As part of Learn to Earn Dayton's service to the Summer + Afterschool Collaborative, we are pleased to provide Learning Circle licenses to partner agencies. This benefit is generously underwritten by the Charles D. Berry Foundation.
Learning Circle is an important part of monitoring and measuring school time behaviors, attendance, and academic progress of students in summer or afterschool programs. Connecting the dots between school and out-of-school time (OST) has never been easier than it is now.
What Is It?
Learning Circle connects otherwise separate educational data to demonstrate the impact that collaborative programs can have on student success. More simply -- Learning Circle is a FERPA-compliant software that can serve as the connector between school district data (attendance, behavior, educational achievement) and OST data (attendance, behavior, individual interventions, etc.). School districts input their data into the back end of the system, and each OST partner has access to their own dashboard that (with caregiver permission) features each student enrolled in their program.
In the past many OST programs would not have any insights into what was happening during the school day data unless they requested items such as report cards from parents, interviewed teachers, or requested documents directly from this school. Now, all of this is available on demand and updated daily within the Learning Circle system.
Why is this important?
We can think of two major reasons:
Identifying opportunities to better serve students. Monitoring your students' academic, behavior, and attendance school performance allows you to support student needs as they arise. For example, if many of your students are performing exceedingly well in Science and Math, it may be wise to invest in more advanced STEM activities and curriculum to continue to scaffold and reinforce lessons learned in school. Conversely, if students are performing poorly in English Language Arts, you may want to invest in more foundational lessons and curriculum to bring students back up to grade level.
Compliance with Local, State, and Federal grants and contracts. Compliance is just a fancy word for reporting; something that is required of nearly all funding these days. Grants, contracts, and philanthropy generally are becoming more and more focused on data collection and evaluation. Learning Circle allows you access to quantifiable data on student demographics, academic achievement, attendance, and behavior. Student data accessible and organized for ease of export and analysis on demand as reports arise. Data secured through a military-level firewall and updated daily in most cases.
We encourage you and your organization to continue to implement and explore the functionalities of Learning Circle. In the last three years, the number of students enrolled in Learning Circle, a program to track student outcomes and success, has nearly tripled! If you are an active member of SASC and interested in learning more about how your OST program can benefit from this invaluable resource, be in touch to request a license or get on the wait list.
For technical assistance, training, and troubleshooting please reach out to Tisha.Peters@learningcirclesoftware.com and or PhilipFerrari1@gmail.com.