Miami-Dade County School District Partners with myON

MINNEAPOLIS - Dec. 15, 2014 - PRLog -- Florida’s Miami-Dade County Public Schools (http://www.dadeschools.net/), the fourth largest school district in the United States, is implementing myON (http://www.myon.com/) in all 250 of the district’s K-8 schools for the 2014-2015 school year. Over 259,000 students will benefit from access to the personalized literacy program, which supports the district’s vision of improving literacy outcomes for all students through effective integration of technology into the curriculum.

District leaders pointed to outcomes from a successful 20-day summer school pilot in 2013 as the rationale for their selection of myON to help meet their goals for transforming teaching and learning. During the pilot over 3,800 participating students in grades 2 and 3 at the time experienced an average Lexile® reading growth of 11% as measured by embedded Lexile^® assessments. Equally important, according to the district, students browsed over 320,000 digital books and read an additional 180,000 to completion.

With the pilot exceeding expectations, the district chose to incorporate myON into their Jumpstart CONNECT@HOME program, which provides a computer device and free Internet access for all students in grades 3-5 at 11 targeted elementary schools. Early data is showing positive results. During the first four-weeks of the rollout 140,000 students read over 48,000 books. After five short weeks, third graders across the district saw an average Lexile® growth of 9%.

“Providing our students with access to thousands of books to support their reading growth and overall learning is paramount for our district,” said Marie Izquierdo, chief academic officer for Miami-Dade County Public Schools. “And the real-time, actionable data on student reading activity and growth makes it possible for our teachers and administrators to collaborate with each other, helping ensure success for every student.”

Through this district-wide K-8 implementation, students have unlimited access to myON, which includes more than 5,000 enhanced digital books with multi-media supports. Embedded Lexile® assessments (http://thefutureinreading.myon.com/results/produces-measu...) measure and predict student reading growth.

The system provides students with their choice of books within guidelines managed by the school or district. Each student also receives, on their personalized myON dashboard, a recommended list of books that meet their unique interests and which are written at the target Lexile® reading level to support reading growth.

“It has been extremely exciting for our team to support the transformational programs underway in Miami-Dade Public Schools,” said Todd Brekhus, myON president. “Their forward-thinking leadership has put students first with a host of innovative approaches that truly leverage technology to support access for all students. We are delighted that they have chosen to partner with myON and we look forward to helping them meet their literacy goals for all students.”

For more information on myON’s award-winning digital literacy platform, please visit them online at www.myON.com.

About Miami-Dade County Public School District

Miami-Dade County Public Schools is the fourth largest school district in the United States, comprised of 392 schools, 345,000 students and over 40,000 employees. Located at the southern end of the Florida peninsula, the school district stretches over 2,000 square miles of diverse and vibrant communities ranging from rural and suburban to urban cities and municipalities. A truly global community, district students speak 56 different languages and represent 160 countries. For more information, please visit http://www.dadeschools.net/

About myON

myON, a business unit of Capstone is a personalized digital literacy platform that creates collaborative learning opportunities. myON expands the classroom for teachers and students by providing unlimited access to the largest collection of more than 7,000 enhanced digital books with multimedia supports, real-time assessments and close reading tools. myON empowers students and teachers with real-time, actionable data—number and type of books opened and read, time spent reading, results of regular benchmark assessments, and more—based on embedded Lexile assessments that measure student reading growth. With myON, every student experiences the benefits of personalized literacy instruction.