Education Week - October 24, 2012 - Special Report - S14

EVALUATING WHAT WORKS: SCHOOL MODELS

REALITY FUELS INNOVATION
KIPP Empower embraces blended learning to pursue its mission in tough budget times BY IAN QUILLEN

T

Los Angeles

he original blueprint for the kipp Empower Academy read something like this: five teachers per grade; 100 students per grade; very few classroom computers. But when a plummeting economy led to the elimination in 2009 of California state funding that rewarded elementary schools for keeping their class sizes at around 20 students or fewer, founding Principal Mike Kerr felt forced to shift in a different direction to preserve the central principle of small-group instruction in his not-yet-opened K-2 charter elementary school in southern Los Angeles. “In essence, we lost about $115,000 in one swoop with losing class-sizereduction funding,” said Mr. Kerr. He added that additional cuts resulting from the ongoing financial crisis had cost the school an additional $85,000 for a total of $200,000, roughly the equivalent of three teacher salaries. “We discussed whether blended learning could be a vehicle to allow us to first and foremost preserve the small-group instruction and see how we could make that happen.” What resulted was the first school to embrace a fully blended learning model in the Knowledge Is Power Program, or kipp, charter school network, a 125-school organization that is among the largest and best-known charter operators in the nation. The focus of the nonprofit network since the organization’s inception in 1994 has been on creating schools capable of preparing students from underprivileged areas to gain admission to college, through five organizational principles: high expectations, parental and student choice and commitment, more time spent learning and studying, leadership autonomy, and a focus on achievement results. The early success of kipp Empower—its 100 percent teacher-retention rate through its third year of operation, and its work at the K-2 level, an age group often thought to be too young for the blended rotational model of schooling—could potentially lead to imitators throughout the network, especially at more recently founded schools. In a blended rotational model,

students in a classroom move between stations that include working online on classroom computers, as well as working face-to-face with teachers or paraprofessionals. Mr. Kerr, who also utilized blended learning to a lesser degree when he served for five years as founding principal of the Achievement First Crown Heights Elementary Charter School in New York City, acknowledges that, in today’s budget climate, his current school’s success is only possible through the blended model. Yet he takes every opportunity to also express caution about the larger movement for blended learning. “We’re skeptics here, and we’re not folks who are toeing the party line for blended learning,” said Mr. Kerr, whose school has used adaptive software to enable a more affordable instructional model, in which four teachers are assigned per grade of 110 students, down from the originally proposed 5-to-100 ratio. A case study from the Austin, Texas-based Michael & Susan Dell Foundation estimated a savings of $965 per student gained through the reimagined model for the 2011-12 school year. “I think everyone is looking for the shortcut and looking for that quick fix, and there is never going to be a shortcut or a quick fix in education,” Mr. Kerr said. “It’s always going to come down to hard work, trying to be smart, and trying to do what’s best for kids.”

LAPTOP LESSONS
Even some of his own teaching staff at first feared that using adaptivelearning software would amount to babysitting, rather than productive supplemental work. But Mr. Kerr insisted that the approach can yield a productive experience even for entering pupils as young as age 4 or 5, provided the model is deliberate and not too time consuming. At kipp Empower, that model calls for kindergartners to spend roughly 11 percent of their extended, 8½-hour school day working on reading or math exercises on a laptop computer. The school has phased in a new grade

RESULTS
While KIPP Empower Academy administrators and teachers have generally been pleased with the results of their rotational blended learning model, it’s hard to pin down the impact of that model alone on student achievement. Educators at the school also have expressed some frustration that few software programs exist yet for pupils in grades K-2 that are capable of mirroring the arc of the face-to-face math and English/language arts curriculum. The overall results have been positive, however, with encouraging results on the Strategic Teaching and Evaluation of Progress, or STEP, literacy test, and the Measure of Academic Progress, or MAP, test, during the school’s first year. And the school has become one of the KIPP network’s most popular for other current and future school leaders to visit and observe.

SOURCE: Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, KIPP

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S14

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EDUCATION WEEK: EVALUATING WHAT WORKS IN BLENDED LEARNING > www.edweek.org/go/elearning-blended

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OCTOBER 24, 2012


http://www.edweek.org/go/elearning-blended

Education Week - October 24, 2012 - Special Report

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - October 24, 2012 - Special Report

Education Week - October 24, 2012
‘Smart Pills’ Promising, Problematic
At S.C. School, Behavior Is One of the Basics
Obama Finding Teacher Support Secure, if Tepid
Focus On: Curriculum: Calif. Laws Shift Gears on Algebra, Textbooks
Table of Contents
News in Brief
Report Roundup
‘Value Added’ Use at Secondary Level Questioned
National Board Seeks to Revive Impact on Profession
Industry & Innovation
Blogs of the Week
Debates Push Fate of NCLB Waivers to Fore
Policy Menu Varies in State School Board Elections
Policy Brief
The Election: Debating Education
Genevieve LaFleur & Scott Poland: Schools Can Be the Difference in Preventing Suicide
Kenneth Wesson: From STEM to ST2REAM: Reassembling Our Disaggregated Curriculum
Letters
Top School Jobs Recruitment Marketplace
Erica Frankenberg & Gary Orfield: Diversity or Resegregation? Why Suburban Schools Need a Plan
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