Successful remote learning requires a whole new system

The transition to remote learning due to the coronavirus pandemic has significantly shifted how United Schools Network (USN) plans and delivers educational experiences to its students. We've outlined our remote learning system—and it is helpful to think of it as a system—in our Education Plan. As soon as that document was created, and the new system was outlined, we immediately started thinking about how to improve it.

Seven Early Lessons about Shifting Education during a Crisis

Once we at the United Schools Network learned about Governor DeWine’s school closure order on the afternoon of March 12, the pivot to remote learning began immediately. The first thing we did was create a COVID-19 Task Force in order to start planning for the initial three-week closure. While those plans were quickly implemented, we’ve now transitioned to creating longer term plans that address learning needs as Ohio schools will remain physically closed to May 1 and possibly beyond.

This limited (hopefully) blog series is our attempt to share what we’re learning during the pandemic. We’ve outlined seven early lessons in this post, which are focused on setting a network or district up for success throughout the closure

Slow Down to Speed Up

The methods of improvement science are often counterintuitive at first glance (which is probably why I love the approach!). Take the title of this blog post for instance - Slow Down to Speed Up. When we launch an improvement project with a school, very early on in the project I display this quote from Albert Einstein on a slide -"If I only had one hour to save the world, I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and only five minutes finding the solution." - and ask participants what they think it means. To me, what Einstein is getting at is that it is well worth the time investment to deeply understand a problem before diving headlong into solutions.

Getting Better: Vive La France!

Not long ago, in late October, the National Assessment Governing Board released the results of the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Generally speaking, the results were met with disappointment among those in the education sector, with the exception of a few laudable bright spots: D.C. and Mississippi. Approximately one month later, the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) announced the results of their 2018 study, which evoked a similar word as the NAEP results: disappointing. American students, as compared to American students of yesteryear and present-day students around the world, have stagnated.

Why Evidence-Based Practices Don’t Work: Part I

To be clear, I am in favor of building a strong education R & D sector. However, it’s important to acknowledge the serious shortcomings of the current system. It is because of this current state that I am arguing that evidence-based practices don’t work.

I’m making two claims.

Claim #1: The current evidence-base in education research is extremely thin at best and completely misleading at worse.
Claim #2: By their very design, studies that result in evidence-based practices discount externalities instead of solving for them.

Probably Wrong, Definitely Incomplete

On its face, probably wrong, definitely incomplete doesn’t inspire confidence. However, we put this phrase in the footer of almost all of the documents we create at School Performance Institute (SPI) to remind us of its value as a core ethos of our improvement work. When people first see this phrase they typically have a reaction something like, “Wow, that doesn’t inspire confidence!”

We disagree.

Have you seen a high-performing, high-poverty school in action?

Like most people working in high-poverty schools, I had never seen a high-performing school serving similar students in action. Think about that for a moment. In the vast majority of struggling schools, it is unlikely the people that work there have ever experienced organizational-level success.