Exact Path Back-to-School Planning Guide

Whether you’re kickstarting a new implementation or reigniting an existing program for the new school year, we want to make sure that you have what you need to get off on the right foot. We’ve assembled our top resources to help you set up things for the new school year, explore all of the features your program has to offer, and learn best practices from successful implementations.

Prepare Your Account for the New Year

There are a few initial steps you should follow to get your implementation off the ground. Our wonderful consultants and on-call support representatives can guide you through this process, but with the help of some how-to resources, you can also do it yourself. While you may have had it all figured it out by last spring, chances are you’ve forgotten a step or two. Or, you may be brand new to the process entirely! Start by taking the following actions using the How-To Tours found in the Help Center of Exact Path or by leveraging the step-by-step guides found on the Learn and Support page.

1. Update your teachers, classes, and users: Each new school year ushers in new educators, new students, and of course, new classes. While admins can adjust teachers and students in the system from the Administration Center, individual teachers have the ability to create their classes.
2. Set your academic year: Before you can get your students into Exact Path, you first need to make sure that you have your academic years defined. This helps guide the testing window structure, and it is important for reporting. Administrators can make these decisions in just a few clicks from the Settings area.
3. Define your diagnostic testing windows: Determining test frequency and test windows are important decisions to help map out your Exact Path expectations for all teachers using the program. As such, this is an important next step. You can also auto-schedule the diagnostic at the same time or choose to take that step separately, one assessment at a time.

Gather Implementation Best Practices

Our in-house research scientists, subject-matter experts, and consultants have gathered lots of great insights throughout their tenure here at Edmentum. Here are a few of our favorite nuggets of information to help guide your program implementation.

• 5 Tips for Administering the Fall Exact Path Assessment: After your account is set up, it’s time to administer the assessment. Check out these quick tips to increase the validity of the assessment results.
• 4 Commonly Asked Questions About Implementing Exact Path: We have answers to your burning questions here, including “How much time should students spend using Exact Path?” and “How do I communicate success and progress to my students’ parents?”
• How are Educators Implementing Exact Path in U.S. Schools and Districts Today? Here, we break down five common use cases spotted in real classrooms across the country to help paint a picture of how you might use Exact Path in your school or district.

Explore Our Favorite Features

Las year, you might have administered the assessment a few times and even been able to get students using their learning paths regularly, but did you make the most out of ALL of the other neat features Exact Path has to offer? With such diverse features as assignments, Trophies, Challenges, and grouping, Exact Path is more than meets the eye. Turn your implementation up a notch by checking out one of our feature focus blog posts for an in-depth look and quick tips to success.

• Individualized Learning Paths: This resource will help you unpack the ins and outs of our automated learning paths, including what lesson components your students can expect to find, what automatic remediation is in place, and what level of insight you can expect to get as an educator.
• Building Blocks: In Exact Path, Building Blocks represent the cornerstone of how the program automatically remediates learning. With this key feature, we’re answering four questions you might have about how Building Blocks work.
• Trophies and Challenges: Exact Path offers meaningful engagement features that can help crank up student motivation. Make sure that you know how they work to support skill mastery and time-on-task—then download some of our free student and class trackers for your classroom!
• Assignments: The individualized learning paths are a critical component of the program, but assignments also provide an important means by which to remediate, accelerate, or simply focus on a specific standard exactly when you need to. Learn more about how they can be used in Exact Path.

Learn from Others’ Success

We frequently have the honor of hearing from our terrific customers across the United States, and they’re all too eager to share how they’ve made the program successful via station-rotation models, computer labs, and intervention breakouts. Check out some of our favorite Exact Path success stories here.

• “I think what my teachers find the most useful is just the fact that they can drill down on a kiddo and see what skills and at what grade level they are currently working at independently. I personally just like that I have kids that really need time just to do their own thing, and it supports that. Especially those kids that might need some enrichment. . . . We’re really trying to build support to our kids that need to be pushed further because they already have the skills their grade level is working on.”
  —Kathy Butler, K–12 Principal at Lone Jack Elementary School, Missouri
• "For instance, the other day we noticed a child—he's an 8th grader, and he was at a 9th grade level in math, but he was at a 6th grade level with decimals. We looked at it, and the teacher talked to him. . . . His response was, "I never liked decimals. I don't understand them." But, the kid understands algebra. We were able to tweak that. Now, we have everyone on Exact Path, and we're going to make strides every year, hopefully."
  — Michael A. Esposito, Director of Pupil Services at Independence Charter Academy, California

Stay on Top of What’s New

We’re constantly improving our programs based on your feedback. This summer was no different—in fact, we’re making some very exciting enhancements to our diagnostic reporting that you won’t want to miss.

• What’s New Page: Here, you’ll always find details about what has just been just released, and you can also preview what features are on deck to drop next.
• Register for a Live Webinar: Want to see a live demonstration of all the program enhancements made this summer? Or, maybe you have questions you want to pose straight to our product managers and research scientists? Join us for a one-hour, live webinar!