From At-Risk to Advancing: How One Kindergarten Cohort Surged Ahead with TILT Tech with Adira Reads

At The Indy Learning Team, we know data is more than numbers—it’s a lifeline for teachers and a launchpad for student success. That’s exactly what we saw this year with a cohort of kindergarten English language learners who began the school year without even basic letter knowledge.

Students with no alphabet recognition are automatically flagged as at-risk, particularly English language learners who often face a 40% achievement gap compared to their native-speaking peers. But with the help of TILT Tech with Adira Reads, this group’s story turned into one of transformation.

TILT Tech with Adira Reads isn’t just another assessment tool—it’s a thinking partner. It lifts the burden of data analysis off teachers’ shoulders and delivers what educators need most: real-time instructional insights, flexible grouping, and targeted learning sequences within their existing curriculum.

Over the course of the year, we monitored student progress weekly. Based on what the data told us, we continuously adapted instructional sequences—not at the end of the unit, not after the benchmark assessment, but in real time. This responsiveness made all the difference.

And the results? Remarkable.

By year’s end, this cohort of students who started at zero had not only mastered all kindergarten foundational literacy skills—they were already 5% through first grade content.

Let that sink in: from at-risk to ahead.

What made this possible was not just the power of technology—but how that technology served teachers. By identifying exactly where each student was in the moment, we empowered educators to act immediately and effectively.

Instead of overwhelming teachers with more data, TILT Tech with Adira Reads created an easy-to-implement framework that translated insights into instruction. It gave teachers back their time and agency. And most importantly, it gave students access to the literacy skills they need to thrive.

This is what it looks like to close the gap. This is what it means to move the needle—not next year, not someday—today.