Program eyed for struggling math students

By Per Peterson

A plan is in the works at Tracy Area High School to help students who are in jeopardy of falling through the math cracks in school.
Math teacher Brittany Peterson spoke to the District 2904 school board at Monday’s meeting about PLATO Coursewear by a company called edmentum. It’s a math credit recovery program aimed at helping students who struggle with the subject to the point of failing.
PLATO Coursewear offers online curriculum and is interactive and customizable in terms of course requirements, activities, and pre- and post-tests. It aligns to Minnesota state standards (ACT, SAT) and also has potential for other uses (ALC, gifted/accelerated program and ACT prep).
“What we really like about it is that the entire program can be customized, starting with the requirements, the course content itself — you can add things, you can take things away,” Peterson said. “We can set a high standard for what grade we want them to be proficient at for pre-tests — we had talked about 80%.”

For more on this article, see this week’s Headlight-Herald.