Rancocas Valley Regional High School Awarded Catalyst Initiative

Social Innovation Program from HP to Foster Global Collaboration

among Educational Institutions

Measuring Learning Consortium to Develop and Demonstrate New Approaches

for Using Technology to Measure STEM+ Competencies that are Often Not
Assessed in School.

Mount Holly, New Jersey, USA , Sept. 16, 2010 – Rancocas Valley Regional High School
announced today it has received a grant to participate in HP’s Catalyst Initiative, a global social
innovation program designed to develop more effective approaches to science, technology,
engineering and math (STEM) education worldwide.

Rancocas Valley Regional High School was awarded a $150,000 grant from HP as a member of
the Measuring Learning Consortium led by Carnegie Mellon University to study Real-Time
Assessment of Standards-Based Declarative & Procedural Knowledge of Students.

As part of the program, HP is donating $6 million to 35 educational institutions, including

Rancocas Valley Regional High School, across five consortia that will use the award to explore
innovations in STEM+ learning and teaching. This builds on the Obama Administration’s
“Educate to Innovate” coalition designed to improve national outcomes in STEM subject
matters.

Program Details

• The HP Catalyst Initiative creates five global consortia in 2010, each focusing on a
specific innovation theme for transforming STEM education. The five themes span:
approaches to teacher preparation, online education, using technology to measure
learning outcomes, and engaging students in global, collaborative learning experiences.

• Member organizations were selected through an open and competitive global call for
proposals. Eligibility was based on two principal criteria: status as an accredited
educational institution (that is, schools, colleges, universities, as well as nonprofit or
nongovernmental educational organizations) and country of location. Eligible countries
for 2010 included Brazil, China, Eqypt, France, Germany, India, Kenya, Russia, South
Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States.

A new global Consortium

Global institutions that will be leading the five HP Catalyst consortia include Carnegie Mellon
University, the Sloan Consortium, FutureLab (UK), the CSIR Meraka Institute (South Africa) and
the Agastya International Foundation (India).
 “We are excited about the impact this initiative and network of consortia will have on our long
term of further integrating technology as part of daily instruction and student assessment. It is
important that we secure funding from companies like HP to be able to empower students to
collaborate globally and deliver the kinds of projects that will shape the way education and
ultimately society evolves.” – Dr. Michael D. Moskalski, Superintendent

“The HP Catalyst Initiative underscores our vision of a world where innovation and collaboration
are enabled by investments in technology and education. The program is designed to help
foster potential solutions to society’s most critical challenges by educating and nurturing leaders
that will be critical in ensuring we develop new communities and find new ways of doing things.“
- Gabi Zedlmayer, Vice President, Office of Global Social Innovation, HP

The two-year long study, headed by Ronald J. Maniglia, Science & Technology Supervisor, will
involve selected science and math teachers from Rancocas Valley Regional High School. The
project will consider how real-world tasks can be designed and administered that effectively
integrate the use of technologies into classroom assessments as part of a framework that
authentically evaluates 21st century critical-thinking and problem-solving skills. The team of
teachers will investigate which aspects of technologies improve and/or hinder the learner’s
acquisition of declarative knowledge and procedural skills.

The team will address the question of whether immediate feedback improves student
performance with respect to standards and learning outcomes regardless of intervening factors
such as gender, socioeconomic status, or learning disabilities. Teachers will construct and
administer test items aligned to science and math standards to evaluate the student’s core
content knowledge of STEM+ literacies in biological and environmental sciences and algebra.
Performance assessments and standards-based scoring rubrics will be developed to challenge
students to generate original content; use models and simulations to explore concepts; collect
and analyze real-time experimental data; and collaborate with other learners. Using HP
technology, assessment data will provide immediate feedback to students encouraging changes
in learning and to teachers making decisions regarding curriculum and instruction. Success will
be measured as students show improvement in their recall of core knowledge; use critical-
thinking skills to solve problems; and demonstrate proficiency in attaining science and math
standards.

About HP Catalyst Initiative

HP is building a global network of consortia that is attempting to develop more effective
approaches to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education. The goal is to
create international collaborative “sandboxes” of innovation that will explore what the future of
STEM education can look like—a future where students use their technical and creative
ingenuity to address urgent social challenges in their communities and around the world. More
information is available at http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/socialinnovation/catalyst.html

Background Information
Rancocas Valley Regional High School is a regional secondary school serving approximately
2100 students from five sending districts that includes Mount Holly, Eastampton, Westampton,
Lumberton, and Hainesport. The student population represents a heterogeneous mix of learners
from a variety of socioeconomic, ethnic, and educational backgrounds. The teaching staff
continues to explore approaches to narrowing the achievement gap among its students.

Further information is available at www.rvrhs.com or by contacting Ms. Tanya Jackson

(tjackson@rvrhs.com), Special Projects and Public Relations Coordinator, Rancocas Valley
Regional High School, 520 Jacksonville Road, Mount Holly, New Jersey 08060 at 609-267-
0837, x 3518.