Curriculum Development | News

New York State Literacy Pilot is a Public/Private Partnership

• By Christopher Piehler
• 05/29/14

Teachers at 25 schools in the state of New York are participating in an 18-month literacy pilot designed to improve college and career-readiness for all students. The pilot is a collaborative effort of myON, a personalized, Web-based literacy environment for pre-K through 12th grade; the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT); the NY State Teacher Centers and BOCES of New York State.

More than 400 teachers and 5,000 students will participate in the pilot of myON, which is built upon the Lexile Framework for Reading and includes metrics that track and predict student reading growth.

Stan Silverman, director of NYIT’s Technology Based Learning Systems Department and co-chair of the New York State Teacher Centers Technology Committee, commented, “This private-public project will bring together the expertise in the classroom with the experts from the private sector to help create a set of learning and teaching strategies,” to prepare students for the literacy demands of college and careers.

Educators at pilot sites are beginning to implement the myON literacy environment in their classrooms, and students are being encouraged to read in and out of school. As teachers develop curriculum and instructional practices during the pilot period, these practices will be incorporated into existing implementations.

Key goals of the pilot include the following:  

• Development of relevant wrap-around resources for the myON personalized literacy environment, with a focus on text complexity, close reading of texts and data-driven instructional practices that are targeted to address all learners;
• creation of capacity-building professional development that provides concrete and ongoing support for teachers, leverages the existing PD infrastructure in the state and promotes family and community engagement; and
• a comprehensive deployment strategy that will ensure statewide availability and access to the new resources and professional development strategies, scheduled to launch in time for the 2015-2016 school year.