Sneak Peek! Exact Path 2022–23 Enhancements

It’s no secret that every summer our teams are hard at work creating meaningful enhancements based entirely on your needs so that you’re armed with new and improved updates to hit the ground running for the new school year. Our 2022–23 school year focus for Exact Path, our K–12 diagnostic-driven individualized learning program, is no exception.

For this coming academic year, we have focused on two specific areas that we can’t wait to tell you about:

1. Creating a balanced assessment system to support increased demand on academic recovery
    
2. Targeting critical learner engagement elements to drive student persistence and success

A Balanced Assessment System

Diagnostic Assessments:

At its core, Exact Path has always offered valid and reliable assessments to measure student growth. We know that these assessments power intervention programs and accountability reporting across the United States, and this summer, we’ve made it even easier for you to procure these assessments as a new standalone option, independent from the learning paths.

Additionally, we’re introducing a long-wished-for reporting feature: year-over-year reporting. This new layer of Exact Path diagnostic reporting will focus on two key metrics to support K–8 data analysis. Beginning with grade-level proficiency (GLP), educators will be able to compare the number of students performing at four proficiency levels—below, approaching, meeting, and exceeding grade-level expectations—across specific times of the school year or multiple years. Educators will also be able to compare the percentage of students who met or didn’t meet typical growth expectations between assessment windows. Aggregated data will be available by school or grade level, and administrators will have the option to export a list of students in each GLP category.

Benchmark Assessments:

Acting as another powerful ingredient in your robust assessment system, we’re introducing grade-level fixed benchmarks in Exact Path beginning this summer. These Benchmarks are built from your state assessment blueprint to quantify student performance against state standards, and they will be available for Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia in time for the 2022–23 school year. Combine both diagnostics and benchmarks inside of a single platform to measure growth over time and prepare students for end-of-year grade expectations.

Standards Mastery:

We’re also soon introducing a meaningful option to target standards mastery via just-in-time formative assessments and practice from Exact Path. Standards Mastery items will be available to support grades 3–8 across all 50 states as an optional program add-on to formatively assess, practice, and measure progress against specific state standards. Using prebuilt, 10-question item sets, educators can quickly deploy standards mastery assignments and leverage standards-based reporting to inform scaffolded, on-grade instructional needs.

Bringing It All Together: Creating a Balanced Assessment System

We all know that assessment is powerful when used intentionally as a way to inform instruction. Creating a cohesive system of assessments can be challenging, though. Exact Path’s combined approach to diagnostics, benchmarks, and standards mastery as formative assessment is allowing educators to strategically meet desired student outcomes without navigating disparate tools.

Prioritizing Learner Engagement

Accelerating Learning Path Progress

We know that students are more engaged when they see a clear path toward success. This summer, we’re accelerating the learning path experience so that students can make more progress faster and educators can receive more actionable, immediate data.

Augmenting the learning path means that students will experience one complete skill module at a time. That most often includes a lesson, practice, and associated five-question Progress Check allowing learners to immediately earn a mastery Trophy when they demonstrate success or address misunderstandings via a Building Block topic aligned to essential prerequisite skills. All the while, educators will be presented with a faster feedback loop for real-time progress monitoring data and intentional small-group planning.

Investing in K–5 Content

At the end of the day, what matters most about a learning program is the quality and effect of its instruction. Over the last year, we have updated Exact Path’s K–2 reading lessons. The new lessons are skillfully designed with engaging backgrounds and fun story lines, and they teach the five pillars of reading (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension); embed social-emotional learning; and celebrate diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Now, we’re turning our attention to updating content for grades 3–5. In the next school year, we will release new lesson instruction for reading and math. For reading, we are starting with grade 3 reading skills to ensure that students are transitioning from learning to read to reading to learn. For math, we are also starting on skills that are critical for future success. We will be updating fraction skills across grades 3–5 to set up students for middle school success.

Enhancing the 6–12 Experience

This summer, we’re zeroing in on opportunities to simplify, optimize, and clarify our secondary learner experience, creating a clean, accessible design for students using Courseware, Exact Path, Assessments, and Flex Assignments.

To empower our secondary learners with the ability to better answer, “What next?” in an environment more aligned to the modern design of technology programs they use daily, we’re making essential improvements. A clean, tile-based design will reduce unnecessary scrolling and use familiar color indicators that align with different Edmentum programs, and a greater level of accessibility will meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)levels AA conformance.

And, that’s a wrap on sneak peeks that are sure to make your 2022–23 Exact Path experience better and brighter. Want to learn more about everything you can expect across Edmentum programs? Visit our entire video playlist.