The Examiner U-46 News Feed

District U-46 considering new curriculum proposal

By Seth Hancock
  The Board of Education in School District U-46 will vote on a curriculum resource proposal at its upcoming meeting on Monday, Jan. 23.
  The proposal would replace StudySync as a literacy and K-12 libraries resource with CommonLit Schools Essential PRO. The proposal was presented at the Jan. 9 board meeting.
  CommonLit would be used for all secondary schools and would cost $87,750, from the education fund if approved, for three years of textbooks and online licenses.
  StudySync has been in use since at least 2015, but data on usage of the resource suggests it should not be renewed, the proposal stated. A free version of CommonLit is currently being used by several teachers who have found the resource helpful.
  “CommonLit was identified as a resource that secondary teachers would like to use as the literature resource in the curriculum when several vendors presented their programs to a group of teachers who worked at updating the curriculum,” the proposal states. “CommonLit is a not-for-profit digital library of free, high quality literature in English and Spanish for students and staff to access.”
  The proposal added: “CommonLit School Essentials PRO is a package of tools that extends the free, high-quality library of CommonLit. The resource provides teacher access to an assessment series that includes three benchmark assessments that are administered on CommonLit.org and will assess students’ reading comprehension. It also includes an administrator digital dashboard that allows administrators to track school-wide CommonLit usage and student performance. Teachers and administrators will have access to over 40 training modules in CommonLit’s Professional Development Pack.”
  Professional development will be provided for implementation in this coming fall.
  Measures to be used in evaluating CommonLit will be usage, teacher feedback and assessments.