Education NC, June 29, 2020, by Jessica Struhs, Troy Smith, Beth Clifford, Preston Faulk and Cole Smith

This data summary analyzes trends in the NC District Responses to COVID-19 School Closures database completed on June 5, 2020, which is an update of the database first published on April 23, 2020. In developing the database, researchers first searched for districts’ publicly posted distance learning plans on district and school websites and social media pages. As a follow-up to the initial research, EdNC sent a survey to North Carolina school districts in an effort to fill in gaps and gain context for district and school responses. This database thus reflects publicly posted distance learning plans as well as districts’ self-reported responses to COVID-19 school closures. Note that the database shows what districts report they are doing, but it may not reflect actual implementation.

In an effort to illuminate statewide trends and explore equity gaps among North Carolina districts’ responses to COVID-19 school closures, the Public Impact data team broke out each indicator in the database along seven district characteristics, as shown in the table below: percentage of students of color, district wealth, district size, percentage of students receiving free and reduced-price lunch, county computer and internet access, percentage of students who are in special education, and percentage of students who are English language learners. Read more…

Education NC, June 29, 2020, by Molly Osborne, Jessica Struhs, Troy Smith and Beth Clifford

In March 2020, the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) released “District Responses to COVID-19,” an online database tracking how some of the nation’s largest public school districts have shifted instruction, student support, and organizational operations in response to COVID-19 school closures. CRPE continues to update the database on a regular basis as district plans shift and evolve.

In April, EdNC and researchers from Chapel Hill-based Public Impact joined forces to create a North Carolina version of this database to provide a similar set of information for state leaders, district leaders, school leaders, and the public. We published this initial database on April 23, 2020.

In alignment with CRPE’s national database, the North Carolina database outlined districts’ responses to COVID-19 according to a series of standard indicators, covering curriculum, instruction, progress monitoring, centralization, learning time, and technology. For more on the initial database, read this article.

Since April 23, both district plans and CRPE’s national database have evolved. To reflect those changes, EdNC and Public Impact again joined forces to update the North Carolina database, resulting in the second iteration of NC District Responses to COVID-19 School Closures. Read the full article…

Education Week, February 25, 2020, by Matt Lieberman

A growing body of research provides evidence that schools can benefit from rethinking their schedules, whether by pushing the start time to later in the day, eliminating one day a week, or otherwise reshuffling how students and teachers spend their time together.

Before districts and schools can pull the trigger on a massive change, though, they’re likely to face a wide variety of obstacles and barriers. Some of them are merely a byproduct of well-established norms and traditions around schooling, including an outdated agrarian calendar. Others reflect deeper insecurities among groups of people with a stake in the success of a school’s approach.

Education Week talked to school leaders who have attempted with varying degrees of success to rethink schedules, and to advocates and organizations that work with schools on facilitating significant change. Barriers to those changes tend to fall in the following six categories:

Staff and support staff

Teachers approach planning their lessons by filling the available time they have. If that amount of time changes, teachers might balk at having to come up with a new approach to covering the material. A schedule change can be even stickier if it substantially changes teachers’ hours or responsibilities, which could mean a lengthy renegotiation of a teachers’ union contract and a testy battle over a wide range of specifics.

Meanwhile, support staff, from sanitation and culinary workers to bus drivers and crossing guards, can feel the effects of a schedule change—and if those workers aren’t full-time employees, a small shift in their hours and duties can make a major difference in their well-being.

Though teacher objections are an obstacle, the conditions in which most teachers work are inherently hostile to innovation, argues Bryan Hassel, the co-president of Public Impact, a nonprofit working with school districts to help them make better use of time. He advocates more collaboration to cut down on waste d time and redundancy during the school day.

“If the teachers on the team see themselves as a team working together with these 100 kids, … there’s much more of a chance to say, ‘I can specialize in what I do best; together we’ll do better than we would at each time by ourselves,’ ” Hassel said. Read the full article…

Education NC, November 19, 2019, by Emily Ayscue Hassel and Bryan C. Hassel

Digital learning has gotten a bad rap, in some cases reasonably so, especially for the lack of results with disadvantaged learners. Meanwhile, alarms are sounding about the rise of online screen time co-timed with surges in anxiety, depression, suicide and insomnia among teens and young adults, here and abroad. While providers entice students with more game-like digital learning — possibly an extra blow to students’ mental health — parents are paying consultants substantial sums to reverse screen addiction.

Yet investment continues in online learning and digital tools. (Note: Neither Public Impact nor the authors invest in or provide digital learning tools.) That’s partly because there’s potential profit to be made, but there’s also a potential benefit for students: Digital tools can help meet each student’s learning needs, especially important for those whose needs are poorly met in traditional, one-size-fits-all classrooms and those who need non-traditional hours for learning.  Read the full column…

Chalkbeat, November 1, 2019, by Stephanie Wang

When Indianapolis Public Schools “restarted” chronically struggling schools, students who stayed under the new management sometimes made smaller gains on tests compared to their classmates who left, a new study finds.

Over time, however, students at the restarted schools closed some of the gaps.

The study by Public Impact, an education consulting group based in North Carolina, honed in on four elementary schools where IPS contracts with outside or charter operators as a turnaround strategy. It compared students who stayed through the overhauls to those who transferred to other schools. Read the full article…

Education Next, October 22, 2019, by Emily Ayscue Hassel and Bryan Hassel

A charismatic charter network leader reminded us recently of his high-poverty schools’ laudable learning results. His secret sauce? Wooing the best teachers and principals away from surrounding districts.

We call this a “Talent Hog” strategy, and its prevalence explains, in part, why reforms that succeed in some schools fail at scale—leaving cities, states, and their children, back where they started. There is a better way, but it requires a policy solution.

For the record, this leader isn’t alone; many districts boast of the same strategy. Sometimes, we’ve even helped them plan and execute it. After all, teacher and principal quality are the top two factors within schools’ control that affect learning outcomes. New reforms—curricula, teaching methods, professional development, technology, governance, and so on—succeed or fail based on how well educators actually use them. Read the full column…