Carnegie Learning is gaining ground in so-called “textbook adoption states”–where traditional publishers have long held the upper hand–with curricula that blends textbooks with software to teach math.
Last month, the state of Kentucky invited the Pittsburgh-based company, which developed math remediation courses from cognitive research at Carnegie Mellon University, to offer its algebra and geometry texts for use in the state’s middle and high schools. Over 130 middle and high schools in 55 school districts in Georgia have adopted Carnegie Learning’s texts, which were customized to meet the objectives of a state educational reform program.
“These decisions show that we are competing more often and more effectively with the larger textbook publishers,” says Mary Murrin, vice president of government and public relations. “A place on the states’ lists of preferred suppliers makes funds to purchase textbooks more readily available for the districts.”
Moreover, acceptance by Georgia’s educational authorities invited Carnegie Learning’s approach to remediation into the state’s reform program to close the gap in educational performance between well-financed and underfinanced school districts.
The company, which is ten years old and headquartered in Pittsburgh, now reaches some 500,000 students in 2,600 schools through its textbooks and software. Recently, the need for improved methods of teaching math opened new doors for Carnegie Learning in the state school systems of Kentucky and Georgia, which require statewide approval of textbooks. These opportunities enable Carnegie Learning to compete with some of the nation’s largest publishers of mathematics textbooks.
Murrin says that the Carnegie Learning Math Solutions provide “a unique and innovative blend of textbook-based learning.” The curricula is employed during three days in a collaborative classroom setting and through interactive computer-based instruction used in the lab two days a week. The approach gives students a method of learning evolved from 20 years of cognitive-sciences research at CMU. It focuses on application of knowledge that targets a student’s individual needs for conceptual learning–provided through Carnegie Learning Cognitive Tutor(r). That software applies artificial intelligence to track the student’s strongest and weakest areas of learned concepts and emphasizes learning and improvements in areas of greatest need.
“We are finding that the demand for new, more effective approaches to teaching and learning math give our programs an advantage in many school districts,” Murrin says.
Source: Carnegie Learning, Mary Murrin
Writer: Joseph Plummer
To receive Keystone Edge free every week, click here.