Mr. James Warford, Florida’s K-12 Chancellor: In the April 23, 2003 Press Release by the Department of Education that announced Mr. Warford as the K-12 Chancellor, evidence of Warford’s success as superintendent of Marion County Public Schools was emphasized by the improvement in performance of 3 “F” and 8 ”D” schools in the county. ACALETICS® was used by the 3 “F” schools and two of the 8 “D” schools. Fessenden Elementary was 1 of only 2 schools in Florida to increase by four grades (“F” to “A” in only one year). The Education Week article that featured our partnership with this school and results summary are enclosed.

Norwood Elementary (Miami-Dade):This partnership shows the results of superior school-level leadership along with efficient and effective use of available resources. For the past six years, our relationship with Norwood has allowed the principal to allocate the majority of the school’s resources and efforts to improve its Reading program while utilizing ACALETICS® products, services and support to continue to strengthen its Math program. As a result, the school’s grade has escalated from three consecutive “Ds” to its current grade of “A” (D-D-D-B-B-A)!

By VALERIE TAYLOR
Published February 3, 2005

Want to help your child do better in math? Put away the flash cards and bring out the Cheerios. Well, not really, but Westside Elementary recently showed about 100 parents and students that there’s a variety of ways to put the merriment in math.

Calling the event Edible Math Night, teachers and volunteers at eight stations in the school cafeteria used pizza to teach fractions, cartoon-character crackers for addition and subtraction, candy prizes for bingo to promote number sense, and M&Ms to teach mean, median and mode. And the best part is that the children got to eat or take home the goodies they used to complete the math work. “It was a way to get parents involved. Kids like it when their parents come with them to school,” said Stacie Wharton, Title I parent educator and organizer of the Jan. 13 event. “It’s also a way to show parents that they can do this at home with any food they have around.”

Math teacher Bradley Stevenson staffed the popular bingo station and explained how the game challenged students “to concentrate, recognize patterns, follow rules and develop a number sense.”

The Edible Math event was designed “to promote math and numbers as something that can be fun on the way to mastering the academic concepts,” he said. continue reading »