Key points:

• Visitor management is an increasingly large part of school safety policy
• 4 considerations for school safety solutions
• How to start solving your school bullying problem
• For more news on school safety, visit eSN’s Educational Leadership hub

One crucial aspect of school safety is monitoring who comes on and off campus, including visitors. Visitor management can be tricky, because school campuses tend to have various points of access. In recent years, schools have put in the effort to advance all safety measures within schools, including visitor management. In fact, recent research by Pew Research Center found that 98 percent of schools require visitors to check in and wear a badge. 

Schools can emphasize their protection of students and staff by requiring visitors to wear a visitor-specific safety badge that can monitor their location while on campus. Opposed to staff safety badges, which only provide location information once an alert is initiated to maintain staff privacy, the visitor badge will monitor the visitor’s location in real-time while on school grounds.

Visitor management solutions can monitor all visitors, including but not limited to parents, volunteers, contractors, and vendors, and can flag whether any visitor is not allowed on school grounds. Through my experience as a former educator and superintendent, I have identified the following five ways to keep K-12 schools safer with better visitor management strategies:

Conduct visitor screening

School visitations occur on a daily basis; therefore, they should be streamlined and made safer for students and staff through protocols and procedures. In previous years, schools may have had little to no set program when it came to recording the visitors in schools. In today’s more modern times with technological advancements, there are more steps that can be taken to ensure a safer school environment. Running background checks on visitors prior to allowing them to enter the campus is one of these important steps. Through screening of visitors, schools can confirm the reasoning and relationships behind the visitor’s attendance at the school. In addition, this screening can also allow for a custom banned persons list. This is to protect the students and staff from individuals who put them at risk.

Have technology in place for instant alerts about visitors

There are many levels of sophistication when it comes to visitor management systems. Instant alerts can offer insights to campus staff on the status of visitors within the school. Through discreet notifications, administrators can be made aware of who is attempting to visit the school. For example, if someone on the custom banned persons list is trying to enter the school, a school resource officer can be made aware through a discreet notification without the visitor knowing that others are being alerted. These awareness notifications can also be made through emails and SMS text messages.

Provide secure student releases

When students are being picked up early from school, there is an early dismissal, or any situation that could possibly alter a student’s typical routine at school, there should be safety measures in place to ensure they are being released in a way approved by their parent or guardian. These unordinary releases should also be a time to conduct background checks on the adults picking up students to confirm that these individuals are allowed to and that the child will be safe.

Utilize detailed reporting for all visitor activities

All data related to the visitor management system should be recorded and accessible to all staff through any internet-connected device to minimize mistakes that could impact a student’s safety. When there are many moving parts in a school system, it is crucial to have a point of reference when referring to a child’s location for their safety. Your school safety system should have one location where this information lives. Within your recorded data, all hours of visitors and staff within the building should be recorded down to the minute–this includes for teachers, substitutes, other staff members and volunteers. In the case of an emergency, you want to be sure that all people within the building are accounted for.

All available data should be taken into consideration when a visitor is checking in. It is important that mandatory reviews of photos and background checks are taken at every single visitor check-in, regardless of whether the handling staff members recognize or know the visitors. The banned persons list is likely to change, therefore, procedures should be followed during each individual check-in.

If a staff member is ever uncertain of a visitor-related situation, they should be able to have immediate access to visitor reports. The main purpose of this is not fully for convenience but also to save time in a situation that could possibly be a safety emergency.

Integrate visitor locating systems with other campus systems

Whether you are looking to add visitor management to your current system or are looking for a completely new product, it is crucial that your selection goes with any other student information systems you have implemented within your school. The synchronization will ensure higher adoption from staff, convenience for all parties involved, and increased cross references amongst student information. Syncing student meetings, daily attendance, and time codes directly to your SIS is crucial for a successful visitor engagement element within your plan.

School safety plans are developed through careful planning and evaluation of individual schools’ needs and challenges. There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to handling visitor management, so a comprehensive safety plan should consist of data-driven and human-based checks. Once a safety plan is developed and approved, ensuring buy-in and understanding from those who will enforce the plan is critical. A strong strategy for handling visitor management will help to avoid unnecessary oversights and ensure the safety of students. 

Key points:

• Very soon, districts must closely examine the edtech they use and compare it with budget realities
• How to ensure edtech ROI? Ask these 4 questions
• For school leaders, routine decisions aren’t so routine
• For more news on district edtech use, visit eSN’s District Management hub

For much of the past 12 years, Casey Rimmer sometimes felt like a “dream killer” when it came to the edtech tools used in her district. As the executive director of curriculum and instruction for Union County Public Schools, a district of over 41,000 students outside Charlotte, N.C., she was often tasked with letting teachers know why a potential new tool wasn’t approved for use.

Lately, though, the district has flipped the script. Now they ask teachers to check the tool’s data privacy policy and age requirements when making a request, so they have a better understanding of why a tool is—or isn’t—a good fit. When teachers feel part of the discussion, it often leads to productive conversations, she explains. 

“We’re doing a lot of work around helping teachers to understand the different processes and what they need to do if they want to bring something into their classroom. Whether it’s a free resource or an edtech product, there’s still some kind of criteria” that needs to be met.

The new policies are part of a wider effort to strengthen and streamline the district’s “edtech ecosystem,” the collection of core and supplemental tools that teachers can use. And Union County is far from alone. In the coming months, many districts will be taking a close look at the edtech they use, especially as it relates to current budget realities.

Making tough choices

Later this year, the final round of federal pandemic funding, known as Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER), will expire, leaving school budgets uncertain in many districts. Funds they have come to rely on for staffing and technology will end in September if not allotted. (If funds are allotted, however, districts can request an extension to use them through March of 2026 in some cases). 

For many districts, the relief funding was significant. San Antonio’s district has received $100 million over the past three years, which it used to boost staffing and help combat pandemic-related learning loss. 

Given that schools were forced into online learning, many districts used those funds to invest in edtech—in hardware like laptops and Wi-Fi hotspots but also in edtech software. The most recent Edtech Top 40 Report notes that districts access an average of nearly 2,600 edtech tools annually, a number that has swelled in the past few years as companies offered free access to their tools during the pandemic and districts spent their relief funding. 

With these funds drying up, districts may face some difficult choices. But they may also see it as an opportunity to reassess their technology use and how to maximize the resources they do have, according to education experts speaking on a recent webinar, “Take Control of EdTech: How to Manage an Effective Digital Ecosystem,” put on by Instructure, the company behind both the Canvas learning management system and the edtech evaluation and management tool LearnPlatform.

“School districts are really having to take a hard look at what the critical parts of this ecosystem are,” said Tal Havivi, the managing director of research and development at ISTE, on the webinar. One way to think of it is as a “strategic culling,” he explains, as districts square budget realities with whether tools are truly meeting their needs. 

How to assess your edtech

Assessing whether a district should continue using—and paying for—a tool is dedicated work involving backend data collection and surveying teachers and students for their thoughts. But both practices can reveal useful insights. 

Core curriculum products can be quantitatively assessed by looking at whether they are helping meet district goals around student learning. In other words, can you tie the tool’s use to improved reading or math scores?

But “there’s also a qualitative piece around each of these tools,” said Melissa Loble, Instructure’s chief academic officer, speaking on the same webinar. “Is this the right experience that represents our district and our goals? Does it help teachers create a deeper connection with their students, address areas of deficiencies, or engage students in new areas that they might be interested in?”

Crucially, collecting good data around edtech use can help districts see the overall picture, she said. And feedback from teachers and students can help contextualize these patterns even further.

That tracks with what Union County has found. Rimmer explains that the district uses LearnPlatform to keep track of its tech use and start conversations. “As a district, we can monitor what our top 10 [most used] products are,” she said. “I want our top 10 products to be those products that we invest in: We invest money, we invest time, we invest in professional learning. Sometimes, I can see maybe some free products creeping up there.”

When core tools aren’t getting used, Rimmer digs in and finds out why. Teachers might not feel comfortable using the tool with students yet, or it could be that they haven’t had enough training. That’s a simple enough fix. But other times, teacher avoidance can signal larger questions about whether the tool is a good fit overall.

“Sometimes they’re great products, and we have to say the product—even though it’s an amazing, robust tool that does amazing things for other schools and districts—maybe it’s not doing that for us,” she said.  

The good news is that teachers are more invested than ever in the edtech they’re using with students, and more willing to experiment with new tools, adds Loble. 

“I still see investment—districts wanting to build ecosystems—but they need to do it where they can have the most effective or the largest return on investment, with reduced funding coming in,” she said. “We use dollars to try everything. We’ve tried it out. Now we’re going to pick what’s going to be the most important [for us].”

Key points:

• Now is the time to evaluate budgets and lay groundwork for the future
• How to find the right edtech tools for public schools
• Act now to avoid financial disasters after COVID relief funding ends
• For more news on district budgeting, visit eSN’s Education Leadership page

The final chapters of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding are drawing near.

The imminent end of ESSER funding has pushed school districts to a critical juncture, compelling them to confront budget deficits for the upcoming 2024-2025 school year before the “fiscal cliff” hits in 2025-2026.

For three years, school districts nationwide have relied on a temporary financial cushion to soften the blow from the pandemic. When that safety net disappears, they will be up against higher expenses and dwindling revenue.

Every day of delay means inefficiently spending or leaving money on the table altogether. As districts navigate this budget season, tough decisions loom regarding staff reductions and cuts to essential resources that have supported students’ learning and well-being.

Superintendents and school boards are at a critical moment, reassessing how to allocate remaining funds and adopt a new approach to operations.

What lies ahead of the fiscal cliff

As school districts approach the September 2024 deadline to exhaust their ESSER funds, a sobering realization is setting in. With schools having collectively used $60 billion in ESSER funds for each of the past two years, they must now prepare for future budget planning without it.

With this impending budget crunch, many districts find themselves in the uncomfortable position of needing to “right-size” their budgets.

While there were some one-time purchases, the reality now is that some dollars spent were not sustainable in the long run.

A substantial chunk of ESSER funding went towards expanding personnel, with 44 percent of districts’ spent funds going towards staffing needs, covering expenses like salaries and benefits for extra personnel. This included hiring more support and administrative staff, investing in professional development, and deliberately alleviating the post-pandemic workload by bringing in additional hands that they wouldn’t have otherwise afforded.

As districts prepare for the 2025-2026 budget, many will realize that changes are necessary to offset the increased expenses they took on.

Restructuring district operations with long-term solutions

Support staff roles at the district level, deemed as ‘nice to haves’ rather than essential, will likely be restructured as districts adjust to a leaner operational model. Due process clerk roles such as administrative assistants and paperwork facilitators are already seeing reductions.

In the coming years, the final funding decisions made by current district leaders will serve as a litmus test to determine if they have proactively addressed the internal capacity needed at the system level to support their chosen allocation of funds.

Will they prioritize short-term fixes, or will they root their decisions in sustainability? These next two years will reveal whether leaders have laid a solid foundation for success or if their choices were merely temporary patches without lasting impact.

The path for district superintendents

As districts chart their budgetary course, it’s imperative to pause and contemplate three things: Where are you now, where do you want to go, and how will you get there?

The answer to these questions lies in assessing the readiness of your teams – do you have the right people in place, equipped with the time and technology to make the investment worthwhile?

Where are you now?

Take a moment to define your current state.

From the special education department to the superintendent’s office, educators at every level feel the burden of limited resources and time constraints. While increasing either may seem unattainable, first clarify the top priorities—not just what seems ideal for the time being.

Daily workloads often hinder us from pausing to pinpoint these priorities, let alone communicate them to school communities. However, without a clear understanding of what’s working and what’s not, staff and resource cuts will be felt even more.

Where do you want to go?

Consider how to strengthen educator recruitment and combat turnover.

Educators are responsible for bringing their best to the table, but it’s up to the district to equip them with the tools they need to thrive. Without proper support, engagement, and resources, educators risk burnout, which could lead to sudden departures, impeding the district’s growth as it rushes to fill vacancies.

Recruitment and retention efforts require more than just one-time investments; they demand sustainable systems and robust processes. This includes ongoing professional development initiatives rather than fleeting, one-day training sessions.

To attract and keep highly-qualified staff, the districts can opt for quick fixes and superficial technology solutions, which often entail extensive and costly training or ‘set it and forget it’ implementation. Alternatively, they can choose to foster lasting partnerships with vendors who support their growth, celebrating successes and driving progress towards long-term goals.

How will you get there?

Lose the survival mode mentality and play the long game.

In the aftermath of the pandemic, districts understandably adopted a cautious approach to fund allocation, prioritizing proven outcomes over risky endeavors. The reactive decisions made during the crisis were necessary for maintaining educational continuity, yet the persistent workload across administrative roles and special education teams, compounded by reduced staffing and increased stress, underscores the need for a new approach.

Continuing to operate in survival mode risks overlooking opportunities to lay the groundwork for sustainable systems beyond the fiscal cliff–systems that will yield lasting benefits to staff, educators, and the students they serve.

Choosing the right educational technology to partner with may seem like a gamble, but it can also be a game-changer.

Technology solutions that streamline administrative tasks, coupled with continuous professional development programs and innovative teaching methods, can empower educators to do more with less.

Sustainability beyond the fiscal cliff

Now is the time to seize the opportunity and lay the groundwork for the future. District leaders should embrace final ESSER dollars for shedding systemic “clutter” in ways that better serve students in the long run.

The reality is that the tenure of a superintendent and the term of a school board member are finite. However, visionary leaders understand the importance of investing in system structures and support that will endure long after they’re gone. By acting now–and recognizing that effective implementation is a gradual process, not a quick fix–they leave behind a legacy of positive impact that will benefit students and educators for years to come.

DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) is a commonly used acronym, but what does it mean in the context of day-to-day operations in a school district?

As many experts will point out, DEI initiatives are prone to fail when they aren’t getting at the crux of the issue—existing systemic processes and challenges that prevent promising solutions and DEI-focused policies from being successful.

During an eSchool News Innovation Roundtable with a focus on DEI, moderated by eSchool News Content Director Kevin Hogan, district leaders delved into the critical but complicated topic of DEI in school districts. Roundtable participants included:

• Julie Mavrogeorge, Coordinator II – CTE (Esports, Drones, AME and Ag) with Fresno Unified School District
• Allison Reid, Senior Director of Digital Learning and Libraries in the Wake Forest County Public School System
• Dr. Cynthia Wise, Principal of J.H. Hines Elementary in Waco, Texas

Here’s what eSN’s panel of educator experts had to say about DEI in action in their schools, the challenges they still face, and what they think will advance DEI initiatives in the years to come.

What does DEI mean in your district’s day-to-day operations?

JM: DEI doesn’t live in one place. Some people say we need a DEI team. But it’s the responsibility of the entire district to focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion. I need to create programs for students that will help educate them in their own culture and their own way. Ethnicity, diversity–all students need to learn how each culture is different. There’s also the equity and inclusion of gender preference. To me, [DEI] is educating myself and our team, but also educating teachers, staff, and students. We only know what we know until we know something different. My passion is specifically for the neurodivergent population and our foster and homeless youth. I try to educate people that we’re all human; we need to be treated as human. How do we go about training our students to realize that where we come from is important? How we’re wired is also important, but we also need to understand people who are different than we are.

AR: I believe that creating a space where each student, every day, feels like they belong is critical for moving the needle for students and allowing students to become the most successful version of themselves. In touching on the different types of ‘otherness’ – DEI means we see people for who they are. We are not blind to their otherness; rather, we see their otherness, we celebrate their otherness where we can, and we use that as a basis to make sure we’re giving those students what they need as individuals and see them wholly so they can grow into the best version of themselves. In looking at policies and processes, we must keep in mind that [we are] teaching students every day–regardless of race, nationality, gender, religion, orientation, neurodivergencies, whatever their otherness might be or not be. Are the decisions we’re making made with consideration of all our populations? Are we courageous enough to have the conversation and really look at what we’re already doing and make changes where necessary? Context matters, and we have to ask the questions to understand the context for each and every student.

CW: I have dedicated my entire administrative career to ensure students of color receive a high-quality education that is safe, inclusive, and recognizes and celebrates diversity while meeting every child’s needs so they can thrive. Diversity stands for acknowledging that there is a range of differences in the classroom. Equity is meeting each individual student’s needs–their exact needs. Inclusion signifies embracing those differences so all students feel supported. I also believe the equity should be applicable to employees, not just students. All employees should be appreciated and allowed to make meaningful contributions and that would boost morale in the workplace.

How do these DEI concepts play out in your districts? What do they look like in terms of the active participation of teachers and students?

AR: [One of the U.S. Department of Education’s recent edtech plans] discussed active vs. passive consumption of technology. We started looking more closely at how our students were using tech in the classroom. What’s fascinating, when you look at it, is students of marginalized subgroups–when we give them technology to use, we give them technology that is passive consumption. We would like for them to watch a video; we would like for them to do a drill-and-kill online. Students in those at-risk subgroups–that’s the kind of technology we give them, and we wonder why it doesn’t work. They’re not actually doing anything–they’re not making decisions, they’re just receiving. We’ve removed the opportunity for conversation, dialogue, or interaction with a human. We’ve given them technology in ways that, quite frankly, stink, because it is passive consumption, and in doing so we’ve removed the human element. Now, our advanced students–when we give them technology, we ask them to create with it–create a video, or a slide deck, or make a movie. Far different cognitive asks of the student regardless of the modality. When we’re talking about DEI, how we use technology with specific subgroups can either exacerbate or help with the achievement gap we see. Making sure that as we’re making decisions about how we integrate technology into our instruction and into our curriculum, are we allowing students of all achievement levels, all subgroups, the opportunity to use technology in an active way, in a creative way. That’s why, when you look at research on gamifying learning, it’s so powerful–because kids are actively engaged in what they’re doing and they’re making choices versus just passively consuming text. We’re starting to see some changes.

CW: In my district, every student has Chromebook, but the downside is that it’s for class use only. We are a Title I district. At my school in particular, 98 percent are on free and/or reduced lunch. I have friends working in more affluent districts and those children are allowed to take their Chromebooks home. The students from these Title I schools are at a disadvantage because the only use they have, as far as using Chromebooks/computers, is at school. The other side of that is, let’s say the district allowed them to take the Chromebooks home. Most of these homes don’t have internet, so now you have another problem, because it’s very expensive. You can give them the devices, but when they get home, where’s the connectivity? In my opinion, the issue is beyond being equitable. I think the issue is more affordability. Internet access is not affordable for all families, so that raises the question around whether this is about equitable access to technology or about affordability. And this creates a digital divide between those who can afford it and those who cannot. Technology is here to stay, so we need to understand what it can and can’t do for the users–but at the same time, it’s expensive for many things and families cannot afford the additional costs.

JM: We are over 90 percent free and/or reduced lunch. About 1 percent of our student body is homeless or foster–that’s 700 students in our district. We also are 1:1 with our devices–our students do take their HP or Lenovo laptops home. When we talk about coming back from the pandemic, our students are so disengaged, regardless of their socioeconomic status or their ethnicity. They’re not as engaged with humans as they were prior to the pandemic. Our district applied for a grant that enabled us to put up Wi-Fi towers in our regions. There’s a Fresno Unified tower families can connect to for Wi-Fi. Through one of our internet providers, families can also get internet access for $10 per month. Technology is here to stay; it’s not going anywhere. My main focus has been the integration of technology or the integration of students with technology in their current classes, as well as in after-school programs. I help to run our esports programs. When you take what seems dry and you put in creative ways of delivering it to students, gamifying just that general education–a huge component of Minecraft in education and what you can do with Minecraft in a classroom. There’s not a single subject you cannot teach within Minecraft, not a single assessment you cannot do within Minecraft. We have to take us older-school education people and retrain our way of thinking about how to deliver [instruction]. And that provides that equity and inclusion for students where they are, but we’re still delivering the content they need in order to succeed in society.

Is it ultimately the responsibility of a district to not only provide a student with a device, but also guarantee them access to anything they’re being assigned at school, at home?

CW: When it comes to technology, we’re stagnated rather than being innovative. Schools really don’t have the freedom to fully invest in the active use of technology, and the other side of that is most schools don’t have the funding to invest in the active use of technology. The way the schools were able to get 1:1 Chromebooks was because of pandemic ESSERR funds, but those funds will run out. Also, the system is designed and geared towards closing the achievement gap in reading and math between black children and white children. That’s what this is designed to do. So, unless, the way I see it, you have to get other outside [funding and support] sources such as tech companies and other companies, grants, donations, but outside of that, the funding is not there. A lot of districts are cutting staff and making deep cuts because the money is no longer there.

AR: I do think we have a responsibility to provide students with the resources they need to access their education. But I very strongly believe having internet access for students and families is not a K-12 problem. This is a community problem that our local government should be investing in. This is not an educational problem. We are at a point in our history in America where connectivity is a basic utility; if there are not programs in our community (we are not there yet either–we provide Mi-Fis for kids who don’t have access at home but sometimes those Mi-Fis are inadequate)… Stop giving our school districts all the problems to solve. We need community partners to step up and own the responsibility for providing this very basic utility for our families, regardless of whether they have children in schools or not. I do think we’re at a point that we owe students that and we certainly should partner with our municipalities, but I do not think this is a K-12 education problem. We’re already facing an educator shortage; these are big problems that are going to have to involve a lot of infrastructure and that doesn’t happen in the silo of a school district–we’ve got to have community partners.

CW: When you look at equity, [it means] each individual student has received exactly what that student needs to be successful, but then you have to train teachers. Where does the funding come in for that? The emphasis in education is not on educators becoming active users of technology; teachers don’t receive that training. The training they receive promotes passive use of technology. I like the [mention of] looking at community partners and municipalities. I want [to also focus on] the continuing education for teachers and teacher prep programs. Those programs do not prepare teachers to actively use technology. Teachers need extensive training on how to actively expand and use technologies in their classrooms. If we’re going to make this a primary goal, it’s going to take some radical rethinking of education in the United States. And I don’t think we’re there yet.

AR: If all we do is give kids a Chromebook and send them home with a device, and we are not changing the pedagogy of how we design instruction for our students, then we have only given lip service to DEI as it relates to using technology for student achievement. Technically, access has to happen first. Without question. But until we shift how we design instruction and kids are asked to do different things with it. we’re not really going to see the potential exponential growth technology can provide for us. If all you’re doing is taking that Chromebook or device and you’re turning your 30-year-old worksheets into digital tech worksheets, you’re just not doing anything different. Nothing has changed in terms of that child’s attitude about school–you’ve made the notebook heavier. I do think we’re at a point that we owe students that and we certainly should partner with our municipalities, but I do not think this is a K-12 education problem. We’re already facing an educator shortage; these are big problems that are going to have to involve a lot of infrastructure and that doesn’t happen in the silo of a school district–we’ve got to have community partners.

JM: That’s largely my role, to find the tech that can transform what kids are learning. We have teachers using Minecraft to teach during the day. We have a class we call Tournament of Technology in our middle school geared toward design, coding, robotics, and video production. And it’s mainstreamed with a lot of the linked learning, so students are doing this with their science, English, and math teachers, and projects of value are being incorporated into teaching. In my opinion, we need to absolutely do away with standardized testing–it’s a waste of time; all we’re doing is teaching a kid whether they can or cannot take a test and most students walk away feeling that they failed. A lot of what I have been working on in our district is providing students with internships during their class period. I work with industry partners to work with those students during their class period on real world projects. [I’m also] training teachers on how to play Minecraft, training them on Raspberry Pi, and how to work with robots, drones, and coding. I have a huge background in communication and conflict resolution. What is it you’re struggling with and how do we make you successful, because if you’re successful, your kids are going to be successful. We can’t just focus on the student–that teacher often needs support, love, and care.

What are your hopes for 2-3 years down the line?

CW: It’s going to require a systematic shift in education, and education as a whole is very conservative. It’s going to take some time, but I know we will get there. I’m not saying that we are not offering any type of active usage of technology. We do it, but we don’t do it with fidelity, and that’s what is needed. I believe the earlier we start with our students at the elementary level, they’ll become more proficient as they progress onto the secondary level. I think we have to be careful and not lose sight that one of the most significant parts of elementary instruction needs to be a focus on learning to read and write in order for elementary school students to be successful at that elementary level and beyond. I see where technology will play a significant role–there are some awesome programs to reinforce those reading, writing, and math skills. I would love for us to get to the point where our students will become active users.

AR: In the late 90s, they’d talk about how education will experience a paradigm shift. For 20-some years, I’ve been looking around waiting for a paradigm shift. We’re still testing kids just like we did in the late 90s. The reality is that what gets measured gets done. So, we test whether or not we covered content. What if we said that the 4Cs were important and we measured and reported on that–I don’t know how we’d do that; that’s messier, that’s not black and white. We have to have some shifts in what we assess, but I do think there’s a paradigm shift on the horizon and I think it’s coming to us by way of AI. For the first time in my career, I think we have some technology that can actually give time back to teachers. We just keep adding to the plates, and we’re not taking anything away. AI has the potential to take some of those mundane tasks and offload those, so teachers can get back to the art of connecting with children on a human level–so they can know them by name, strength, and need, and help them be successful. If we can be more strategic about what we measure and what we report, maybe we can change our attitudes about assessment and focus on the things that can really move the needle. I think AI is going to help us do some of that.

JM: AI is going to help teachers, and we do need to help them embrace it. It is going to give them back time and help them make those connections. That’s what’s needed–teachers need more time. Thy need to feel loved and cared for, and they don’t. How do we expect teachers to teach when they’re almost robots in front of a classroom having to teach to all these standards that kids aren’t embracing? It’s not engaging. We definitely need a shift. We can do what little bits we can in our district, but it needs to be from the top down.

Related:
Navigating cultural diversity in American education
How to work for equity of access in classrooms
For more news on DEI, visit eSN’s Educational Leadership hub

Last week, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), in partnership with SAS, launched the Missouri Data Visualization Tool (MO DVT), a web-based application that offers easy-to-use reports and analysis on academic performance, including achievement and growth data aggregated by subject, year, and grade. MO DVT was created in response to stakeholder questions about interpreting and using Missouri Growth Model data.

I was able to get into the weeds with Missouri Commissioner of Education Margie Vandeven & Dr. John White, VP of SAS Education Visualization and Analytics Solutions (EVAAS) to discuss the genesis and strategic goals of the MO DVT, the integration with Missouri’s broader educational strategies, and how quality data is improving decision-making in Missouri schools.

According to both Margie and John, the tool allows educators to access longitudinal data on student performance, track progress over time, and identify areas for improvement. It provides insights at both individual student and group levels, enabling teachers to tailor instruction to meet diverse student needs. Additionally, it supports decision-making at the policy level by analyzing academic impacts, such as the effectiveness of a four-day school week.

By actually using the wealth of available data, the emphasis is now on translating it into meaningful insights to drive improvements in teaching and learning. The goal is to foster a culture of continuous improvement and empower educators with the tools needed to support student success.

Some highlights of the conversation:

• Actionable Data for Teachers: The program aims to make growth data actionable for teachers, moving beyond using it solely for accountability purposes to inform classroom instruction and support individual student needs effectively.
• Privacy and Security: Measures are in place to ensure data privacy and security, with access restricted to authorized personnel and adherence to regulations like FERPA.
• Longitudinal Tracking: Educators can track student progress over time, analyze historical data, and make projections for future performance, enabling targeted interventions and support.
• Group-Level Insights: The tool provides insights at both individual student and group levels, allowing educators to identify trends, disparities, and best practices among different student populations.
• Policy-Level Decision Making: The program supports policy-level decision-making by analyzing academic impacts, such as the effectiveness of initiatives like the four-day school week, to inform future strategies and interventions.
• Promotion of Data Literacy: Educators are encouraged to engage with the data to understand student performance trends, measure growth, and identify areas for improvement, fostering a culture of data-driven decision-making in education.
• Continuous Improvement: The overarching goal is to foster a culture of continuous improvement in education, leveraging data insights to drive positive outcomes for students and empower educators with the tools and knowledge needed for success.

Below is a machine-generated transcript of the recording:

Transcript 

00:00:04 Speaker 1 

OK, great. Thanks so much for joining me today. I really appreciate your time. I know you’re busy. Lots of news. Let’s jump right into it. Doctor, maybe you can start by just talking about the program where it began. How long has it been in process to where we’ve gotten to the point now that it’s an active tool for your users? 

00:00:23 Speaker 2 

So in the state of Missouri, we have a history of of using growth data to inform our accountability decisions. But what we’re doing now is moving to a step further to to not just let it inform accountability policy decision making at the state level, but really making the data actionable for our teachers in the classroom. 

00:00:45 Speaker 2 

And that’s really where it’s at. We know that’s that’s what helps improve and performance for our students is when we can actually take data and make it an A usable, actionable place for our teachers. 

00:00:59 Speaker 1 

Yeah. And John, I know you’ve been working in this field for a long time. It used to be, at least when it came to our readers and listeners over the years that sometimes data would be seen as a dirty word, a little bit of a boogeyman, especially when you would get down to the teacher level, many of whom consider themselves. 

00:01:19 Speaker 1 

Artists, not necessarily scientists when it comes to their kids and how to teach their kids. I think a lot of that has changed, but I think there’s still some remnants of it. Maybe you could talk a little bit about how you see. 

00:01:32 Speaker 1 

The these tools and I think would support when when Doctor mentioned that it is for the teachers, not necessarily for the the Superintendent or the principal, right. 

00:01:42 Speaker 3 

Yeah, that’s right. So what this tool really allows is for people to see longitudinal data over time at the student level, track the progress of students through all the way starting from 3rd grade all the way through whatever grade they may be sitting in in that year with what, what teacher that. 

00:02:02 Speaker 3 

Maybe teaching them at that time? 

00:02:05 Speaker 3 

So allowing a teacher to have access to how much growth a student made in previous years and in the most recent year can be really helpful in trying to understand what may be best for an individual student. Now the data not only is available at the student by student level, but also aggregated. 

00:02:24 Speaker 3 

At the group level, maybe for schools and for Elias, so schools and Elias can reflect on trends in growth data to see if they implemented different strategies in previous years. What may have worked best to help make the most growth possible with the different groups of students. 

00:02:42 

Yeah. 

00:02:43 Speaker 1 

So and I I mentioned the cut of the data is a dirty word and sometimes seen as a boogeyman and one of the big reasons for that over the years has been the the worry about student privacy, right. And data privacy and the use of that. Maybe you could talk about how this solution is able to kind of distinguish between you’re talking about getting that at the granular level with a particular. 

00:03:05 Speaker 1 

Student. I’ll assume that there is protections in there in terms of that data when it comes to not only test scores, but maybe ISP’s or behavioral sort of data. 

00:03:17 

Yes. 

00:03:17 Speaker 3 

That’s absolutely right. So what the system is, is there is a public site access, but that available that data is only available in the aggregate level at the school in LA kind of aggregated level. But you have to have login credentials for any individual access to get into the system and see individual student level. 

00:03:38 Speaker 3 

You can. 

00:03:39 Speaker 3 

Then you know it would be dependent upon the school in which a an educator is at, for what individual students that they are able to access and see data for. So we certainly follow all the security standards and requirements as well as legislation like FERPA to make sure that only the. 

00:03:59 Speaker 3 

Appropriate individual educators have access to the appropriate student level. 

00:04:05 Speaker 2 

Yeah. And I’ll just, I’ll just piggyback on that. I think that’s probably the very first thing we. 

00:04:09 Speaker 2 

Need to assure. 

00:04:10 Speaker 2 

Everyone of is that this is always protected data to the highest level that we can ensure that our our parents are counting on that. We certainly make sure that all those protocols are in place. 

00:04:22 Speaker 1 

Yeah. Can you paint me? 

00:04:24 Speaker 1 

A little bit of kind of a. 

00:04:25 Speaker 1 

Day in the life. 

00:04:26 Speaker 1 

When it comes to the use of this, especially when you’re talking about maybe a teacher, I mean just kind of walk through the day is this, is this still intended to be used on a daily basis or on something maybe at the end of the quarter when they’re compiling grades? Can you give me some real world examples of of how you intend it to be? 

00:04:46 Speaker 2 

Well, I’ll, I’ll speak from the day in the life of of us at a policy level and then try to bring it down to the, to the teacher level. So again these the the particular model that we are currently using is is still dependent upon that end of the year State assessment data that we get that. 

00:05:04 Speaker 2 

Has historically been important, but sometimes falling a little flat, and here’s what I. 

00:05:09 Speaker 2 

Mean by that, if we. 

00:05:10 Speaker 2 

Focus solely on the proficient score. Like if we just look at where a child scores on the proficient level, then that becomes the target for teachers or for parents or for the students even. And what we’ve learned over I think over since the implementation, particularly of NCLB. 

00:05:30 Speaker 2 

Over a decade ago is, if you focus just on proficiency, you can lose sight of kids on both ends of of that spectrum there. So those kids that are really scoring. 

00:05:40 Speaker 2 

Well, sometimes can be that they’re going to score proficient no matter what this is. This is a value added model that says for all kids, even those highest performing, how do we make sure that we are driving improvement at every level. So all those kids get get paid very close attention to and all teachers pay attention to every kid. 

00:06:01 Speaker 2 

Don’t get me wrong, they certainly do. But I’m talking about from the. 

00:06:04 Speaker 2 

State level when? 

00:06:05 Speaker 2 

We used to hear a term that. 

00:06:10 Speaker 2 

Sometimes teachers or school districts would refer to as our bubble kids, like kids who are just about to get over one level into proficiency, and what the growth model does, it says, hey, let’s pay attention to every single child on that roster and let’s see how far whether they’re well below proficiency. And we’re going to move them towards that or whether they’re. 

00:06:30 Speaker 2 

Well above proficiency, and we’re going to continue to make sure that we’re pushing those highest. 

00:06:36 Speaker 2 

Achievers, even higher. So for us at the state level, that’s how I like to look at that data and say we are paying attention to every single child. Now how does the teacher take that data then? There, I’m going to let John speak to that a little bit more too. But as a teacher, you want to know who am I most effective with in the classroom? I really moving performance. 

00:06:56 Speaker 2 

For all kids? Or am I able to step back and say, gosh, I wonder what was? 

00:07:00 Speaker 2 

Happening with with this group of students that I that I as a teacher, didn’t have as much value. Add to that learning opportunity for those kids because we want to be successful with with all students. And then you add a few more tools to that toolbox. But I I wouldn’t say that that the initial results are a day-to-day operational piece because. 

00:07:21 Speaker 2 

We are still we we depend on that state state assessment that we get annually to to talk about what’s happening gives us great power at the. 

00:07:33 Speaker 2 

State Board of Education level or others when we can say which schools really are serving various populations of students and still showing tremendous growth and that’s that. Then you can say what are they doing because we have a like population over here who we’d like to see those kinds of results to. Can we connect those two? 

00:07:53 Speaker 2 

Schools can we connect those two districts to say, what’s happening at all in the spirit of of improvement and serving our kids better? 

00:08:04 Speaker 3 

Yeah. So, so I’ll just add a. 

00:08:05 Speaker 3 

Couple of thoughts here. 

00:08:09 Speaker 3 

As an educator goes into the system at the individual student level, they would be able to see all of the prior student testing history of that student. So as the Commissioner said, each and every year with new state assessment data, that data would be up loaded into the system and so there would be new assessments. 

00:08:26 Speaker 3 

Available annually in that system, but to your earlier point point Kevin about security and access throughout the year, students may move from one building to another, and so the system has to be updated to make sure that as students move around the state and move into different buildings, that the permissions and security are updated so that. 

00:08:47 Speaker 3 

And educator can gain access to the student level data for students sitting in their classroom at that moment. So that’s something that. 

00:08:55 Speaker 3 

Because get updated throughout the year now within the system, as the Commissioner was saying, so an individual educator can see all of the testing history and math and reading and and all the various subjects on the state assessment system, they can look at how much growth is being made by that student in years past. 

00:09:15 Speaker 3 

They can also look forward. 

00:09:18 Speaker 3 

More proactively to get a likelihood of success on a future assessment, so they may be seeing a student in their classroom and we may be saying something like based on all the prior testing data of that individual student and the average experience that you may see, this student has a 70%. 

00:09:38 Speaker 3 

Chance of being proficient, let’s say, on. 

00:09:41 Speaker 3 

On their next grade level assessment, they haven’t taken. So as they are administering kind of interim assessments throughout the year to gauge where that student is, they can reflect back on that projection probability to see if that student seems to be on track throughout the year. 

00:09:58 Speaker 3 

Also, when you aggregate this data up a level, you can see the amount of growth that students were making. Let’s say that were in the lowest achievement group or the highest achievement group. You can disaggregate the student level data into different types of student groups such as. 

00:10:15 Speaker 3 

Your higher poverty student groups versus lower poverty or English learners versus non-english learners, just to see if. 

00:10:24 Speaker 3 

An individual group or a certain subject in grade you are making more growth with certain types of students. For example, one group of teachers within fifth grade math might be doing really well with their highest achieving students, but not as well with their lowest achieving students. Or maybe vice versa, so they can reflect on those practices and see. 

00:10:44 Speaker 3 

You know what can we do a little bit differently with our lowest achieving students to make sure that they’re able to make as much growth and progress as we’re making with some of the other students. And then there’s a lot of comparative features too, that allow a school to see the amount of growth that another school may be making. That’s of a similar. 

00:11:05 Speaker 3 

On a student group, so they may have similar groups of students within their building or a similar makeup of students within their building their achievement level so they can find another school and locate them to maybe again just share best practices or try to understand a little better of what they may be doing differently that’s having more or less success. 

00:11:25 Speaker 3 

With their students. 

00:11:27 Speaker 1 

Yeah, that seems that the idea of sharing best practices is something that is is really strong and when you have the numbers to back it up, it just it makes it that much more powerful. I know that there’s been other at the state level, you know, initiatives such as the, the, the four day school week that has has gone back and forth. Can you talk a little bit about how this sort of data? 

00:11:47 Speaker 1 

Was able to kind of reinforce some of those ideas. 

00:11:53 Speaker 2 

Well, I’m going to start off with just talking about what we were trying to garner from the study itself and then I’ll let John speak to how they were able to to do that for us. And so for us in the state of Missouri, again, we have had the option of a four day school week for quite some time now for probably just over a decade that legislation. 

00:12:13 Speaker 2 

Changed back in a time when it was, it was really to try to address fuel, fuel charges and you know, busting issues and that sort of thing it was. Can we save money? 

00:12:26 Speaker 2 

And well, that really didn’t come to great fruition. We found out that it wasn’t really a great cost saving metric for it. So a lot of districts did not go to the four day school week. What what we’re seeing now is that a number of our districts are finding it to be what they see as an effective teacher recruitment and retention. 

00:12:46 Speaker 2 

Strategy. So we had a large number of our districts sort of what what I call the domino effect you you have one district start here and then the neighboring districts start to to follow suit because they’re trying to pull from the same pool pool of teachers. 

00:13:02 Speaker 2 

And so the statute does give the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education the authority to really look at what is the academic impact of that four day school week. 

00:13:11 Speaker 2 

And should they? 

00:13:11 Speaker 2 

Keep that option in place, so that was. 

00:13:14 Speaker 2 

Our very, very. 

00:13:15 Speaker 2 

First question is to look at again, going back to the sort of value add concept, does it add value to go to a four day or does the five day? 

00:13:23 Speaker 2 

And how do? 

00:13:24 Speaker 2 

We measure that. So that’s when we called upon Sass to say, could we look at the growth data to help inform that academic? 

00:13:31 Speaker 2 

Side I’ll let John speak to that, but just as a data person, you’ll you’ll know and understand that that only became the the first layer of the onion peel. Once we started talking about academics, then people want to know, well, did it impact attendance? Does it really successfully recruit and doesn’t help retain your teachers? 

00:13:48 Speaker 2 

What are the? 

00:13:49 Speaker 2 

How do the families feel about it? What is the social implication? Who’s feeding the kids? 

00:13:53 Speaker 2 

And there’s a million questions that follow. So I like to be very specific that our request to Sass was to really help us to understand academic impact. And John, I’ll toss it to you now to talk about how that study was done. 

00:14:09 Speaker 3 

Yeah. So all of our work with the state of Missouri has been around using longitudinal student level data. 

00:14:15 Speaker 3 

And so we have a lot of information over time at the student level for all of the students in the state on these statewide assessments. And So what that allowed us to do with this particular research question is follow the achievement levels of school districts over time then to. 

00:14:35 Speaker 3 

Identify where that school district may have made a change to a four day. 

00:14:39 Speaker 3 

Full week and to see if using their own prior data as kind of a control. Did they have some type of significant impact when they moved to a four day school week on their achievement information and we were able to look at that for all the school districts given they moved at maybe a different point in time to that. 

00:14:59 Speaker 3 

Four day school week, not only did we look at just kind of generally how high achieving. 

00:15:05 Speaker 3 

Were they, and how much did that change when they moved to a? 

00:15:08 Speaker 3 

Four day school. 

00:15:08 Speaker 3 

Week. 

00:15:10 Speaker 3 

But we also looked at their growth data, so growth data being a little bit different. You know how much growth are they making with students given all of the prior achievement levels of their students? And did the amount of growth that those school districts did that? 

00:15:25 Speaker 3 

Amount changed from the point prior to after them moving to that four day school week, and the answer was there was there was really no significant up or down movement in both the achievement or growth data when school districts moved over to that four day school week. 

00:15:43 Speaker 3 

So we have we didn’t. 

00:15:45 Speaker 3 

Find anything in terms of a a significant change in those academic indicators. 

00:15:50 Speaker 3 

As the Commissioner was mentioning. 

00:15:52 Speaker 1 

Interesting. Well, so now that UM, this tool is launched and is in use, what’s next I. 

00:16:00 Speaker 1 

Mean what are are there? 

00:16:01 Speaker 1 

Hopes and goals that maybe some. 

00:16:05 Speaker 1 

Not some surprises, but some. Some new ideas on which you guys can use this data to further improve the student experience. 

00:16:16 Speaker 2 

Well for me. 

00:16:17 Speaker 2 

For me again at the state level, I’m just really happy to hear the feedback from the school districts who are understanding and using the tool for so long. 

00:16:25 Speaker 2 

They’ve been giving them a score and a score without information is a score, right? Like it doesn’t really. And we understand that and recognize that it doesn’t help inform the next steps. 

00:16:39 Speaker 2 

Or the school district or the teacher. We think this putting this tool in the hands of our school districts allows them again to to move beyond. Just looking at a report card and saying, OK, how do I, how do I transform some of the work that needs to take place here? And again that. 

00:16:59 Speaker 2 

Can’t always happen on one year. You want to look at multiple trend data. You want to look at what’s happening in your school, in your environment. 

00:17:05 Speaker 2 

And and what the data are telling you, but that’s that’s how I see it is is again that it was coming from the the school districts who were really asking us for assistance. How do I get better? How do I how do I move the needle here. And so how you do that is by making sure we’re reaching every single child in the best way that we can. 

00:17:26 Speaker 2 

Right. So to me, that’s exciting. I’m. I’m excited to see what we’ll be able to do. 

00:17:31 Speaker 2 

And and and garner from more information we I’ll just wrap up with this statement. You’ve heard it a million times. If you’re in the data world, but it is just true when you’re data rich and information poor, that’s a challenge, right? We have a ton of data. So what are we doing with it and how do we use that information? 

00:17:51 Speaker 2 

For the betterment of our kids. 

00:17:54 Speaker 1 

Yeah. And John, any last thoughts? 

00:17:56 Speaker 3 

Yeah, we’re. I’m just really excited. I’m we’re. We’re really proud to be working with the state of Missouri on making this information more accessible and being able to put it into the hands of educators. I think that, you know, when they can actually see this information, they can find it very they they will find it very intuitive. 

00:18:15 Speaker 3 

They will be able to. 

00:18:16 Speaker 3 

Look at the data at the individual student level. 

00:18:19 Speaker 3 

You will. 

00:18:20 Speaker 3 

Start to help them seek and why measuring growth is so useful and valuable. 

00:18:25 Speaker 3 

And just we’re really excited to just help promote the usage of this and see where it goes. 

00:18:30 Speaker 1 

Well, congratulations on your work and know it’s going to have a huge impact for the the students in the state of Missouri and hopefully sharing these insights will help inspire some of our readers and listeners to maybe put a little pressure on their own state governments to get their their data house in order. So thanks again for your time. I really appreciate it. 

00:18:49 Speaker 2 

Thank you. 

00:18:50 Speaker 3 

Thank you so much. 

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.

Since school buildings reopened after COVID closures, I’ve heard teachers say, again and again, that the older elementary children in their classrooms are just not the same.

I lead a small network of schools, and many of our current fourth graders remain dependent on adults’ opinions and find it hard to move from one problem to the next without reassurance. Our fifth graders can solve a basic math problem but often struggle to explain how to answer a word problem. Across fourth, fifth, and sixth grades, we’re seeing students have trouble with sharing, taking turns, and working with others — symptoms of the developmental milestones many children missed in recent years.

What exactly did they miss?

As an early childhood specialist who taught kindergarten through second grade for 12 years, I remember watching the progression of cognitive and social development throughout the early elementary school years.

At the beginning of kindergarten, my students would bunch together, crowding at the door, massing around me, all asking questions or wanting to show me the boo-boo on their finger. Sometimes, it seemed like they didn’t even notice that they weren’t the only child in the room. They had to learn how to exist in a large group.

Once they learned how to manage in a group, we began the work on interpersonal relationships, like how to share, respond to a question, and show empathy. Kindergarteners frequently respond to questions with unrelated statements of fact that are of interest to them. For example, if I were to ask the class, “What do you notice about the main character in this story?” they might say, “My uncle is getting a puppy this weekend” or “I had pancakes for breakfast.” All year, they progressed toward understanding that their perspective wasn’t the only view of the world.

My first graders did understand that there were other people and perspectives. This made them good at working with partners. They wanted to please the adults by following the rules at school, but their good intentions could fall by the wayside if they wanted something badly enough. Because they knew the rules but could not help but break them sometimes, first graders would sometimes lie. “No, I didn’t do it!” was a frequent refrain.

For first graders, the playground was a magical place full of fairies, knights, and superheroes, because all you needed was the right stick or flower or a little scarf tied around your neck to transform. These types of imaginary games are part of developing complex representational thought, which helps our minds visualize characters in novels, understand the symbols that stand in for equations in algebra, and think through a variety of outcomes so we can make strategic life decisions.

My second graders were terrified of making mistakes and froze up when what they were trying to draw didn’t keep up with their underdeveloped fine motor skills. They wanted a lot of reassurance. They wanted to be able to do the things the big kids did, but they weren’t quite sure how. They thrived on routine and working together to tackle complicated tasks, whether it was creating a class newspaper or garden, or running the school post office. Second grade was always my favorite because of that incredible industriousness.

Isolated at home during the pandemic, early elementary school students missed out on complex, make-believe play and had grown out of it by the time we all got back. I worry that this might be getting in the way of tasks that require symbolic reasoning. We see, for example, that our fifth graders can answer a factual question about something they’ve read but struggle to make reasonable inferences.

Many grades have had to go back a few years to teach students some of the more basic concepts. We have adopted a social-emotional curriculum that teaches children to recognize and name their feelings, how to calm themselves down, and how to explain to another person the impact of their actions on them.

There is so much to study about the impact of those two COVID years on learning that I have no doubt it will be the subject of Ph.D. dissertations for decades. But in the meantime, schools and educators are tasked with catching students up on what they missed. The New York Times recently published an article with a tool where you could type in your local school district and see how far behind it was in math and reading compared to the pre-pandemic years.

I believe in assessments. It is crucial to understand what your students know and still need to learn in order to teach them well. But it’s also important to remember that there is much more to child development than learning multiplication tables or the fundamentals of reading. Even as we gauge academic progress and gaps, we must acknowledge the other skills that so many of our students need to catch up on as well.

In our rush as adults to be over this pandemic, let’s not deprive our students of the time they need to explore who they are in relation to their peers. In turn, hard-working teachers and school leaders need grace as they try to figure out how to give every kid what they need and deserve at this unprecedented moment.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

Related:
The pandemic is over–but American schools still aren’t the same
“Ambitious growth” is needed to accelerate learning recovery
For more news on COVID-related recovery, visit eSN’s Educational Leadership hub

Key points:

• District communications platforms can have a transformative impact on school outreach
• 6 tips for communicating with emergent bilingual families
• Your top 5 school-home communication challenges, solved
• For more news on communications, visit eSN’s Educational Leadership hub

In an increasingly interconnected world, it’s more important than ever to have effective communication within your diverse school community. Communication plays a pivotal role in fostering a collaborative environment, ensuring the well-being of students and promoting a culture of continuous improvement. Communication impacts all of your stakeholders, and when parents are involved in their children’s schooling, academic achievement, school engagement, and motivation all improve, according to the American Psychological Association.  

Breaking language barriers

One of the most significant barriers to successful integration of newcomers into communities is language. Schools have a two-fold challenge: Newcomers struggle to understand and be understood, and schools grapple with the means to effectively communicate with them. This is where a communications platform like Bloomz can make a profound impact. By offering translation services in more than 133 languages, Bloomz dismantles these barriers, ensuring that important information reaches everyone in a language they select. This feature is particularly crucial in educational settings where parents’ engagement in their children’s schooling is pivotal. With Bloomz, parents who are not proficient in the local language can receive updates, participate in discussions, and contribute meaningfully to their children’s education.

There are 97 languages spoken in Round Rock Independent School District in Texas. “Before Bloomz, we would send out posts, calendars, and alerts, and put the information on our website for parents to change into a different language, but there weren’t many available other than Spanish,” says Bertha Benedict, director of Bilingual and ESL Programs. “ESSA requires me to do parent engagement, and to go above and beyond I have to communicate with parents. Bloomz lets me do that.”

Cultivating inclusivity and empathy

Communicating in your native language is deeply empowering. It’s not just about understanding words; it’s about connecting with those words on a cultural and emotional level. Bloomz acknowledges this by providing a platform where every individual feels seen, heard, and valued. This inclusivity goes a long way in fostering a sense of belonging among newcomers, making their transition into new communities smoother and more comfortable. Furthermore, when local community members witness the effort to accommodate different languages and cultures, it cultivates an atmosphere of empathy and respect. Such an environment encourages deeper and more meaningful interactions, paving the way for a cohesive and supportive community fabric.

Facilitating better parental involvement

While newcomers strive to adapt to their new surroundings, the host community also needs to extend support and understanding. Bloomz facilitates this mutual effort by ensuring that language does not become an impediment to participation. Whether it’s parent-teacher meetings, community events, or local announcements, the availability of multiple languages ensures that everyone can be an active participant. This not only boosts the confidence of newcomers but also enriches the community’s cultural tapestry. When people from diverse backgrounds share their perspectives and experiences, it leads to a more vibrant, dynamic, and innovative community.

Joseph Mattina is principal of P.S. 023 Carter G Woodson Elementary School in Brooklyn, NY, a Title I school with every student below the poverty line. “We struggle with parent engagement and involvement,” he says. “Lots of our students are in temporary housing, parents come from different backgrounds and have different capabilities around using technology, and they don’t go through backpacks and folders. We wanted it to be easy for us and for the parents to interact. With Bloomz, we can notify parents immediately or we can schedule messages to go out a week or two in advance. Parent involvement is more favorable now than it was five years ago and a lot of that has to do with Bloomz.”

Cathy Daniels, former principal at Waters Elementary School in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, agrees that Bloomz helped her teachers connect with all families. “Teachers can send beautiful pictures and video clips to parents about what’s happening and share the ‘inside the classroom’ experience. We’ve never had the opportunity to get pictures to parents as quickly as what Bloomz does.” 

In today’s globalized world, platforms like Bloomz play a critical role in keeping school and home connected. As we move forward, the lessons districts learn from communications platforms will shape the future of community engagement and integration, making our communities more connected, empathetic, and inclusive. 

Key points:

• Modernize existing spaces to support diverse learning needs for all students
• 4 ways we designed collaborative learning spaces
• How to create engaging active learning environments
• For more news on learning spaces, see eSN’s Educational Leadership hub

We always knew that it would be great to have a dedicated space for students who needed pull-out testing, different accommodations, and/or more individualized instruction. We also knew that by creating a modern, multipurpose space from an existing facility we’d be able to meet those needs while also using the space for staff meetings, academic clubs, Bible study, and other uses.

Using funding from our Parish Picnic and donations, we picked the perfect place for our new multipurpose room: a common space that was central to the gathering area near the entrance to our church.

The facility was previously used as a meeting space for adult faith formation and is part of the school’s building. The space itself didn’t need much renovation other than the removal of an aging mini kitchen and countertop.

Here are five steps we took to get that space modernized and ready to use:

1. Brainstorm your wants and needs. We needed a space where we could have multiple grade levels in a space at once, with up to 15 children in one space and 15 in another at any given time. We needed a large enough space for that, and we wanted it to be something that was inviting, welcoming, and modern.

2. Fill it with modular furniture options. We wanted to make sure all of the furniture was able to be moved and reconfigured in different ways. That was important because after school we have larger meetings that have to be held there, so we need greater flexibility to be able to move the tables and chairs around.

3. Get creative with tables, chairs, and fixtures. We wanted students to be able to stand or sit at different heights. We have two study carousels, which are one-person units where a student can sit and have a quiet space. Also, we wanted everything to be able to be wiped down so that it could be cleaned easily because we knew that there would be a lot of students in there utilizing the space.

4. Work with a flexible partner that provides a variety of options. MiEN and its designers worked with us both in person and remotely. They would present their initial renderings; we would suggest revisions because we weren’t sure at the beginning what we wanted. After we’d throw out ideas, they’d go back to the drawing board and provide a new rendering. Having that kind of collaborative partnership and flexibility was very nice.

5. Check out similar spaces. We looked at spaces in two other schools and took pictures of a similar space at the high school level. We looked at how the space was being used, but we still couldn’t quite visualize how that would transfer here. It was very helpful to see how other schools used their space to help us finalize our plans and move to installation.

Our new space was available for use for the 2023-24 school year, and we’ve received a lot of positive feedback on it so far. The kids love going in there and using it. Our principal takes families on tours that are interested in coming to our school and they have been astounded by the new space. Most of the Catholic schools don’t have a space like that, so that’s also been a wonderful selling point.

Key points:

• Educators can implement strategies to validate students’ unique backgrounds
• 3 strategies to support inclusive learning
• Advancing educational equity with UDL and generative AI
• For more news on diversity, visit eSN’s Educational Leadership hub

The tapestry of America’s history is arguably woven with threads of multiculturalism, reflecting a nation that has embraced diversity since its inception. In many ways, the history of multicultural education runs parallel with the history of the United States, because we have been an ostensibly multicultural nation from the very beginning.

Within the educational landscape, the concept of Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT) has emerged as a multifaceted approach that aims to promote equitable excellence and validate the diverse experiences of students. CRT refers to a student-centered approach that seeks to validate and affirm students’ diverse experiences and contributions. By creating bridges between students’ knowledge and classroom content, educators who employ CRT practices aim to affirm identities and values. Furthermore, educators who employ CRT extend learning beyond the classroom, thereby fostering community engagement and service learning to enhance students’ critical consciousness regarding social justice and racial inequalities.

The educational landscape calls for teachers to be well-versed in the role of culture in learning to address the needs of students from diverse backgrounds. CRT helps bridge the gap between teachers and students, thereby leveraging cultural backgrounds as assets in the learning process. Effective teaching is deemed as inherently and inevitably culturally responsive. Proper teacher preparation becomes crucial to address the cultural gap, as well as to ensure that teachers are adequately equipped to respond to students’ varied learning styles and needs. Culturally responsive instructional practices play a pivotal role in creating equitable classroom climates. Teachers must employ cultural scaffolding to help diverse students use their backgrounds to enhance academic achievement, including collaborative learning opportunities that empower students to participate actively in decision-making processes. Culturally responsive caring involves setting high expectations for students while recognizing and addressing their unique needs.

Despite its advantages, CRT faces challenges. Negative perceptions from parents (irrespective of their cultural background) may arise if they feel the content taught does not align with their cultural values. Teacher preparation also plays a crucial role, as some educators may struggle with implementing CRT consistently. A lack of awareness amongst teachers about their own biases and privileges can hinder effective implementation. Superficial attempts at diversity, such as using ‘ethnic’ songs and dances, may lead to trivial celebrations as opposed to the intended meaningful improvements in student achievement. Additionally, deficit thinking by teachers may contribute to misconceptions about students (i.e., conflating race with socioeconomic status). Teachers themselves need increased exposure to diverse cultures to overcome these biases and deliver truly culturally responsive education.

Educational pluralism is prevalent in many democratic school systems. It involves government funding and regulation of schools without direct operational control. Accountability is maintained through national curricula and standardized exams, emphasizing the belief that education benefits both individuals and society. While the United States boasts a diverse ecosystem of schooling options, it lacks a truly pluralistic system due to preferences for local control, along with resistance to a government-prescribed curriculum. Pluralistic systems in the United States face constitutional challenges, particularly regarding funding for religious schools. The Blaine Amendments of the 19th century prohibit direct or indirect funding for parochial schools, thus presenting fiscal and operational concerns for pluralistic education. Federal education laws, such as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and Titles I and III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), include provisions for non-public schools within the pluralistic framework.

Assimilation in education entails shaping students into fully functioning citizens by infusing common cultural traits into curricula. This approach encourages students to adopt mainstream cultural values, leaving behind their own cultural identities in favor of national unity. There are drawbacks even though assimilationism aims to create a unified society. Advocates of assimilation argue that schools play a crucial role in nation-building by instilling established values in children. However, assimilationist education may inadvertently disadvantage students with different learning styles, perpetuating perceptions of mainstream superiority. The historical roots of assimilationism in education can be traced back to the 19th century, with policies like the Civilization Fund Act, which sought to assimilate Native American children through off-reservation boarding schools.

As the United States continues to navigate its diverse cultural landscape, educators grapple with the challenges and opportunities presented by CRT, pluralism, and assimilationism. Acknowledging the strengths and weaknesses of each approach is essential for crafting an inclusive and effective educational system. In essence, educators can contribute to a more equitable and enriching educational experience for all by fostering a deep understanding of cultural diversity and implementing strategies that validate students’ unique backgrounds.

Key points:

• COVID learning loss is still real–here’s how districts are leveraging tutoring strategies
• Transforming summer school with high-dosage tutoring
• 5 ways virtual tutoring reinforces our after-school program
• For more news on tutoring, see eSN’s Educational Leadership page

The benefits of high-dosage tutoring can’t be ignored. Research shows that tutoring is one of the most effective ways to increase academic achievement, including among students from lower socio-economic households–one of the groups disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

High-dosage tutoring is a crucial strategy for student advancement regardless of a student’s abilities or where they may struggle academically.

In fact, high-dosage tutoring is a main component of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Improving Student Achievement Agenda for 2024, which focuses on accelerating academic performance for every child in school. The initiative will adopt three evidence-based strategies that improve student learning: increasing student attendance; providing high-dosage tutoring; and increasing summer learning and extended or after-school learning time.

Here are 5 things to know about high-dosage tutoring:

1. Since the pandemic, students have struggled markedly in math, particularly algebra. According to NAEP Mathematics Assessment data, eighth-graders’ algebra scores were eight points lower in 2022 than in 2019. According to the Nation’s Report Card, the average eighth-grade mathematics score was lower than all previous assessment years—going back to 2003. As a gateway content area, algebra prepares students to tackle advanced study in calculus, physics, and other subjects—yet it often is a sticking point for many middle and high school students. Without a solid understanding of algebra, many students find that they get stuck in their math studies. Here are 5 ways to help students struggling with algebra learning.

2. Policymakers must take action to support states and districts in implementing high-dosage tutoring to ensure opportunities for student success. The pandemic left students, on average, five months behind in math and four months behind in reading by the end of the 2021-22 school year, with even more significant losses for students in majority-Black or low-income schools. This gap shows an increased inequality in educational outcomes across racial and socioeconomic lines. Thankfully, extensive research points toward one incredibly effective option in recovering learning loss: high-dosage tutoring. Learn more about how to implement high-dosage tutoring programs in schools and districts.

3. To truly help students build deep understanding, intervention requires the right time, place, people, and curriculum. As educators continue to work to accelerate learning for students following the pandemic, many are turning to tutoring to provide support. Tutoring is one of the most effective math interventions available for students, but the quality of tutoring varies widely. Here are 6 key steps to ensure tutoring, including high-dosage tutoring, is as effective as possible for students.

4. When this North Dakota school district analyzed student achievement data from multiple measures and through the lens of student groups, district administrators saw an immediate need to provide additional reading intervention to help students recover from the effects of the pandemic. Yet, due to staffing shortages, leaders knew they could not provide the level of personalized support each student needed. Thanks to a data-driven approach to tutoring, the district has been able to help students increase their growth and confidence in reading. Here are five strategies the district implemented to create an effective high-impact tutoring program.

5. In a review of research on high-dosage tutoring as an intervention strategy, from K-12 assessment and research organization NWEA, authors looked at the evidence on high-dosage tutoring and highlighted the benefits of using this strategy, especially in supporting at-risk students. The report also noted several “non-negotiable” factors that lead to high-dosage tutoring being used effectively to accelerate academic growth. Key takeaways from the report include: At-risk students continue to need support, especially now as the share of at-risk students has increased post pandemic; high-dosage tutoring programs can produce large gains in reading and math test scores for at-risk students (if implemented appropriately); high-dosage tutoring is effective for building foundational skills in elementary grades, and can aid struggling middle and high school students; and as part of implementation planning, districts must address barriers that hinder student access to HDT by ensuring an equitable selection criteria and offering holistic supports for student learning. Read the full report here.

Key points:

• The right data can drive improvements in student learning
• Here’s why anecdotes are as important as data in edtech decisions
• With better data, these 12 things would improve, supes say
• For more news on district leadership, visit eSN’s Educational Leadership page

As data analytics comes of age for the K-12 sector, educators are increasingly turning to data insights to help identify students’ learning abilities and areas of opportunity, enhancing operational efficiencies, and helping teachers’ professional development. Naturally, administrators are often enticed to engage powerful, enterprise-grade solutions like PowerBI or Tableau. After all, if it’s good enough for a Fortune 500 company, it’s good enough for a school district, right? 

Not so fast.

While there’s no arguing that enterprise-grade data analytics solutions are powerful, administrators need to consider how the approach taken to harness their data’s potential can significantly impact outcomes in the long-term. For example, enterprise-grade solutions often come with expensive seat licenses and overbuilt software that make it costly and complex when it comes to extracting insights from data.

Instead, school district administrators should consider real-time data analytics platforms specifically designed and customized for K-12 education. These platforms are typically customized for student data and provide real-time information that can make a real difference in a student’s education. 

Here’s what school administrators need to know about making an informed decision when it comes to implementing a data solution.

Legacy enterprise platforms: A mismatch for K-12

Besides being expensive and overbuilt for education, there are a few reasons why legacy data platforms are ill-suited for K-12. Cost and scalability are two major factors. Enterprise platforms are expensive, and scaling beyond 20 users will exponentially increase costs that are not feasible for even large school districts. In effect, it would limit data access to only a few administrative employees. 

School administrators considering legacy data platforms might also be underestimating the technical expertise needed to operate these systems. Typically, legacy platforms require skilled data scientists to manage complex data warehousing, integration, and to extract actionable insights from the data. Few districts possess the in-house expertise–or have the budget to hire a team of data scientists–to make the data work. 

Finally, consider the limited focus of legacy data platforms. Data analysis delivered by legacy systems is often limited to assessment and accountability, such as grades, test scores, and attendance. They are not built for providing holistic student performance evaluation, and they certainly do not have the ability to provide “whole child” data, such as emotional health and behavior.

The power of real-time data analytics

On the other hand, real-time data analytics platforms built for K-12 school districts are everything that their legacy counterparts are not. Affordability and scalability are the biggest advantages. Instead of needing an expensive team of data scientists to customize a platform, education data as a service (DaaS) will usually outsource data management to experts who enable scalability at a reasonable cost. Built-for-education DaaS platforms can also accommodate all users in a district—administrators, teachers, counselors, students, families, and even members of the community who work with students.

DaaS systems can automate data movement and make data accessible to the people who need it without expensive licenses. This enhances education decision-making by ensuring the right people at the right time have access to the latest data.

Real-time data analytics also delivers valuable holistic insights that can help educators make the right decisions for students. By centralizing data on academics, behavior, attendance, and teachers, stakeholders gain valuable insights that promote a better understanding of the “whole child.” 

So instead of a counselor submitting an IT help ticket to download data that is already months behind, the DaaS system will provide real-time data that can enable the counselor to provide better student guidance. Or teachers can look at a student’s historical MAP score data to see which areas that student might need help with so they can provide tutoring or other support.

Successful integration strategies

A successful implementation is an ongoing process because school districts consistently gather data from multiple sources. Whether it’s at the behest of their board, teachers, educators, or families, there will inevitably be additional data needs or requests to fine-tune the district’s approach. That’s why administrators should maintain an open mindset and follow a long-term strategic approach that includes:

• Data ownership: Take ownership of the district’s data—after all, it’s the school’s data, not a vendor’s. The right vendor will collaborate with districts to centralize data for better analysis and action. 
• Gain leadership buy-in: Superintendent and board support ensures successful district-wide adoption. Engage decision-makers early-on to secure resources and begin driving cultural change. On the operational side, engage teachers to act as early-adopters and evangelists for the data solution—they are on the frontlines and know what approaches will serve students best.
• Acknowledge data challenges: Start with knowing your pain points—recognize where you currently have limitations and gaps in data utilization and work toward finding a solution that can solve those challenges. This is not the time to compromise, so keep interviewing partners until you find the one who can meet your needs.

Harnessing the power of data

DaaS platforms present a revolutionary approach to incorporating seamless collaboration and data sharing in school districts that can drive student learning like never before. By arming administrators, teachers, counselors, students, families, and even members of the community with the same data, DaaS solutions can reshape the landscape of K-12 education by providing actionable insights into the whole child. To harness this potential, administrators need to work with partners who understand K-12 education and understand the importance of purpose-built, real-time data analytics. With this approach, educators can get the most out of their data and help students get the most out of their education.

Key points:

• Simple design changes can transform student experiences
• 4 ways we designed collaborative learning spaces
• Sensory spaces may help support all students
• For more news on equity and access, visit eSN’s Educational Leadership page

For generations, school facilities have been designed for the average student, leaving neurodiverse individuals to struggle in environments that don’t meet their needs. Recently, however, the growing awareness of neurodiversity has started to shift the school design narrative for students with unique learning styles.

Every student deserves to feel like school is a place designed with them in mind – a space where they belong and can thrive. The sense of belonging is key to promoting success and equity among all students, which has a profound ripple effect on their futures. Using the built environment to promote equity in the classroom starts with understanding each student’s sensory needs and learning styles, whether in the classroom or on the playground.

Indoor design

Many neurodivergent students have sensory needs and sensitivities that can be accommodated through intentional school design choices. Standard school designs that have been around for 40 or more years can leave them feeling stressed and anxious. These feelings can hinder their ability to learn or lead them to act out, damaging their academic performance and overall school experience. However, research and experience have shown that simple school design changes to hallways, shared spaces, and classrooms can transform a student’s time at school.

Incorporating tactile details can help students fill their sensory stimulation needs. Small additions, such as textured walls, allow students to engage with the building itself as they walk from class to class. These tactile additions can calm agitated students, providing them with a healthy outlet for their sensory needs. Placing these textured surfaces on walls or other non-centralized areas empowers students by allowing them to engage with the materials when they need to, which can be especially helpful for overwhelmed students who may already be struggling with sensory overload.

Designing dedicated sensory spaces throughout campus gives both neurodiverse and neurotypical students an area to gather themselves before tackling the next assignment or transitioning to a new class. While changing the lighting and incorporating sensory walls or water features makes these spaces particularly soothing for neurodiverse students, sensory environments are calming for anyone who needs a break from the bustle of school, whether they’re students or even teachers and administrators.

Even the furniture is adapting to each student’s unique learning style. Research consistently shows a link between comfort and productivity, but traditional school desks are hardly a comfortable learning environment. Many students don’t sit at a table to do their schoolwork at home–they’re lounging in bed or on a sofa. Substituting some traditional furniture for standing desks or bean bags allows students who focus better while moving, standing or slouching to thrive in a comfortable learning environment tailored to their needs.

Outdoor design

Crafting outdoor spaces that ensure every student has access to nature is essential to providing an equitable education. Time spent outside is grounding and stabilizing for students, so crafting spaces that are accessible to all is integral to the holistic development of each student.

Playgrounds offer an abundance of opportunities to creatively design for all students. Incorporating elements such as a musical environment, edible gardens, or sensory paths encourages children with autism or other neurodiversity to engage with the space. Establishing inclusive school environments hinges on providing play areas where neurodiverse students can feel understood and enjoy themselves. The positive impact extends beyond neurodiverse individuals, benefiting every student who engages with these spaces.

A variety of outdoor environments allows all students to learn and grow through exposure to nature, which promotes their physical and mental well-being. Without thoughtfully designed outdoor spaces to accommodate all learning styles, neurodiverse students may feel unable to enjoy their time outside, whether that be because they can’t physically access different play spaces or because those spaces don’t meet their needs. Designing spaces with every child in mind allows all students to benefit from the many advantages of time outdoors, which then translates to better focus and behavior inside the classroom.

No child should ever be left out, especially at school. These research-backed designs can equip every student for success by helping them feel seen, included and understood. However, the advantages of these changes go beyond just neurodiverse students. By incorporating inclusion into the physical structure of the school and exemplifying it in classroom furniture, schools can educate neurotypical students about diversity through tangible examples and practical applications. Today, schools have a powerful opportunity to model and shape their classroom toward a more equitable future.

Key points:

• Organizations must cultivate talent who can lead, communicate, and collaborate
• 5 top education innovation trends in 2023
• For school leaders, routine decisions aren’t so routine
• For more news on edtech leadership, visit eSN’s Educational Leadership page

The latest national survey conducted by the Edtech Leadership Collective has identified a stark misalignment in expectations when it comes to emerging leaders’ readiness to reach the executive suite. For a second year in a row, very few C-level executives (9 percent) expressed confidence in their ability to hire from within for executive team vacancies. In contrast, one out of two (58 percent) of Department Heads fell they are ready for the executive suite.

The gap in confidence regarding management depth comes at a time when 78 percent of C-suite leaders consider the work of their non-executive leaders to be critical to their company’s success. However, C-suite leaders also acknowledge they have fallen short on providing mentoring, constructive feedback, and clearly defined paths to advancement.

Conducted in December 2023, the survey reflects the perspectives of 157 edtech leaders regarding talent gaps, business risks and employee pain points associated with leadership development in the U.S. K-12 edtech industry. The Edtech Leadership Collective has published the survey findings in a report titled, “The State of Edtech Talent Development: Executives’ Insights Regarding the Challenges of Business Growth.” 

“We know that leadership depth continues to be a gating factor to company growth, and our survey respondents clearly indicated their concerns regarding the potential their teams’ potential struggles,” stated Collin Earnst, founder and managing partner of the Edtech Leadership Collective. “Recent economic shifts and evolving work environments have introduced new levels of complexity for K-12 edtech executives, which is why organizations must continue to cultivate talent who can lead, communicate, and collaborate.”

As edtech companies strive to maintain aggressive growth targets, more than half (54 percent) of respondents indicate that their company has conducted layoffs in the past year. Meanwhile, leaders from every level reported high levels of stress and anxiety, with nearly half (48 percent) who considered themselves to be at a high-risk of burnout.

The full report from the Edtech Leadership Collective includes additional data regarding:

• Waning executive confidence in leadership depth and succession plans
• Leadership skill gaps causing the greatest obstacles to company growth
• Strategies for accelerating leadership development and addressing vulnerabilities
• Concerning levels of burnout, stress and anxiety among ed-tech leaders
• Continued shortfall in support for members of historically marginalized populations
• Impact of remote work environments on leadership dynamics
• Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to address resource gaps
• Fallout from recent layoffs and reorganizations

“Our 2024 report identified some fairly alarming statistics regarding elevated risk of company underperformance and employee burnout, however the data also clarified practical the steps that will allow companies to strengthen leadership capacity throughout their organization,” continued Earnst. “Leadership depth has become a competitive advantage and the data show that K-12 ed-tech companies are ready to invest in their emerging leaders.”

This press release originally appeared online.

Key points:

• To lead effectively, school leaders must create safe spaces for collaboration
• 3 innovative ways to help teachers feel engaged and valued
• I’m a first-year teacher. How can I find success in the classroom?
• For more news on school success, visit eSN’s Educational Leadership page

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) calculated global economic output loss will total $28 trillion dollars between 2020 and 2025 as the result of the COVID-19 virus that impacted businesses and education. Our schools are still pivoting to serve students and families who are figuring out life in the space of no longer and not yet.

The pandemic has changed us all.

Nonetheless, success in education is about developing people—on every level.

Even though we do not know exactly what the future holds, we can recognize that leaders who make a difference see opportunity in challenges.  We can lean into applying this paradigm to our educational systems.

This begs the questions: How do educational leaders keep improving our schools to recognize unique opportunities and needs at the forefront?  What situations can bring adaptive capacity to education?

Upon reflections, with a 20-year career as an educator and scholar, I’m asserting a simple response: collaboration and mentorship.  This requires a cognizance, commitment, and humility from all of us.

Setting the stage for innovation

Schools shape everyone and the memories endure a lifetime.  

We recognize how strong school leadership means we are exploring and adapting with others for a better future—and that includes valuing the collective diversity of ideas to set the stage for innovation in educative spaces.

After all, to lead effectively, we must create and honor safe spaces for collaboration.  Because when it comes to spaces with uncertainty and high challenges, people are often reluctant to express thoughts or potential actions.  We must suspend judgments to learn more from the people around us. 

Ultimately, the more often that educational leaders anticipate and promote change and input, the more effective will become the results—which brings out the best in our teachers’ abilities and talents.   

Avoiding fool’s gold

With practices that make a difference, teachers (and students) want to “listen, learn, lead” from authentic leaders who care about lifting others up and excelling in uncertain spaces.  Although 83 percent of organizations assert that developing future leaders and mentoring are crucial aspects, research shows only 5 percent of organizations have leadership development programs at all levels (Kizer, 2023).  The work of leaders is not to keep resources or power for themselves—but to share it and give it away.

Now, more than ever, educational leaders must highlight and affirm teachers’ talents and skills to deliver more than what they thought was possible.  The classroom is a space where teachers know that “one-size-fits-none” and where they need support from leaders and community to adapt curriculum. 

A scholar from the thirteenth century, Rumi, expressed that “Fool’s gold exists because there is real gold.”  This sentiment could address leadership in education.  We must differentiate between effective leadership and ineffective leadership.  Authentic leaders demonstrate self-awareness and competence in that all members are included to act with purpose and empowerment. 

Mentoring is one important strategy to let people connect and reflect, and it works as a two-way street for colleagues to support each other.  Genuine acts of caring and collaboration, such as a handwritten note of encouragement or visiting colleagues, are other ways to uplift a person’s spirits.  In other words, leaders recognize unique opportunities to connect and draw people forward.

 And leaders know that meaningful change takes more than one person to reach the next level. 

Humility wins, paradoxically

To illuminate on collaboration a bit further, I’d like to share one more important piece of fascinating information.  

In education, as in life, we must take the time to find strengths in each person.  Why? Because there is nothing more rewarding than helping others discover their unique strengths.  CliftonStrengths Assessment is one resource to find out what you (or another person) have as greatest strengths that sets you apart from everyone else.   It is important to leverage each other’s strengths, so the sum is greater than the parts! 

In this space of no longer and not yet, honest discussions are necessary to explore the space of where others are along the journey.  Career paths differ, and there are different seasons in our careers.  Most notably, in a study where mentors underestimated their abilities, these humble mentors were given the absolute highest ratings by the mentees (Johnson, 2016, p. 68).  Lesson learned: The best leaders were the ones who had self-awareness and humility.  These guides offered the highest-quality relationships and the most effective facilitation of a person’s development.

Finding hope and purpose within ourselves

Harvard Business School states, “Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.” Collective vision holds the dream of flourishing individuals and communities, as we need both for society to function well.

In particular, leadership success includes mobilizing colleagues to believe in and achieve their goals. When it comes down to it, every person has a role in contributing to playing big in uncertain times.

We must start seeing our educators as our community leaders, which they already are in many ways.  Remember the words of John Maxwell (2008) that we should “Never work alone.  I know that sounds too simple, but it is truly the secret to developing others. Whenever you do anything that you want to pass along to others, take someone with you” (p.16). Agreed, engaging others is how to pass down important information and practices.  Strong relationships and common experiences create winning teams.  Moreover, committed teams go places that no one has been before. 

To conclude, educators should have more collaborative supports and leadership opportunities since they are the experts on what is working (or not) in this fast-paced world.  Success will come.  When we cross a worthy finish line, the anguish vanishes.  Deep inner satisfaction replaces the time of hardships, because we have made the world a better place.  Educators know a simple truth: When we lead others, we facilitate that others can find hope and purpose within themselves.

Because without hope, we would not find the courage that is needed when we are grappling in the space of no longer and not yet.

Key points:

• A federal outline for education technology intends to close access gaps
• How to work for equity of access in classrooms
• How schools can help students overcome the digital divide
• For more news on digital access, visit eSN’s Educational Leadership page

The latest iteration of the U.S. Department of Education’s National Educational Technology Plan (NETP) takes aim at several obstacles limiting edtech’s ability to transform teaching and learning.

While past NETPs have largely served as surveys of the state of the field, the 2024 NETP frames three key divides limiting the transformational potential of educational technology to support teaching and learning, including: 

• The Digital Use Divide, addressing opportunities to improve how students use technology to enhance their learning, including dynamic applications of technology to explore, create, and engage in critical analysis of academic content and knowledge.
• The Digital Design Divide, addressing opportunities for educators to expand their professional learning and build the capacities necessary to design learning experiences enabled by technology. 
• The Digital Access Divide, addressing opportunities for students and educators to gain equitable access to educational technology, including connectivity, devices, and digital content. This also includes accessibility and digital health, safety, and citizenship as key elements of digital access. 

The 2024 NETP maps each of the three divides to the “instructional core” (i.e., students, teachers, content) and focuses on how schools, districts, and states can use educational technology to help design learning experiences that improve student access to educational opportunities and their outcomes. The NETP provides action-oriented recommendations for states, districts, and school leaders alongside examples from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and several Territories for addressing disparities in educational technology and closing the three divides.   

“From the American Rescue Plan to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and more, the Biden-Harris Administration has made bold investments aimed at closing the digital divide and ensuring all students can equitably access the latest digital tools and technology,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.

“As we work to Raise the Bar in education, it’s essential we focus on empowering teachers to become designers of active learning, using technology in effective ways to engage and inspire students. The 2024 National Educational Technology Plan is a forward-thinking approach to reframing and realizing the potential of educational technology to enhance the instructional core, reduce achievement gaps, and improve student learning in our schools.”

“The launch of the 2024 NETP comes at a pivotal moment for educational technology and learning,” said Sarah Edson, director of projects and initiatives at SETDA. “We are proud to stand at the forefront of this exciting journey, advocating for effective integration of technology in education systems nationwide.”

To complement the 2024 NETP, the Department also released guidance that aims to increase understanding of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act’s requirements regarding assistive technology (AT) devices and services for children with disabilities. The Department will also release a collection of federal resources to support students’ digital health, safety, and citizenship. 

This press release originally appeared online.

Key points:

• Educators need reliable, easy-to-use edtech tools for maximum impact
• Edtech tools to beat our state of emergency in reading and math achievement
• How to find the right edtech tools for public schools
• For more news on edtech ROI, visit eSN’s Educational Leadership page

Working with curriculum and system leaders and educators across the state of New Hampshire, I frequently hear some common refrains about education technology tools for the classroom.

I know ___ is a great resource, but I don’t think teachers are even aware of it.

Teachers aren’t able to take on “another thing” so anything we share with them has to solve problems they already have.

We want to use ___ but the tech staff have other priorities.

Somehow, after the pandemic and returning to “normal,” teachers are more reliant on worksheets or things they find online (often unvetted) and can easily duplicate. They need tools that are easy to use, support active learning, and can accommodate the needs of diverse learners. There are almost too many options! Or too many different tools for different tasks. And, unless yours is a very fortunate system, technology staff hasn’t increased at a rate commensurate with the reliance on, and the complexity of, technology that supports school operation and education of students.

Maybe some of these challenges sound familiar, whether you’re a district, a school, a curriculum leader or an instructional coach, a digital learning specialist, or a librarian. Across New Hampshire, school leaders are searching for strategies to ensure that their edtech investments are being leveraged to pay dividends on student engagement, acceleration of learning, and saving teachers’ time.

To explore how to increase the return on investment (ROI) of education technology, let’s take an inquiry approach. Consider your district, schools, departments, and educators, and ask the following four questions at a team meeting to ensure you’re all on the same page and experiencing these challenges and solutions with common understanding.

Who are your district’s building-based edtech coordinators?

Do your district’s schools have a central point person who serves, and is widely recognized, as a central point person for edtech tools? Databases, lists, websites, newsletters, and the like are all excellent ways to share information about digital tools and drive usage. Establishing and highlighting the person in this role can be a great help in getting educators to the right person for targeted support, getting the word out, coordinating training, and so much more. Library media and digital learning specialists or technology coordinators are excellent candidates for this, especially when they periodically meet with their role-alikes across the system. Edtech information is then not limited to one school but shared throughout the system. The educators in these coordinator roles will be more effective if they are members of school leadership teams and have the flexibility needed to integrate into the classroom to support educators and students while actively engaged in learning.

How might you increase usage without “adding another thing”?

This is a challenging one, because no matter what edtech you’ve acquired, there will be some necessary investment of time for that tool to go from new to indispensable. Educators frequently seek administrator guidance for what they expect to see in the classroom or in use by students. Designated edtech coordinators can take the lead, working with principals and curriculum leaders to set goals, leading professional learning, and fostering digital tool adoption. Success will come by ensuring teachers understand what different tools can do, highlighting best practices, sharing fun and relevant examples, and providing time for educators to play with and learn new tools. Coordinators can also help streamline the numbers of tools needed, such as finding tools that bring tech functionality and content together. Coordinators can make it fun by creating challenges that leverage engaging digital content and interactive learning activities that teachers can share, copy, and edit. This solves one problem teachers already have: lack of time. This is an excellent way to foster use that is rewarding and meaningful, ensuring usage is based on value rather than mandates that satisfy compliance metrics.

In New Hampshire, all preK-12 schools have access to high-quality digital content through the New Hampshire Education Department. This content includes instructional activities that educators can use as-is or edit to meet the needs of their students. These resources can be shared and tweaked to support all learners and tailored to meet specific learning goals. This type of sharing and collaboration reduces stress and saves educators’ time. Now that’s incentive! This process can also alleviate confusion about what tools educators should select.

How do you keep the instructional edtech and IT infrastructure team on the same page?

Depending on how IT infrastructure and instructional edtech support teams are structured, they may not understand each other’s work or have may have competing interests. Your district’s IT infrastructure team must know what education purchasers are acquiring (or requesting), the function and users of the tool, any specific tech requirements, and how they will integrate into your digital ecosystem.

Interoperability is increasingly important as a means of making deployments efficient, supporting ease of use, and protecting student data privacy. Partnership and collaboration between technical and education stakeholders along, with tools that support integration such as single sign on and learning management systems, can help ensure that all parties are on the same page, part of effective implementations, and educators have a single point of entry for finding the edtech their school wants them to use. This collaboration also ensures technology support teams will understand the importance of edtech tools and keeping them accessible and functioning. This cross-collaboration ensures school-based tech coordinators can help fill communication gaps, expedite support, and provide educators and students with best practices for all edtech systems.  

Is professional learning a part of your edtech implementations?

It is increasingly true that teacher professional learning time is at a premium, and there are so many initiatives beyond implementing effective edtech for which districts are responsible. However, just as in any new learning initiative, professional learning on edtech is key.

As leaders with a whole-school focus, dedicated edtech coordinators are poised to assess and address professional learning gaps and opportunities.  Library media or digital learning specialists are uniquely capable of helping build professional learning plans, plan professional learning days, and play a leading role in building internal capacity among educators to help them help their peers. Training on digital tools does not need to happen in a vacuum. New learning in literacy instruction can be delivered through learning management systems. Resources for competency learning can be built and shared with digital tools, so both the competency process and edtech training are happening at once. Create purposeful opportunities for collaborative planning, leveraging learning tools that support sharing between teachers.

By identifying your edtech coordinators as communication and professional learning leaders in their schools, district leaders can take a big step forward in the effort to wring maximum return on investment for edtech spend.

This article was originally published by the Center for American Progress.

Key points:

• States and districts should prioritize and implement high-dosage tutoring
• Transforming summer school with high-dosage tutoring
• 5 ways virtual tutoring reinforces our after-school program
• For more news on tutoring, see eSN’s Educational Leadership page

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, students have faced unprecedented levels of learning loss because of school closures and interrupted learning. In fact, recent national testing shows a decline in math scores in 43 states¹ and reading scores in 30 states,² while no states saw an improvement in scores for either subject. Nationwide, 64 percent of fourth graders are below proficient in math³ and 66 percent are below proficient in reading.⁴ The scores remain grim for older students, with 73 percent of eighth graders below proficient in math⁵ and 69 percent below proficient in reading.⁶ Public school leaders estimate that 49 percent of students began the 2022-23 school year behind grade level in at least one subject.⁷ As students across the country continue to struggle academically and as educators work to catch students up, policymakers must ensure that they are properly scaling academic recovery strategies to reach as many students as possible before it is too late.

The pandemic left students, on average, five months behind in math and four months behind in reading by the end of the 2021-22 school year, with even more significant losses for students in majority-Black or low-income schools.⁸ This gap shows an increased inequality in educational outcomes across racial and socioeconomic lines.⁹ As educators work to catch students up academically, analyses reinforce the importance of supporting this generation, predicting that students affected by the pandemic may earn up to $61,000 less over their lifetime, with a resulting impact on the U.S. economy that could amount to $188 billion every year as this cohort enters the workforce.¹⁰

Thankfully, extensive research points toward one incredibly effective option in recovering learning loss: high-dosage tutoring.¹¹ As states, districts, and even the federal government begin to implement tutoring initiatives to address learning loss, it is important that they consider the type of tutoring being offered. Not all forms of tutoring reap the same benefits, and districts may need help in determining how to select and implement the best programs.

High-dosage tutoring

High-dosage tutoring, sometimes called “high-impact” or “high-intensity” tutoring, is one of the few school-based interventions with demonstrated significant positive effects on math and reading achievement.¹² Yet high-dosage tutoring is a very specific form of tutoring that must meet specific criteria:

• One-on-one or small-group sessions with no more than four students per tutor
• Use of high-quality materials that align with classroom content
• Three tutoring sessions per week—at minimum—each lasting at least 30 minutes
• Sessions held during school hours
• Students meeting with the same tutor each session
• Professionally trained tutors who receive ongoing support and coaching

High-dosage tutoring is most effective when the program supports data use and when tutors use ongoing informal assessment to tailor individual student instruction. As a bonus, these sessions can allow educators more opportunities to measure student achievement through informal assessments, potentially providing new holistic accountability measures.

Studies continuously show the benefits of high-dosage tutoring: It increases students’ learning by an additional three to 15 months across grade levels;¹³ moves an average student from the 50th percentile to the 66th percentile;¹⁴ and is, overall, 20 times more effective than standard tutoring models for math and 15 times more effective for reading.¹⁵ These increases in achievement show great potential for using high-dosage tutoring as a school improvement strategy. As schools continue to focus on long-term improvement of their education, implementing a high-dosage tutoring program can provide them with the tools necessary to ensure students’ academic achievement by catching knowledge gaps early, meeting students where they are, and providing evidence-based intensive recovery. Indeed, implementing these programs with fidelity allows schools to recover current learning loss while also gaining the long-term knowledge and skill to scale programming as needed moving forward.

Unfortunately, there are many challenges districts and schools face in implementing high-dosage tutoring programs. Amid a teacher shortage, labor challenges persist in hiring tutors.¹⁶ Moreover, schools often face complex logistical issues when it comes to training tutors properly,¹⁷ rescheduling the school day to fit in a tutoring block, and vetting tutoring services run by outside companies.¹⁸ In addition to these challenges, funding concerns are often at the top of school leaders’ minds. While COVID-19 relief funds provided targeted funding for high-quality tutoring, those funds are set to expire at the end of 2024. And unfortunately, many schools lack long-term investments that can be directed toward effective tutoring programs.

Current implementation efforts

While more than 80 percent of schools offer at least one type of tutoring in the 2022-23 school year, the modes and student participation levels vary.¹⁹ The School Pulse Panel collected data from a representative sample of more than 1,000 public K-12 schools in December 2022, providing insight into what tutoring services they offer.²⁰ The survey estimated that only 37 percent of schools offer high-dosage tutoring and, nationwide, only 11 percent of public school students participate in high-dosage tutoring—despite recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores showing that a vast majority of students are below proficient in reading and math. Schools were found to be most likely to offer standard tutoring, a less intensive method of tutoring provided by educators, with 59 percent of schools reportedly offering this method.

Despite the evidence-based benefits of high-dosage tutoring, only a small share of students receive this service. To adequately recover learning loss and ensure a brighter future for this generation, high-dosage tutoring programs must be properly scaled to reach more students.

Policy recommendations

Despite strong evidence pointing to the effectiveness of high-dosage tutoring, logistical challenges have prevented many schools from providing this valuable service to their students. The federal government can further assist districts in the following ways as they work to support students.

Designate long-term funding for high-dosage tutoring

While COVID-19 relief funds have played a vital role in district and state efforts to recover learning loss, these funds are due to expire in September 2024. However, reports estimate that it will take three to five years to recover learning loss at the current rate of recovery—time that, unfortunately, older students may not have.²¹ Without continued funding, districts will likely face disruptions in their recent efforts, reducing the long-term benefits these evidence-based practices can provide.²²

To prevent this, Congress must consider providing additional funding to public schools to implement high-dosage tutoring on a long-term basis, with particular emphasis on schools serving low-income students. Without increased federal and state funding, districts will be much slower to recover learning loss as they face more barriers to success. Most importantly, districts must, at a minimum, maintain all funding in upcoming federal budget discussions.

While funding from the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is available to districts for tutoring purposes, it is challenging and unsustainable for districts to reroute how they have historically used these funds.²³ Estimates suggest districts must spend between $1,200 and $2,500 per student each year to provide high-dosage tutoring effectively.²⁴ Without additional funding, they have few options and may need to diminish other vital programs to shift funds toward high-dosage tutoring.

To adequately invest in high-dosage tutoring, policymakers should allocate additional funding through a new grant program accessible to all populations, specifically to implement high-dosage tutoring programs. As Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds wind down, new funding avenues are vital to continue this work and successfully recover learning loss to set this generation on a better path.

Continue to grow awareness and reach of the National Partnership for Student Success

Recognizing student learning loss, the White House, in coordination with AmeriCorps and the Johns Hopkins Everyone Graduates Center, launched the National Partnership for Student Success (NPSS) in July 2022 to supply 250,000 tutors and mentors in K-12 public schools over the next three years.²⁵ NPSS estimates that in its first year, 78,000 additional adults have provided high-intensity tutoring.²⁶ The partnership has also developed the NPSS support hub, which provides technical assistance and resources at no cost,²⁷ and has formed a network of organizations doing similar work that can support one another and share information. In addition, NPSS established a higher education coalition focused on placing more college students in school support roles, such as high-dosage tutors.

The work NPSS is doing plays an essential role in the initiative to increase the number of students receiving high-dosage tutoring. The NPSS support hub is crucial in providing guidance and technical support to districts, states, and organizations. This includes one-on-one support and published resources accessible to the public. These resources include guides on creating a state partnership for student success, a district partnership toolkit, and voluntary quality standards.²⁸ As education leaders focus efforts on addressing learning loss, they must have access to NPSS as a valuable network with expertise in high-dosage tutoring and implementation.

For its efforts to be most effective, the White House must work to increase awareness of these resources by marketing the work of NPSS to states. NPSS can market its services through its hub and networks of organizations. States should, likewise, spread awareness of NPSS and the organization’s resources to local school districts.

Expand the federal work-study program

College students are one population education leaders are trying to tap to support the staffing issues schools face when implementing high-dosage tutoring programs. While high-dosage tutoring requires professionally trained tutors, many examples exist of colleges, school districts, and even third-party entities providing professional training before and during college students’ service to meet this requirement.

Recognizing this population’s value, NPSS formed a higher education coalition focused on placing college students in school support roles.²⁹ Additionally, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona issued a letter encouraging colleges, universities, and school districts to collaborate to use federal work-study (FWS) and other federal resources to increase the number of college students in these roles.³⁰ FWS, a program that provides paid part-time jobs for college students with financial need, is an existing resource colleges and universities can use to partner with their local school districts and provide additional tutors. However, limitations regarding FWS’ funding formula and regulations related to where students can work prohibit the program from more effectively benefiting communities. To provide more tutors, Congress should consider amending FWS, including by allowing college students to serve as tutors in all academic subject areas for grades pre-K-12, rather than current regulations that restrict this to reading tutors for pre-K-6.

Universities and colleges must market these school support roles as a type of FWS employment to increase the number of college students serving in these roles. Doing so will allow universities and colleges to build stronger connections with their local school districts and better serve their communities. At the same time, it is necessary to emphasize the importance of providing quality training for college students who will serve as tutors to ensure they meet the high-dosage tutoring criteria. These partnerships must ensure that the college or university, local school district, or a third-party provider offers free, high-quality training before and throughout the college student’s service for continued support. For example, in partnership with Annenberg Learner and Step Up Tutoring, Arizona State University is building a program with stackable microcredentials accessible for free to anyone interested in becoming a high-dosage tutor.³¹ This is just one resource that partnerships can utilize to ensure tutors are professionally trained and prepared to support students.

Collect more robust data on tutoring

Currently, the availability of federal data on tutoring initiatives is limited. While the School Pulse Panel provides some insight into the tutoring students receive, there are limitations. To better understand recovering learning loss efforts nationwide, the Department of Education must collect more in-depth data from districts across the country.

In developing a more robust data collection tool, the department should first consider providing precise definitions of high-dosage tutoring, standard tutoring, and self-paced tutoring. While the most recently administered survey defines high-dosage tutoring, it fails to state that this form of tutoring must occur during the school day. Additionally, despite the Education Department providing its definition, 13 percent of schools who say that they offer high-dosage tutoring also note that their students only receive it once to twice weekly.³² Given high-dosage tutoring’s requirement of at least three sessions per week, these responses are contradictory. The department should therefore consider providing a more precise definition, emphasizing that programs must meet all criteria to be regarded as high-dosage tutoring. Moreover, it must give that precise definition multiple times throughout the survey to reduce confusion.

New data collection should also include information on student progress through high-dosage tutoring programs. As previously mentioned, high-dosage tutoring is most effective when it supports ongoing data collection and when tutors use ongoing informal assessments to measure student achievement. Offering insight into students’ grade-level achievement will provide more transparency on the success of programs. In addition to this quantitative data, these efforts should include a collection of best practices and innovations that are easily shared across the country for educators to utilize in their implementation efforts.

To increase school participation, the Education Department may consider clarifying the Every Student Succeeds Act’s (ESSA) required accountability indicators to include student participation in high-dosage tutoring programs as an opportunity dashboard indicator.³³ ESSA requires state-designed accountability systems to include several indicators, including math and reading assessments, graduation rates, and English language proficiency.³⁴ The law also requires at least one indicator of school quality and student support, known as the “opportunity dashboard” indicator. This allows for greater flexibility, including the use of student engagement and any other state-chosen indicator that allows for meaningful differentiation of school performance. Issuing guidance that clarifies that this component could include reporting student engagement in high-dosage tutoring programs, as well as guidance on how to best collect this data, may lead to more states and schools using high-dosage tutoring participation as a school-based indicator in their accountability systems. With this increased transparency, more research can be conducted on the success of high-dosage tutoring by comparing student participation rates and statewide or national assessments.

It is essential that this data collection is robust, public, and easily accessible. Having access to such data would allow education leaders and policymakers at all levels to make evidence-based decisions. When robust data are not collected and made public, policymakers are more likely to draw conclusions that are not evidence-based and have the potential of further harming students. For example, some policymakers—based on low-quality data—may be led to believe that high-dosage tutoring has been properly implemented and yet has made little impact on testing results. However, with robust data, policymakers can better visualize the lack of proper implementation and the barriers to successfully scaling high-dosage tutoring programs. Developing a stronger understanding of the programming occurring in schools is necessary for policy to be effective in supporting students.

Conclusion

As students struggle to catch up, the federal government must step up to support states and districts in implementing effective high-dosage tutoring programs. With dedicated long-term funding for high-dosage tutoring, continued support through the National Partnership for Student Success, expanded federal work-study regulations, and more robust data collection, districts will be better equipped to support students in learning loss recovery. This work is vital to ensuring the success of a generation and the U.S. economy’s future.

Endnotes

1. The Nation’s Report Card, “NAEP Report Card: 2022 NAEP Mathematics Assessment,” available at https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/mathematics/2022/ (last accessed January 2024).
2. The Nation’s Report Card, “NAEP Report Card: 2022 NAEP Reading Assessment,” available at https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/reading/2022/ (last accessed January 2024).
3. The Nation’s Report Card, “NAEP Report Card: 2022 NAEP Mathematics Assessment.”
4. The Nation’s Report Card, “NAEP Report Card: 2022 NAEP Reading Assessment.”
5. The Nation’s Report Card, “NAEP Report Card: 2022 NAEP Mathematics Assessment.”
6. The Nation’s Report Card, “NAEP Report Card: 2022 NAEP Reading Assessment.”
7. National Center for Education Statistics, “Administrators Report Roughly Half of Public School Students Began 2022-23 School Year Behind Grade Level in At Least One Academic Subject,” Press release, February 9, 2022, available at https://nces.ed.gov/whatsnew/press_releases/2_09_2023.asp.
8. Emma Dorn and others, “COVID-19 and education: The lingering effects of unfinished learning,” McKinsey & Company, July 27, 2021, available at https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/education/our-insights/covid-19-and-education-the-lingering-effects-of-unfinished-learning.
9. Carly Robinson and others, “Design Principles for Accelerating Student Learning With High-Impact Tutoring” (Providence, RI: EdResearch for Action, 2021), available at https://annenberg.brown.edu/sites/default/files/EdResearch_for_Recovery_Design_Principles_1.pdf.
10. Dorn and others, “COVID-19 and education: The lingering effects of unfinished learning.”
11. Carly D. Robinson and others, “Accelerating Student Learning with High-Dosage Tutoring” (Providence, RI: EdResearch For Recovery, 2021), available at https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED613847.pdf.
12. Robinson and others, “Design Principles for Accelerating Student Learning With High-Impact Tutoring.”
13. Ibid.
14. Jill Barshay, “PROOF POINTS: Taking stock of tutoring,” The Hechinger Report, February 27, 2023, available at https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-taking-stock-of-tutoring/.
15. Roland G. Fryer Jr., “The Production of Human Capital in Developed Countries: Evidence from 196 Randomized Field Experiments” (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2016), available at https://www.nber.org/papers/w22130.
16. Barshay, “PROOF POINTS: Taking stock of tutoring.”
17. Ibid.
18. Kalyn Belsha, “Sweeping research effort tackles big question: How to get tutoring that works to more kids,” Chalkbeat, October 27, 2022, available at https://www.chalkbeat.org/2022/10/27/23426952/tutoring-research-pandemic-accelerate/.
19. Jill Barshay, “PROOF POINTS: New federal survey estimates one out of 10 public school students gets high-dosage tutoring,” The Hechinger Report, February 13, 2023, available at https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-new-federal-survey-estimates-one-out-of-10-public-school-students-get-high-dosage-tutoring/.
20. Institute of Education Sciences, “School Pulse Panel,” available at https://ies.ed.gov/schoolsurvey/spp/ (last accessed January 2024).
21. Megan Kuhfeld and Karyn Lewis, “Student achievement in 2021-2022: Cause for hope and continued urgency”(Portland, OR: NWEA, 2022), available at https://www.nwea.org/uploads/2022/07/Student-Achievement-in-2021-22-Cause-for-hope-and-concern.researchbrief-1.pdf.
22. Marguerite Roza and Katherine Silberstein, “The ESSER fiscal cliff will have serious implications for student equity,” Brookings Institution, September 12, 2023, available at https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-esser-fiscal-cliff-will-have-serious-implications-for-student-equity/.
23. National Student Support Accelerator, “Funding for High-Impact Tutoring” (Stanford, CA: 2023), available at https://studentsupportaccelerator.org/sites/default/files/Funding%20for%20High-Impact%20Tutoring.pdf.
24. National Student Support Accelerator, “Developing a Budget,” available at https://studentsupportaccelerator.org/district-playbook/section-2/developing-budget#_ftn1 (last accessed January 2024).
25. The White House, “Fact Sheet: Biden-Harris Administration Launches National Effort to Support Student Success,” Press release, July 5, 2022, available at https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/07/05/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-launches-national-effort-to-support-student-success/.
26. Robert Balfanz and Vaughan Byrnes, “Increasing School Capacity to Meet Students’ Post-Pandemic Needs: Findings from the 2022-23 National Partnership for Student Success Principal Survey” (Baltimore, MD: Everyone Graduates Center at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education, 2023), available at https://www.partnershipstudentsuccess.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Increasing-School-Capacity-to-Meet-Students-Post-Pandemic-Needs_ECG_Balfanz-Byrnes-FINAL.pdf.
27. National Partnership for Student Success, “About Us,” available at https://www.partnershipstudentsuccess.org/about/ (last accessed January 2024).
28. National Partnership for Student Success, “NPSS Support Hub Resources,” available at https://www.partnershipstudentsuccess.org/resources/ (last accessed January 2024).
29. National Partnership for Student Success, “Colleges & Universities,” available at https://www.partnershipstudentsuccess.org/colleges/ (last accessed January 2024).
30. Secretary of Education Miguel A. Cardona, “Key Policy Letters Signed by the Education Secretary or Deputy Secretary,” U.S. Department of Education, May 10, 2023, available at https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/secletter/230510.html.
31. Annenberg Learner, “Current Partnerships & Programs,” available at https://www.learner.org/programs/ (last accessed January 2024).
32. Barshay, “PROOF POINTS: New federal survey estimates one out of 10 public school students gets high-dosage tutoring.”
33. Every Student Succeeds Act, Public Law 95, 114th Cong., 1st sess. (December 10, 2015), available at https://www.congress.gov/114/plaws/publ95/PLAW-114publ95.pdf.
34. National Education Association, “Opportunity Dashboard Indicators in ESSA” (Washington: 2020), available at https://www.nea.org/resource-library/opportunity-dashboard-indicators-essa.

Key points:

• Inclusive learning can lead to improved academic outcomes for students with disabilities and their peers
• Advancing educational equity with UDL and generative AI
• How to work for equity of access in classrooms
• For more news on inclusive classrooms, visit eSN’s Educational Leadership page

The Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA), passed in 1975, ensures that eligible children with disabilities receive free public education along with the services they need to succeed. The IDEA act also guarantees that students with disabilities have the right to engage in the Least Restrictive Learning Environment (LRE) that best meets their individual needs.

The LRE ensures that students under IDEA are offered equitable access to education alongside their non-disabled peers. Under these requirements, special education students should be in the same classrooms as their peers to the maximum appropriate extent. The goal isn’t to make sure that special education students are in the mainstream classroom as much as possible, but to allow students to engage in a classroom setting that is the most beneficial to their academic success and development and to have equal opportunities to their peers. This requires some training for educators on how to create more inclusive classrooms.

Strategies for educators to support inclusive learning

Inclusive classrooms are classrooms where students with diverse abilities and backgrounds learn together in a mainstream classroom setting. To maintain an inclusive learning environment, it is critical that educators have effective strategies to ensure that all students, regardless of their abilities, are given the opportunity to thrive academically.

Here are three strategies for educators to support inclusive learning:

1. Foster a collaborative classroom culture

A collaborative classroom culture encourages students to work together and appreciate the unique perspectives that their peers bring to the table. Educators can create this culture through tactics such as group projects or peer tutoring programs. Other activities like circle time, where students have the opportunity to share their thoughts and experiences, can also help foster mutual understanding and respect. Collaboration not only helps to create a sense of community and belonging inside the classroom, it also prepares students for the real world that values teamwork.

2. Professional development

To enhance educators’ capacity to support diverse learners and inclusive classrooms, they need ongoing training and professional development opportunities. Having regular professional development training helps educators to learn more ways to best serve their students.

3. Differentiated instruction

Offering tailored teaching methods, materials and assessment strategies can help students to better understand the curriculum. Students learn in various ways, and offering materials at different difficulty levels, providing visuals or offering kinesthetic activities ensures that all students can engage in the classroom.

Why special educators are essential

Expertise

Special educators play an important role in ensuring the effectiveness of inclusive classrooms. They have the expertise, training, and resources to address the diverse needs of students, especially those with special needs.

Teaching methods and materials

In an inclusive classroom, special educators can tailor their teaching methods and materials to meet the abilities and preferred learning styles of students. This ensures that every student has access to individualized support that suits their unique needs.

IEP familiarity

Special educators are also trained to create Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) for students who have special needs. IEPs describe how a student learns, how they demonstrate what they are learning, and what educators can do to help a student learn more effectively. They are tailored using input from general and special education teachers, parents, school administrators, and the students themselves. Having an IEP can also help to determine if a fully inclusive classroom environment is the right fit for a specific student.

Behavior management

Behavioral difficulties are often a challenge in inclusive classrooms. Special educators have the necessary training to manage students with behavioral issues and can help maintain a productive learning environment in the classroom.

While special educators are important in driving the success of inclusive classrooms, they also face challenges such as being responsible for too many students.

Pros and cons of inclusive classrooms

The pros and cons of inclusive classrooms have been heavily debated and can vary with each individual circumstance or classroom.

Inclusive education has benefits for both students with disabilities and for their peers as it promotes social integration, cultivates empathy, and exposes students to those with diverse abilities. Studies have shown that inclusive education can lead to improved academic outcomes for both students with disabilities and their peers.

While inclusive classrooms have many benefits, there are also drawbacks that often dissuade schools and classrooms from adopting an inclusive classroom environment. Meeting the needs of students with varying abilities and offering individualized support can be challenging for teachers, especially in larger class sizes. Resource allocation can also be a concern because special education students often need support staff, specialized teaching materials or technology.

Inclusive classrooms are not a one-size-fits-all environment. By working with special education students alongside their peers, with an appropriate IEP in place, educators can tailor their teaching to better serve each student. While an inclusive classroom might not be the best fit for every student, every student should have the opportunity to participate in the learning environment that allows them to gain the most from their education.

Unprecedented funding has flowed into districts over the last several years as part of pandemic support and recovery efforts. As a result of this increased investment in technology, schools are generating more valuable data than ever—but much of that data isn’t readily available and actionable because it’s siloed in systems that aren’t connected to each other.

Simultaneously, with NAEP scores showing declining progress across the United States, school districts are trying to understand the scope of educational inequities and narrow equity gaps. However, it’s challenging to understand the root cause of these issues and to determine how best to address them without whole child insights made possible through interoperability—the seamless, secure, and controlled exchange of data between applications.

4 Key Considerations Around Data Interoperability for 2024

As school districts navigate a new year, building a foundational understanding of data equity and data interoperability is critical to establish holistic policies, practices, and systems that support learner variability and address the needs of historically and systematically excluded learners. By sharpening their lens on holistic data, districts can ensure that data becomes an authentic and integrated part of district culture and decision making all year long. Below are some key considerations to keep in mind:

1. Good data governance—which the U.S. Department of Education defines as “clearly outlining policies, standard procedures, responsibilities, and controls surrounding data activities…to ensure that information is collected, maintained, used, and disseminated in a way that protects the individuals’ rights to privacy, confidentiality, and security, while producing timely and accurate statistical data”—is critical to maintaining a secure, accessible, and reliable data infrastructure and is foundational to designing and implementing data interoperability projects. However, Project Unicorn’s 2023 State of the Sector Report indicates that this remains a significant challenge for school districts. Most (65.38%) respondents still need to define data governance goals and objectives at the organizational level.
   
   
2. Many educators are excited about the potential for AI to finally help us realize our goals of creating personalized learning journeys for students. But to fully personalize learning, we need to establish seamless, secure data flow between platforms so that educators can get a holistic view of students and effectively support students where they are.
   
   
3. Interoperability is also critical to enable us to transform assessment. It enables educators to see learning patterns across platforms, revealing strengths, potential challenges, and engagement. According to Erin Mote, executive director and co-founder of InnovateEDU, “Data interoperability can give educators a superpower to unlock the full potential of every learner.”
   
   
4. Interoperability and adherence to data standards can and should be a key consideration for procurement decisions. Many district leaders are unaware of the real long-term costs associated with a lack of interoperability. Project Unicorn has created an Interoperability Certification to help district leaders identify products that prioritize interoperability. CoSN’s case study–The Michigan Data Hub: A Strategic Alignment and ROI Study–offers insight into these hidden costs. The study’s authors found that “data management by [Michigan] districts requires both personnel effort and technology costs totaling over $160 million per year statewide. More than $61 million per year is spent on data quality, data completeness, and other general data management tasks, while $64 million per year is spent enabling key internal systems within districts to talk to each other.”

An Actionable Resource for Districts

Digital Promise’s newly revised Data Ready Playbook is designed to support districts with creating an effective interoperable data solution that allows them to identify and address opportunity gaps and outcomes while simultaneously earning micro-credentials through a series of free, self-paced learning modules.

As district teams advance through the Playbook, they will evaluate their current data culture, build their knowledge and understanding of data equity and interoperability, and take steps to apply an equity lens to data policies and procedures—ultimately establishing a practice of using data analysis and interpretation to  gauge data access, equity, and inclusion and identify disproportionality within their district.

The Readiness Framework

The Data Ready Playbook is anchored in a Readiness Framework consisting of three readiness domains: Project Governance, Needs Assessment, and Implementation Plan—all of which are critical to successfully implementing data interoperability projects.

Data Governance

Data Governance is the first of three domains addressed in the Playbook. By completing activities in the modules focused on data governance, district teams can:

• Identify and onboard district team members (including data stewards who are responsible for a given area of data, from collection through use)
• Initiate cross-departmental discussions on data priorities, processes, and workflows
• Document the district’s data landscape and workflows
• Identify key data elements and expectations around their usage (e.g. data catalog)
• Assign data stewards to draft and manage data processes and workflows
• Define a governing strategy or protocol to support decision making around emerging case data needs, including security and access
• Adopt data processes and workflows that support the implementation of data interoperability projects.

Needs Assessment

Needs Assessment, the second domain, focuses on helping district staff identify key challenges related to data use, including siloed data. Activities in this domain guide district teams through the following:

• Conduct focus groups with diverse community members to explore classroom-, school building-, and district-level activities that rely on or refer to data
• Develop cross-departmental opportunities for input and feedback related to data interoperability needs
• Identify and analyze specific growth points related to the use of data in classroom, school, and district activities by multiple departments and stakeholder groups
• Evaluate growth points based on need, solubility, and overall impact and identify clear requirements and specifications for the development of an solution
• Design a solution concept that defines specifications and requirements to achieve interoperability success
• Validate the challenge and solution concept with academic and technology stakeholders

Project Planning

The third and final domain of the Data Ready Playbook is Project Planning, which includes analysis of the costs of interoperability. By completing modules in this domain, teams achieve the following:

• Identify various interoperability solutions and their purposes
• Define an implementation team based on various interoperable solutions
• Articulate project parameters (e.g., ideal timeline, budget, etc.) for a potential district implementation
• Validate the feasibility and viability of possible solutions.
• Narrow from a range of solutions to one to two options (if necessary) based on feedback and project perimeters
• Select a team to implement the identified solution
• Create a general project plan for implementation, including appropriate detail on project milestones, financial and personnel requirements, and expected benefits, to present to leadership for approvals

How Data Ready is Your District?

The best way to understand your district’s readiness for data interoperability is by completing the Readiness Diagnostic. This diagnostic will assess your district’s progress to date using the Readiness Framework and provide a customized learning plan to follow in the Data Ready Playbook. Are you ready to get started?

Visit Digital Promise’s new Data Ready Playbook to learn more about data interoperability, build your team’s skills, and modernize your technology infrastructure in service of your students, staff, and community.

Key points:

• Younger students aren’t on pace with learning expectations post-pandemic
• See article: The pandemic is over–but American schools still aren’t the same
• See article: Unfinished learning concerns still plague educators
• For more news on learning loss, visit eSN’s Educational Leadership page

Children who were in early childhood learning programs during the pandemic are struggling to keep up with grade-level learning in math and English, according to School Readiness for Young Students Post-Pandemic, a new report from Curriculum Associates that examines nationwide data quantifying the latent academic impact of disrupted access to early childhood care and education for the nation’s youngest learners.

This report is one of the first to gather and analyze nationally representative data from more than five million Grades K–2 students, thanks to their i-Ready® Diagnostic for Reading and for Mathematics.

“While learning disruptions are well-known and documented for school-age students due to the pandemic, less is known regarding the impact on children who were in early childhood or pre-K settings in 2020 and 2021. Those children, who were ages 1 to 4 at the start of the pandemic, are coming to school less prepared and lagging behind expectations with signs of a slow recovery,” said Dr. Kristen Huff, vice president of assessment and research at Curriculum Associates. “These data show that post-pandemic recovery is still an uphill battle for millions of students nationwide, reinforcing the challenges our educators face in the classroom every day.”

Some of the key findings include:

• Students appear less prepared at school entry, with greater proportions of students entering below grade level. Some grades demonstrate modest recovery. 
  • Grade K students show latent, albeit small decreases in school readiness from pre- to post-pandemic, with nearly identical trends from 2019 to 2021, but show small declines in years since.
  • Average test scores dropped 2.8 points and 9.1 points for Grade 1 and Grade 2 students, respectively, from pre-pandemic to 2021. Grade 1 scores continue to decline heading into 2023, while Grade 2 scores show modest signs of recovery.
• Trends in mathematics performance and readiness at school entry show little indication of returning to a pre-pandemic level.
  • Grade K students again demonstrate a delayed impact of pandemic disruptions for mathematics, with comparable trends from fall 2019 to fall 2021, but show small declines in achievement in fall 2022 and 2023.
  • By comparison, students in Grades 1 and 2 have suffered more pronounced declines with less evidence of recovery, with average scale scores decreasing by 4.3 and 5.7 points, respectively, from 2019 to 2023.

While the pandemic was disruptive to all early childhood care and services, the report shows the impact of this disruption was not equally felt across communities. Many minoritized communities relied on continued access to public pre-K programs and thus lost services entirely with pandemic closures. These findings echo the emerging trends described in the latest edition of Curriculum Associates’ State of Student Learning research. 

“In analyzing these data by various demographics, such as grade, race, and income level, we recognize a familiar phenomenon: the pandemic exacerbated educational socioeconomic inequities,” said Tyrone Holmes, chief inclusion officer at Curriculum Associates. “The good news is that these data can help guide decision makers in how to best allocate resources and support the students most in need.”

“In an equitable world, every educator would have the support, tools, and data to help every student achieve their potential,” continued Huff. “Our students have faced tremendous hardship, and the road ahead will not be easy. We owe it to them to be ambitious and change the course of learning now.”

School Readiness for Young Students Post-Pandemic is the seventh in a series of research reports on the effects of unfinished learning conducted by Curriculum Associates. More information on Curriculum Associates’ research on unfinished learning may be found here. 

This press release originally appeared online.