Meet the New Brunswick Company Helping Schools Raise the Bar
FREDERICTON – One New Brunswick company is setting the bar for research that’s helping improve schools around the world.
The Learning Bar (TLB) is a research-based education company led by internationally renowned researcher, Dr. J. Douglas Willms. The company provides schools with tools and solutions designed to inform educators, guide school planning and give a voice to students, parents and teachers.
“I think when we look into the mirror, we see six parts education and four parts technology,” says Robert DiDiodato, TLB’s vice president of business development. “What we do is provide tools to schools that help them improve outcomes for their children and improve outcomes of the schools generally.”
The Learning Bar provides two solution-focused systems. The OurSCHOOL|TTFM (Tell Them From Me) school improvement system and the Early Years Evaluation (EYE).
OurSCHOOL|TTFM aims to provide a complete solution for measuring, assessing, and reporting insights for schools. These insights are based on measures that are known to affect learning outcomes. This system has become the largest national school survey in Canada, being used in nine of the 10 provinces.
The Early Years Evaluation is an assessment framework that helps children, parents and schools with the transition from home to school.
DiDiodato says approximately 3,500 schools across Canada are using TLB’s technology. They also have a growing following in Australia with 1,400 schools, and schools in several other countries are participating in pilot projects as well. “It’s a very big export focus,” says DiDiodato.
The OurSCHOOL|TTFM system has a variety of measures that can be selected, such as bullying, school safety and mental health. The Learning Bar can also measure different levels of engagement, such as social engagement, institutional engagement and intellectual engagement. DiDiodato says this is where the company shines.
“I really think we have some of the best measures on intellectual engagement in the world,” says DiDiodato.
Every school used the TLB systems differently and for different reasons. Education departments, school districts and schools themselves are able to customize the program to help address specific areas of concern.
DiDiodato uses New Brunswick, where nearly all schools use both TLB systems, as an example.
“The way it works in New Brunswick is the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development establish a core group of measures. We have a menu and there are approximately 40 different measures that we have,” he says. “The department creates a common theme by choosing from some of those, and the districts have the chance to populate it by adding some other measure from the list.”
The schools can get even more specific.
“The school can then add some of their own questions, so if there are some local needs or initiatives underway that you’re trying to get some date around, they can populate it by adding some of their own questions to our platform.”
Unlike many other research models where results won’t be determined for months or even until the next school year, The Learning Bar gets results to the schools within two days.
“What we do is get that back to the principal so they can make a difference today and within this school year,” DiDiodato says. “That’s our goal, help one school at a time.”
Since launching in 2005, the company has grown significantly. DiDiodato says about five years ago the company only had around six employees. Two years ago that number was 16. Today, they are closing in at around 50.
The impressive growth is getting noticed. The Learning Bar has been nominated for a Kira Award in the Economic Impact Through Employment Growth category. Clearly, what they’re doing is working.
“We’re still a small company by world standards, but to us it’s a measure of success,” says DiDiodato. “Over 99 per cent of our business is export, so we’re an export that would be outside of Atlantic Canada. We’re bringing wealth into the community and buying local whenever possible.”