Memphis, Tenn. – The Memphis Grizzlies these days introduced plans to update numerous areas at Rozelle Elementary Faculty as portion of the NBA’s 75th Anniversary leaguewide legacy initiative to make and dedicate new Stay, Find out or Play Centers all through the 2021-22 season. The Grizzlies have concluded around 15 Dwell, Discover or Enjoy Centers, with preceding areas such as Chandler Park, Bethel Grove Elementary and Gordon Accomplishment Academy. The Grizzlies sign up for as all 30 teams celebrate the historic milestone time although continuing the NBA’s legacy of supporting and uniting communities globally through the match of basketball.
“Improving the mastering expertise for youth in the Town of Memphis is often extremely crucial to us here at the Grizzlies,” stated Abusheri Ohwofasa, Grizzlies Vice President of Neighborhood Engagement and Executive Director of the Memphis Grizzlies Foundation. “We are thrilled to work with each other with Rozelle Elementary University in updating their out of doors areas and creative areas that will keep on to elevate and encourage the understanding ordeals for all learners.”
As the only Inventive and Accomplishing Arts (CAPA) Optional Elementary College within Shelby County Faculties, Rozelle Elementary encourages achievement by way of integration of the arts into the tutorial curriculum. The Memphis Grizzlies, in partnership with NBA Cares, will update various areas, such as growing the school’s theater, dance studio and basketball court and environmentally friendly space. Rozelle also offers a special Artistic and Undertaking Arts Program that delivers a sturdy basis in getting techniques, know-how and inventive talent by way of “Encore Classes” in visual arts, tunes, artistic writing and dance/motion instruction.
“We are exceptionally fired up and honored to be the recipients of the Memphis Grizzlies’ NBA 75th Stay, Understand or Participate in Legacy Project,” explained Kimberly Shaw, Rozelle CAPA Optional Elementary College Principal. “Our learners are eager to understand, follow and execute in our recently renovated spaces as we soar to new educational and creative heights. We want to thank the Grizzlies for their assistance of the Imaginative and Performing Arts system below at the historic Rozelle CAPA Optional Elementary University, a single of Shelby County Schools’ biggest gems.”
Through the league, all 30 NBA teams will create new Reside, Discover or Participate in Facilities in their communities all over the period of the season. The projects will assortment from developing new schooling and engineering rooms, basketball courts and enjoy spaces to home refurbishments. Benefiting corporations provide youth, family members, and users of the LGBTQ+, Black, Latinx and AAPI communities, among others. These new areas will additional the NBA family’s collective intention to produce chances that enable propel the future generation of leaders and deliver support for historically marginalized communities. This February, the league will devote the 2,000th NBA Cares Reside, Study or Enjoy Center as portion of NBA All-Star 2022 in Cleveland and an more heart in Los Angeles in the spring.
The Memphis Grizzlies are fully commited to earning a difference in the lives of underserved youth and households across the Mid-South location. Our wide parts of assist incorporate schooling, overall health and fitness, and service. For a lot more details on Stay, Find out or Play, stop by grizzlies.com/local community.
Despite the fact that a significant scandal erupted in 2019 over bribery and other fraudulent methods applied by rich Americans to safe their children’s admission to elite colleges, the affluent keep on to benefit from other varieties of particular admission procedures that are completely lawful.
Contemplate the reality that, in accordance to a the latest research, only about 57 per cent of Harvard’s white college students were being admitted on the basis of tutorial merit. The other 43 percent gained specific cure due to the fact their mother and father experienced created large donations to Harvard, or they experienced dad and mom who had graduated from the faculty (“legacy admissions”) or taught there, or have been recruited as athletes. Without this preferential status, some three-quarters of them would have been turned down in the intensive levels of competition for admission.
Truly, a preferential position for the privileged has prolonged been a custom in the major ranks of American bigger schooling. For the duration of their very first many years, elite faculties considered only wealthy white pupils as worthy of admission. Even by the stop of the nineteenth century, their campuses ended up populated primarily by graduates of non-public large universities. In the early twentieth century, anxious directors, nervous to limit the selection of Jews and other new immigrants, leaned ever more upon legacy status, loved ones donations, and athletic recruiting.
I experienced a imprecise feeling of these priorities when, from 1958 to 1962, I was a pupil at Columbia College. Established in 1754, this male undergraduate faculty offered the core of Columbia College, which grew up close to it. Composed of about 2,000 pupils, the school was a portion of the prestigious Ivy League, and the excellent, promoted by the administration, was “the very well-rounded person.” This phrase experienced a relatively patrician, inbred ring to it, and unquestionably did not describe me or most of my university pals, who experienced attended city public educational institutions, arrived from modest financial circumstances, were devoid of athletic capabilities, and lacked relatives connections to the institution.
Nevertheless, though a Columbia undergraduate, I observed functions that proposed a disturbing hierarchy in admissions. A lot of my classmates had attended extravagant prep educational facilities, and even now other individuals were experienced athletes who ended up as somewhat dim stars in the school’s lustrous intellectual firmament. On top of that, the wide the greater part of Columbia’s learners were being white. My getting into yearbook (The 1962 Directory),which shows photographs of just about the overall freshman class, reveals only five pupils who are evidently Black. At the time, college admissions applications needed a photo of the applicants, a handy software for screening out these regarded unwanted.
Issues started to alter a bit—though not much—in 1970, when I was instructing heritage at Vassar College. As a single of the Seven Sister Schools, Vassar experienced an elite standing similar to Columbia’s, and came inside of a hairsbreadth of merging with Yale in the late 1960s. Even so, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the discovery of poverty shook Vassar up, foremost to pressure to transfer beyond its typically white, economically relaxed (and from time to time really wealthy) pupil constituency and produce a much more numerous one. As a result, a committee was billed with creating new admissions standards, and I was appointed to the committee.
After several committee meetings, we last but not least agreed upon a simple affirmative action treatment. In the rating of admission candidates from 1 (the finest) to 5 (the worst), we would give customers of earlier excluded groups a plus, so furnishing them with an edge above some others in their rank. At this place, nevertheless, with about 15 minutes still left in the final conference, the admissions director introduced, alternatively casually, that the suggestions would, of study course, continue on to give a in addition to young children of Vassar graduates! I promptly objected, pointing out that this would reproduce the previous admissions pattern. A Black scholar who served on the committee agreed with me. But we had been outvoted, and regular privileges prevailed.
It need to appear as no surprise, then, that, even as affirmative action has increased the quantity of pupils of colour at America’s elite faculties, more mature styles of favoritism have continued.
This is specially accurate when it will come to the small children of the abundant. Researchers have observed that the offspring of the best 1 per cent are 77 moments more very likely to attend an elite non-public U.S. higher education than individuals from the base 20 per cent. And this is no incident. At Harvard, prime directors repeatedly bent the school’s admissions specifications to accommodate wealthy donors. Jared Kushner’s admission to Harvard, just after a desultory academic performance at his prep school, followed on his father’s give of $2.5 million to the university. Of system, provided inflation and the intensive opposition for admission, the price has risen around the yrs. “You made use of to be capable to sway an admissions place of work for $1 million,” remarked Mark Sklarow, the main executive officer of the Impartial Academic Consultants Association. “Now it’s almost certainly $10 million and up.”
While some elite faculties no extended give particular therapy to youngsters of their alumni, most of them continue this observe. As a consequence, “legacy” students—who tend to be affluent and white—constitute a sizeable constituency, which includes 14 percent of the freshman course at Yale, 13 {e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} at Dartmouth, and 10 percent at Brown. At Harvard, “legacy” candidates are 6 times extra most likely to be admitted than college students without the need of this hereditary privilege.
Lastly, most elite schools carry on the apply of prioritizing the admission of athletes. This precedence, like other regular ones, lowers tutorial requirements and—largely thanks to the point that a lot of Ivy League groups are situated in upper-course athletics like sailing, golfing, drinking water polo, lacrosse, and fencing—contributes to the admission of massive quantities of white, affluent pupils. As a Harvard school member observed, the athletic choice is “blatantly privileging by now privileged teams.”
Total, it is crystal clear that merit-dependent admission at the nation’s best schools will not be secured while these forms of priorities continue being in location.
WOODLEAF — Thanksgiving was always a significant creation for the Nettles domestic.
Charles Nettles liked feeding people today and for each Thanksgiving food he cooked two hams, two turkeys and four pans of stuffing.
“We commonly experienced about 50 people,” said Carol Smith, Nettles’ daughter.
The meals ended up open to family, pals and any individual lonely for the holiday break. Just after cramming much more than 30 individuals into their home, the spouse and children identified Thanksgiving would want to shift to their church.
Smith claimed her father beloved remaining with men and women, talking to them, hearing about their life, conversing about his young children and their achievements. They had a major spouse and children, way too. Nettles and his spouse Sarah experienced eight children.
“He was in all probability the most extroverted man or woman you’d at any time meet up with,” Smith claimed
Charles died on Monday at age 65 because of to problems from COVID-19.
He used 35 a long time working at Duke Energy’s McGuire Nuclear Station and his most the latest position was nuclear instrumentation supervisor. He was born in Tennessee and bounced from Florida to China Grove just after graduating from substantial university. Charles and Sarah settled in Woodleaf in 1993.
Notably, Charles was a nearby home faculty pioneer. He co-established the Rowan County Home Faculty Association and was an activist who lobbied the point out in the 1980s to generate the modern home college regulations that moved the approach from a gray region pursuit to a codified way for family members to teach their have young children in 1988.
In the course of the 2020-2021 university 12 months, there have been an approximated 3,379 residence faculty pupils in Rowan County.
The last time the Put up spoke with Charles was late July in 2020 for a story about how the pandemic influenced residence faculty family members. He informed the Publish he and Sarah determined to property college just before they experienced young children for the reason that they desired to impart their values to their children, expend a lot more time with them and have a adaptable schedule.
All those positive aspects are represented in the litany of childhood journeys the spouse and children took. Smith reported her father loved travel and excellent time. He wished to display the kids what he loved and she has visited 46 states as a end result.
In 2006, the family members took a vacation to Alaska, and they drove. Charles hated traveling, so street journeys ended up the conventional. He took three months off from perform, some thing Smith however does not understand, and they manufactured the trek all the way up as a result of Canada to arrive at the country’s disconnected and northern-most point out.
The household once took a tumble vacation to New England just to see the leaves alter.
“It was attractive,” Smith mentioned.
Charles’ beloved area was Yellowstone Countrywide Park and he frequented it virtually 10 moments.
Some of the excursions had been basic, other people were bigger affairs. Charles was always element oriented, arranging in advance with spreadsheets, lodging, distances and areas to consider some time off if matters did not rather go to strategy.
Smith stated the arranging was great for the reason that it designed the visits fear absolutely free. As soon as, the loved ones made the decision to see how lots of nationwide parks it could stop by in a row. They strike 26 in a month and a half, and did the junior ranger applications at all of them, besides for a single the place it was not available.
Some of these adventures ended up only probable due to the fact of household schooling. Regular faculties are in session for most of the drop, but for the Nettles relatives, school adopted them where ever they ended up.
“I did math homework at picnic tables and used rocks to maintain my papers down so the wind did not blow them away,” Smith reported.
She recalled astonishing a park ranger the moment with her knowledge about cryptobiotic soil. Realizing about the phenomenon of communal soil area organisms and viewing it in individual is something she characteristics to dwelling school and the family’s outings.
Charles did not oppose community universities, either. In his final job interview with the Submit, he famous he volunteered in general public universities.
Smith mentioned almost everything her dad did centered all around his faith. Any time they ended up touring, they would uncover church buildings to go to. The moment, they transformed plans so the youngsters could show up at Bible school though touring.
At Needmore Baptist Church in Woodleaf, Charles was officially a deacon and he was a chief in The Gideons Worldwide. At church, he did regardless of what necessary to be carried out, from the cemetery to the sanctuary.
He was also greatly included with 4-H for decades as a volunteer. Lately, he was educating well known lessons on electrical energy and robotics.
Charles developed indicators at the start off of the month and commenced to strengthen, but the Tuesday ahead of very last he had chest pains following waking up.
Smith claimed various folks in the loved ones experienced contracted the illness and recovered. It appeared like Charles was on the mend as perfectly, but his problem deteriorated.
Smith said 8 decades back Charles suffered a stroke and the odds of him recovering had been incredibly low.
“The kind of stroke he had killed individuals or left them in wheelchairs,” Smith explained.
The odds of him returning to function ended up nonexistent, but 6 months afterwards Charles was back to function.
“He was a living wonder,” Smith mentioned.
She claimed in all places Charles went he designed persons smile, and she desires people today to recall how a lot he cared about folks.
Many days each and every week, Charles would meet up with Smith’s grandfather for espresso at a community fuel station. They went in the morning, at times immediately after church, and it turned a tradition. Just one of Charles’ sons, John, commenced heading as properly. On Friday, for the initial time given that Charles passed, they obtained espresso yet again.
LINDSAY, Calif. — On a morning this fall at Washington Elementary, a young boy, sitting at a table with five of his peers, held a tablet while he built a digital snowman — a cool proposition given the 85-degree heat just outside his air-conditioned classroom.
His neighbor, a girl, whose ponytail was tied with a bright red bow, used her index finger to move shapes around her screen. At another table, a child wearing a rainbow mask bent studiously over her workbook, meticulously coloring with a green marker.
Elsewhere in the classroom, an instructor knelt to chat with two boys engrossed in playing with blocks, while a second teacher supervised a group of five students as they completed worksheets.
Every 4- and 5-year-old in this transitional kindergarten classroom was doing something different, tailored specially to their academic development. It’s a scene that is replicated across the seven elementary schools and two high schools in this agricultural community of around 13,500 in California’s Central Valley.
Students in a transitional kindergarten class at Washington Elementary, a K-8 school in the Lindsay Unified district, work in small groups. Credit: Charlotte West for The Hechinger Report
There are few straight rows of desks at schools in this district, Lindsay Unified. Teachers rarely stand at the front of the classroom. Students instead focus on whatever assignment is next for them — often a task that differs completely from the work being performed by the other kids in the room.
Kids are helped along by access to take-home devices and individualized learning plans that allow them to progress through class material at their own speed.
It’s a model that’s paid dividends for the district. Lindsay Unified has seen significant improvement in academic achievement, graduation rates and the number of students going to college since it created a performance-based system in the mid-2000s. The model also helped students and educators weather the pandemic’s ups and downs more easily than other districts in the country. While the pandemic still took its toll, adapting to online learning was smoother in Lindsay due to its preexisting infrastructure and history of adaptation.
For years, Lindsay has experimented with competency-based education, a more personalized approach to education that involves letting kids learn on computers for at least part of the day. In mid-March 2020, schools in Lindsay Unified shut down in response to the coronavirus pandemic. And, as it did for millions of other students and teachers around the country, instruction went fully online.
But superintendent Tom Rooney likes to say that while facilities closed in Lindsay, “the learning never stopped.”
Now, with learning back in person in many places in the country, Lindsay’s experience keeping kids mostly on track, even during the most chaotic of times, offers lessons to other districts. Teachers in Lindsay are ready to shift from in-person to remote learning with minimal prep time — if a coronavirus outbreak requires a quarantine, for example, or a natural disaster causes school closures.
“With about a day planning, [teachers] shift right into distance learning,” Rooney said.
Students on a break at Lindsay High School. Credit: Charlotte West for The Hechinger Report
Washington Elementary is a K-8 school in Lindsay, an agricultural community in California’s Central Valley. Credit: Charlotte West for The Hechinger Report
Ushering in a new model
Located near the foothills of Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks, the town of Lindsay used to be known for two things: olives and oranges. But the community began to suffer economically after several major employers, including what was once the largest olive processer in the world, shut down in the early 1990s.
Today, more than 90 percent of the 4,000 children enrolled in Lindsay Unified are socioeconomically disadvantaged, and about 40 percent are English language learners. Ninety five percent of students in the district are Hispanic.
In 2007, administrators were frustrated by the district’s poor outcomes and low graduation rate. Even its most successful students had difficulties: 8 out of 10 high school valedictorians were placed in remedial English classes when they went to college, according to district officials.
The district convened a series of meetings with teachers, school leaders, parents, city officials and community members to discuss what kind of educational system the community needed. The result was the adoption of “a learner centered, personalized, competency-based” approach that allows students to meet learning goals on their own terms, Rooney said.
Related: Why a high-performing district is changing everything with competency-based learning
The new approach threw out many traditional facets of education such as the A-F grading scale and time-based learning in which students advance to a new grade level each year. Along with the changes came a new vernacular — teachers are “learning facilitators,” students are “learners,” grades are “content levels” and schools are “learning environments.”
Students are scored on a scale of 1-4, with a score of at least 3 needed to show proficiency in a subject. Educators say a 1 or a 2 doesn’t mean students have failed, only that they have more work to do to move on to the next level.
Lindsay High School junior Gaby León said that other students she meets are fascinated when she tells them she’s never received a letter grade. “I’m not familiar with the ABCs, because all my life I’ve gotten numbers,” she said.
Lindsay High School junior Gaby León demonstrates Lindsay Unified’s learning management system, Empower. “You can learn anywhere,” León said. “You can complete assignments on road trips or at an airport.” Credit: Courtesy Gaby León
What is competency-based education?
Lindsay is a forerunner among a growing number of schools and districts across the United States that have adopted a performance- or competency-based approach to education, said Susan Patrick, president and CEO of the Aurora Institute, a nonprofit that studies and promotes competency-based education. (Superintendent Rooney serves on the board of the Aurora Institute.)
Patrick said that 10 years ago, only a handful of states in the United States used competency-based education. Her organization estimates that now 6 to 10 percent of public school districts across the United States are piloting or planning competency-based approaches.
She expects that number will continue to grow in the wake of the pandemic.
“We just saw a shift where getting rid of time and space constraints unleashed a lot of creativity in helping to provide more flexibility for students,” Patrick said. “After the pandemic, the demand is really increasing for school systems around the U.S. to learn how to make the shift from traditional time-based systems … towards one that is truly organized around the learner.”
So, what is competency-based education, exactly?
A student works on developing his own video game in a design class at Lindsay High School. Credit: Charlotte West for The Hechinger Report
It goes by many names, Patrick said, but at its core, the approach enables students to take charge of their own learning while they work towards a common set of learning goals. Students receive meaningful feedback on their progress and receive support until they achieve those goals. They show their mastery of a subject by presenting evidence, such as a paper or project, demonstrating what they know and are able to do.
One of the most frequent criticisms of competency-based education is that it is incredibly time consuming, Patrick said. There’s also little evidence that personalized learning improves student learning, in part because so many different approaches are used.
But educators in Lindsay say that, while there’s more work on the front end, the district’s model actually makes teaching easier in the long run.
Related: Does the future of schooling look like Candy Land?
“Every teacher in the district does what we call a personalized learning plan with each of our students at least twice a year,” said Marla Ernest, a drama and English language arts teacher at Lindsay High School. “I know that sounds like a lot of work, but it really frees up a lot of your planning, because you’re now really doing mini-lessons, instead of having to fill a 90-minute block.”
Matt Diggle is in his 28th year as an educator. After starting as the new principal of Washington Elementary in August, he’s been impressed by how much teachers have to know about their students in Lindsay’s model.
“I came from a grades-based system,” he said. “This requires a lot more depth and knowledge in terms of digging into the learning targets and really understanding [what] the child has to achieve.”
In 2016, Lindsay Unified, a school district in California’s Central Valley, asked the city of Lindsay if the district could locate antennae on the community’s tallest buildings to expand its own network in order to provide free community Wi-Fi. Credit: Courtesy Lindsay Unified School District
The role of technology
Lindsay’s ability to rapidly pivot to remote learning in spring 2020 was largely due to preexisting infrastructure. Unlike many districts where a lack of devices and spotty Wi-Fi made adapting to online learning difficult, almost all Lindsay students already had access to their own tablets or laptops — which are age-appropriate and replaced every three years — and community Wi-Fi.
Getting there wasn’t easy. In the early years of Lindsay’s experiment, few students had internet access at home. “I would come to work at 7 in the morning and there would be 60 kids on the front lawn of the district office because there was a hotspot,” said Barry Sommer, director of the district’s foundation.
After unsuccessfully approaching several major internet companies, the district decided to take matters into its own hands. The district asked the city of Lindsay if it could locate antennae on the community’s tallest buildings to expand the district’s network. Then they installed hotspots on 500 homes in Lindsay. By the end of 2016, almost 90 percent of the district’s students and their families had access to free internet at home.
“There’s always a certain pace that the teachers progress the class at, but with our Empower website, it allows students to progress further in the course by working independently and outside of the class.”
High school senior Connor Dunbar
Today, students are even able to access assignments on their mobile devices. León, the high school junior, held out her phone as she demonstrated how she’s moved through her math class this year. “You can learn anywhere,” she said. “You can complete assignments on road trips or at an airport.”
But educators say that technology by itself isn’t what makes Lindsay’s model work. It’s the combination of its personalized pedagogical approach combined with technology.
The district’s “learning management system,” Empower, is an online dashboard that allows teachers to upload, grade and keep track of assignments for their class. It also contains “playlists,” which might include videos or reading assignments, that students complete as they progress through a class.
Related: What lessons does special education hold for personalized learning?
Students, parents and teachers can log into Empower at any time to check on progress towards finishing a class. At any point, students can see what they’ve completed and what else they need to do to finish a subject. The courses are still based on California state standards, and students continue to complete external assessments such as iReady.
Empower also allows school administrators to pull aggregate reports on students’ pacing — whether and how quickly they are making progress in their respective subject areas.
“We’re able to look at the overall pacing for the learning facilitators and for learners, and then we’re able to dig in deeper if we needed to, to look at individual learners and see what progress they’re making towards completing by the end of the year,” said Jorge Ramos, learning director at Washington Elementary.
Marla Ernest, an English language arts and drama teacher at Lindsay High School, works one-on-one with a student in late September. Credit: Charlotte West for The Hechinger Report
Training the teachers
Most teachers aren’t taught the competency-based approach in college, so there were growing pains when the district first adopted its performance-based model in the mid-2000s, Sommer said. Several teachers left because they could not adapt to the new system, he added.
“Teacher training programs are not preparing teachers for personalized competency-based learning models,” said Patrick, of the Aurora Institute.
In response, the district set up opportunities for professional development, programs that continued during the pandemic. Educators use Empower, the same platform the students use, for their training.
“They take that performance-based approach with us as well,” said Guadalupe Alvarez, who teaches eighth grade. New teachers are also paired with veteran teachers such as Ernest, the English teacher, who help show them the ropes.
Related: How one state’s teachers are sparking digital innovation
Ernest said that teachers have to have the right mindset to be successful in Lindsay. “You do have to have a staff that’s really open to lifelong learning and really open to flowing through change,” Ernest said. “Because in this model, nothing is static, you’re always looking for the best practice. You can’t as a teacher be stuck in ‘This is how I do it.’”
Fourth grade teacher Nelly Lopez said she used to think the perfect classroom was one in which students sat silently with their hands folded and the teacher was the center of attention.
“Now it’s like a full shift into where the focus is on them,” she said. “There’s no one size fits all.”
Drawings in a fourth grade classroom at Washington Elementary, a K-8 school in Lindsay Unified. Credit: Charlotte West for The Hechinger Report
Students move at their own pace, with lots of support
One of the benefits of Lindsay’s approach to teaching and technology is that it accommodates different populations, such as students with disabilities and English language learners. The approach also reduces the stigma for students who might be “behind” in a traditional system because all students work at their own pace, whether they move ahead quickly or need extra help.
One of district’s early lessons, however, was that there is a delicate balance between letting kids do their own thing — and keeping them on track. Teachers still must make sure that students don’t fall behind.
John Woods, Lindsay’s director of special education, said it’s important to set incremental deadlines so students don’t wait until the last minute to try and finish everything. “We say we’re not time-based, [but] you have to have urgency,” he said. “There are certain kids that are very self-directed, but there are others that are not, if you just leave them to their own devices.”
Depending on the subject, students might work independently or move to another class with a different teacher. Within each class, students are grouped based on the learning targets they are trying to reach and their progress towards meeting those targets.
The system also helps accommodate students who are moving faster than their peers. “There’s always a certain pace that the teachers progress the class at, but with our Empower website, it allows students to progress further in the course by working independently and outside of the class,” said high school senior Connor Dunbar.
“After the pandemic, the demand is really increasing for school systems around the U.S. to learn how to make the shift from traditional time-based systems … towards one that is truly organized around the learner.”
Susan Patrick, president of the Aurora Institute
Alvarez said that whenever she has “fast runners,” she meets with administrators to come up with the best plan to meet students’ academic needs. “I have had groups of eighth graders that go to the high school for math and English and then they just come back to me for their subject matter in history as science,” she said.
León was able to take extra classes by completing her history class in one semester. “That allowed me to add a college class to my schedule for the following semester,” she said.
Ernest said she teaches three English classes, each at a different level, with students in each class grouped according to the progress they’ve made towards a learning target. She still gives short 15- to 20-minute lessons on topics that are applicable to the entire class, but then spends the rest of class period working with students in small groups or one-on-one.
“I’m still doing the same amount of grading that I’ve always done,” she said. “It doesn’t create more work. It just creates different work.”
Parent Jennifer Keeton, who works in the district’s financial services division, said that Lindsay’s model has helped meet the needs of both her children. Her son, who graduated in 2020, has autism. “With everybody being customized … it helped him not stick out,” she said.
Keeton’s daughter is a junior, currently on track to earn her associate’s degree from the College of the Sequoias, a community college, before she graduates from high school next year. Keeton said the system helped her daughter “because she didn’t get stuck waiting for everyone else to finish, because she was an avid reader … She was always finishing things fast, but she was allowed to work on other projects to give her a higher understanding of the concepts.”
Students in an eighth grade class at Washington Elementary, a K-8 school, work in small groups. Credit: Charlotte West for The Hechinger Report
Does it work?
Test scores leaped in Lindsay Unified after the district implemented competency-based learning. The number of students proficient on California’s academic standards increased from 26 percent in 2014-15 to 47 percent in 2018-19. Graduation rates rose from 69 percent in 2010-11 to 90 percent in 2017-18. College-going rates increased from 66 percent to 70 percent, and more students are going to four-year colleges, according to district data.
During the pandemic, the results were more mixed — teachers and students felt the same stresses that all districts faced, including a significant toll on social and emotional health. But Lindsay students still made progress in math and reading, although less than during a normal school year.
In March 2020, after curriculum experts gave teachers a weekend crash course in online instruction, students and teachers were back in school fulltime, in their virtual classrooms, within just a few days. They quickly learned to avoid all-day online classes in favor of small group work and one-on-one attention from teachers, something they’d already been doing in person before the pandemic.
Bins for students’ personal items in a transitional kindergarten class at Washington Elementary. Credit: Charlotte West for The Hechinger Report
And in the early weeks of the pandemic, the district had to boost its Wi-Fi connections as more kids and parents were suddenly online 24/7, Rooney said.
A year into the pandemic, Lindsay students had less growth in reading than in previous years, but — particularly among younger learners — still made more progress than their peers in other districts around the country with similar demographics, according to a recent report from the non-profit Learning Accelerator.
“We saw a lot less growth for kids in upper grade levels than we did for those in lower grade levels,” said Beth Rabbitt, CEO of the Learning Accelerator and one of the authors of the report. This could be because older students were more likely to have responsibilities such as working or taking care of younger siblings, according to the study.
The study also found that students classified as English learner, migrant, or homeless, and those receiving special education services, saw positive growth, thanks to frequent contact with counselors, translation services, access to a food pantry and social services and opportunities for an “early return” to school in fall 2020.
And students who came back in person as part of the early return model did better than their peers who remained at home, which could serve as a lesson when future disruptions occur. These kids continued with the same online curriculum as their peers studying from home, but worked at school in small groups with tutors who could give them extra support.
“That speaks to the power of kids having adults who, even if they’re not the primary content teachers, can be helping them connect and helping them stay on track.” Rabbitt said.
In Lindsay, “the learning never stopped.”
Superintendent Tom Rooney
Ernest said the switch to remote learning was especially hard for the recent immigrants she works with. “Trying to get them to a place where they can follow along with a computer when they’ve never had one, it was very difficult for the first few months,” Ernest said.
But after students got used to the technology, she said, the program was “the perfect model for someone who is just learning the language.” Some of her high school students started at a kindergarten level in English, but because they didn’t know they were beginning at such a basic level, they were able “to move at the right level, make progress and not feel ashamed about that,” she said.
Overall, the pandemic reinforced the role of competency-based learning and technology-based teaching in Lindsay, said Ernest. “We’ve been doing blended learning in this model for so long, the only difference for us was that [students] weren’t in a room with us.”
This story about adapting to online learning was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
A taxpayer-funded “educational tour” very last 7 days for hundreds of workers at the Key Minister’s Workplace was light-weight on schooling and significant on entertainment, according to a report Sunday.
A copy of the itinerary published by the Ynet news web site showed most of the two-working day party was put in at the Dan Accadia Hotel in Herzliya, with the exception of breakfast the 1st morning and a take a look at to the Planetanya space museum.
Besides meals, the other functions mentioned on the schedule incorporated a efficiency at the lodge by local singer Rotem Cohen, a “dance occasion into the night” and “escape room” games.
The news internet site said the tour was counted as common perform times for staff members of the Prime Minister’s Business and that some workers have been reimbursed travel fees.
Finance Ministry resources quoted in the report stated the tour had no academic message and was seemingly scheduled to use unspent budgetary cash prior to the year’s end. They also said it was unclear why Yair Pines, the director-common of Key Minister Naftali Bennett’s business office, approved the vacation.
Get The Occasions of Israel’s Every day Version by e-mail and under no circumstances pass up our prime stories
By signing up, you agree to the conditions
“All workforce of government ministries are entitled to participate in an educational tour when a year… as are staff of the Prime Minister’s Business,” Bennett’s business office said in reaction.
Along with the stop by to the place museum, the Key Minister’s Business stated the tour included functions on the legacy of Israel’s initial premier, David Ben-Gurion.
“The price range for the excursion was limited in progress and not totally used,” it extra.

You’re severe. We respect that!

 We’re definitely happy that you have read X Instances of Israel posts in the previous thirty day period.
That’s why we come to function every single day – to present discerning audience like you with should-read protection of Israel and the Jewish world.
So now we have a ask for. Unlike other news shops, we haven’t set up a paywall. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite viewers for whom The Instances of Israel has grow to be crucial to aid aid our perform by becoming a member of The Periods of Israel Local community.
For as little as $6 a thirty day period you can enable aid our quality journalism even though savoring The Moments of Israel Ad-Free of charge, as well as accessing distinctive content obtainable only to Occasions of Israel Group customers.
New Delhi [India], December 10 (ANI/ThePRTree): North India’s largest instructional occasion, The Higher Training Conclave (HEC) by Silver Fern Schooling Consultants was carried out around a time period of two days. The HEC was not just one more conclave, but an encounter backed by a high inflow of contributors, counselors, and gurus from the education and learning market. A structured pre-function ‘Rendezvous with the educators’ was organized on the 18th for a satisfy and greet involving principals, directors, senior administration of schools, and the university delegates of prestigious institutions where by they experienced a term above the long run of education and learning abroad and the uncertainties associated with it. 22 out of the 42 delegates had been escorted for this tour to three companion colleges- YPS Mohali, St. John’s Substantial school, and Bhawan Vidyalaya, Chandigarh supplying them an perception into the functioning of the North Indian Instruction process. The to start with working day of the conclave on 19th witnessed a footfall of in excess of 1500 students engaging with overseas university delegates who had proven their stalls (42 in quantity) in addition to all those of the Indian types such as Vedantu, Great Discovering, and OP Jindal.
Nations like Australia, United kingdom, US, Canada, and Dubai produced their mark on the occasion with the active participation of top rated notch universities like Waterloo College, University of Windsor, University of Victoria, University of Arizona, King’s Faculty London, York University, University of Sydney, University of Bristol, The University of Sheffield alongside with the engagement of some reputed schools, Seneca Faculty, North Island College, Algon Quin Faculty, and Georgian College The enthusiasm of pupils was acknowledged by all, and their curiosity was being reflected through their questions which ended up answered by the respective delegates completely. A networking gala meal was hosted on the 19th for the gurus from the market graced with 78 university delegates, 20 principals, a significant range of instructors, counselors, administrators, and board members of universities from across Northern India to build a regional networking system for educators. The night was enriched by a panel discussion on ‘The Potential of Training: Troubles and Opportunities’ which made discussions and dialogues about the educational prospects and the uncertainties linked to it. An trade of dialogue was observed amongst the dignitaries of the stature of Dr Sumer Bahadur Singh (President of the Boarding Universities Association of India), Dr Jagpreet Singh, Vivek Atray, Palak Behl, Kavita Chatterjee Das, Saheb Pal Singh, and Megha Srivastav who was the moderator for the similar. HEC by Silver Fern was concluded on an extremely significant note beefing up the richness of the education and learning sector with the contribution of expert knowledge aligned with the passions of college students paving the way for more these kinds of activities in the long term. This story is furnished by ThePRTree. ANI will not be liable in any way for the information of this write-up. (ANI/ThePRTree)
