Education Week - April 13, 2022 - 22

taxing. And in a lot of other places, the complexity is
even higher.
Should we accept that we're in a pandemic and
that such fatigue (and the interruptions to normal
timelines that follow) are a normal response? Or
should we be trying to change that?
At a high level, we should try to get back on the
highway. But it's hard to do it by just putting more
pressure on teachers who are trying to deal with so much.
I hope, I believe, that next school year might be the
first truly normal school year we've had since [2018-19].
But I think there is space for individual students,
families, and teachers to take action. Khan Academy is
out there. You don't have to wait for somebody to get it
for you. If students are able to put in even 45 minutes
a week, we see really good efficacy studies. We're
talking about kids growing 30 to 40 percent more than
expected.
If you're a school or a district that feels ready, we
also have our Khan for Districts offering where we
can go do support and training with the teachers
and give districts dashboards so they can better
understand what's going on.
I think that's going to be especially important
because traditional testing regimes have been broken.
And it's unclear what they're going to go back to.
What might assessment and accountability look
like in the near term?
We have this partnership with [nonprofit assessment
organization] NWEA that I believe is the best of both
worlds. Where you have these interim assessments,
and then it informs the personalized practice, and
you as a district or principal or teacher get a roll-up of
how kids are performing, and you get to validate that
against a very psychometrically valid assessment like
MAP Growth. That's what I would be doing if I was a
superintendent or chief academic officer.
Let me play devil's advocate. Kids and families
and educators have endured lots of trauma
during the pandemic. Instead of doubling down
on this idea of catching kids up based on where
the standards say they should be, why not
re-orient the system to more of a care-based
approach focused on giving people the time and
space to heal?
I don't think they have to be in tension with each other.
Our ideal implementation model is to have the
students go on the platform and the platform meets
them where they are. They practice in their zone of
proximal development. But it's keeping them engaged
where they need to be, so they can grow.
That actually is nurturing, versus I'm just going to
show you 6th grade material because you happen to
be 11, even though you forgot half of your 4th and 5th
grade material. There's a way where you can meet
them where they are, it doesn't feel like a pressurecooker
type of situation, and then they can accelerate
into where they need to go.
But you do need to do something. People talk about
a K-shaped recovery in the economy. I think it's a more
dramatic K-shaped situation when it comes to education.
My kids have learned just fine over the pandemic. The
kids at Khan Lab School have learned just fine. While a lot
of kids in large urban school districts, kids in poverty, kids
who didn't have the right supports, not only have they not
progressed, they've lost a grade level or two.
I don't think it's reasonable to just accept that as OK.
Are schools and districts using Khan Academy
the same ways they did pre-pandemic?
Before the pandemic, we would go to districts
and say look, here's the efficacy studies, here's
the implementation models. And they would say,
" Look, this all makes sense. But for us to adopt it as
a mainstream strategic thing, we have to have better
support, better training, we have to have districtlevel
dashboards, integrate with our assessments. "
And so that's when we started the Khan for Districts
offering, a few months before the pandemic hit. It's a
deeper use case than we have historically had, and it is
growing pretty dramatically.
Another use case that you could say maybe the pandemic
catalyzed is I've always been interested in how work on
Khan Academy can translate into real credit. I'll just pick
college algebra, because that really is the leverage point
where most people aren't able to reach their goals. Even the
motivated kids, the kids who graduate from high school
and are going to college, 70 percent of them have to take
remedial math.
We started a pilot with Howard University. It's
very small right now, five classrooms. But there's no
reason it couldn't scale to 5,000 classrooms. Where
the [high school] students are taking a mastery-based,
personalized college algebra course on Khan Academy
called Howard College Algebra. And if they get mastery
in the Khan Academy course, they're going to get
transferable college credits from Howard University.
It's stuff like that I'm pretty excited about as part of
the arsenal to help solve a lot of the damage that's been
done the last several years.
Let's talk for a second about the nuts and
bolts of how to actually teach math. I had the
chance to talk recently with the president of the
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.
She was hesitant about schools turning to
software to help students catch up. But she was
excited about new tools that allow students to
collaborate and show their thinking to the entire
class. Does that make sense to you?
I don't think it's an either-or. At Khan Lab School, the
kids use a lot of Khan Academy to get that practice in, get
that feedback, make sure they're seeing a lot of different
22 | EDUCATION WEEK | April 13, 2022 | www.edweek.org
http://www.edweek.org
Education Week - April 13, 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - April 13, 2022
