How Much Time Should Students Be Spending in Exact Path?

The time available in the school day is finite; every minute counts. Knowing how many of those minutes should be devoted to Exact Path, and how is imperative to making your implementation a success..

At Edmentum, we think about time spent through the lens of accelerating growth. To optimize personalized learning time and teacher-student interaction, students need just 40 minutes per week per subject, in the Exact Path learning path. In this article we’ll take a closer look at how those 40 minutes should be spent to successfully scale the best of your intervention model with Exact Path.

If you’re looking for just a snapshot, the Exact Path Implementation Guidance document is a quick reference guide to implementing Exact Path with fidelity.

Universal and Targeted Intervention

At a general education tier 1 level, Exact Path is designed to be a universal intervention, supporting differentiation for all learners, automatically filling gaps and reinforcing skills as needed. With an implementation of 40 minutes per week per subject across grades K–12, students can successfully make up more than a grade-level worth of progress in one year.

Erin Rineberg, K–8 coordinator at California Pacific Charter Schools in California, reported that all students utilize Exact Path at least two total hours between math and reading learning paths every week to address skill gaps inside of their intervention program. She commented: “We've used [Exact Path] for several years, but we weren't utilizing it to its full potential. And [“in 2020–2021], we've made it a key part of our instruction.”

At the tier 2 and tier 3 level, learning is focused more on repairing deep gaps from previous years. While following the guidance of having students work in their personalized learning path for 40 minutes per week per subject, these learners will additionally benefit from Exact Path’s focused support tools to make above and beyond progress. Exact Path’s Priority Skills and Standards Mastery assignments are highly effective targeted intervention tools to identify and address individual and small-group instructional needs. Finally, for the most intensive interventions, schools can partner with Edmentum to provide students with diagnostic driven, live, online 1:1 and small group tutoring services.

Dr. Courtney Holley, the district MTSS (multi-tiered system of supports) director and school psychologist at Cook County Schools in Georgia, described her award-winning intervention program, which utilizes Exact Path at the center. Each grade level receives appropriate intervention three to five days a week depending on the grade level and tier 2 versus tier 3 qualification. Her goal: “I wanted to make sure we were monitoring these kids all the way through graduation, and we were providing intervention if the intervention was needed. . . We have loved it, and we’re excited about using it.”

Implementation Guidance

All students should use the program for the research-backed, suggested  amount of time each week. However, depending on whether Exact Path is implemented as an intervention for elementary or secondary students, where that time is spent makes a difference.

We know elementary and middle school teachers provide frequent guidance and encouragement to their students during class time. This hands-on support not only helps students manage their time on task, but is necessary to help students make sense of what they are learning. Because this type of support is so intertwined with the success of younger learners, personalized learning time is often built right into the core classroom. Exact Path was built to fit seamlessly into this time as a scaffolded, age-appropriate, personalized learning station to support teachers in filling their student’s essential skill gaps.

Implementing intervention for secondary students looks a bit different from the lower grades. Increasing on-grade level proficiency expectations decreases the amount of time tier 1 teachers have to provide 1:1 support. At these grade levels, personalized learning is almost exclusively small-group focused, both during class and dedicated intervention or enrichment blocks. Instructors can leverage the flexibility of Exact Path to plan and deliver small-group sessions that match what their students need in a way that aligns with their instructional strategy. During core instruction, teachers can assign Exact Path standards mastery practice and/or digital-lessons to students to check for understanding and provide targeted instruction, while those same students are filling skill gaps with their Exact Path adaptive learning path during their intervention or enrichment block. 

Stacey Knerr, math department supervisor at Cumberland Valley School District in Pennsylvania, shared that all her middle school students were using Exact Path every other day during their 44-minute study hall class periods in addition to using it in math class. The benefits of this approach are clear to her: “[Exact Path] was able to show us where those gaps were, and it was able to assign those [skills] through the learning path so that [the students] could make progress.”

Interested in more tips and strategies to augment your Exact Path implementation? Utilize our Getting Started Resources page for videos, blog posts, and downloadable resources to take your program experience to the next level.