Marietta City Schools is one of Georgia’s first charter systems. This International Baccalaureate World School District has seen the Emergent Bilingual population grow to more than 1,600 students across the district.
After weighing their options, district leaders chose to incorporate Lexia® Core5® Reading (for grades pre-K–5) and Lexia® PowerUp Literacy® (for grades 6–12) into their English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) programs.
Both of these programs are based on the evidence of the science of reading and use an Adaptive Blended Learning model to support educators in differentiating learning for students of all abilities.
Since this was a districtwide initiative that needed to be implemented efficiently yet flexibly, Marietta City Schools expanded their Lexia® partnership and included a Lexia Implementation Support Package. This was so teachers could hit the ground running with training, data coaching, and ongoing consultation from a dedicated team.
The availability of data on demand, and native language support, confirmed to Marietta City Schools leaders that Core5 was the right choice for their district.
And the results?
Only 11% of the K–5 Emergent Bilinguals began the year at grade level in Core5. By the end of the year, 90% of these students advanced at least one grade level of content in the program. Sixty-seven percent of the students using the program with fidelity were working at or even above grade level.
The district’s results were comparable with PowerUp for their older students.
In PowerUp, students are auto-placed into their appropriate skill levels within three areas: Word Study, Grammar, and Comprehension. In Word Study, 88% of students using PowerUp began in the lowest (Foundational) zone. But by the end of the year, that number reduced to just 28%. In Grammar, 78% in the Foundational zone reduced to 34% and in Comprehension, 58% went down to 19%.
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