Accelerate to Create Learning Leaps

 

“You have been stretched. You have been pulled. You have been through the wringer, tested, and tested again. You probably feel like a rubber band, holding it together but under a lot of tension. But the problem with the rubber band analogy is this: They either break or they go back to their former shape. Neither are good options for you, your family, or your students.”1

We know that we must continue to improve our instructional practices and we know that we cannot remediate our way into greatness. Consider for a moment the amount of time, energy, and financial resources that schools have put into remediation. Yet, despite that investment, students continue to lag academically, and educators gameplay accountability by focusing the greatest remediation efforts on students who are scoring just below the proficiency level, intuitively knowing that remediation simply does not pay big dividends. Why then, in the midst of one of the greatest academic challenges ever faced, would we put significant energy and resources back into something that just does not meet the needs of most students, students who have been denied significant instructional time over the course of the three school years impacted by the pandemic?

In Carteret County Public Schools, we are working hard on improving Tier 1 or Core Instruction through acceleration. The book, "Rebound: A Playbook for Rebuilding Agency, Accelerating Learning Recovery, and Rethinking Schools," by Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, Dominique Smith, and John Hattie is one of our touchstone texts and is guiding our work. It has been said, “you can’t remediate yourself out of a faulty core.” Instead of focusing on lost learning opportunities, achievement gaps, and pulling out remediation strategies that have had limited effect, CCPS is accelerating learning and creating opportunities for learning leaps by focusing on high-yield strategies to improve literacy in every classroom and every subject area.

An important step in this journey has been immersing district leaders in the work of Dr. Donyall Dickey, who stated, “Our children cannot afford to be subject to haphazard instruction.”2 In equipping teachers with strategies, instead of programs, we have seen classroom instruction and student success surge forward. This focus must permeate the system, from the Superintendent sharing #WordPartsWeekly with Board Members and Administrators (and via Twitter with the world), to actually witnessing high yield strategies in action in each classroom. The “talk must be walked.” 

Key and central to accelerating learning is high-quality, focused professional development and authentic buy-in from every educator. State assessment scores from 2020-2021 indicate that the school system is on the right path. The work is not easy, but we know, “all students can and will perform at levels beyond common expectations when exposed consistently to high-quality, targeted instruction planned and delivered by teachers who genuinely believe in students’ innate ability to achieve.”2  Acceleration, not remediation is key.

1 - Fisher, D., Frey, N., Smith, D. & Hattie, J. (2021). Rebound: A Playbook for Rebuilding Agency, Accelerating Learning Recovery, and Rethinking Schools. Corwin. 

2 - Dickey, D.D. (2020). The Integrated Approach to Student Achievement. Educational Epiphany