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William Penn SD to pilot three ELA curricula and an AI reading intervention in 2025-26
Summary
The Education Committee heard that year-long English/language arts pilots will run across elementary and secondary grades next school year with HMH, McGraw Hill and Savvas; the district also will pilot an AI intervention called Amira. Final purchasing decisions will follow midyear assessment comparisons.
Miss Tockely, a district curriculum staff member, told the William Penn School District Education Committee on May 14 that the district will run year-long English/language arts pilots in the 2025-26 school year with three vendors and an AI intervention.
"We are going to talk about the instructional ELA instructional pilots that we will begin in the fall of 20 25, and they will be year long pilots for elementary and some secondary," Miss Tockely said. She listed Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), Savvas and McGraw Hill as the vendors to be piloted and described grade- and school-level placements.
The pilots and placements named by Miss Tockely include: East Lansdowne Elementary, kindergarten through fifth grade, piloting HMH Into Reading with the Amira AI intervention; Penwood Ninth Grade Academy piloting Into Literature for two ninth-grade ELA teachers; Ardmore Elementary piloting Savvas My View for kindergarten through fifth grade; and Evans and Park Lane elementary schools piloting McGraw Hill Wonders 2023 (kindergarten through fifth) with StudySync used at the sixth-grade secondary level. Miss Tockely said Read 180 will be piloted with one teacher and that some pilot teacher assignments remain to be decided.
The district will run pilots from September through June and will collect multiple sources of data before making a purchase decision. "In September, students will take both the Acadience for kindergarten through second grade and the MAP test and Acadience test again in January," Miss Tockely said, adding the district will compare beginning‑of‑year and midyear results and consider common assessments and teacher feedback. She told the committee a final purchasing decision is expected after midyear assessments, around February.
Budget and data‑privacy concerns were raised. Board member Miss Hoff asked about cost implications and whether student information would enter an "open" AI system; she said, "we've been told that no student data can go into an AI device that's open because it's, you know, data that, you know, AI is learning, so they can't learn from that data. The intervention is a closed AI system?" Miss Tockely replied "Absolutely" and later confirmed "Yes" when asked directly about Amira being a closed system. On costs, she said quotes would be sought later in the cycle and that the district can choose which program components to buy.
Discussion items kept separate from decisions: committee members and staff discussed vendor support, professional development plans (an introductory professional development session in May 20 and full training in August), fidelity to vendor scope during pilots (Miss Tockely said teachers would follow the curriculum "from cover to cover" to ensure an authentic pilot), and that secondary classes may use downloaded digital resources or additional texts depending on teacher and student needs.
Next steps spelled out by staff include providing the May 20 "appetizer" professional development for pilot teachers, collecting September baseline Acadience and MAP data, retesting in January, analyzing midyear results, soliciting teacher feedback, and returning to the committee with recommendations after that comparison. No formal motion or vote was recorded at the May 14 meeting.
