Derivita Power User Stories: More Than Math

Our Marketing Director, Arianna Irwin, recently sat down with Secondary (6-12) Math Instructional District Specialist - Jason Aldridge from Charleston County School District (CCSD) to hear about his Derivita journey over the last three years. 

Derivita’s 6-12 Math Courseware solution was initially implemented in 2021 at CCSD in conjunction with the Illustrative Mathematics Curriculum (IM) in all of their Algebra 1 classes. 

In the 2022-2023 school year, CCSD expanded its partnership with Derivita to utilize the platform for their Common Assessments and Benchmarks in the other three (3) main core subject areas; ELA, Social Studies, and Science. 

Watch his full video interview on YouTube here.

More than just math

After a few years with a different assessment partner, it was time for CCSD to move on to a different product that could better fit the district’s needs. Jason states, “We were trying to find a way to streamline our assessment strategy and use something similar for all of our core subject areas”.

When asked, what made the District decide to move forward with the Derivita platform for their Common and District-wide assessments, Jason responded, “We were very interested in the reporting feature for Derivita - that was really big”. He also comments that Derivita was able to provide a similar product as their previous vendor, “plus the reports and they [Derivita’s Reports] were more user friendly.”

Jason also comments that CCSD, “just developed a good relationship with them [Derivita], where they were really catering to a lot of the things that we needed specifically for our district”.

Since the implementation of Derivita’s assessment system, CCSD’s educators have been “working closely” with Derivita’s Content and Commercial Team “to improve those assessments and Item Banks”. 

An Educational Partner

Last school year, Derivita representatives met with CCSD’s Curriculum Department once a week to ensure the District Instructional Specialists had a strong understanding of Derivita before taking the platform to individual schools. 

Jason says that Derivita “catered to our district” with the CCSD curriculum and corresponding items already existing in the Derivita Item Bank - making it quick and easy for teachers to search and find the content they need. 

Jason also comments that CCSD’s dedicated Derivita Representative, Sherri Abel, has been essential in increasing the staff's understanding of the platform throughout the district. He offers a recent example, “I just called her last week because I had a new testing coordinator at one of our high schools who wanted to learn more about Derivita. So I reached out to Sherri and she's going to set up a meeting with her one-on-one”. 

Derivita also ensures that there are many opportunities throughout the year for teachers to ask questions and attend Derivita trainings or Derivita-provided Professional Development (PD) courses. Jason says these in-person or virtual events typically have “lots of attendance”, which encourages platform usage and improved instruction.

A tool to be used daily

Jason wants the CCSD teaching staff to know that Derivita is a tool that can be used every day in the classroom, instead of once or twice a year like other digital assessment providers. By using Derivita for EOC exams, common assessments, formative assessments, quizzes, and other exams - there will be an increase in the amount of high-quality data the specialists and teachers can access to identify patterns, areas of growth, knowledge gaps, student progress, etc.

This means CCSD educators don't get “halfway through the semester” and get just “one great report” from one or two assessments. Instead, the regularly updated Derivita Reports can be used to create an “ongoing” plan of action to improve instruction and students’ learning outcomes.

Jason says the CCSD teachers are starting to see the benefit of using Derivita daily, where they can even “just use [Derivita] for one question” if they want or need to.

Community building in progress

Jason says that “change” in Education can be difficult and met with resistance. He remembers that the first year, “the math team loved it”, but the other subject educators were more hesitant. Jason comments that it took “about a year” for everyone to get on board.  

Jason says the multiple opportunities to learn about Derivita in in-person and virtual trainings help create momentum for the platform. Jason says he even could conduct a Derivita training session at this point!

But instead of conducting his own Derivita workshop, Jason tries to include Derivita in his individual teacher feedback sessions. He says, “I will go into a school and work with a teacher, and one of the pieces of feedback that I always give them - especially if I haven't seen evidence of them using it [Derivita] - is just ‘Hey, have you thought about using Derivita for certain things?’ So I do that on a daily basis”.

Jason says “Teachers love the SpotCheck feature and that’s unique to Derivita” and that it is something they want to use. He also claims that keeping the Derivita platform implemented for the last three years and the constant improvements made to the platform’s reports and capabilities are contributing factors that help teachers embrace the platform.

“I think once they've realized, and dug into it, how much they have their fingertips- it's just really well received. So we have seen a lot of teachers using it, especially to start off the school year”. 

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