CompassLearning Predicts Key K-12 Education Sector Trends for 2012

Personalization Plays a Key Role in Education; Blended Learning Models Continue to Evolve to Make Teachers More Effective

Austin, TX – January 25, 2012 – CompassLearning, a leading provider of K-12 personalized learning solutions that empower teachers to help every child reach their potential, announced today predictions and key trends that will have the biggest impact on K-12 education in 2012.

“2012 will see several new trends begin to have a real impact on schools,” said Arthur VanderVeen, vice president of strategy for CompassLearning. “K-12 education is shifting from classroom-centered to student-centered learning models, where teachers organize instruction around the needs, motivations and strengths of each student rather than the whole class. Students will increasingly direct their own learning, pursuing their interests and passions as they chart learning pathways toward mastery of state standards and graduation requirements.”

VanderVeen continued, “Personalization technologies will mature, empowering teachers to differentiate instruction down to the individual child. Teachers by necessity will flip the classroom, allowing quality digital resources and learning tools to handle direct instruction of foundational skills so that they can focus on coaching, tutoring, and developing students’ critical thinking, problem solving and collaboration skills. State and district policies will shift from seat time to competency based credit models, enabling students to advance at their own pace as they master the curriculum, independent of age or grade level. This shift from nineteenth century classrooms to 21st century learning will put tremendous pressures on schools to offer more flexible instructional models — in online, blended, and face-to-face instructional settings — giving students and parents greater choice for how, when, and where students learn.”

Key Education Sector Predictions for 2012:
Educators will continue to be pressured to “do more with less” and prepare for new national standards. Technology will play a key role to support teachers in their aspirations to keep every student on the path to both academic success and personal growth.

Personalization Hits Its Stride:

• The ability to create personal “play lists” for each student based on multiple dimensions that influence how students learn will gain significant momentum in 2012.
• Software that allows teachers to more easily assess student performance and efficiently implement personalized curriculum and content across disciplines and grade-levels will see increased adoption.
• Districts will increasingly “go digital,” enabling them greater flexibility to customize instructional resources drawn from multiple providers, both commercial and Open Educational Resources (OER).

Blended Learning Models Will Grow In Importance:

• Innovative districts will launch blended learning pilots within a grade level, academy, or entire school to evaluate the challenges and benefits of modifying traditional school structures to blend technology and face-to-face instruction.
• Schools will begin to adopt staffing, scheduling and teaching delivery models that adapt to when, where and how each and every student learns.
• Use of online courses and instructors will continue to grow, allowing greater scheduling flexibility and choice for students and increasing access to high quality teachers and elective courses.
• Schools will pilot wider use of controlled social networking sites to support student collaboration, online homework help and tutoring, and online study groups.

Technology Will Play A Major Role:

• As school districts look for cost-effective device strategies, tablets and low-cost laptops/netbooks will increasingly be a part of the day-to-day solution.
• As security protocols improve, districts will increasingly consider cloud-based solutions, moving instructional content, learning applications, assessment, student work, and student data to cloud-based hosting environments.

Teacher Effectiveness And Assessment Programs Will Mature

• Teachers will remain the primary factor affecting student success in classrooms. Districts that embrace innovation and support teachers will show the most gains in student outcomes.
• Teacher effectiveness programs will mature, addressing concerns about validity and reliability and providing greater formative feedback to help teachers improve their practice. Programs will gain wider acceptance as an appropriate way to keep the best teachers in the classroom.
• The next 3 years will be a transition period as school administrators and teachers prepare for the move to the Common Core standards and assessments.

Budgets Will Continue To Be An Issue

• State and district budgets will continue to be very tight in 2012, reflecting what might be considered a “new normal” until the economy and policy environment change.
• Districts, schools and teachers will be expected to do more with less.

Added VanderVeen, “More flexible assessments and better data reporting to enable teachers, students, and parents to manage their learning based on real measures of student progress will be required. Common Core standards and common data standards will lay the foundations needed for school systems to shift toward these student-centered educational models.”

About CompassLearning
CompassLearning provides educational software that empowers educators to unlock the potential of every student. With CompassLearning education solutions for grade K-12, schools and school districts can more fully empower teachers to truly engage with students in the learning process that ultimately ensures students achieve success in the classroom and beyond. The comprehensive CompassLearning personalized education solutions address the needs of every student and student type as well as the whole student, all backed by academic rigor that is based on more than 40 years of research and standards-aligned. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, CompassLearning serves nearly 6,000 schools across the United States.

For more information visit:www.compasslearning.com

Visit the company’s blog at:http://navigator.compasslearning.com/