Representing California
Multitudes is built with and for California students. Our carefully selected sample allows us to refine the sensitivity and specificity of our tools and to conduct bias analyses to ensure fairness and equity.
Multitudes research was conducted by locally based teams in four remote hubs across the state, to bring both urban and rural school communities into our validation study.
Centering Multilingual Learners
Every child deserves fair and unbiased instruction and assessment. In California, about 19% of elementary public-school students, are identified as English Learners, and of these more than 80% speak Spanish as their primary language. In 2023-2024, 1075 schools had students enrolled in dual language programs.
Multitudes is dedicated to a culturally responsive approach that considers language proficiency and language variation during measure development, validation, and analysis. We aim to recognize children who may be at risk of learning difficulties, without overidentifying those who are still developing language proficiency.
Innovation Cycle
Multitudes research guides implementation by continously improving the process. Our longitudinal study, now in its fifth year, allows us to refine the platform as we learn more about students, their growth and their learning contexts. Our aim is a more precise, efficient, and flexible tool that serves both monolingual and multilingual learners in varied educational settings, fairly and accurately.
The flexibility of the digital Multitudes platform facilitates seamless integration of new neuroscience discovery and emerging tools and technology. Areas of expansion include math and social emotional domains, as well as new languages, language agnostic measures and progress monitoring.
Multitudes Development and Implementation
