Welcome to our Summer Newsletter – as is our custom, we’re sharing what we see on the school front lines --in classrooms, the principal’s office and in district administrative suites. This August there are two things we think deserve attention.

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More screen-based instruction as the remedy for "learning loss"? We don’t think so….

Responding to last year’s troubling NAEP scores, i.e., the “nation’s report card”, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said, “Let’s be very clear: the data prior to the pandemic did not reflect an education system that was on the right track. The pandemic simply made that worse. It took poor performance – and dropped it down even further.” Cardona was referring to the fact that after a decade of flat achievement, test scores have fallen even more and a crusade has begun to help school children recover from COVID “learning loss” (referring to a loss of knowledge and/or skills, or a “reversal in academic progress”, most commonly due to an extended interruption in a student’s education –summer vacation, illness, absences, etc.)

In response, tens of billions in federal aid began its flow to our schools to combat learning loss. The largest chunk of the federal largess, $122 billion that was included in the American Rescue Plan signed by President Joe Biden in March 2021, requires that schools put at least 20% toward battling that “learning loss”. Schools need to spend most of their recovery funds by 2024, and summer is the main buying season, so new tools can be delivered in time for school to start. We ask, who’s set to benefit from that?

An armada of companies are now pressing the case that schools should spend the money on their products. In particular, as reported by Pro Publica, the ed tech industry is not only poised to benefit from the surge in federal funding but also enjoyed a huge wave of private funding as the federal tap opened: The annual total of venture capital investments in ed tech companies rose from $5.4 billion to $16.8 billion between 2019 and 2021. Firms that track such investments also predict that global edtech venture capital will nearly triple over the next decade. (chart below)

We certainly agree with an obligation to respond to genuine learning loss, but we’re hoping that educators keep their eyes on the gigantic irony herein: a host of studies showed the negative impact of increased school-based screen time during COVID and that the extent of learning loss was closely correlated to the amount of time that students had spent doing remote learning, rather than receiving direct instruction. And now companies are offering us more screen-based instruction as the remedy.

Although we’re in support of limited and very careful investment in on-line learning, what we recommend more strongly is to focus on and buck up district “impact solutions”, among others intensive tutoring, focused skill review, counseling support, and extended-day and extended year programming. Building-based teams and community partners should engage in granular, wrap-around planning and care coordination which address a full range of key aspects, most critically literacy and “reading recovery”, emotional and physical wellness, varied instructional strategies in content areas, establishing homework centers, and providing one-on-one check-in’s and mentoring and coaching beyond school hours.

These are practices which have always made a difference in addressing gaps in student learning, and importantly, bring an essential, high-touch element which simply cannot be replaced. Spend the “learning loss” funds close to home in ways that address the core issues.

(For support in planning and implementing “impact solutions”, contact us here at ERC)

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Take On the 800-pound Gorilla of Teacher Evaluation – But don’t rush out for a new system!

Almost everywhere we go these days we find school administrators groaning under the weight of cumbersome evaluation procedures. Its difficult to find many who feel that that work is making a significant difference in their school, that their investment pays big dividends in supporting teachers and improving instruction. And now its back in the news.

Some history. Teacher evaluation reform during the late 2010s was one of the fastest and most widespread education policy changes in recent history. Thanks mostly to Race to the Top and ESEA “waivers,” over a period of about 10 years, the vast majority of the nation’s school districts installed new teacher evaluation systems. We were a part of that ground level work in a dozen school districts. Conceived in what must be acknowledged as a climate of teacher mistrust, the mandate required a vast expenditure of time to learn and adopt new and more stringent procedures. Evaluation methodologies began to include expanded rating categories and incorporating multiple measures, some based on student outcomes – i.e., testing results.

Schools have now been at that work for a decade, and regrettably, two visible outcomes we encounter are a burdening of school administrators that distracts them from other critical work, and a general disbelief among educators that the whole process really makes a difference. It’s one of the 800-pound gorillas that we’ve come to live with in education. In most schools it’s not something that teachers complain about. The unspoken trade-off seems to be, “I don’t really get much support for my actual teaching, but evaluation is not something I have to pay a lot of attention to or worry about”. Not what we’d like to hear or believe but an accurate assessment of how things stand in too many schools.

But a major new report issued in April 2023 on the impact of teacher evaluation reform has garnered attention. The research on student outcomes with data from 44 states comes from the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Annenberg Institute at Brown University and offers a strong analysis of multiple locations that finds no aggregate effect of the new systems and that national evaluation reform has not been successful in improving measurable student outcomes. [Bleiberg, Brunner, Harbatkin, Kraft & Springer.]

That report dovetails with what we’re seeing on the ground-- that the implementation, the actual day-to-day practices, seldom provides the payoffs we’d want: familiarity with over-all teacher practices, meaningful support and incentives, rating systems that work, and improved teaching. In a nutshell, evaluation frameworks and procedures are too top-heavy and time consuming, and don’t allow for timely dialogue, instructional intimacy, or support a growth mindset.

But whether provoked by the report or attempting to get more results from the process, many districts are suddenly looking to move to yet another new evaluation framework. We’ve even heard of two districts close to each other where one is giving up on a system while the nearby district wants to adopt it.

Stop! Pay attention to the report! There is NO evidence that one particular or different approach to evaluations would have changed the results. We did not somehow “miss” the right approach or framework. It’s in the implementation and conditions. But many districts are on a hunt for yet another teacher evaluation system despite the fact that they’re expensive, they take lots of time to understand and implement, as well as to negotiate with teacher associations. And the usual suspects who monetized teacher evaluation a decade ago are making a comeback, with new logos and Zoom modules, and school districts are looking to buy.

We have a better idea and its taking root. Our approach has become to bring school leaders and teachers together. The task is to collaboratively choose two, perhaps three, areas to focus on, areas that are likely to support growth and achievement, and using frequent mini-observations and conversations, develop mutual expertise in those areas. Formative assessment, lesson planning, managing classroom environment, student engagement, the use of multiple strategies -these and others all hold the potential to make teachers more successful in engaging and growing young people in their intellectual work.

This doesn’t mean that other elements of an evaluation framework don’t matter. They have their place. But regular feedback and conversation among administrators and teachers on a few key agreed-upon areas can foster improvement, build a culture of growth and trust, and give teacher support and evaluation the boost it needs. It’s a simple approach that makes better use of time, energy and wisdom in all regards. Its careful work, to be sure, and requires good decision making, smart public engagement, and a strategic road map.

We’re doing more and more in this arena and would love to share our methods and coaching support if your school would like to get to the heart of the work. Let us know if you’d like more information.

Larry Myatt Wayne Ogden