Words are not enough: How we learned that ELL was just a start
When our company was still in the startup phase, we were devoted to the idea of ELL: English Language Learners. We wanted to make a difference in outcomes for students, teachers, schools, and districts, and we knew that using our data management innovations to improve academic performance for English Learners would indeed change lives.
That’s how our company was born … as Project ELL. And change lives we did. As soon as schools and districts implemented our SaaS solution for ELL, academic performance improved. The vindication for our hard work felt fabulous … at least until we thought about all the kids we were leaving behind.
Wait, what? Leaving kids behind?
That’s right. Because as powerful as our ELL solution is, it only serves a portion of the student population. What about students who don’t face EL challenges, but do have issues with truancy, behavior, or response to intervention (RTI)? Or perhaps they have unmet opportunities, such as a less-than-optimal Gifted and Talented (GT) program?
These issues are compounded for EL students, who are more likely to drop out, act out or miss out. Which means that any solutions that focus solely on language – such as those from our competitors at Ellevation – merit an “I” for “incomplete.” They preach outcomes but deliver shortcomings, leaving school districts holding the bag.
We recognized the ELL-only shortcoming early on, and began transforming our company from “startup” to “grownup.” Project Education was born, delivering a suite of ever-improving solutions to help schools and districts unlock the amazing potential inherent within their existing databases.
Those databases are often a patchwork of siloed, disconnected, and underutilized resources. Our Project Education platform helps unify that data to give teachers and administrators instant access to the insights they need for better decisions and responses to students’ needs. We go beyond mere compliance to help students succeed, delivering actionable data to drive instruction and intervention strategies.
We still offer that starter ELL module, but we have supplemented it with the overall Project Education platform, with specialized modules for Truancy, RTI, 504, Behavior, GT, Special Education, Title I, Continuing Education, Path to Graduation, and data access/management.
With communities, families and children dealing with the chaos and crises of COVID, deportations, racism, and violence, it has never been more vital to manage students’ social, emotional and behavioral needs, especially among English Learners. To help ease the transition and cost for districts that might need options, Project Education has developed “Lite” versions of our RTI, Behavior and Truancy solutions tailored directly to ELs. This is an innovation that only Project Education makes available.
To help ensure success, we supercharge those online software modules with partnership and service to help districts and schools customize the system to their specific situations, such as local and state requirements. This human component is integral to the winning results we help schools achieve.
With all that, our comprehensive solutions outperform the competition, and are more affordable, too. The cost of implementing Project ELL with several Lite area add-ons beats Ellevation’s base price for most districts. And for districts that may have tried Ellevation but see the need for improvement, our proven Ellevation to Project ELL migration process makes implementation smooth, fast and effective.