LearnPlatform Launches Evidence Services To Support Edtech Providers To Meet ESSA Requirements

RALEIGH, N.C., Aug. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Every Student Succeeds Act  (ESSA) requires federal funding and stimulus dollars to be used for "evidence-based interventions." In order to meet these requirements, LearnPlatform announced today the launch of Evidence Services to support edtech providers and their partners in building the evidence base for districts and states to buy and use their products. 

With the acceleration of edtech use in K-12 since the pandemic, more districts and states are requiring evidence from edtech providers. Furthermore, with over $170bn in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER), and with the American Rescue Plan (ARP) mentioning "evidence-based" as a requirement at least a dozen times, edtech providers must be able to show promising, moderate or strong evidence that their product positively impacts student outcomes.

However, education technology providers and school districts have long complained that the resource requirements are too high for traditional third-party evaluation, which is too expensive, takes too long, and often lacks relevance or context to be useful for real-world decision making. By aligning LearnPlatform's research capabilities and unique technology, IMPACT™, with the four ESSA levels of evidence, the recently released Evidence Services provides a cost-effective, efficient and replicable approach for any education technology to build its evidence base.

In a matter of weeks, Evidence Services powered by LearnPlatform can equip edtech providers with evidence that "Demonstrates a Rationale," meeting the requirements of ESSA Level IV, an essential step on the way to a Level III evaluation. In a matter of months, providers can complete a  study that demonstrates "Promising Evidence," "Moderate Evidence," or "Strong Evidence" (Levels III, II or I, respectively) to comply with ESSA evidence-based reporting requirements. These studies can be delivered to and replicated with district partners, states and other stakeholders, such as foundations and investors. 

For example, Nepris, an edtech platform founded in 2013 that sits between industry and education and virtually connects working professionals to students, is on a mission to bring career relevance to classrooms everywhere. However, because Nepris' product  is a non-traditional curriculum, running a study always seemed out of reach in terms of practicality, time and cost.

"As a maturing edtech company with over 1 million student impressions (serving over 132,000 educators), unbiased third-party research is not just a 'nice to have' offering to help  inform instruction or operations but is necessary for districts and states to report and receive federal funding," said Sabari Raja, CEO and Co-founder of Nepris. "The Evidence Services team of researchers, analysts, data scientists and practitioners quickly understood our product to generate the study we needed to comply with  ESSA  to demonstrate the effectiveness of Nepris' non-traditional curriculum that is catching state-level attention."

Evidence Services stages, customizes and guides the research process for edtech providers to develop a study that is tailored towards individual products. Additionally, the study design allows for repeat evaluations within customer districts using LearnPlatform's IMPACT. Having conducted thousands of rapid-cycle evaluations with practical rigor and intellectual honesty, LearnPlatform's IMPACT is proprietary technology that is built to run in state, school, and district settings.

"Traditional randomized control trials have been impractical for both providers and practitioners for a long time. However, the U.S. Department of Education's ESSA levels of evidence provide a useful on-ramp to phase and fund promising to strong evidence gathering for any intervention," said Karl Rectanus, CEO and Co-founder of LearnPlatform. "Evidence Services is a cost-effective, staged model and rapid turn-around solution that is more practical than the bespoke evaluations that have intimidated companies and customers for years."

For more information or inquiries about Evidence Services powered by LearnPlatform, please visit: https://learnplatform.com/solutions/evidence-services.

About LearnPlatform
LearnPlatform is a comprehensive edtech effectiveness system used by educators, leaders and their partners to save time, save money and improve outcomes. The research-driven technology, central office automation and data-rich insights and evidence services equip school districts, states and providers to organize, streamline and analyze their edtech interventions to ensure learning ecosystems are safe, equitable, cost-efficient, and effective for all students. For more information, visit learnplatform.com.

About Nepris
Austin-based Nepris provides a cloud-based platform connecting industry professionals with K-16 classrooms so that students see the relevance of what they are learning in school. Students are exposed to diverse role models and career paths in STEM, the Arts, retail, manufacturing, and countless other careers. Nepris makes it easy for teachers to leverage industry connections while offering a scalable platform for companies and regional intermediaries to easily and effectively engage the current workforce with the future workforce, virtually. Over a half-million students have participated in a Nepris virtual session or have viewed one of the over 12,000 hours of videos in its library. See Nepris in action at Nepris.com/webinar or sign-up as a teacher or professional at Nepris.com.                                                                                   

Media Contacts
Alyssa Miller
LearnPlatform
973-615-1292
[email protected]

Lindsay Hallam
Director of Marketing, Nepris
678-778-6166
[email protected]

SOURCE LearnPlatform

Related Links

http://www.learnplatform.com