With the right data, teachers, leaders, and families can better advocate for the right supports to ensure that students experience more creative learning opportunities
Data can be used by stakeholders to understand how and to what extent disciplinary practices are occurring within their school or district, and further advocate for equitable practices for students.
Edtech plays a critical role in promoting the quality of virtual and hybrid learning. Leaders must capture and reflect on their edtech tools’ ability to drive quality learning.
Leaders of virtual and hybrid programs can use this checklist to audit their program’s edtech stacks. This tool is designed to produce actionable insights about where edtech products support overall virtual and hybrid program quality. Additional information about the drivers of virtual and hybrid program quality can be accessed in The Learning Accelerator (TLA)’s report, Driving Quality in Virtual & Remote Learning.
We know the importance of learning experiences that happen beyond the confines of a traditional classroom. But how might federal policy support such experiences to prepare young people for life after high school? That’s where work-based learning comes in – a strategy designed to help students connect what they learn in the classroom with what is expected in the workplace by integrating learning with real-world applications in partnership with industry professionals.
While momentum is growing at the local and state levels to design and implement PK-12 through workforce pathways to support work-based learning, there is still much work to be done in creating truly supportive policy environments. This set of federal policy recommendations outlines how enabling policies could further incentivize and focus increased resources on pathways and work-based learning.
Edtech tools can serve as a channel to involve families in their students’ lives, strengthen the home-school connection, and provide access to teachers for better communication. School leaders should seek to gather family feedback to ensure all stakeholders are aware of these designated tools and their purpose, can access them seamlessly from any device and in their home language, and possess the technical skills necessary to navigate them.
The Hilltown Cooperative Charter Public School was founded in 1995 as Massachusetts
Public Charter School. Inspired by the pre-schools of Reggio Emilia in Italy, their educational approach is grounded in knowledge of children’s development and in a commitment to teaching creative, critical thinking skills, and strong basic skills to students in kindergarten through eighth grade.
Hilltown Cooperative Charter Public School created a survey using Google Forms to learn more about how families were receiving information about the school’s events, announcements, and opportunities to be involved. The survey included demographic information so the staff could disaggregate the data and determine whether any trends were apparent within specific subgroups of their school community.
Professional development can be a powerful driver for edtech integration. Collecting and analyzing data around teachers’ technology needs can help ensure that learning opportunities are relevant and targeted.
By utilizing and applying ideas and steps from instructional design, teachers can create better learning experiences that lead students toward rigorous application and more meaningful outcomes.
