Special Education

“There needs to be a shift in focus from diagnosing how a learner is disabled to diagnosing how a learner can be enabled”

– Jeff Grimes, 1997 NASP

Whether used separately or as part of a Response to Intervention Model, the New Century Learning System is a powerful tool to help teachers enable students who have been identified with high incidence disabilities. New Century provides assessment, curriculum and program management to help Special Education students achieve the standards of NCLB through access to rigorous, relevant and high quality individualized reading and mathematics instruction.*

Diagnostic Assessment

New Century’s adaptive online assessment instantly provides an instructional IEP for each student. The assessment also helps teachers identify students in need of Early Intervening Services and provides baseline performance data.

Highly Individualized Instruction

Instruction begins with each student’s unique skill/knowledge base and builds to proficiency. The instructional prescription is highly personalized, targeting specific skill gaps rather than an entire level or unit of instruction. Each student progresses at his own pace. The software is infinitely patient, providing extended opportunities for students to master key instructional objectives.

Standards Aligned Curriculum

New Century provides individualized access to rigorous content correlated to the state’s framework and assessment standards. The research based curriculum supports the need of Special Ed teachers to successfully instruct across multiple content areas and skill levels. New Century’s curriculum uses examples from science, history, and geography to teach critical subject content and is age appropriate, even for older students struggling with lower level skills.

Multimodal Lessons

New Century’s pedagogically sound instructional design accommodates the individual learning styles, multiple intelligences, and interests of Special Ed students. Extensive use of instructional audio in Reading, Writing, and Mathematics creates a multidimensional learning environment for Special Needs students.

Continuous Assessment

Short interim assessments are embedded in the curriculum after every few lessons. Using the results from these tests, the software automatically adjusts instruction as students advance. Teachers are provided with frequent progress reports and other performance data to implement a Response to Intervention model. (See Response to Intervention)

Teacher Management System

Teachers can access assessment results and instructional IEPs quickly, and can efficiently manage the learning of students at varied ability levels. Parent Letters (automatically generated and available in English and Spanish) provide an efficient means for teachers to inform parents regularly of their child’s progress.

Test Focused Instruction

New Century’s diagnostic benchmark tests, blueprinted to the state test, help Special Ed students become familiar with the proficiency test format and expectations. Students benefit from individually targeted instruction in any weaknesses identified in the tested objectives.

*Due to attributes inherent in the instructional software the program may not be appropriate for students in the following categories, which comprise less than 1% of the population of students ages 6 through 17 nationally:

• Hearing Impairment – if student is unable to hear audio instruction
• Visual Impairment
• Deaf-Blindness
• Orthopedic Impairment – if student lacks ability to use a keyboard