HELP Math+Teaching with Grace (HM+TwG)

Recently, the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) announced historic declines in mathematics achievement for students with average scores dropping 5 points, to 236 out of 500 in 4th grade and 8 points, to 274, in 8th grade in the main assessments. The NAEP, administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), takes a snapshot of progress every two years but was delayed by the pandemic from 2021 to 2022. The ’22 AEP was the comprehensive assessment's first look at students' mathematics achievement since the pandemic began. The 2022 assessment examined the progress of a representative sample of more than 116,000 4th graders and 111,000 8th graders in every state. Unfortunately, there was bad news for (nearly) every student. All students across demographic indicators including socio-economic status, race, gender, and disabilities status, in every region of the country, all failed to demonstrate increased or demonstrated decreased scores in mathematics proficiency, especially in the cases of historically marginalized populations. 

The effects of math learning loss during the COVID-19 pandemic are long-lasting and will have serious consequences for students' future academic and career prospects. In a recent Fortune report, Stanford University economist Eric Hanushek estimated the lasting societal costs of the pandemic’s effects on students could amount to more than $28 trillion by the end of the century. This is particularly concerning given the importance of math skills in a wide range of fields, from science and technology to business and finance. Learning loss could shave $70,000 off the lifetime earnings of children who were in school during the pandemic, according to a new study. (Citation). The sobering forecast is based on an analysis of the sharp declines in the scores of eighth graders on national math tests taken between 2019 and 2022.

Our solution, HELP Math, is research proven, and a comprehensive on-line math tool, for students from grade 3 to grade 10. Built with software including an adaptive engine, and 73  interactive animated lessons (with seven sub sections in each module) for grades 3-10, HM is delivered online by a set of SQL servers.  Designed to remediate prior knowledge learning gaps using SIOP (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol) and supports, HM is being updated for struggling students to accelerate learning recovery. Initially funded by $6.5M from the USDE (Ready to Teach)and IES, in collaboration with the Colorado Department of Education, U of Colorado, and Texas Christian U, the tool has been used in 28 states with over 300,000 user records currently contained in the HELP math database. Research developed for HM was accepted “without reservations” by the What Works Clearinghouse.

Our solution, HELP Math, is research proven, and a comprehensive on-line math tool, for students from grade 3 to grade 10. Built with software including an adaptive engine, and 73  interactive animated lessons (with seven sub sections in each module) for grades 3-10, HM is delivered online by a set of SQL servers.  Designed to remediate prior knowledge learning gaps using SIOP (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol) and supports, HM is being updated for struggling students to accelerate learning recovery. Initially funded by $6.5M from the USDE (Ready to Teach)and IES, in collaboration with the Colorado Department of Education, U of Colorado, and Texas Christian U, the tool has been used in 28 states with over 300,000 user records currently contained in the HELP math database. Research developed for HM was accepted “without reservations” by the What Works Clearinghouse.

An updated version of HELP Math will include “Teaching with Grace” Integration into the platform.   

Teaching with Grace (TwG) is an AI powered virtual classroom that provides a consequence-free personalized practice space for teachers to learn and master evidence-based teaching practices, specifically providing high quality feedback. Teaching with Grace was created by Stage Tools, an EMMY-award winning[RB1] [JR2]  maker of tools for filmmakers and educators since 1995. Teaching with Grace was initially funded through $30M grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and is being further developed by Hunter College’s Learning Lab. The tool was created, produced, and is maintained by StageTools. TwG provides practice opportunities for teachers and parents to practice talking with one student about their math learning. TwG requires the live adult to first listen to students and then recognize strengths in student responses and the provide feedback to press student thinking. The virtual immersive experience creates a strong sense of presence and focus, and potentially increases near transfer (Dede, 2009). High quality teacher feedback consistently produces significant improvements in student learning with diverse populations of students.

Creating[RB1]  a “Super Tool” by integrating Teaching with Grace and HELP Math

By combining HM and TwG we will create a “Super Tool” deeply rooted in motivation and cognitive sciences. “Whole Systems Thinking” is a method that aims to understand how elements and systems are interconnected and influence one another within a whole. It emphasizes the relationships and interactions among various components to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of a system. We define a Super Tool in this case as a whole systems approach to address math learning recovery and teacher professional development on the same platform with one “student facing” solution and one “teacher facing” solution.

HM was developed through a public/private partnership with The University of Colorado, (UCCS), Texas Christian University (TCU), Rocky Mountain PBS (RMPBS), and Digital Directions Inc. (DDI) under a US Department of Education, Ready to Teach Grant ($5M). A subsequent Institute for Education Sciences (IES) Grant with TCU ($1.5M) was awarded to TCU/DDI (BLI’s predecessor), designated to research, and develop a version of HELP Math (The Math Learning Companion-MLC) for Special Education students to continue the work to create and/or modify support tools for students and teachers in response to field research on feasibility and functionality. Since its’ completion and commercial release, HELP Math has helped hundreds of thousands of students in 28 states improve math achievement by 70%, as evidenced by the high ratings and acceptance by the IES What Works Clearinghouse (Help Math Program, IES, 2016). HELP Math remains the only research proven, Sheltered Instruction digital math solution built from the ground up for ELL’s and other struggling students in the WWC.

The need for new ways to support teachers continues to grow.

●      As of October 2022, 4 percent of all public-school teaching positions were vacant. The average public school had two vacant teaching positions.

●      Eighteen percent of public schools had one teaching vacancy and 27 percent had multiple teaching vacancies.

●      The top three teaching positions with the highest vacancy rates in public schools were special education (7 percent), English as a Second Language or bilingual education (6 percent), and computer science (5 percent) positions.

●      A larger percentage of public schools in under-resourced neighborhoods had at least one teaching vacancy (57 percent) compared to public schools in low-poverty neighborhoods (41 percent).

●      A larger percentage of public schools with a high-minority student body (greater than 75 percent minority) had at least one teaching vacancy (60 percent) compared to schools with a low-minority student body (25 percent or less minority; 32 percent).

●      As of October 2022, 6 percent of all public-school non-teaching staff positions were vacant. The average public school had one vacant non-teaching staff position.[RB1] 

By combining HM and TwG we will create a “Super Tool” deeply rooted in motivation and cognitive sciences. “Whole Systems Thinking” is a method that aims to understand how elements and systems are interconnected and influence one another within a whole. It emphasizes the relationships and interactions among various components to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of a system. We define a Super Tool in this case as a whole systems approach to address math learning recovery and teacher professional development on the same platform with one “student facing” solution and one “teacher facing” solution.

Through our partnership with CUNY-Hunter College and the I Have a Dream Foundation, we will select a 6th grade class and teachers in the Denver ISD working with the IHADF. We will schedule 2-3 30-minute sessions per week over a month for implementing the prototype with students and 2-3 sessions to test the TWG module. Bug feedback will be requested, and usage data and anecdotal responses will be recorded and shared with the team.

The software prototype will be made available after pilot research for testing after Q &A fixes have been made. Through the I have A Dream Foundation (Programs in 18 states) and Sunburst Digital (contacting former HELP Math Customers) we will aggregate students and teachers from at least 10 schools in varying locations to test the software prototype.

The HM+TWG software super tool will be designed and implemented to give the Boulder Learning R&D team useful feedback iteratively to begin the process of continually improving the product as we move towards HELP Math 2.0 in Phase II. Given this as our goal, the software prototype is a critical phase on our roadmap towards integrating Teaching with Grace as well as HELP Math 2.0.

HELP Math V. 1.0 was initially funded by the US Department of Education, IES and private investment.  It was launched successfully and was used by students in 28 states.  Its' research was accepted without reservations by the What Works Clearinghouse and shoed >70% improvements in math proficiencies for struggling students including EL, SPED, and those with Dyscalculia. It is award winning and has data from over 300,000 student users.

Due to the Pandemic and technology changes, HELP Math requires an update and relaunch.  In addition we want to take this opportunity to integrate TwG so that the resulting "supertool" will be student facing and teacher facing, thus using a "Whole Systems" approach to address multiple problems with one tool. HELP Math's pedagogy can be augmented with generative AI to supercharge the award winning pedagogy in a way thet will accelerate learning recovery, one of the most pressing problems we must solve now. 

The project team includes five members of the original HELP Math Project Team. They are John Ramo, CEO/project co-creator, Megan Schmeister, Product/Production Manager, Venkatesh V. Developer, Dr. Zung Vu Tran, Research Scientist who validated data and submitted to the What Works Clearinghouse which accepted the research “Without Reservations”, Greg Brooks (Tech River) Programmer and Database specialist.

The team at Boulder Learning and its network of learning scientists and technologists include some of the best in ed tech research and development. The teams’ core competencies include the fields of Automatic Speech Recognition, AI for voicetek in educational applications,

Initial funding for HELP Math came in 2012-15.  TwG was funded by Chan Zuckerberg/Harvard in 2020.

The team at Boulder Learning and its network of learning scientists and technologists include some of the best in ed tech research and development. The teams’ core competencies include the fields of Automatic Speech Recognition, AI for voicetek in educational applications,.  We value diversity and equity especially since our program HELP Math focuses on Latino students, low income and all students struggling to recover in math.

Our business models is yearly licensing to school buildings, unlimited usage and a SAAS model.  We have successfully sold over $5M in licenses to districts, school buildings, teachers and home nationally and internationally.

As mentioned previoulsy HELP Math was sold to thousands of schools in 28 states.  We successfully converted reserach schools to paying customers through a distribution partnership with Sunburst Digital, a Chcago based company that has provided digital education solutions to the ed tech market for over 35 years and also resllers and direct sales.