Center for Education Innovation - Our Programs
Our program is designed to offer technological resources and intensive one‐on‐one professional support to public school teachers in order to promote individualized instruction for every child. In order to achieve this overarching goal, CEI assumes responsibility for all technology‐based professional development activities in our partner schools and provides the requisite hardware and software to support positive student outcomes. Our service delivery lasts an entire academic year, with further support and assistance available beyond that time at the request of the principal, teachers or school. Currently our partner schools are in their second or third year of a partnership that grows and evolves according to the needs of the school, its staff and students.
Through our unique public‐private partnership, CEI has developed a model for connecting public school teachers to targeted technology integration and professional development opportunities. First, through the input of New Bedford Public Schools Superintendent, Assistant Superintendent for Accountability and School Improvement, and the District IT Director, we identify school principals who are eager to participate in such a program. Second, once a partner school is established, we provide personalized, comprehensive, longitudinal technology integration services to all teachers in that respective school. In this design, our strategy differs from most. We are also unique in that we have no financial incentive to sell a particular method, software, or hardware. Instead, we are free to research best‐practices and implement them in a particular context to address the needs of a particular district or individual schools. Also, our "wrap‐around" technology services demand accountability of and by numerous district officials. Consequently, our mission dovetails with and complements that of the New Bedford Public Schools: to improve student outcomes and prepare students for success in the 21st century.
In designing our program, we have drawn upon data from research and policy experts like McKinsey and Company, who identify the three key in‐school factors for improving educational outcomes as: "Getting the right people as teachers; developing them as effective instructors; and ensuring that the system is able to deliver the best possible instruction for every child." In other words, the academic, social and even economic outcomes of students can be greatly enhanced by improving the "professional capital" of their teachers.
Our current programs, which are being offered in five New Bedford Public Elementary Schools, support the district in the following manner:
Through our unique public‐private partnership, CEI has developed a model for connecting public school teachers to targeted technology integration and professional development opportunities. First, through the input of New Bedford Public Schools Superintendent, Assistant Superintendent for Accountability and School Improvement, and the District IT Director, we identify school principals who are eager to participate in such a program. Second, once a partner school is established, we provide personalized, comprehensive, longitudinal technology integration services to all teachers in that respective school. In this design, our strategy differs from most. We are also unique in that we have no financial incentive to sell a particular method, software, or hardware. Instead, we are free to research best‐practices and implement them in a particular context to address the needs of a particular district or individual schools. Also, our "wrap‐around" technology services demand accountability of and by numerous district officials. Consequently, our mission dovetails with and complements that of the New Bedford Public Schools: to improve student outcomes and prepare students for success in the 21st century.
In designing our program, we have drawn upon data from research and policy experts like McKinsey and Company, who identify the three key in‐school factors for improving educational outcomes as: "Getting the right people as teachers; developing them as effective instructors; and ensuring that the system is able to deliver the best possible instruction for every child." In other words, the academic, social and even economic outcomes of students can be greatly enhanced by improving the "professional capital" of their teachers.
Our current programs, which are being offered in five New Bedford Public Elementary Schools, support the district in the following manner:
- CEI provides laptops for every teacher as well as desktop computers for a computer lab and classroom stations. In addition, each school receives one or two (depending upon school size) fully equipped iPad carts. This equipment remains the property of the New Bedford public schools for continued use after the end of the partnership.
- We provide licenses to software designed to individualize education, develop critical skills, and build proficiency in 21st century skills. Specific programs include Lexia Core 5 Reading, Kidpix, Kidspiration, Timeliner and Comic Life.
- CEI provides over 60 hours of technology integration instruction to teachers per year.
- We ensure a hands‐on, personalized experience for all participants in our professional development offerings.
- CEI trains teachers for software we provide as well as best practices in standards based technology integration. For example, advanced features of the Lexia program provides teachers with detailed reports of student progress enabling individualized instruction to bring students to grade level literacy benchmarks.
- Maximize access to technology for all students despite severely limited public school district resources.
- CEI partnered with WIDE World at the Harvard Graduate School of Education to provide professional development to teachers in order to effectively help students through the use of integrated technology.
- CEI technology integration specialists and coaches mentor teachers one‐on‐one to strengthen critical thinking, problem solving, and analytic skills as they are applied in the classroom.
- All the work of CEI is aligned with core standards in literacy and mathematics.
- Lexia has built in evaluation tools allowing CEI to track the progress of the students we serve and determine the effectiveness of our efforts.
- We have structured our program to be both replicable and sustainable by identifying those teachers who are most successful after a year of technology introduction, professional development and mentoring. We then train them to become mentors to teachers in other local schools. This structure has two strengths: 1) it is cost‐effective and 2) it ensures that even with high turnover among faculty and administration resources for support of professional development and mentoring remain in the district.