Project RED will use its past research to offer educational opportunities for district leaders.

An initiative that uses research to identify ways to use educational technology successfully soon will launch a professional learning community with resources and collaborative opportunities to help school and district leaders better prepare students for a global economy.

Project RED, which aims to help educators effectively integrate technology into the classroom, consists of the Greaves Group, the Hayes Connection, and the One-to-One Institute.

Two years ago, Project RED released landmark research indicating the key factors in ed-tech success. Now, in its second phase, the project will use its past research to offer educational opportunities for district leaders and school administrators.

“The Project RED research is proof that technology can be a practical, cost-effective way to improve student achievement,” said One-to-One Institute CEO Leslie Wilson and Project RED team member. “The key, however, is effective implementation, and that’s exactly what sets Project RED apart from other studies. After analyzing the research findings, Project RED developed a proven method to productively and efficiently integrate technology into the classroom.”

The group’s previous research, which involved 1,000 schools and showed that proper ed-tech implementation can help boost student achievement, provided a basis for what the group says is a replicable design to help schools use technology in the most effective way possible.

There are four key findings the Project RED research reveals about using technology in schools to improve learning performance and return on investment, the group says:

Educators aim to extend learning time and boost graduation rates.

T.C. Williams High School, in Virginia’s Alexandria City Public Schools (ACPS), uses technology to create online and blended-learning environments that provide extra support to students who need it. Two of the school’s primary goals are to extend the amount of learning time and ensure that more students graduate—and early results from these programs are encouraging.

For these reasons, we’ve chosen T.C. Williams as our “eSchool of the Month” for April. Here, Mary Fluharty, the school’s online learning coordinator, describes some of her school’s accomplishments—and the challenges it overcame in the process.
(Editor’s note: To nominate your school or district for our “eSchool of the Month” feature, and to read about past winners, go to: http://www.eschoolnews.com/eschool-of-the-month.)

How do you use technology to advance student learning?

As our school goes through the transformation process, we have become recommitted to engaging students through the integration of technology to increase and sustain student learning. In our 3,000-student high school, we have approximately 10 percent of the student population taking courses online using K12/Aventa and 100 percent of the students learning in a blended learning environment via Blackboard.
Online courses have been integrated into the school day for some students and are helping to meet some of the primary goals of the T.C. Transformation project: to extend learning time and to increase graduation rates. In addition to using Blackboard, our classroom teachers use DyKnow software to manage and monitor student laptop use, SMART Sync to engage students and increase data-driven instruction, and BrainFuse online tutoring that gives students access to a live tutor 24-7 via an online chatroom, to name just a few.
Grant monies were used to roll out the ACPS Academic Access resource that connects students and families to the tools they need to help their students succeed. Academic Access can be used to retrieve course content, grades, assignments, and online tutoring.  Students and parents can also view real-time grades, schedules, and attendance data—all designed to increase engagement in academic and school life.

How do you use technology to streamline school administration and aid in decision-making?

T.C. Williams administrators use iPads to collect data on curriculum implementation during walk-throughs and for formal observations. They use Google Docs to collaborate and to collect and analyze data using Google forms. They use Blackboard surveys and discussion boards to reach the staff and students to ask for feedback and suggestions on how systemic improvements can be made. Administrators also use the Blackboard Journal feature a for creating professional learning plans. All this is done to meet our goal of improving instruction and to build relationships with staff and students.

A $250 million initiative will use technology and social media to strengthen U.S. graduation rates.

A new $250 million campaign from AT&T seeks to help more students graduate from high school ready for college or a career through a “socially innovative” approach that will engage education stakeholders as they use educational technology to devise new solutions to challenging social problems.

The AT&T Aspire program has put more than $100 million into educational initiatives since 2008, and the new $250 million investment will focus on using technology to connect with students in new and more effective ways, including interactive gaming, web-based content, and social media.

The Aspire program intends to help every student graduate from high school “equipped with the knowledge and skills to strengthen the nation’s workforce,” said AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson.

Lacking a high school degree is a serious issue in the United States, where one in four students—more than 1 million each year—drops out, according to a March 19 report by Civic Enterprises, the Everyone Graduates Center, America’s Promise Alliance, and the Alliance for Excellent Education. Education experts say the lack of a high school degree significantly worsens job prospects in a rapidly changing, increasingly sophisticated job market.

See also:

Ed-tech grants and funding: March 2012

And, if dropouts find jobs, they typically earn less. On average, a high school dropout earns 25 percent less during the course of his or her lifetime compared with a high school graduate and 57 percent less than a college graduate with a bachelor’s degree.

Part of the new $250 million investment will allow the Aspire program to fund smaller, proven programs in need of additional investments so they can expand on a larger scale, said Beth Shiroishi, vice president of sustainability and philanthropy for AT&T and president of the AT&T Foundation.

The expanded initiative will build support for high school graduation in multiple ways.

The average national graduation rate was 75 percent in 2009, up 3.5 percentage points from 2001. Still, that means 1 in 4 students drops out of school.

The last straw for 17-year-old Alton Burke was a note left on his door. The high school dropout picked up the phone and re-enrolled at South Hagerstown High.

Burke missed roughly 200 days of class, but Heather Dixon, the student intervention specialist who left the note, never gave up on him.

Aggressive efforts to prevent students such as Burke from dropping out contributed to a modest 3.5 percentage point increase nationally in the high school graduation rate from 2001 to 2009, according to research to be presented March 19 at the Grad Nation summit in Washington, D.C. The event was organized by the children’s advocacy group America’s Promise Alliance, founded by former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

The average national graduation rate was 75 percent in 2009, meaning 1 in 4 students fails to get a diploma in four years, researchers found. That’s well below the organization’s goal of 90 percent by 2020.

Researchers found that the number of “dropout factories,” schools that fail to graduate more than 60 percent of students on time, had dropped by more than 450 between 2002 and 2010, but 1,550 remain.

“Big gains are possible if you work hard at it, and if you don’t focus on it, you’re going to go backward,” said Robert Balfanz, a report author and director of the Everyone Graduates Center at the School of Education at Johns Hopkins University.

The increase in graduation rates was primarily because of growth in 12 states, with New York and Tennessee showing double-digit gains since 2002, according to the research. At the other end, 10 states had declines: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, New Jersey, Nebraska, New Mexico, Nevada, Rhode Island, and Utah.

So far, only Wisconsin has met the 90-percent benchmark, although Vermont is close.

“This year’s report proves struggling schools are not destined to fail,” said Education Secretary Arne Duncan. “The reality is that even one dropout factory is too many.”

The authors said there are proven strategies to tackle the problem, such as getting all students to read at grade level, raising the compulsory school attendance age to 18, and developing “early warning” systems to help identify students who might be at risk of later dropping out.

Fetzer said she “jumped at the chance” to begin teaching online.

Through a combination of blended learning, individualized instruction, and enthusiasm, online biology teacher Leslie Fetzer’s dedication to helping her special-needs students develop core learning skills contributed to her new title as the 2012 National Online Teacher of the Year for K-12 education.

Fetzer, who teaches in the North Carolina Virtual Public School (NCVPS) Occupational Course of Study (OCS) blended learning program, teaches special-needs students in grades 10-12. Students are paired with an exceptional children’s teacher in a classroom, as well as with a content specialist teacher online.

Fetzer said that teaching online lets her instantly individualize instruction for her students, and she is able to personalize lessons to appeal to each student’s own areas of interest or preferences. Access to different online tools and technologies is an added benefit.

“I can spend more time with each student individually and adapt to their likes or dislikes and strengths and weaknesses,” she said. “And they become very comfortable with us; sometimes they might be more comfortable saying things to their online teacher than they would to their classroom teacher, especially students who have communication barriers.”

Teaching biology and lab-based sciences might seem difficult online, but Fetzer said her students participate in a combination of virtual labs and “kitchen sink” labs for hands-on experience.

“There certainly are challenges, but it’s definitely not impossible,” she said. “I try to figure out what my students like so that I can adapt my instruction.”

Classroom and online teachers “chunk” the information that students receive, Fetzer said, meaning that they dole out instruction in manageable pieces that are easy for students to learn and review.

“Virtual snow days” would help ease pressure on school calendars.

Could the internet mean the end of snow days? Some schools think so, and they are experimenting with ways for students to do lessons online during bad weather, potentially allowing classes to go on during even the worst blizzard.

“Virtual snow days” would help ease pressure on school calendars. Because districts are required to be in session for a certain number of hours or days, losing teaching time to winter weather can mean extending the school day or cutting short spring break or summer vacation.

And canceling school in the winter, when some of the most difficult material of the year is covered, risks leaving students with a learning deficit heading into the spring, when many states administer standardized tests.

“Even if you can’t continue on at the same pace, being able to keep students on track can make a huge difference,” said Doug Levin, executive director of the nonprofit State Educational Technology Directors Association.

Virtual learning, which has been widely used by colleges and universities for years, is becoming more viable for younger students as teachers and administrators grow comfortable with the technology. Online learning also saves money because districts don’t have to pay for transportation, electricity, and custodians.

But there are obstacles, too. Many families don’t have internet access with speeds that would support complex classroom-style work, especially in rural areas and impoverished inner cities. Families with multiple children—without multiple computers—could be hard-pressed to keep up.

And some people say kids just need an occasional extra day off in the depths of winter.

Credit recovery programs are helping students stay on track.

“College-ready” and “career-ready” are major buzzwords in the educational field these days, as President Obama’s push to increase graduation rates gains traction. Educators have spent a great deal of time and energy deciphering what it means to make students college- and career-ready—but a significant portion of the conversation has focused on finding ways to keep kids in school in the first place.

Early intervention and credit recovery programs can pave the way for students to remain on the road to graduation, and a growing number of school systems are turning to online options for delivering these services.

“My members have been having conversations about the fact that, before we can talk about kids being college- and career-ready, we have to reduce dropout rates [and] increase our graduation rates,” says Brenda Welburn, executive director of the National Association of State Boards of Education. “Many kids don’t find school relevant, especially as they get older.”

The challenge, she says, is not just to give lip service to the need for relevance, but to make the connection real for today’s learners between the outside world and that of school.

Educators are determined to find that relevance by giving students more of the skills they’ll need to succeed in a globally competitive economy—the so-called “21st-century skills” such as problem solving, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration—in addition to traditional skills such as reading and writing.

In the 2010 Speak Up survey from Project Tomorrow, a national survey of the attitudes and opinions of students, parents, teachers, and administrators toward education and technology, 38 percent of the nearly 15,000 K-12 school leaders who responded said that “integrating 21st-century skills into the curriculum” was the best way to improve student outcomes, particularly in terms of increasing college and career readiness. This was the second most popular response to the question, following 49 percent of administrators who believed the best way to improve student outcomes was by enhancing teacher effectiveness through professional development or professional learning communities.

Going hand-in-hand with developing students’ 21st-century skills and making school relevant for today’s learners is keeping them engaged in their education.

Today’s students have gotten used to being “plugged in” and connected with technology nearly constantly when they are outside of school, whether through PCs and laptops, or gaming systems like the Nintendo DS or the Wii, or through phones and tablet computers—and their interest in school often lags when technology is not integrated into instruction.

Here’s how four districts have had success with credit recovery.

While the Spring Branch Independent School District in Houston, Texas, has a strong early intervention program that is successful in keeping more kids from failing classes, the district still uses credit recovery as an element in its overall student graduation plans.

Students who have failed a course may take credit recovery with Aventa’s online courses, or they may be required to retake a class in the traditional way. The choice is sometimes up to the student, but the teacher, the counselor, and the parents all have a voice in the decision. If a student simply missed too much of the course, he or she likely will be required to retake it in a traditional setting. But other students can benefit greatly from online credit recovery, says Sheri Alford, director of educational technology for Spring Branch ISD.

“We like it because it’s a continuous enrollment,” says Alford; students can begin taking the online course as soon as they’re in trouble.

The district gives each student in an online credit recovery course a liaison—a teacher who can help when that student hits a snag. “The liaison is also the person who says, ‘I notice you didn’t log in yesterday,’ or, ‘You were only online for so long, and you’re not progressing.’ So the liaison can provide one-to-one help,” Alford says.

The liaison also sets up tutorials. For example, if the liaison is an English teacher and the student is struggling with a certain portion of an online math course, the liaison can set up a tutorial with a math teacher.

Alford says Aventa is far superior to a prior credit recovery program the district was using. That program, from another vendor, was not as rigorous, and students had figured out how to manipulate it without actually learning anything.

The Tucson Unified School District in Arizona is another district that is offering online credit recovery to students. If a student is a junior or senior, has failed a class, and needs those credits to graduate, the student is eligible to take an online credit recovery course free of charge.

Stuart Baker, Tucson USD’s coordinator for online learning, likes the Aventa program because the focus is on the skills a student learns, not on the amount of time he or she spends on the class. Additionally, Baker says, the speed at which a student learns is entirely up to the student, not up to the online class.