Brevard Public Schools

RFI

THE FUTURE OF FLORIDA’SSPACE COAST

response

Mr. Matt Frey September 17, 2010 Manager, Educational Technology Brevard Public Schools, Brevard County, FL. RE: RFI, Brevard Instructional Improvement System Dear Mr. Frey: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is pleased to submit the attached response to your Request for Information on an Instructional Improvement System for Brevard Public Schools. After carefully reviewing the RFI, we are confident the information presented herein will demonstrate that the HMH Integrated Enterprise Solution can provide Brevard with all of the desirable elements of a fully functioning Instructional Improvement System. By utilizing the HMH Integrated Enterprise Solution, Brevard Public Schools would be leveraging the best Web 2.0 technologies aligned with an award-winning Learning Management System that integrates curriculum, professional development, collaboration, analytics, and administrative oversight. The two attached response charts includes all of the requested information on our solution functionality. The first Chart addresses IIS:

• Ease of Access to disaggregated analytics on student, teacher, school, and district growth

• Performance Metrics tools for system utilization; tracking and reporting • Integrated Assessment, Curriculum, Classroom Management, and Tracking to support

instruction, operations, and research • Growth Data Analytics with flexible data configuration • Meet or exceed all DOE support/implementation/structural requirements and

functionality with regard to Section 1006.281 (Florida Statute), and federal RT3 Data Systems to Inform Instruction requirements

• Three-Year Implementation Plan overview • Assessment Methodology

As the largest educational publisher and educational technology provider in the world, HMH has proven solutions that fully support districts in their efforts to focus on the five main project areas of Race To The Top funding:

1. Standards and Assessments 2. Great Teachers and Leaders 3. Data Systems to Inform Instruction 4. Turning Around Persistently Low Performing Schools 5. STEM

The second chart will address these project areas, along with some other important RTTT grant funding considerations in which our solutions have a superior performance track-record:

• Lesson Study Plans • Portal/lesson repository • Professional Development • Career Technical Education • Student Information Management

Additionally, various reports which can be effortlessly generated within the HMH Integrated Enterprise Solution will facilitate the reporting of deliverables that the Brevard County Schools will be required to complete for Race To The Top. Our 175 year-old company has a history of responding to the needs of LEAs and SEAs both large and small, with solutions that fit those needs according to budgetary restraints. In order to quote specific implementation, customization, and integration costs, further discussion will need to take place in order to determine the scope of this project, which we will gladly accommodate at any time convenient to your district. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has a proven performance record of enterprise solutions, most recent of which is the successful implementation of our curriculum management products in the states of Georgia and Vermont (Statewide), and in several large districts, including Miami Dade Public Schools, Broward County Public Schools, Detroit, and Memphis City Schools. The HMH Integrated Enterprise Solution is currently being used in the Pittsburgh Public Schools to implement a teacher effective program in conjunction with The Gates Foundation.

Our experience with these programs not only provides evidence of our expertise and success with large-scale technology-based product implementations, but it will inform our collaboration with future educators while we move forward as the world leader in education. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is confident that upon reviewing this response to your Request for Information, Brevard Public Schools will find that no other company or system can provide the Instructional Improvement System functionality combined with powerful learning outcomes-based components that will meet your present and projected education and administrative goals. Thank you for your interest in HMH educational products and services, and we look forward to engaging in further discussion at a convenient time and date. Sincerely, Allen Burgtorf Vice President of Strategic Accounts Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Innovation in Education Group 222 Berkeley Street Boston, MA. 02116 561.573.5447

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Brevard Questions HMH Integrated Enterprise Solution

Describe how your system can be easily used by students, parents, teachers and administrators (school and district) to show growth of students, teachers, schools and districts disaggregated by subject and demographics.

The HMH solution is at its heart a web based portal system that allows easy access to a vast array of information for school administrators, teachers, students and parents anytime and anyplace 24/7.

Administrators and teachers can monitor progress by district, school, teacher, and individual student through the powerful Analytics tool which enables easy data analysis through a simple ‘point and click’ interface. This Analytic tool provides for simple disaggregation of data by numerous data parameters including demographics, subject, ethnicity, etc. The ability to disaggregate is limited only by the data contained within the district data warehouse.

Teacher Analytics Screen (it is customizable by the teacher)

What tools/utilities are included in the system that would help the district to monitor utilization in order to evaluate engagement of all stakeholder groups?

Tool provides reports on usage metrics, performance metrics that allow various stake holder to track both utilization and performance improvements. In addition, the system will record access to curriculum by teachers including assignments and assessments and then student work submitted through or scanned into the system. This student work then becomes a virtual student portfolio.

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How can your system be adopted and used in the classroom, school and district offices to support instruction in the classroom, operations at the school and district levels, and research?

The system provides:

a) Centralized as well as classroom-centric Assessment management capabilities including district common assessments, classroom assessments, online/offline assessments, and the importation of student work samples.

b) centralized and classroom-centric curriculum management, i.e. – the ability to push centralized curriculum, curriculum library to bring content from multiple sources and enable sharing, allow teachers to further enhance curriculum

c) complete classroom management tools for teachers

they can track individualized learning plans, students and parent communication, tools for blended and online learning, customizable classroom pages, assignments, and assessments seamlessly integrated with the portal that could include gradebook and attendance if so desired.

These integrated tools allow all stakeholders at schools, districts and home to have all the information they have permission to see at their fingertips.

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What types of student growth data is available to each user group through your system?

Through our Analytics tool we provide multi-year data views on student performance (with ability to build dynamic filtering on demographics, teachers, courses etc.). This data is available for either the current school year or longitudinally. Viewing reports is easily done through a series of point and click screens.

Sample Analytics Screen

(1) To ensure that all school districts have equitable access to digitally rich instructional materials, districts are encouraged to provide access to an electronic learning management system that allows teachers, students, and parents to access, organize, and use electronically available instructional materials and teaching and learning tools and resources, and that enables teachers to manage, assess, and track student learning.

Our system does exactly this, allowing for the creation, import, and housing of learning and curriculum materials and then providing access to them based on roles to school administrators, teachers, students and parents in a web based environment available to all users 24/7. In addition, it tracks both the assignment of student work and submission, scoring and storing of results to track student learning.

Sample Teacher Screen

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(2) To the extent fiscally and technologically feasible, a school district's electronic learning management system should allow for a single, authenticated sign-on and include the following functionality:

Yes, we do single sign on.

We can either be the single sign on host or a player in someone else’s portal.

a. Vertically searches for, gathers, and organizes specific standards-based instructional materials

Yes, every element in the system is linked to whatever standards are desired whether they be state or local standards of the Common Core Standards.

b. Enables teachers to prepare lessons, individualize student instruction, and use best practices in providing instruction.

The HMH solution allows teachers to either utilize pre loaded best practice lessons (from the state, district or publishers) or to develop and save their own lessons.

In addition, the system has a prescriptive component that informs teachers when students either did not master specific standards based on assessments and/or are at risk of not mastering them AND provides suggested re-teaching activities to present to the students involved as required in the RTTT ‘lesson study’ proposals.

Sample Prescriptive Screen

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c. Provides communication, including access to up-to-date student performance data, in order to help teachers and parents better serve the needs of students.

Teachers have access through their ‘dashboard’ to all pertinent information for all the courses they are teaching including all curriculum (lesson plans, activities, assessments), test results, student completion of assignments, etc. This data is updated on a ‘live’ basis.

Parents have access through a parent portal and their own ‘dashboard’ to summary data about their children including assignments, completion, assessment scores, and more.

d. Provides access for administrators to ensure quality of instruction within every classroom

Administrators are able to see summary data for all teachers AND using the Analytic tool create ‘on the fly’ reports to view progress at schools and with individual teachers.

They are also able to determine teacher use of the best practice curriculum provided to them by the District and insure that not only have teachers been provided with a quality curriculum but that they are appropriately using it with their students.

e. Provides access to multiple content providers

The HMH Integrated Enterprise Solution is vendor agnostic and will allow any content that a State and/or District has license for to be accessed through its portal structure.

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The Department of Education shall provide assistance as requested by school districts in their deployment of a district electronic learning management system Please respond to each of the items and sub-items by describing how your system may be used, in part or in whole, the meet the intent of the legislation

The HMH Integrated Enterprise Solution is infinitely scalable and could operate on a SEA or LEA level with data flowing in both directions for reporting purposes.

• Describe a three year implementation plan that scales up most significantly by the end of the third year.

Year 1 - Implementation of Curriculum, Assessment and Data

Year 2 - Implementation of the Instructional and Curriculum Resources and PD

Year 3 - Implementation of Teacher Effectiveness

While our priorities are subject to change as we get further into developing the scope of this project, our early focus has tended to lean toward the assessment component of an Instructional Improvement System/Learning Management System

• Please describe your ability to deliver a mechanism and/or methodology for common assessments

The curriculum component of our product had an integrated assessment module that provides for import and/or building of common assessments, a test item bank for questions, the assignment of assessments to students via online or traditional pencil paper, the scoring and reporting of the assessments and storing of the results.

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While a budget has yet to be determined for this project, it is important for us to understand the kind of investment that will be necessary to implement an Instructional Improvement System that meets the intent of Race to the Top and Florida Statute while concurrently meeting the goals of Brevard Public Schools. Knowing that we will likely favor a modular approach that is phased in and scaled up over time, please consider the ball park costs associated with implementing your solution. I anticipate that the lion’s share of Brevard’s Race to the Top allocation will go toward developing and executing a differentiated pay-for-performance structure. However, in relatively short order, I need to be able to advocate for a portion of the award that can be used to deliver a viable Instructional Improvement System. Information that may help you arrive at these preliminary figures includes the following: 70,000 K-12 students 20,000 students in grades 9-12 30,000 students in grades 7-12 86 traditional schools 4500 teachers

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has a history of responding to the needs of educational providers with solutions that fit according to those needs within the budgetary restraints. In order to quote specific implementation, customization, and integration costs, further discussion will need to take place in order to determine the scope of this project.

Additionally, it would not be unreasonable to explore an implementation that addresses one content area at a time (i.e. math, science, language arts, etc.)

The implementation of the product can be done in any manner that complies with the wishes of the client and the FLDOE mandates.

HMH Integrated

Enterprise Solutionand the

Florida RTTT

HMH Integrated Enterprise Solution, Florida RTTT

RTTT Initiative HMH Integrated Enterprise Solution Lesson Study Plans • Bank of lesson and curriculum resources from

FL districts already using the HMH Integrated Enterprise Solution

• HMH electronic curriculum lessons • HMH textbook electronically available lessons

and ancillary resources Portal/lesson repository • HMH Integrated Enterprise Solution

o Single sign in o Access to all curriculum resources

Professional Development Online access of PD resources through HMH Integrated Enterprise Solution:

• Classroom Connect, • PD within HMH product lines, • DOE/LEA/Third Party PD Resources

Assessment • Riverside Publishing, • Edusoft

Career Technical Education • Steck-Vaughn, • Skills Tutor

Low Performing Schools 24/7 access to HMH resources through HMH Integrated Enterprise Solution:

• Destination Success, • Edmark, • Earobics, • Skills Tutor, • Heinemann

Student Information Mgmt • HMH Integrated Enterprise Solution is a sophisticated SIS as well as curriculum data warehouse and as such can interface easily with other sis systems

Effective Teachers • The HMH Integrated Enterprise Solution is currently being used in the Pittsburgh Public Schools to implement a teacher effective program in conjunction with The Gates Foundation

• The HMH Integrated Enterprise Solution contains all the components necessary for a data driven teacher effective model as requested by RTTT

STEM • Textbook resources (Holt McDougal, etc.) • Electronic curriculum

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company 222 Berkeley Street Boston, MA 02116