Proven Success

I am very pleased to make an enthusiastic recommendation to other education organizations for the curriculum improvement and assessment solutions offered through Collaborative Learning Inc.

I first began working with Collaborative Learning Inc. (CLI) three years ago in my capacity as a curriculum and assessment specialist with the Broome-Tioga BOCES. I served 15 school districts in the south central region of New York State in their efforts to improve teaching and learning through the meaningful interpretation of state assessment results. Several of those districts requested help and guidance in curriculum mapping to further those efforts. We quickly availed ourselves of CLI's  professional development services and Curriculum Mapper program to create and sustain a systemic initiative for documenting and analyzing what was really being taught and learned in our region's schools. Collaborative Learning’s team of consultants, known as Professional Learning Associates, worked with us and our districts to help improve our approach to curriculum improvement on a systemic basis.

I was so convinced of the relationship between our collaboration with CLI and the positive changes experienced by the participating schools, that I then brought CLI with me into my current position as Curriculum Coordinator for the Sidney Central School District. The guidance and support of Professional Learning Associates and the web-based accessibility of Curriculum Mapper, will facilitate the collegial conversations necessary to quickly move our district towards a culture of excellence and curriculum improvement. Our curriculum and teaching practices will be informed by data directly from the classroom, and our students will learn more and faster than ever before using enhanced curriculum.

I give my strongest recommendation for the use of Collaborative Learning’s Curriculum and Assessment solutions, and their outstanding Professional Learning Associates' consulting process.

Carol S. Dean, Ed.D, Curriculum Coordinator

To my friends and saviors at Collaborative Learning,

This has been an exciting year in Orange as we have developed our Leadership Cadre and begun to implement curriculum mapping. If it were not for all of you (and our fearless professional development consultants Marie and Mike) we would not have experienced the success we are so proud to report. What started as an initiative has truly become a hub for all of our curriculum, instruction, and assessment refinement. By mapping the operational curriculum it is our goal for students to make a seamless transition between primary, intermediate, secondary and postsecondary education, in a system in which students do not experience gaps or unnecessary overlaps in their learning. You are playing an integral role in helping Orange achieve that goal by supporting systemic change and helping us to facilitate on-going, meaningful conversations around curriculum.

Curriculum Mapper has proven to be a tremendous tool for allowing our teachers to see authentic evidence of the standards they are teaching in the classroom. This data has been powerful in refocusing instruction and in re-framing professional learning to improve classroom practice. The impact on assessment has been remarkable during this short implementation time. Instructional staff, even beyond the Leadership cadre, report that they are now using multiple, different forms of assessment to gather evidence of student learning, and have received valuable ideas for assessment using the global features of Mapper, and through ideas provided by our consultants. Needless to say, we are thrilled with this outcome!

As we move forward with the second year of our implementation plan we are looking forward to continuing our relationship with Collaborative Learning and have further expanded the consultant involvement to include training all teachers and administrators new to the district. It is our next step toward becoming a mapping district. Thank you for all you do to help Orange make this a reality for our learning community. You, Marie and Mark are a part of the Orange team and deserve credit for the positive changes that are being made to the curriculum and assessment improvement process. If we can share our results with other districts in support of your efforts, please do not hesitate to ask. Collaborative Learning gets my highest recommendation!

Mrs. Julie Glazer

Supervisor, Instruction and Professional Learning

Department of Curriculum and Testing

The Ottumwa School District is pleased to recommend Collaborate Learning to other education organizations for use as a curriculum improvement and assessment solutions tool.

Curriculum mapping is a process – one that is greatly facilitated through the use of Curriculum Mapper software.  Our district started its mapping efforts in 2005, complemented by the simultaneous use of Curriculum Mapper.  Our teachers found the application extremely easy to use, and even teachers who were technology-challenged were able to be successful.  Curriculum Mapper has allowed our district to collectively document the actual content, skills, resources/strategies, and assessments taught/used across grade levels and content areas; easily access peer maps within our district and outside our community using Global Search; visibly connect the taught curriculum with district standards and benchmarks; and spiral, modify and strengthen curriculum and benchmarks to maximize student learning.  Within our tenure with curriculum mapping and Curriculum Mapper, our district has mapped math, held rich cross-grade level conversations facilitated by the maps, spiraled skills to strengthen math instruction, revised district standards and benchmarks, and created Math Consensus maps to guide instruction and ensure success.  2008-2009 brings a strong focus in our district to assessment – both formative and summative.  We are confident that the assessment tools and assessment sets provided within Curriculum Mapper will assist our teachers with the documentation and evaluation of our current assessment strengths and weaknesses in an easy to use, no-nonsense manner true to everything else within Curriculum Mapper. 

Before making the choice of joining the Curriculum Mapper family, we evaluated the other companies and systems and felt that Collaborative Learning was the best match for us.  Curriculum Mapper comes from a foundation that is educationally sound and continually works to expand and strengthen it’s functionality to assist teachers/district with the main obligation of education – to provide equal access to a guaranteed viable curriculum for all students at all grade levels at all buildings. 

In addition to Curriculum Mapper, our district uses StandardsScore™, Collaborative Learning’s online gradebook and communication tool.  StandardsScore™ accesses the same set of district standards and benchmarks and provides immediate analysis on assessments, achievement, and instruction as documented within teachers’ maps.  Our students and parents love having access to live grade data and being able to communicate with their teachers easily through WebNotes.

Trainers from Professional Learning Associates guided our ‘advanced mapper’ teams to a level of proficiency that allowed easy training of all staff members across the district.  Michael Rush and Leslie Noonan quickly captured the essence of what our team needed for training and instilled within the participants a confidence needed to move forward within their individual buildings.

Curriculum Mapper and StandardsScore™ – what an awesome partnership of tools supporting the education of each of our current students, as well as those who are yet to come. Working together, they have helped us help our students become the very best they can become. 

As part of the Iowa Educators’ Consortium, we have been in an active partnership with Collaborative Learning for over 3 years. Within the Iowa educational community, there are more teachers and districts using Collaborative Learning than any other School Improvement company in the state.

I recommend Collaborative Learning, Curriculum Mapper, StandardsScore™, and Professional Learning Associates to any school and district that wants to succeed in increasing student achievement. 

Bev Stokes, K-12 Instructional Technology Coordinator

The Cheyenne Mountain School District is currently rated the #1 performing school district in the state of Colorado as determined by an array of data analyzed by the Colorado Department of Education. Our achievement in getting to this lofty place is eclipsed only by the will to stay in this place year after year.   As we reviewed our vision for our school district, it was very clear that our system was not “broken” or in need of major overhaul.  Instead, it was the vision to continue to push for higher and higher achievement for all students, especially in light of the new Colorado Growth Model that will debut this August in which we will be analyzing the individual growth of all students in addition to comparing groups of students from year-to-year.  In addition, we are seeing our experienced staff retire and new staff coming in and are facing the dilemma of preserving this culture of excellence that has been in place for so long.

As the superintendent and I reviewed the many options that were available to us for continuing the culture and moving eight excellent schools into a district of excellence focus, we determined that we needed to do the following (which became the Superintendent’s Vision) for the years 2007-2010:

• Clearly defined student outcomes
• Fully articulated and aligned PK-12 curriculum
• Effective use of student assessment data
• Inherent culture of collaboration and inquiry about student achievement

In thinking about how to accomplish these four outcomes, it became clear to us that Curriculum Mapping paired with the Professional Learning Communities Model would be an ideal way to frame the work and conversations in these important projects.

Our next project was to determine how to roll out the Curriculum Mapping process.  Through contacts with several other school districts around the state and my own research, including the “trial period” offered by each of the software companies involved with a mapping framework, I determined that the Curriculum Mapper, developed by Collaborative Learning Inc. was the best choice for the following reasons:

• User friendliness and ease of use for our teachers
• The Global Search feature which would allow our staff to “surf” for good examples of established maps from other districts like our own
• Consultation with Collaborative Learning’s implementation staff for assistance in getting started and determining a path of action that suited our district
• Technical support in navigating the system (which was absolutely wonderful even during my trial period) and making full use of the system’s many features
• Supporting documents that would help me support my 350 staff on the Mapper and lead them to independence on the Mapper system
• Expert training from Professional Learning Associates for each step along the way
• Cost-effective and very reasonable for all that it delivers to us

After a full school year in the curriculum mapping process with our Curriculum Mapper support from Collaborative Learning Inc. , I could not be more pleased!  This has been a positive relationship from the very beginning.  As the administrator at the helm of this daunting task of leading 350 employees through the first phase of our project, I know I made the perfect decision in choosing to work with Collaborative Learning., Inc.  All of the reasons listed above that led to my decision to go in this direction have been realized in our experience with the software,  training, and support.  The quality of our maps is excellent and are a partnership between our excellent professionals and Collaborative Learning, Inc.  Without the expertise of the teachers in placing their knowledge about teaching and learning into the maps AND the support they have received on the technical end of the mapping process from CLI, we would not have the glowing success we have at this moment…all maps for all grades 7-12 courses and writing maps for all PK-6 teachers will be fully into the Curriculum Mapper as of August 31, 2008!  This is quite an accomplishment for one school year.

Our teachers are excited about the next phases of our process…reviewing, calibrating, and sustaining our mapping.  The conversations that were held with and between teachers across our district in the course of mapping have been rich and focused on student learning.  The process has brought 8 schools together in their work to have a seamless Pk-12 alignment of all curriculum and instructional practices.  We are already seeing the difference in student learning that articulation and alignment can bring to our schools and can only imagine what we can realize as we complete the maps with our common assessments and differentiation strategies in place for all grades and courses.  We have an exciting future ahead of us as we continue our Curriculum Mapping with our partner Collaborative Learning Inc. and their excellent services with the Curriculum Mapper.

Cheyenne Mountain School District 12 gives our strongest recommendation for the Curriculum Mapper and its creative solutions from Collaborative Learning Inc. and Professional Learning Associates.  Our choice of this excellent company and its talented staff and expertise has made the difference for us in making this adventure an outstanding one with far-reaching possibilities for student learning and achievement.  I recommend Collaborative Learning Inc. without reservation.

Bev Tarpley, Assistant Superintendent, Chief Academic Officer