i-Ready Data Suggest Higher-Powered Learning is Addressing Educational Inequalities

In the past few months, eLearning has become necessarily widespread because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Families have quickly implemented at-home structures to teach their children. Unfortunately, the extensive use of eLearning raises issues of equity. Two months after school closings, the New York Times wrote about the stark contrast between the eLearning experiences at a high-income school and a low-income school. This article highlights the differing experiences between two families who attend schools serving students from different income backgrounds. Similarly concerned with disparities during eLearning, EdSurge published an article discussing recent data from the software program, i-Ready. The latest data shows a set of troubling statistics that indicate usage data for the program is related to income levels – lower-income students are using the program at lower rates. Still, when they are using the program, they are using the program for longer periods than those in other income levels.

As the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to move to eLearning, many schools around the country and the world struggled to make this shift. In some cases, districts reduced instructional time, while in others it led to parent, student, and teacher frustration.

A month ago, schools across the country shut down and teachers prepared themselves and their students for eLearning. Many teachers and school leaders across the country scrambled to find resources to support their students. During this transition, Brigid Krause, a third-grade teacher at Community of Saints Regional Catholic School in West St. Paul, Minnesota, was concerned with acknowledging her students' needs while recreating her classroom community in an online setting. She followed a set of simple teaching practices to guide her transition to eLearning.

Did you know that the phrase “Be not afraid” is used in the Bible 365 times? Talk about a daily message from God! Fear is a great divider. It causes distance between people. It blocks grace from flowing freely and prevents ingenuity. Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.”

It is unrealistic during these times to never feel afraid, but I urge you to allow your faith to be bigger than your fear and to look for the things that are more important than fear.

Here are three truths that God has affirmed for me during these past few weeks. These truths inspire me to work for “something more important than fear.”

Thanks to advancements in technology and all the online resources available, social distancing does not have to mean breaks in learning. Although learning may look different for a short period of time, eLearning provides wonderful opportunities for innovation outside the traditional classroom setting. Read on to learn more!

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, I am taking some time to think about the reasons why I love blended learning. Of course, blended learning yields an extensive list of academic benefits, but what excites me even more is the social-emotional learning blended learning supports.

When properly executed, blended learning creates a classroom environment where personalized instruction happens for each student. I could write a book sharing stories and reasons why I love blended learning. But our teachers can do a much better job! Today I am honored to share the spotlight with two wonderful teachers in our Higher-Powered Learning Program (HPLP) who will help me share the love!

Mountain bikers must consider many factors to maximize their workouts, but the most important factor is fun maximization.

Similarly, when instituting a change like blended learning in an entire school, plenty of factors should be considered to maximize teacher and student learning. But the most important factor is altering the learning culture at a school. I have found quite a few parallels between mountain biking and instituting school change.

The research on professional development (PD) is clear: change is tough! Research funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on PD states that “far too many teachers have reported that current professional development offerings are neither relevant nor effective.”

Another research point made by CoSN links the hurdle to the sustainability of innovative programs with the lack of agility, strategies, and mindsets necessary to move from a few classrooms to an entire school. In order to overcome these barriers, we grounded our coaching framework in the research and adapted it for our schools’ use.

I distinctly remember the first time I walked into Rebecca Buller’s middle school math classroom at Saint Alphonsus Catholic School in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota.

The energy was electric and students were buzzing with excitement while talking about...MATH!

Rebecca uses the station rotation model. She divides her students into three groups – a technology station, a collaborative work station where students apply math learning, and her small-group instruction station. She combines this model with her version of the flipped classroom model to make math concepts attainable for all students.

My classroom layout matched the colorful, vibrant personalities of my students. And similar to the lovely, ever-changing, adolescent personality, my classroom was constantly changing. I am a big fan of the flex model, particularly for older students because it gives teachers more flexibility to pull groups or individual students. I constantly adjusted my groups to keep instruction “fresh,” as my kids called it. My flexible groups also removed the stigma that can sometimes accompany ability grouping.

You finish a class and think to yourself, “Wow! What a wonderful lesson. I can’t wait to grade these exit tickets.” 

However, after grading, you find a handful of your students ROCKED the lesson–but a group of students completely misunderstood the concept. How will you make sure these students don’t fall behind on future lessons?

Reteaching small groups of students is an effective way to ensure students receive instruction that targets their misconceptions.

Some may wonder, “If I have blended-learning, what is the point of pre-teaching concepts if I can go back and remediate?” In response to this question, a significant element of blended learning is equity: giving students exactly what they need. When teaching a whole-group lesson, every student must be able to access the lesson's objective. Equity is the reason why pre-teaching is essential.

When considering pre-teaching, the next logical question is:

How do I know which students will be in my pre-teach small group?

As an educator, small-group instruction time was always sacred.

Students knew there had to be an emergency if they interrupted my dedicated time with a small group of their peers. My students valued the intimate time they got to spend with me, and I treasured the opportunity to know my students better as learners and as people. To make the time most effective, I tailored my small-group instruction to the needs of my students. 

For the next few weeks, we will focus on formats that have produced effective small-group instruction. 

St. Cletus School in New Orleans

Minneapolis/St. Paul and New Orleans share some obvious similarities: both are cities on the Mississippi River, both are home to musical legends (Louis Armstrong from “the Big Easy” and Prince from the “Twin Cities”), and the food is… okay, yeah, the food is just way better in New Orleans. Never mind. 

As a former secondary English teacher, I battled the homework question many times throughout my ten years of teaching. On the one hand, homework, particularly reading homework, was necessary for students to build their literacy skills and stay on top of classwork. When studying a novel, assigning 20 pages of daily reading during class was not an effective use of class time. However, if I gave too much homework (more than 20 minutes or so of reading, unnecessary worksheets for extra practice, etc.) then students would not complete it.