FOLSOM, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--PowerSchool (NYSE: PWSC), the leading provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education in North America, today announced updates to its PowerSchool Unified Classroom® and PowerSchool Unified Insights™ solutions. These updates include new data-driven personalized learning products, LearningNav and ContentNav, and a new resource library within Unified Insights MTSS, which will provide educators with vetted, research-backed strategies and tools. PowerSchool also announced time-saving software Clouds built to provide educators with a more connected approach to planning, engaging, and monitoring students’ unique needs.
As we emerge from the past two and half years, the impact of the dramatic learning disruptions experienced by students nationwide is evident. In fact, the results from the latest “National Report Card,” distributed by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, shows declines in math and reading scores for the U.S.’ fourth and eighth graders with math scores having the largest declines since NAEP testing began in 1990. Each student is at a different place in their learning journey, making it clear that educators need tools and resources that will help personalize learning, address individual student needs, and streamline their operations.
LearningNav: Building Personalized Pathways
LearningNav is an intelligent platform that uses AI and machine learning to provide personalized learning pathways that adapt to students’ needs. Within LearningNav, an educator can view a student’s starting point in real-time, select a student’s learning goals and then review a continually adapting personalized pathway recommendation for that student. After a teacher has assigned a student their personalized pathway, students move through the curriculum at their own pace, and teachers are empowered with data to highlight learning milestones and continued challenge areas.
“Educators have taken on more and more responsibilities over the last three years and are now faced with the largest learning declines in recent history,” said Jean Teillon, Group Vice President, Product at PowerSchool. “While educators know every student learns and develops at their own pace, they do not have the time to create individual learning pathways for each student. That’s why we have created a solution that builds personalized, standards-aligned learning paths, and it represents an important step in PowerSchool’s personalized learning roadmap.”
Another update to Unified Classroom is the launch of ContentNav, a one-stop shop for high-quality, pre-approved content so that teachers have simplified access to resources that support instruction. ContentNav is the content and learning object repository for PowerSchool, bringing together district-created materials, curated partnership content, and open education resources. LearningNav will use this solution to access content that drives AI-based recommendations. Additionally, educators can access their district-approved content by using ContentNav to find and add resources to their courses within Schoology Learning, PowerSchool’s award-winning Learning Management System.
MTSS Resource Library: Addressing Students’ Needs
To further help educators address students’ individual needs, PowerSchool Unified Insights MTSS is launching a Resource Library, which will provide educators with vetted, research-backed strategies and tools. PowerSchool has integrated resources from highly esteemed non-profit organizations, including:
- What Works Clearinghouse*: Provides evidence-backed academic practice guides on a variety of topics including emotional and physical safety, bullying and physical and mental health.
- Attendance Works: Provides proven strategies, guidance and free downloadable resources and toolkits to enable PreK-12 educators to collaborate with students, families, community members and policymakers to identify and develop solutions for chronic absenteeism so students attend school regularly, learn and thrive.
- Digital Promise: Provides the Learner Variability Navigator, a free tool helping educators find and easily weave into their practice the research-based factors and strategies that best support their learners.
"By providing seamless access to these organizations' resources within Unified Insights MTSS, only PowerSchool can offer educators simple, streamlined access to the best-in-class, most efficacious intervention and extension supports to implement with their students at scale," said Marcy Daniel, Chief Product Officer at PowerSchool. “These added resources from expert organizations within the industry will provide educators with strategies that cover attendance, behavior, and PK-12 general academics. With these strategies, educators can take instant action for students identified as needing support and extension within MTSS.”
Clouds: Educating with Ease
PowerSchool’s new Clouds are persona-specific offerings that have been built and integrated to help educators best serve their unique set of students by having the tools that their role requires all in one centralized location. There are six Cloud types available:
- Student Information Cloud: Helps save time, reduce manual entry, and improve data security with a single, interoperable operations platform that's easy to use for both staff and families. The Student Information Cloud helps educators get actionable insights from various stakeholders, keeps data safe and accessible and improves family engagement and convenience via mobile-responsive solutions that a student’s family can access on any device.
- Personalized Learning Cloud: Unifies assessment, planning, and instructional systems to support high-quality tiered instructional supports while providing educators flexibility via an always-on digital system. The Personalized Learning Cloud helps students gain a greater understanding of self in relation to whole-child focus areas and ensures access and equity of the learning experience through the 5 C’s: Coherence, Collaboration, Communication, Community, and Consistency.
- Educator Recruitment Cloud: Reduces decision-making time by providing informed analytics in real-time. The Educator Recruitment Cloud decreases time from recruit to onboarding, while increasing the quality and quantity of applicants. It helps HR administrators stretch their recruiting budget by reaching wider audiences with time-saving online postings and reduces the burden on administrators by providing paperless efficiencies via digital maintenance of employee records and onboarding documents.
- Educator Effectiveness Cloud: Provides personalized support that helps administrators optimize staffing and training budgets with talent systems that align resources. The Educator Effectiveness Cloud supports educator retention by providing meaningful feedback, tailored professional learning, digital record keeping, and simplified administrative processes.
- Student Success Cloud: Promotes equity and access for every student by centralizing the tools they need to succeed. The Student Support Cloud helps boost student attendance and outcomes with communication tools that are proven to increase family engagement and overall support. It also helps ensure students of all ages have access to college, career and life readiness tools.
- Workforce Development Cloud: Ensures individuals are getting the support they need to explore options for lifelong success as they build their personalized pathway for the future. It simultaneously helps school counselors, state-level agencies, and everyone in between have the insights they need to better support a wide variety of college, career, and life readiness initiatives.
LearningNav, ContentNav, MTSS updates and Clouds are expected to be available in the first half of 2023.
Learn more about LearningNav and ContentNav at https://www.powerschool.com/blog/personalized-learning-recover-learning-loss/.
Learn more about Unified Insights MTSS at https://www.powerschool.com/insights/mtss/.
About PowerSchool
PowerSchool (NYSE: PWSC) is the leading provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education in North America. Its mission is to power the education ecosystem with unified technology that helps educators and students realize their full potential, in their way. PowerSchool connects students, teachers, administrators, and parents, with the shared goal of improving student outcomes. From the office to the classroom to the home, it helps schools and districts efficiently manage state reporting and related compliance, special education, finance, human resources, talent, registration, attendance, funding, learning, instruction, grading, assessments and analytics in one unified platform. PowerSchool supports over 45 million students globally and more than 15,000 customers, including more than 90 of the top 100 districts by student enrollment in the United States, and sells solutions in more than 90 countries. Visit www.powerschool.com to learn more.
© PowerSchool. PowerSchool and other PowerSchool marks are trademarks of PowerSchool Holdings, Inc. or its subsidiaries. *Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
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