CSM builds and certifies High Performance, delivering a new type of college and career readiness:
Powered by next-generation learning technology that simultaneously personalizes instruction in academics and how you learn, act and feel.
Learn MoreCertifies High Performance, employability skills, and gains college math credit.
Learn MoreA new approach to career development focusing on learning the skill of making career decisions throughout your life.
Learn More"[Our high school has] an extremely challenging student population – 85% of students are free and reduced lunch, many students are minority, undocumented and/or otherwise at-risk, and about two-thirds of the students at an unsatisfactory level on the state proficiency test... [with] a 49% dropout rate.
Remarkably, the majority of students made substantial progress on CSM – including many who started at very basic math and literacy levels. The consistent feedback from the teachers has been that CSM makes the students work hard – it doesn’t let them off, and it doesn’t let them guess. Yet instead of frustrating the students, they appear to enjoy working with it.
...the unanimous feelings of the math teachers involved in the program is that students are learning in ways they haven’t before. CSM is extremely exciting to me in its potential role in building not only the math skills of students, but also their general interest in academic work, and their ability to learn.
CSM is very different from the other computer-based systems that I have seen – it is not narrowly competency-based, and it addresses the deficits that many struggling students have both in their feelings about learning as well as the learning strategies that they use.
This will also be of particular benefit for those teachers who need professional development with intervention or more generally in dealing with struggling students."
CSM is intensely personalized, and remediates down to 4th grade math. CSM deepens intuition based on mental math, integrating math with literacy, problem solving instruction, and required 100% mastery.
Students at all levels, including those with mild learning or intellectual disabilities and English-language learners, can succeed at CSM given time and support. Students can build college aspirations and math confidence by knowing that the CSM Certificate is accepted as college math credit at many colleges (CSM is one of only a few such courses that doesn't require algebra).
The CSM Course is often implemented as a math course, but it is also an employability skills course focused on the transferable skills needed in all jobs. The CSM Course is aligned with key aspects of the widely adopted Common Employability Skills framework, and is used in corporate upskilling in both blue- and white-collar environments from frontline workers to managers with advanced degrees, including in tech-heavy sectors such as energy and water/wastewater treatment.
In addition, the Career Strategies mini-course teaches the skills of making career decisions throughout your life, filling in an important cultural capital gap in most CTE pathways.
Many students struggle in school because they aren't effective at learning, they lack persistence, or they think of themselves as "bad at math/school" and have given up before they even try. The CSM Course addresses these and other issues head-on, and embeds them in content learning that can gain college math credit with seamless remediation.
The CSM Course can be implemented:
Many students simply don't believe that they're "college material" and are particularly scared of college math requirements.
The CSM Course builds confidence in many ways. For example, students are informed when they master a skill what percentage of 4-year college grads can't do that skill. For many students, this casts their skills in a new light and they see themselves as capable of succeeding in college.
In addition, students can earn college math credit that in some cases satisfies general education math degree requirements.
An evaluation by Stanford Research Institute, comparing CSM to ALEKS from McGraw-Hill and MyFoundationsLab from Pearson, showed that CSM had the highest math and literacy gains relative to classroom learning, as well as the highest student engagement.
In an program for opportunity youth, Cuyahoga Community College was surprised to find that:
Pepco (the energy utility in Washington, DC) uses CSM in their program preparing high school graduates for high paying lineman positions. After completing CSM, passing rates on the industry-standard CAST test (which has a challenging math component) rose from 20% to 67%.
The teacher's role in the CSM Course is different from most instruction: it's the student's task to learn the skills on their own, and the teacher's role to help them learn how to do this (we call CSM instructors "coaches").
To help teachers with this new role, SeeMore provides three types of free support:
In a High Performance High Schools, everyone in the school community is encouraged to take the CSM Course, working together to build their high performance characteristics and a spirit of communal purpose, effort, excellence, accomplishment and pride. "Everyone" is inclusive to mean the principal, teachers, office, cafeteria and janitorial staff, students, and even parents.
To learn more about High Performance High Schools or our special pricing for community implementation, email hello@smilabs.org for more information.
We aim to develop deep relationships with our clients to ensure success. Some examples of our free assistance include:
If there are any other ways we might be of assistance, please contact us.
