STATIS© (STudent And Teacher Instructional System) is the third in a series of successful on-line academic products developed by Teacher Resources, Inc.’s management team. It was designed in response to our belief that classroom teachers could use technology to help them in meeting the end-of-year testing requirements now demanded by every state and the federal government’s No Child Left behind Act.   During our development effort, we spoke with many teachers, principals, and school administrative personnel who were addressing this problem. These conversations resulted in the release of the STATIS© Instructional Management System in 2009 that will we believe offers a new dimension in the delivery of classroom instruction.

STATIS© contains features normally associated with relational database management systems, except it has now makes everyday tasks far easier for teachers to use.  In addition, STATIS© contains features and benefits that will support daily instruction by eliminating all of the traditional clerical activities normally associated with delivering Instruction.  We believe  STATIS© will eliminate as much as 95% of the clerical aspects of a teacher’s job such as creation of lesson plans, homework, and grading of assignments.  STATIS© will provide teachers with a level of academic detail at the class and student level that has never been available to them in a real-time manner. STATIS© will monitor the academic progress of each student and provide them with multiple opportunities to master the content presented in the classroom.  STATIS© will enable a teacher to concentrate all of their efforts on doing what they do best, which is to teach.  STATIS© supports the following functions:

• CLASSROOM INSTRUCTIONAL MODULE

• STUDENT PRACTICE MODULE - TRI Booster©

• TESTING/BENCHMARK MODULE

Class Time

The CLASSROOM INSTRUCTIONAL MODULE consists of a single relational database that contains a year-long set of teacher lesson plans, diagnostic test questions, formative and summative diagnostic tests, and remedial homework assignments.  STATIS© is ready-to-go for English/Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies for grades 7, 8, and 9.

Development of content for STATIS© continues with of additional content beung added all of the time.  Each  lesson plan and its associated content is aligned to the learning objectives for multiple states. Currently, the system will support the standards for Pennsylvania,  Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina.  (Expected shortly are the alignments for Geotgia, South Carolina, Delaware, New Jersey, Mississippi, and Florida.)   Once a state is selected by a user (e.g. Florida), the system will create a database by selecting material that has been designated as that aligned to Florida standards.

The entire database is managed by STATIS© and will enable teachers to make their own additions and modifications to the existing database.  In addition to managing the database, STATIS© contains a unique software feature that will enable it to monitor student progress throughout the entire school year and to ensure that student will have multiple opportunities to master the content.

Teachers will use the CLASSROOM MODULE to administer a variety of tests such as daily formative assessment that use student hand-held clickers to provide real-time feedback, pre-post assessments, formative–summative assessments, and benchmark testing.  As an example of the flexibility and power of STATIS©, consider that a teacher with 100 students in their classrooms can deliver instruction, administer more than 15,000 daily tests throughout the school year, and to automatically provide targeted remedial instruction to every student in need.  The reports generated by STATIS© will enable every teacher to know the academic needs of every student and every student could be provided with an individualized IEP showing which objective were mastered in every courses and which ones were not.

Practice / Reinforcement Time

The second module within STATIS© is TRI Booster© - a PRACTICE MODULE that can be used in school or home on a 24/7 basis. TRI Booster© permits teachers to quickly create and deliver practice tests related to what was taught in the classroom.  Students can access these practice tests from home, or from the school’s computer lab, for practice purposes.  Once completed, a wealth of diagnostic information is available to the teacher at both the class and student level. Currently, the TRI Booster© contains more than 300,000 Math test questions for grades 3 through Algebra I.  A unique feature of TRI Booster© is a parameter driven test question generator that can automatically create and add hundreds of new test items in minutes. This capability will enable the school system to easily maintain the test question database to meet their own special diagnostic needs.

Although TRI Booster© now ONLYcontains math test questions, we can load test questions for other subject areas with little effort.  If a school has access to prior year end of year exams for English, Science, and Social Studies for multiple grade levels, TRI Booster© can create a very large databank of test questions in a short period of time.

Test Time

The BENCHMARK MODULE is the fourth and final piece within the STATIS© system. It will enable teachers, supervisory personnel, or the curriculum and assessment staff to create and administer school-wide diagnostic benchmark tests that will provide real-time feedback on the academic status of every school, teacher, and student. In addition, it can create pre-post, and formative-summative assessment tests that can be administered to a single student or the entire student body on a routine basis. As no technical skills are needed to accomplish any of this, we can teach your staff to use the entire product in just two hours of their time.

Think of the impact of the use of this module. Your teachers could be asked to teach the same set of learning objectives during specific time periods throughout the school year. At the conclusion of specified time periods (e.g. six to eight week periods), a benchmark assessment could be created by the administrative staff and instantly administered to every student at every grade level across the entire school system. The results of these benchmark exams will provide diagnostic data at the school, teacher, class, and individual student level in a matter of seconds after the testing is completed. There will never be a time when the academic status of every student in not fully known to every teacher. This feature alone would more than justify the small cost of our product.

One of the more difficult tasks associated with classroom based instruction and technology based Independent study programs is to ensure that students learn and retain what was taught and that remedial help is provided for those in need. When one considers that each student must master as many as 50 to 75 learning objectives within each subject, this becomes an almost impossible task for teachers to manage. As you are well aware, the introduction of both state and the federal government’s “high-stakes” testing requirement has made the above tasks an even more formidable task to ensure that students are prepared. Through the use of technology, STATIS© can manage this entire process in a very easy manner that will allow your teacher to concentrate solely on the delivery of instruction. Incidentally, if a student fails a diagnostic test that is administered in the classroom, the student will automatically receive remedial instruction targeted to their needs. This process requires that the schools provide student hand-held responders (clickers) to answer questions presented by the teacher during their instructional periods.

Summary

STATIS© is easy to install and can be accessed by teachers and students on a 24/7 basis. For schools dedicated to establishing Professional Learning Communities, STATIS© contains a report generator that will enable teachers and administrative personnel to have real-time access to assessment data at the school, teacher, class, and student level. It can be used to evaluate teacher and student performance, and for parent-teacher conferences, as it will clearly identify the academic strengths and weaknesses of every student and what is being done to correct their deficiencies. Teachers, principals, and parents will like the comprehensive oversight that it provides and the fact that they can automatically receive feedback in time for them to take action. Parents will love this product because it will enable them to know the precise areas in the curriculum where their children may need help. It will also enable them to compare their child’s progress against that of other students.