Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

9 big ideas to bolster the teaching profession and boost student learning

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

This is part two in a two-part series. Part one focused on four major challenges facing the teaching profession. Sign up for Chalkbeat’s free weekly newsletter to get these stories and more delivered straight to your inbox.

America’s schools face a number of warning signs about the teaching profession: higher turnover, lower morale, declining interest in the profession among college students, persistent shortages in certain subjects. These problems could have big consequences for students.…Read More

Nearpod Announces the 2022 Educator of the Year Award Winners

FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. (PRWEB) —  Nearpod, a Renaissance company and a teacher-centric, interactive instructional platform that gives teachers real-time insights into student learning, announces the  2022 Educator of the Year Award winners. With 2,900 nominations and 4,600 votes received, Nearpod’s 2022 Educator of the Year Award winners represent the best and brightest in education, recognizing five winners and five finalists within the U.S. and abroad for their innovative and impactful work in the classroom.

“You cannot imagine how much I am excited to be one of the five winners for the 2022 Educator of the Year Awards,” said Liudmyla Katereniuk, a School Director in Ukraine and one of the award recipients. “I believe that teaching is the most difficult job in the world. As a school director, I am always trying to support and encourage my teachers, especially these days, in spite of the challenges presented by the ongoing war. Some people say challenges and barriers make our lives complicated, but I think they are essential for success and self-development.”

The awards program—now in its second year—highlights how educators use  Nearpod and  Flocabulary in their classrooms to best support their students. Nearpod expanded the awards program in 2022 from one to five winners to shine a light on the hard work and dedication of educators who are making an impact. Educators were encouraged to nominate someone making a difference with their students, peers, and local communities and then vote for their favorites.…Read More

Balancing high expectations with relationship building to boost engagement

Teachers are constantly challenged with improving student engagement, something they know directly impacts student learning outcomes. A USC Rossier School of Education Center EDGE survey this year queried 1,400 teachers about the engagement strategies they use most often in their classrooms and those they think will hold most value next year. For 2022, the most common response was building relationships with students. In 2023, educators anticipate establishing high expectations for students. 

The prioritization of these two practices alongside each other begs the question of how teachers can balance these two strategies — one of which relies on kindness and compassion, and the other which lends itself to more serious goal-setting and intense conversations. The key is approaching high expectations as an integral part of building strong relationships.

Raising the bar for learners …Read More

4 ways to address learning gaps for underserved students

While it is now clear that the pandemic has had a significant impact on student learning – especially for historically underserved students – we are still discovering the most effective ways to help students recover. It turns out that summertime has the potential to be a big part of the solution for some of our most marginalized students. 

Recent findings from NWEA’s research team show the power of summer learning in changing academic trajectories for students. More specifically, the studies reveal that students with disabilities, rural students, and English learners make academic gains at rates equal to or faster than their peers during the academic year but experience greater learning loss when they’re out of school in the summer. The backsliding is so significant that it causes persistent or growing achievement gaps over the course of these students’ academic careers.

The lesson for pandemic recovery is clear. Summer learning provides an underutilized opportunity to help students regain lost ground due to COVID-19 and ensure that achievement gaps do not continue to widen. It should also be part of longer-term strategies to advance learning for historically underserved students. When summer learning is not part of the instructional strategy, the research suggests that it may lead to persistent opportunity gaps and diminished school-year gains over time.  …Read More

The best ways to approach high-impact tutoring

What do we even mean when we say “high-impact tutoring?” As schools grapple with so many of the effects of unfinished learning, tutoring has emerged as a potential approach for addressing students’ educational needs.

“High-impact tutoring” is defined by the National Student Support Accelerator as a form of teaching 1:1 or in a small group toward a very specific goal. It is a form of tutoring that leads to substantial learning gains for students by supplementing, but not replacing, students’ classroom experiences and it’s intended to respond to individual students’ needs by complementing what they’re learning in the classroom.

High-impact tutoring is not just homework help, nor is it just test prep, so there is key differentiation between it and what most people conceptualize “tutoring” to be. It’s an intentional, multifaceted program that’s geared toward accelerating student learning. High-impact tutoring is not intended to solely focus on remedial skills; it’s about addressing the skills that are necessary for the student to make progress and advance to those instructional next steps.…Read More

7 strategies to counter student learning loss

Until very recently, learning loss was a matter of concern mainly because of long summer holidays. Students’ socioeconomic situations played a role in those concerns but, mostly, making up for the knowledge and skills lost over school breaks involved returning learners to their school routines.

And, of course, revising the last few weeks of last semester’s curriculum before moving on to new material.

The coronavirus pandemic has redefined what learning loss means. Generally speaking, nobody was prepared for the sudden and dramatic upending of life as they knew it. Some adapted quickly, while others struggle with the mental and physical impacts of COVID to this day.…Read More

Why we need formative assessment

Formative assessment, while not a new concept by any means, has been receiving a lot of attention recently due to discussions regarding student learning loss and the need for more digitized solutions for remote learners.

There’s been discussion in recent years about what formative assessment truly is. According to the Council of Chief State School Officers, formative assessment is the “planned, ongoing process used by all students and teachers during learning and teaching to elicit and use evidence of student learning to improve student understanding of intended disciplinary learning outcomes and support students to become self-directed learners.”

Ultimately, in the classroom, a teacher’s instructional action that is framed by a learning objective, skill, concept, or standard that invites students to demonstrate progress or mastery toward that established goal is considered formative assessment. This invites the notion that countless teacher and student interactions can be designated as an assessment tool. But what actually makes formative assessment one of the most important tools in an educator’s instructional practice?…Read More

Latest NWEA Research Shows K12 Educational Gaps Still Wide, but Show Signs of Stabilizing

PORTLAND, Ore., Dec. 22, 2021 /PRNewswire/ —  NWEA — a not-for-profit, research and educational services provider serving K-12 students — today released  new research that illustrates the scale and disproportionate nature of the disruption in student learning resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. The research,  Learning during COVID-19: An update on student achievement and growth at the start of the 2021-22 school year, is the third in a series of research briefs by NWEA focused on understanding how the pandemic has affected student reading and mathematics outcomes.

The research examined   MAP Growth assessment scores from six million U.S. public school students in grades 3-8 from fall 2021 compared to students in the same grade in fall of 2019, the last quarter unaffected by COVID-19. The research found evidence of significant levels of unfinished learning, particularly in math, however, gaps between current achievement and pre-pandemic achievement have not increased since the end of 2020-21, which may indicate the impacts of the pandemic are stabilizing. 

Key findings include: …Read More

Texas Education Agency Approves FEV Tutor as a Full-Service Provider in New Statewide High-Impact Tutoring Initiative

WOBURN, Mass. – Sept. 7, 2021 – The Texas Education Agency (TEA) has approved FEV Tutor to be a full-service member of the state’s new Vetted Texas Tutoring Corps (VTTC). The corps is an initiative aimed at accelerating student learning through high-impact tutoring. The TEA vetted all VTTC members to ensure they have the research-based criteria for high-impact tutoring. The agency also confirmed that the VTTC providers can help districts meet House Bill (HB) 4545’s requirements for supplemental accelerated instruction. Local education agencies (LEAs) may use local ESSER funding to obtain these tutoring programs.

The TEA-approved providers include both full-service and partial-service providers. Full-service VTTC members, like FEV Tutor, will provide end-to-end services, including instructional materials, tutoring platforms and trained tutors.

“We are excited to have been chosen to support the Texas Education Agency’s and Texas legislature’s commitment to providing scaled high-impact tutoring to the state’s K-12 community,” said Ryan Patenaude, Sr. Vice President and Co-Founder of FEV Tutor. “We believe that TEA’s high-impact tutoring initiative has the potential to make a true difference in the lives of students throughout Texas. Our mission is to make a social impact through K-12 education, and we’re doubling down on our commitment to the state of Texas and our strategic K-12 LEA, charter and ESC partners.”…Read More