Race to the Top funding has been announced and North Carolina was one of the big winners!  We’re very excited that the Department of Instruction now has the funding to proceed with implementing an Instructional Improvement System!

We’ve been working with Wilkes County Schools in North Carolina for the past year to develop a North Carolina version of Interactive Achievement’s testing software.  The North Carolina Standard Course of Study has many similarities to the Virginia Standards of Learning, but in many ways the two differ greatly. The development of North Carolina content has been quite the learning opportunity for us here at Interactive Achievement, and we look forward to hopefully sharing IA with the rest of the state.

The Department of Instruction in North Carolina worked hard to write the application for Round 2 of Race to the Top, and they were rewarded for their efforts and their foresight and interest in developing a better educational system.  We applaud their efforts and wish them the best of luck as they implement their new processes!

Congratulations, North Carolina!

The IA advantage really shines at the district level.  When a district comes on board to use IA, benchmarks can be administered district wide to test all students prior to end of the year testing.  By benchmarking our students, we are providing ourselves with the needed tools and data to remediate throughout the year.

When a district goes site based, allowing individual schools to purchase products, we lack the continuity that a district based testing provides.  Call IA today to find out about district wide benchmark testing and the things it can do for your schools!

An educator is a door opener: a guide in each child’s life.  We cannot force them to go through the door, but if we find the right door, the child will go through.

What if you knew each child’s learning style and could adapt parts of each lesson to match how they connected to the material being taught?  I have witnessed students who were thrown out of class daily because they disrupted class, but they were extremely successful in another setting that was active and had the student moving throughout the classroom during parts of the lesson.  That teacher found the door that the child would willingly go through to learn the material.  In the other teacher’s room (where the student was not successful), the door the student was trying to go through was shut, and the student decided to bang into the door they needed over and again.

Learning style driven instruction, focused to the individual student, will only breed success.  Discipline issues, failures, and other classroom related problems become minuscule in the over-education process when the learning styles of each student are being met.  We need to open all the doors during every class period so every student receives the education the teacher wants to deliver each day.

At Interactive Achievement we pride ourselves in not having a sales team.  That’s right, no salesmen! Instead we have a staff of educators who have been in the classroom and who will show you around the software and will answer any questions you might have.

By focusing not on sales, but instead on quality and proper fit, we find that our clients are happier, more productive, and more satisfied with our testing software.  I was presenting Interactive Achievement to a school in Prince William County on Wednesday, and as I told that room of dedicated principals and teachers:  ”If it don’t fit, don’t buy it.”

(Full disclosure:  I did not actually say “If it don’t fit, don’t buy it”.  Had I said that I’m fairly certain the English teachers in the room would have requested that I leave immediately, banned from the school’s campus for eternity. You can rest assured that I said something along those lines, but with proper diction and grammar instead.)

We do not have a list of references at the ready that we provide to prospective clients.  Instead, we always suggest that the person seeking references call any of the school districts on our client list. Why should we pick and choose our happiest and best clients when what you’re looking for is an honest opinion? By not pushing for a sale, badmouthing our competitors, or providing pre-approved references, we may be in the minority when it comes to technology companies. But we believe that in the end, our clients will be happier because they’ve chosen to go with the company that best fits their needs.  And a happy client is always the ultimate goal!