Date: 5/21/2019
To: The Escondido Education Foundation
From: Guy James, Hannah Booker, Karol Roberts – Oak Hill Elementary Special Education
Regarding: Grant Evaluation (Mind Magnifying Microphones)
The Special Education team at Oak Hill is grateful for the grant we received which allowed us to provide more focused services for our students with disabilities.
We had requested headphones for our students in order to take full advantage of the speech to text software that the district provided. Specifically, many of our students who cannot write yet are able now to compose full sentences and paragraphs without interrupting their general education peers since the headphones also contain an individual microphone.
Additionally, those students who have speech services are now able to clearly see via text conversion what people they are speaking to may actually hear. This allows them to practice words, receiving immediate feedback, in order to better enunciate and therefore communicate more effectively. While the improvement in overall speech is not an easily measurable effect, we can provide some numbers identifying the success of the devices academically.
Our students who have completed MAPS testing for Reading have improved their scores by an average of 7.4 points since implementing the headsets and dictation.
Students who have completed the MAPS Writing assessment have increased their scores by 10.3 points.
While many of the benefits are not measurable, they certainly are evident in the increased confidence that many of the students are exhibiting. One such example is the 3rd grade student who previously took 40 minutes to write 5 words. With the addition of the dictation equipment he can now compose complete, multiple sentences in only minutes. He now can put on paper his original thoughts rather than losing them because transferring them to paper took so long.
We thank you for the generous grant and guaranty that they will be put to good use for many years to come.