Next Up Blog

With most Nevada students missing out on learning significant amounts of their grade-level content this school year, how can standardized testing hold the most useful value next year, and beyond?  

And if some real amount of rolling school closures are likely next school year and beyond, as many experts predict, are our present systems for measuring student learning the tools we need?

Since Governor Sisolak announced that all K-12 schools in Nevada would be closed beginning March 16, Nevada school districts and public charter schools have undertaken widely-varying distance learning plans, with varying degrees of success. So have private schools.

According to the latest national survey by Education Week, students are on average receiving three hours of instruction per day in recent weeks, while students in higher-poverty schools receive closer to two. The same survey of teachers found that one in four students have been “essentially truant,” not participating in distance learning plans. 

Whatever bad news this narrative holds for student learning seems far worse when viewed through a prism of student equity.  Prior to this crisis, half of Nevada’s eighth-grade students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches through the National School Lunch program scored “Below Basic” – the lowest score given on the National Assessment of Educational Progress – in math, and 40 forty percent did so in reading. Both rates are about twice those of their classmates who are not eligible for the program. 

With standardized testing having been mostly abandoned for this school year, how can we track progress and equity next year? U.S. Secretary of Education DeVos announced in late March that her agency was granting waivers from federal standardized testing requirements for the 2019-20 school year for states unable to provide the assessments due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevada quickly applied for, and received, such a waiver.

So what should standardized testing look like next year?  States’ accountability plans, including Nevada’s, will need to be substantially adjusted if they are to remain meaningful in the post-COVID landscape.

Some federal officials have suggested states should administer standardized tests twice next year – at the beginning and end of the school year – to more precisely track academic growth.

This approach seems problematic for several reasons. The financial costs of the additional testing would sap crucial education dollars at the worst possible time as tax revenue projections remain dire. Such a plan would also carry steep educational costs in lost instructional time.

And if Nevada were to administer our Smarter Balanced Assessments this fall, given that it generally has taken some five months after students take the test before results are posted for families and schools to see, how useful would these results be to support student learning?

A more useful approach would be to rely on varied, valid measures of the academic growth of individual students over time, ensuring that each assessment adheres to consistent guidelines for inclusion and fidelity. One crucial lesson states learned in their transition from the pre-No Child Left Behind era was that for schooling to be equitable for all students, all students must be included in accountability systems, so that every child’s test scores matter equally (appropriate assessment accommodations for learners with special needs are also essential).

A range of such growth measures are already being utilized in Nevada schools.  A year ago, the Clark County School District expanded its administrations of the NWEA MAP growth assessments for grades K-8.  Various other norm- and criterion-referenced assessments from different publishers, when administered to all students according to prescribed guidelines, can be used to reliably produce valid measures of the academic growth of individual students over time, while also providing timely, actionable information on student learning to help teachers guide interventions and supports.

Varied, valid measures of student growth may well represent the most essential element of school accountability in the post-COVID education landscape. Students will arrive at the first day of school next year, whenever that occurs, with wider disparities in grade-level content mastery than ever.  Educators broadly expect they will be confronting a substantially more severe “summer slide” of learning loss as a result of pandemic. 

Given our new educational realities, measuring and supporting academic growth for all students will be more important when schools return than ever before. Our school accountability systems should be adjusted to reflect this brave new landscape.

Two of the nation’s most successful charter networks, Summit Public Schools and Success Academy, have taken the school closures due to COVID-19 and turned it into an opportunity to support students, teachers, and families, with both strategies that already existed in the school, and new approaches. As we move forward with planning the upcoming school year, reviewing what some of the nation’s most exemplary schools offered and had success with this spring is an important aspect of planning.

Summit Public Schools, which consist of 11 schools in the California Bay Area and Washington’s Puget Sound, have experienced success because the schools’ existing model was relatively easily adapted for distance learning. In 2013, Summit implemented a purposeful blended-learning model that equipped their students with tools to succeed and focused on six core aspects of student learning. One of Summit’s six core aspects of student learning is personalized-learning time. This personalized-learning time is online and is facilitated by the Summit-developed Personalized Learning Plan. This tool allows teachers, students, and parents to work together. It also offers the crucial element of immediate feedback, which students receive and use to advance their learning without delay. 

The personalized-learning plans include the use of technology. Summit’s purposeful use of technology has created an environment where the learning that takes place is both self-paced and self-directed, and includes a teacher facilitating the learning.

In a recent blog post for the Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), McKittrick discussed how Summit Atlas, in West Seattle, has taken its personalized learning one step further by offering families four different paths for their child’s education during distance learning. These paths allow students options ranging from taking a pause to accelerating learning during this time. McKittrick and her son chose the plan that allows them to stay on track. This plan has her son attending school from 8:20am-3:20pm.

Summit Atlas holds daily synchronous instruction, and also uses face-to-face time to have mentor teachers check-in with students regarding anything that may be hindering learning, such as a lack of food or other resources. Diane Tavenner explains the value of the mentor in her book, Prepared What Kids Need for a Fulfilled Life, “Each mentor has an individual relationship with each mentee, but they also lead a group that spends lots of time together. They are essentially the nuclear family for each student in the Summit community. We are very careful in selecting  groups that are heterogeneous, balanced by gender, race, academic skill, and economic background.”

This face-to-face time allows teachers to discuss assignments with students and offer valuable feedback. Teachers hold regular face-to-face meetings with parents as well. These check-ins with students and families are held multiple times throughout each day. During the synchronous instruction time, students get the opportunity to interact with each other, which is beneficial for the student to continue to develop social-emotional skills. 

Another of the nation’s most celebrated charter school networks, Success Academy Charter Schools, which operates 45 charter schools in New York, is holding high expectations for their staff and students. Success Academy is using this period of remote learning to reorganize teacher roles. CRPE’s Brian Wilson explains here that, “one teacher in each grade—the most engaging and inspiring, the clearest, perhaps the funniest—will be selected to deliver the lessons via video calls in each subject area to all students in the grade.” 

The idea of reorganizing teacher roles in order to allow for more students to be impacted by one teacher is not a new idea. Emily Ayscue Hassel and Bryan C. Hassel explained here that, “Teacher effectiveness has the largest impact of school effects on student learning…” If teacher effectiveness has the largest impact, and teachers are in short supply, it makes sense to take the most effective teacher and have that teacher instructing larger groups. This allows the reach of one effective teacher to grow. Instead of sticking with the teacher/student combinations that were assigned at the start of the brick-and-mortar school year, all students now have the ability to experience being taught by highly-effective teachers.

The other teachers that are not instructing large groups of students still have important roles to fill. At Success these teachers are able focus on student-created content. This allows them to work one-on-one with students that need help understanding concepts being taught and also provide valuable feedback in a smaller setting. The teachers work together as a team to plan and trouble-shoot. 

Success still maintains reading as its first priority. Elementary students are required to read 15 books a week, and listen to another 15 books each week. Though libraries are currently closed, Success students look to digital titles available online from public libraries. Students are only allowed to listen to books using Audible, Overdrive, and Tumblebooks. 

We don’t know what school will look like next year, but we do know that now is the time to create plans that can provide the highest level of education possible for students during uncertain times. Schools in Nevada, and all over the country, have the opportunity to learn from how other schools responded this spring, and what they offered their students, in order to put in place a plan where every child in Nevada can receive a quality education that prepares them for the future.

CRPE has compiled a database of district responses to COVID-19, including resources the school has offered, feedback that is being given, and if teacher check-ins are happening. This database is an informative resource that CRPE is continually updating. It includes 82 districts that were selected for range in geography and size, serving close to 9 million students.

We are so excited to announce the overall winners and finalists of our very first National Poetry Month youth poetry contest. We are including the winning poem from each group in this post, and we will have all of the finalists’ poems up on our website to read in the days to come.

A huge thank you to the wonderful judges from our poetry contest, Clark County Poet Laureate, Heather Lang-Cassera and Las Vegas native poet Alexsis Nueman. We appreciate the time and attention that they gave to being a judge, and are grateful for the feedback they provided. 

Our winners from each group are (the poems appear below):

Overall winner in Group 1, Malea Nishiyama “Deep Sea Adventure” (Faith Lutheran Academy)

Overall winner in Group 2, Kate Shoraga “When I get my world back” (St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic School)

Overall winner in Group 3, Landon Edwards “When the World Turns Again” (Homeschooled)

 

The finalists are:

Aspiring Poet (Group 1), NN (Nasri Academy for Gifted Children)

Aspiring Poet (Group 2), Isabelle Yucha (Pinecrest Academy Sloan Canyon)

Most Inspiring and Best Use of a Metaphor, Katelyn Rosales (Somerset Skye Canyon)

Best Voice with Purpose, Kelly McCloskey (Bob Miller Middle School)

Best Haiku, AG (Nasri Academy for Gifted Children)

Best use of rhyme, Violet Adams (St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic School)

Best use of rhythm, JF (Nasri Academy for Gifted Children)

Best use of sounds/consonants, OVD (Nasri Academy for Gifted Children)

Best use of imagery, Landon Mageau  (Pinecrest Horizon)

Best use of internal rhyme, AH (Nasri Academy for Gifted Children)

Best use of repetition, Lyric Mahoney (Pinecrest Horizon)

Best use of concrete language, Logan Calhoun (Pinecrest Horizon)

 

Scroll down to read the winning poems! We will have an update out soon with the time of the Facebook Poetry Reading. Look forward to “seeing” you there, and in the meantime, enjoy these poems!

 

Deep Sea Adventure 

Malea Nishiyama

Deep in the sea

I’m on a submarine 

I look for treasure

I’m so happy I could sing! 

 

When I get my world back 

Kate Shoraga

When I get my world back 

I won’t be as blue. 

When I get my world back 

I’ll go somewhere new. 

I’ll go to places, 

New and old. 

I’ll go somewhere different

 Or places untold. 

I’ll go to the mountains 

And look at the view. 

It’s so attractive, 

I’ll snap a picture or two. 

I’ll go to school, 

And get to class. 

I’ll greet my teacher, 

And have fun at last. 

People have died from corona, 

A spreading disease. 

So from now on, 

Cover your cough Please. 

 

 

When the World Turns Again

Landon Edwards

A tragedy struck our world,

No longer does it rotate.

All the people hold their breath,

Anxious and fearful they wait.

We’ve had some time to ourselves

To reflect on who we’ve been.

I decided who I’d seek to be

When the world turns again.

I want to be as Paul and Silas,

And all the saints so long ago.

Who, though opposition tried to stop them,

Kept telling others what they know.

These turned the world upside down,

Oh! What an honor it would be!

If someone said these exact words,

Said these words right to me.

But alas! I have not been faithful

In following my Best Friend.

So I won’t hesitate to share

When the world turns again.

When the panic calms itself,

The person I want to see,

Is the very one who needs my Lord,

So that Christ my Lord can use me.

My message is not popular;

This I knew from the start.

Oftentimes I worry much,

And sinking dread fills my heart.

Soon the world will turn again,

But this time in a different way.

For I’ll be bolder to share my faith,

That Jesus died to take sins away.

We love them. We miss them. We appreciate them. Next week is Teacher Appreciation Week, May 4th – 8th, and we are looking forward to celebrating teachers. This week, of course, will look a little different this year.  Our teachers are doing a remarkable job under difficult conditions and uncertain times. Hearing supportive expressions of appreciation from families like ours really matters to them right now.  

Here is our quick list of ideas to appreciate your teacher:

  1. Have your child draw a picture and/or write a note of appreciation to their teacher. You can snap a quick picture of the drawing and/or note, and email it to brighten your favorite teacher’s day.
  2. Send your teacher a virtual gift card. While it might not feel as personal as picking out a unique gift, it is still a great way for your teacher to feel appreciated!
  3. Create a video message for your classroom teacher by recording a video of your child thanking their teacher. If you have photos from classroom events throughout the year, creating a slideshow is another creative way to show your appreciation!
  4. Does your teacher have a project on DonorsChoose? DonorsChoose allows teachers to create projects for materials they need in the classroom. A donation to their project is a quick and easy way to get a teacher exactly what they want.
  5. Order your teacher’s favorite coffee or meal to go. Purchasing their favorite coffee or a meal, at a time that the teacher can pick up, takes a little coordination with your child’s teacher and is a sure way to help your teacher feel appreciated.

Do you have a favorite teacher that is doing something above and beyond that you would like to see recognized? We will be highlighting a few teachers next week at Nevada Action for School Options. Send the teacher’s name, grade level, and what unique thing they are doing right now to ashley@nevadaaction.org, and they might be featured on our social media next week!

April is National Poetry Month, and the Nevada Action for School Options office is excited to celebrate with a poetry contest and Facebook Poetry Reading Event with the finalists (videos will be pre-recorded by the finalists)! We want you to send us your poem for our National Poetry Month contest with the theme “When I Get My World Back.” The winner from each age group will receive a certificate and a prize!   

 

This contest is open to all students grades K-12.

Contest will be broken down to the following grade level groups, K-3, 4-7, 8-12.

One winner will be selected from each group.

There is no required format for your poem, however we do ask that your poem be inspired by the theme “When I Get My World Back” and include one of the following elements:

     A place you would like to visit

     A thing you would like to do

     A person you would like to emulate

 

All poems must be emailed to ashley@nevadaaction.org by the end of day April 30, 2020. Please include your name, age, grade, and city you live in when you submit your poem.

Finalists will be selected by our panel of VIP poets. All finalists will be notified by email. The finalists will be asked to send a video recording of themselves (with parent permission) reading their poem for our Poetry Reading Facebook event. The VIP panel will select one winner for each age group from the finalists.

Please contact Ashley at ashley@nevadaaction.org with any questions! We look forward to reading your poems!