Frequently Asked Questions
Question: What is SAM?
Question: Why did Scholastic decide to
develop SAM?
Question: How does SAM support data-driven,
differentiated instruction?
Question: How will SAM affect my district's
total cost of ownership?
Question: How will SAM help my district
meet AYP?
Question: Does SAM use industry-standard
technology?
Question: Can SAM be purchased separately?
Question: Can I import data from our district's
Student Information System (SIS)?
Question: What data points can be exported
from SAM into .csv format?
Question: Does it take a long time to learn
how to use SAM?
Question: Will SAM run on our district's
Wide-Area Network (WAN)?
Question: What is SAM?
Answer:
SAM, the Scholastic Achievement Manager, is a management system that
supports Scholastic Education's technology products. It is the dashboard
for supporting data-driven instruction, AYP accountability requirements,
and district wide data aggregation for teachers, administrators, and
technologists.
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Question: Why did Scholastic decide to develop SAM?
Answer:
During the past five years, Scholastic has launched a number of technology
products, including READ 180 and Scholastic Reading Inventory
(SRI).
Since then, technology has evolved, as have many school and district
needs. Scholastic Education is committed to providing high-quality programs
that address the most hard-to-tackle challenges faced by schools and
districts. SAM takes advantage of the latest advances in technology
to offer an innovative solution for managing student data, monitoring
progress, and differentiating instruction at the classroom, building,
and district level. With SAM, districts can aggregate and disaggregate
data at the district-level, run reports, and monitor progress according
to demographic groupings.
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Question: How does SAM support data-driven, differentiated
instruction?
Answer:
SAM facilitates data-driven, differentiated instruction in a number
of ways. First, a user-friendly interface makes it easy for educators
to run reports and monitor student performance. The reports provide
point-of-use suggestions for interpreting the data and taking action
for follow up.
Additionally, SAM provides access to online resources that can be used
for differentiating instruction. Teachers can link directly from the
reports to the appropriate lesson plans, passages, and graphic organizers
that can be used to meet students' needs. Educators can also use a search
engine to locate resources by skill and resource type.
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Question: How will SAM affect my district's total
cost of ownership?
Answer:
SAM reduces total cost of ownership by reducing the number of servers
needed to support Scholastic Education programs, by increasing concurrent
usage limits, by automating certain procedures, and by reducing the
amount of time dedicated to set up and maintenance for the programs
it supports, such as READ 180, ReadAbout, SRC!, and SRI.
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Question: How will SAM help my district meet AYP?
Answer:
SAM enables administrators to aggregate and disaggregate performance
data at the district level, making it easy to monitor student progress.
Special reports have been designed so that districts can filter and
sort students according to the demographic categories outlined in NCLB—or
by custom filters that districts can set up on their own.
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Question: Does SAM use industry-standard technology?
Answer:
Yes, SAM uses industry-standard technology, such as MySQL, JBOSS, XML,
and JDK, making it interoperable with other databases and information
systems. Additionally, SAM is built to the Schools Interoperability
Framework (SIF) standards. Scholastic is in the process of developing
an agent that will allow easy export of SAM data to a SIF compliant
database.
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Question: Can SAM be purchased separately?
Answer:
No. SAM is a technology management platform that works in coordination
with the Enterprise Edition of Scholastic's technology-based reading
programs including: READ 180, ReadAbout, SRC!, and SRI.
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Question: Can I import data from our district's
Student Information System (SIS)?
Answer:
SAM makes it easy to import and export data from your current Student
Information System (SIS). If you're using additional learning management
systems, you can also import and export data to and from SAM. Through
SAM, student data can be transferred to your data warehouse or other
student management applications to address data aggregation and reporting
needs.
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Question: What data points can be exported
from SAM into .csv format?
Answer:
Each SAM-based product (READ 180, SRI, SRC, rSkills, and ReadAbout)
has its own specific fields that are available for export. To see the
exported fields for each product, please reference the Scholastic
Enterprise Data Dictionary.
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Question: Does it take a long time to learn how
to use SAM?
Answer:
No, SAM is easy to use. An intuitive interface helps teachers and administrators
manage enrollment and class rosters, run reports, and access resources
for differentiating instruction. Certain step-by-step wizards are built
into SAM to simplify the performance of more complex tasks, such as
importing and exporting data to other Student Information Systems (SIS),
data warehouses, or the district data aggregation server.
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Question: Will SAM run on our district's Wide-Area
Network (WAN)?
Answer:
Yes. Products powered by SAM are WAN-ready. That means they are capable
of being centrally hosted and running well across the WAN. However,
performance varies greatly depending on a district's network infrastructure
and the bandwidth of the network connection. We recommend a minimum
of a T1 network speed.
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