Category Archives: Covid-19 schools

How to Improve Learning? Many Small Improvements? Or Top-Down “Transformation?”

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What if you had been struggling for years to improve how effectively your children learn? Then suddenly, you were provided with an almost-unlimited amount of money? But you only had a few years to spend it. What would you do?

This is exactly the challenge being faced right now by school districts across the U.S., and they must decide how to spend millions of dollars in federal Covid-19 ESSER relief funds. You could of course easily compile a list of many items that would benefit your kids. But would you also use this as a one-time opportunity to bring about a major transformation in how effectively your kids learn?

Here’s a letter to the editor I wrote that was in the print edition of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Sunday, July 25.

An Opportunity for MPS

Milwaukee Public Schools will receive more than $500 million in federal stimulus funds. (“MPS making plans for more than $500 million in federal stimulus,” July 21).

The district is now making plans on how to spend this money over the next three years. MPS recently held listening sessions and has developed a list of ideas. Items on the list include tutoring for students and training for teachers. And these are worthy ideas.

But I believe there is one best use of these funds. This is to fund an effort across the district to transform how students learn, with the goal to greatly increase student achievement. One likely emphasis in the transformation would be on the use of personalized learning and the enabling technology. Another would be more movement to the community schools concept.

This won’t be easy. Many similar efforts here and in other cities have failed. But what’s different now is the availability of this funding, along with a forced time window.

And coming off our pandemic experience, do we now also have a motivation that is more intense than in the past? Or are we content to have our children continue to fail to learn? This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. We can’t pass it up.

Virtual Learning Will Make the New Normal Better. But We Must Still Value Our Human Interactions.

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The New York Times recently ran two articles with different opinions on the value of virtual learning.

In his February 15th article on “Lessons from Virtual Kindergarten,” [i] David Saks talked about how his four-year-old son Kyle will benefit from a return to face-to-face kindergarten.

But in his February 16th article on “I Actually Like Teaching on Zoom,” [ii] Viet Thanh Nguyen argued that continuing the changes brought about by the pandemic will enable his college students to learn more effectively.

They’re both right.

Three things happened to us during the pandemic.

We needed to make more use of technology and tools, and we did. We acquired new devices and other technology.

We all acquired new technology skills, even four-year-olds like Kyle.

And our culture changed. We began interacting in new ways at work, at school, and at home.

We would be wise to realize these are transformative changes. We need to proactively manage them to get their benefits but also to avoid the downsides. Our technology tools can help us to be more productive and connect better with each other. And we can benefit from our experience with virtual learning during the pandemic.

But we also need to cherish all that was best about the old normal—we must be especially vigilant not to let our alluring technology diminish our ability to have normal human interactions. And how this works will vary depending on the age of the humans involved.

Mr. Saks was right on the money regarding Kyle—four-year-old children need intense human interaction, and their screen time, although somewhat inevitable today, needs to be carefully controlled.

Professor Nguyen’s college students are towards the other end of the education age spectrum. They grew up with screens, and they can benefit from virtual learning in some ways. But whether we’re four or one hundred and four, we need to prioritize those face-to-face human interactions.

[i]    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/15/opinion/kindergarten-remote-learning-covid.html.

[ii]   https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/15/opinion/zoom-video-school-teaching.html#:~:text=And%20much%20is%20horrible%3A%20teachers,the%20human%20connection%20attenuated%20online

When We Provide Learning Technology to Disadvantaged Kids, “Just OK” Is Not OK Anymore

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The Covid-19 shift to school-at-home since last spring has helped us see how far we have progressed in our use of technology for learning—and where we must do better.

Many districts quickly issued computer devices to students for use at home. But other districts struggled to supply devices to their students. This was especially so in urban districts that serve many disadvantaged students.

So, what to do?

To start, let’s stop being content to just wring our hands over how disadvantaged kids consistently get short-changed in the provision of technology. Instead, let’s take inspiration from the TV ads that declare, “Just OK is not OK anymore.” We must insist that all our kids now need to enjoy a basic standard of learning technology.

But what are the basics that every student needs to have?

All students must have an appropriate computer device for use at school and at home. We have had computers in our schools since the early 1980s. But for years we rationed time in computer labs at the end of the hall. It was only recently that the falling prices of laptops and tablets made it feasible to give students easy access to devices.

Some districts had moved to “1-to-1” coverage and assigned each student their own device, sometimes letting them take the devices home. Education Week reported that, “In February (2020) … the EdWeek Research Center surveyed teachers (and found) about 57 percent said each student in their schools had a device. That percentage increased slightly, to 59 percent, when teachers were surveyed again in May.” [i]

But this coverage was more common in districts with fewer disadvantaged kids. We must now ensure every student has a device for school and home. And as students are returning this fall it seems that we are close to 100 percent—the expectation now is simply that the district issues each student a device.

If students do not have Internet access the district must issue them an Internet hotspot—and ideally provide wired access for the home. But we may not yet be quite to 100 percent in ensuring that all students have the Internet connectivity needed to make those devices work. Here again, disadvantaged kids have been losing out. In an analysis of 2015 Census data, the Pew Research Center found that, “roughly one-third (35%) of households with children ages 6 to 17 and an annual income below $30,000 a year do not have a high-speed internet connection at home, compared with just 6% of such households earning $75,000 or more a year. These broadband gaps are particularly pronounced in black and Hispanic households.” [ii]

A model of how to address this challenge is the Des Moines Public Schools, where 76.8% of the 32,545 students qualify for Free and Reduced Meals. [iii] Last spring DMPS issued Internet hotspots to quickly provide access at homes for those who needed them. The district then worked with an Internet provider to “install wiring and activate high-speed internet service for families designated by DMPS.” [iv]

This access incurs new costs. Federal E-Rate funds can help. In Milwaukee, the Milwaukee Public Schools’ private foundation and the City Forward Collective nonprofit worked to raise private funds. [v] And the recently introduced “Emergency Educational Connections Act” could provide up to $4 billion in federal funds. [vi]

But districts can’t wait to ensure Internet access until the feds or others fund this. As with all the other necessary parts of a child’s education, ensuring Internet access for kids who otherwise lack it now needs to be part of the job of every school district.

This still leaves the tough problem of a lack of broadband access in rural areas.

School-issued devices need to be pure business. Devices can also provide a powerful distraction. They must be carefully configured so they can only be used for learning functions.

The devices need all the right learning “stuff.” These devices must be set up to access the educational content and software that gives them their power. This begins with the Google G Suite or Microsoft Office 365 productivity suites. But possibly the most valuable use of the devices is to provide adaptive learning software that enables personalized learning for reading and math.

Districts must have integrated SIS and LMS systems. Teachers need to post resources and assignments and communicate with students. This requires some combination of student information system (SIS) gradebook and learning management system (LMS) software. LMS products such as Schoology provide district-wide, top-down support. One advantage of the LMS products is the district can work to integrate student, class, assignment, and grade data between the district’s SIS (and gradebook) and LMS. So teachers shouldn’t have to labor to key this data in or, worse yet, key things like assignments and grades into both systems.

An alternative to products like Schoology is the Google Classroom LMS, which is popular with teachers partly because it can be independently implemented in a bottom-up way. Also, it’s free.

In any event, the Covid-19 experience has raised the bar for LMS use, and districts that until now made do without a district-wide LMS will need to concentrate energy and funds in this area.

Schools need to use technology to engage modern parents. Schools and teachers need SIS portals, LMS systems, and notification technology such as BrightArrow to engage parents. And teachers need the technology to text parents without using their personal phones. Here again, the bar for communication has been permanently raised.

Districts must manage their larger technology picture and provide professional learning for teachers. Teachers already has the toughest job in town—and since last spring it has become tougher yet. Districts must work with their teachers to develop a unified technology approach with components such as standard software tied to the curriculum. They then must provide professional learning and one-on-one coaches to help each teacher put these resources to work. And of course, our teachers need deluxe devices.

. . . . . . . . . .

We’re trying to figure out the post-Covid-19 “new normal.” The new normal for learning technology must be that all our students get the same advanced level of technology.

In the midst of the pandemic we also found ourselves amid the Black Lives Matter demonstrations. These demonstrations are about things in addition to education. But our country has arrived at a place where all our people—and certainly all our children—must share in the same benefits of living in the wealthiest and most technologically advanced nation in history. We must equip all our kids for the challenging future they face. The best learning technology along with our great teachers can help us do that. Just OK is no longer OK.

[i]    Bushweller, K., “How COVID-19 Is Shaping Tech Use. What That Means When Schools Reopen,” Education Week, June 4, 2020

[ii]   Auxier, B., and Anderson, M., “As Schools Close Due to the Coronavirus, Some U.S. Students Face a Digital ‘Homework Gap’,” Pew Research Center, March 16, 2020.

[iii] https://www.dmschools.org/about/facts-figures.

[iv]   https://www.dmschools.org/2020/04/dmps-mediacom-connect-students-for-distance-learning.

[v]   St. Onge, N., “MPS Foundation and City Forward Collective Trying to Bridge Technology Gap for Milwaukee Students,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, June 8, 2020.

[vi]   https://www.baldwin.senate.gov/press-releases/emergency-educational-connections-act.