Press Release - September 18, 2007
Hacienda La Puente School District Invests $486,000 in Vantage Learning's MY Access!®
Success at the high school and middle school levels prompts district to expand program, giving 13,000+ students access to the award-winning, Web-based, language arts program
Newtown, Pa., September 18, 2007 - Hacienda La Puente Unified School District's fifth-grade students can now boost critical writing, reasoning, and computer skills in the classroom, thanks to an expanded licensing agreement for MY Access!®, the award-winning online writing tool from Vantage Learning. This month, Hacienda La Puente expanded its use of MY Access! to all 13,517 high school, middle school, and fifth-grade students in the school district. The Web-based writing environment builds better writers by instantly scoring student essays, and provides immediate remedial instruction that engages and motivates students."Our high school teachers were first to measure the difference MY Access! makes in students' writing performance and attitude," says Judy Carlton, Director of Instructional Support Teams/Programs with Hacienda La Puente USD, City of Industry, Calif. "Their success led our middle school instructors to embrace the program. Now it's only natural we extend MY Access! to our fifth-grade classes, to engage and develop their writing skills at this crucial educational stage."
To use MY Access!, students write an essay based on a teacher's assignment, and submit it to the Web-based system. The program instantly analyzes over 350 semantic, syntactic, and discourse characteristics, and scores the students on focus and meaning, organization, content and development, language use and style, mechanics and conventions, and overall writing proficiency. MY Access! then instantly scores the essays on a scale of 1 to 6. This provides immediate feedback to students, and saves teachers valuable grading time so they can focus on personalized, targeted student instruction instead.
Students have quickly reaped the benefits of this innovative program, which helps better prepare them for the California Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) exam. In the Spring of 2007, several middle schools posted a 40 to 50 percent increase on their STAR writing scores and teachers attributed this accomplishment to consistent use of MY Access!. The improved test scores further motivated the district to extend MY Access! licenses to all fifth-graders for the 2007-2008 school year.
MY Access! also supports multilingual capabilities, which help improve the writing skills of the district's English language learners (ELL), who comprise about 40 percent of the student population. MY Access! tutoring and editing feedback is available in multiple languages, giving ELL teachers the ability to adapt the program based on students' English proficiency. Its unique translation feature lets ELL students write in English, but receive feedback and corrections in their native language.
"Hacienda La Puente is committed to this program's success, because they are committed to helping all students build their English writing skills and confidence," says Harry Barfoot, Vice President of Sales and Marketing of Vantage Learning. "For the district's ELL students, the ability to get feedback in their native language is a big advantage. It's just one more way teachers can customize our products to teach students at their own pace, regardless of their different learning levels and proficiencies. We're thrilled to see them expand the program's reach, and look forward to seeing how MY Access! helps their fifth-graders this year."
About Vantage Learning
Delivering more than 193 million online test transactions last year, Vantage Learning is recognized as the leader in cost-effective, high volume, secure, scalable online assessment and instructional programs for K-12 and higher education. Leveraging technology such as artificial intelligence, natural language understanding, and Web-based learning objects, Vantage provides educators with high-quality tools and resources that motivate students to learn and that create meaningful interaction between students, parents and teachers.
Acknowledged by industry leaders as the gold standard for scoring quality, consistency, reliability, and scalability of automated essay scoring using the patented IntelliMetric® engine, Vantage Learning has received accolades ranging from the prestigious CODIE Award for best instructional technology to recognition by Eduventures as one of the eight most innovative educational technology companies.