eNews: November 16, 2022
In This Issue:
1. New History Standards Proposal from the Virginia Dept. of Education
2. Data Confirms that APS Recovery Plan Slower Than Neighboring Districts
3. APS Provides First Report on Tutoring Program, “Paper”
4. From the Teacher's Lounge
5. What We're Reading This Week
6. 11/10 School Board Meeting Recap
7. Happening Soon
New History Standards Proposal from the Virginia Dept. of Education
The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) released a new draft proposal to set history and social science standards across the state. If adopted, they will go into effect the 2024-2025 school year. A vote was previously expected by the end of the year, but the board decided to delay the review process in August after a recommendation from Virginia Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow. A final vote is now expected in February 2023.
Virginia is required by law to reassess and update its “History and Social Science Standards of Learning,” known as SOLs, every seven years. These standards provide basic guidance on what subjects and areas are required to be taught, but the specific curriculums are mostly determined by individual school districts.
Community engagement sessions and meetings for the public to weigh in on the standards are expected to be held in December and January.
Read the proposal here.
Read the “Fact Sheet Sent to VA Legislators” here.
Data Confirms that APS Recovery Slower Than Neighboring Districts
Last school year, Arlington Parents for Education provided the APS Board with data and sent a letter which highlighted the dramatic learning loss reflected by that year’s SOLs. We urged APS to adopt best-practice learning loss recovery services, which requires additional instructional time, including high-intensity tutoring, extended instructional days, extended school years, and double-dose instruction.
We highlighted superintendent surveys which demonstrated an intent by school districts across the country to offer high-intensity tutoring and additional instructional time. We also specifically highlighted that both neighboring districts of Fairfax and Prince William County created lengthy and detailed recovery plans that included tutoring and extended instructional time. Both also allocated a higher percentage of their awarded funds to learning loss than APS.
The data is out and it indicates that the approach taken by Fairfax and Prince William led to better results for students, particularly in math. Both counties saw significantly higher increases in SOL pass rates from the 2020-21 school year to the 2021-22 school year, in both reading and math, than was achieved by APS.
Prince William saw an 24.1% increase in its math SOL pass rates from 2021 to 2022, which was almost 75% greater than the 13.8% increase seen in Arlington. Fairfax saw a similarly large percentage increase. To put that in context, if Arlington had increased its math SOL pass rate by 24.1% (as Prince William did) rather than by 13.8%, APS would have achieved a math pass rate of 80.6% instead of the 74% pass rate it actually achieved. That 6% difference represents approximately 780 students between 2nd grade and 8th grade who might have passed the SOLs, but instead failed.
APS also fell short with respect to its most vulnerable populations. For the Math SOL, Fairfax was able to increase its passing rates for the economically disadvantaged by 56%; Arlington increased only by 39%. Fairfax increased its passing rates for English Learners by 95%; in Arlington English Learner pass rates increased by only 59%. Fairfax increased its passing rates for Black and Hispanic students by 37% and 57% respectively; in Arlington the pass rates for those students increased only by 22% and 34% respectively. Prince William also outperformed Arlington substantially in each of those categories.
This year, APS still has not put forward a plan to add instructional time. In fact, APS had a reduced calendar in terms of total school days from pre-pandemic levels, and seems to be adhering largely to a business-as-usual approach. In the meantime, Fairfax(which itself has been criticized by some for not doing enough on learning loss), continues for the second year to provide additional funding ($27.5 million per year) directly to schools to fund academic interventions, including for tutoring. Not only does it have a plan, Fairfax required every school to develop detailed plans for their respective use of those ESSER funds. Depending on the school, this included after-school instruction groups, hourly in-school tutoring, Saturday teaching time, and use of intervention periods and small group instruction. This was in addition to the use of “Tutor.com,” which was made available in Fairfax last spring (though to mixed results as discussed below).
We urge the Board to add a monitoring report, similar to that for the VLP program last year, to the School Board calendar, or address learning loss in a work session. The Board should consider using reserves or otherwise allocating close-out funds to increase instructional time for students, and should consider targeting expenditures in the upcoming budget cycle to focus spending on recovery services. Read more on what APE would like APS and the school board to consider here.
(Data for all analyses sourced from Virginia Department of Education School Quality Profiles. Growth rates in scores were measured by taking the difference in pass percentages from SY 2020-21 to SY 2021-22 and dividing by the pass percentage from SY 2020-21.)
APS Provides First Report on Tutoring Program, “Paper”
APS, like many school districts, allocated during the spring budget process to spend $628,000 for a one-year contract for an online tutoring service named “Paper.” While APE appreciates any investment in making tutoring available to our kids, we would note (as we did at the time the “Paper” program was budgeted) that the proposed tutoring program is far less than the high-intensity tutoring that is needed for our students to recover from learning loss. Now, the evaluations of Paper and other virtual tutoring programs are starting to roll in – including from APS – and the results are underwhelming.
At Thursday’s Board meeting, APS reported on the results of its own experience with Paper during the period August through October (constituting almost the entire first academic quarter). APS reported that 2062 APS students engaged in 3,933 sessions on Paper for a total of 113,679 minutes (1,895 hours). That represents approximately 15% of APS’ middle and high school student body, who engaged on average 1.9 times over that period, for 29 minutes per session. In total, over the quarter, those 2062 students engaged with Paper for less than an hour on average, an amount of time that Fairfax determined to be unlikely to yield tangible benefits to student achievement. APS did not provide additional detail on the demographics of the students who used Paper, or whether Paper was used by those students most in need of tutoring. Annualizing the $628,000 cost for the quarter of usage ($157,000), the 1,895 hours of usage results in a cost of around $83 per hour.
Likewise, Fairfax contracted with a similar online tutoring company, Tutor.com, last spring and a recent report indicated that student engagement with this service is “unlikely to yield tangible benefits to student achievement.” Further, that report indicated that the students who use this service typically do not demonstrate academic need. A study from the Hechinger Report released last week also echoes those local results. That study looked at the effectiveness of “Paper” at the Aspire public schools in California, which were one of the early adopters of Paper. Research reflected that participation by students was low: Only 27% of students tried it once and only 19% connected with a tutor. Of those who needed it most – students with Ds and Es – only 12% ever logged on. Students who did log on typically had no more than 4 tutoring sessions, and almost none had sessions three times per week, which is what experts recommend. The report also noted that online tutoring suffers because students do not build a relationship with a tutor, and because the “all-you-can-eat” cost (as APS paid) often results in a very high hourly rate (potentially $100 per hour).
In sum, Arlington’s experience to date appears to mirror the experience of other districts that have adopted a virtual delivery model for tutoring:
The virtual service is used by a relatively small percentage of the student body, for a period of tutoring time that is lower than what experts recommend, and that is unlikely to yield tangible benefits, all at a cost that would make some private tutors blush.
While we recognize that scaling up a true high dosage tutoring program can be challenging, and appreciate that APS has made some tutoring available, we join in the skepticism of Fairfax County and the Hechinger Report about whether a virtual tutoring program can truly be effective. We ask again that APS look for ways to implement additional in-person instructional time, including double-dosing, in-person tutoring, and after-school instructional services.
From the Teacher's Lounge
(Editor's Note: From time to time, we will offer a perspective written by an APS parent or teacher on a topic of concern or interest for APS. What follows has been only lightly edited for clarity.)
We are now at the end of the 1st quarter of the 2022-2023 school year and as a teacher I am encouraged to be moving forward.
We are moving forward with engaging students with the required grade level and content-specific curriculum while spiraling back through content that was previously taught. This review of concepts taught in a student’s prior learning program is not uncommon. The ongoing challenge for teachers this school year and in the academic years ahead is to recognize and differentiate between which students were exposed to the content expected to have been mastered in prior learning and which students may be learning this content for the very first time.
As we move forward with providing instructional opportunities for student’s learning gaps we are grateful for the many resources APS offers. Teachers in APS are provided evidence-based materials in all content areas to serve as resources for the Standards of Learning we are required to teach. In addition to the many additional staff members APS has to support students, teachers have content specialists across grade levels to support our understanding and pace of content standards, while helping us deliver high quality instruction to meet the needs of a variety of learners. There are reading and math coaches in the elementary and middle schools and specific subject matter experts serving as department chairs in secondary schools.
We have a structured block of time built in to the schedule daily across all grade levels to work with students who need additional support. Lastly, and what I consider the most important, is: we in APS work among stellar teaching colleagues to share teaching strategies, resources, collaborate on specific students learning, while celebrating the tiniest successes we experience with students and commiserating over the unfairness of the multitude of expectations what we are tasked with each day.
As we move forward into Quarter 2 teachers are so grateful virtual learning is in the past! We are understandably exhausted and beleaguered, yet determined to continue to forge ahead while acknowledging the enormous amount of learning that needs to be achieved for students to meet curriculum standards.
From this teacher, and I know I do not speak for all: I will continue to focus on moving forward.
WHAT WE’RE READING
Why Homework Matters (Fordham Institute) "It is important to remember that kids only spend a fraction of their time in school. The learning that does or does not take place in the many hours outside of school has a monumental effect on children’s academic success and is a root cause of educational inequity."
"We also know that none of these benefits accrue when homework is mere busywork. Low-quality homework is likely what drives the mixed research evidence on the impact of homework on student achievement. It also sends the message to kids that doing it is simply an exercise in compliance and not worth their time. Homework must be challenging and purposeful for kids to recognize its value."
"Ultimately, minimizing homework or getting rid of it entirely denies children autonomy and prevents them from discovering what they are capable of. As we work to repair the academic damage from the last two-plus years, I encourage educators to focus not on the quantity of homework, but instead on its quality—and on using it effectively in class. By doing so, they will accelerate kids’ engagement with school, and propel them as assured, autonomous learners and thinkers who can thrive in college and beyond."
The NYT Daily Podcast (New York Times) “I mean, in the matter of three years, the pandemic wiped away, essentially, 20 years of slow progress and more or less stability and, in particularly in math, very steep declines — the largest declines that we’ve ever seen in math in fourth and eighth grade.”
“Wow. So the kids who struggled the most lost a lot more ground than the top performers did. And, again, it’s important to remember, the students at the bottom were already at the bottom. They didn’t have a ton of ground to lose.”
“But there is a growing consensus and call of alarm to really make sure we’re spending this money on academic recovery because it is important to remember that we have a limited amount of time to catch kids up, particularly kids who are older in middle and high school. They’ve had several years, now, affected by the pandemic, and we’re on a time frame to make sure that they’re on track to graduate. So a lot of this money is being spent on academic recovery. And one of the most promising areas and a popular strategy is tutoring. The research has shown — we know that tutoring, when done in small groups of three to four students with a trained tutor multiple times a week during the school day — that is one of the most effective ways to help students accelerate their learning.”
Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong (APM Reports) There's an idea about how children learn to read that's held sway in schools for more than a generation — even though it was proven wrong by cognitive scientists decades ago. Teaching methods based on this idea can make it harder for children to learn how to read. In this podcast, host Emily Hanford investigates the influential authors who promote this idea and the company that sells their work. It's an exposé of how educators came to believe in something that isn't true and are now reckoning with the consequences — children harmed, money wasted, an education system upended.
The alarming state of the American student in 2022 (Brookings Institution) The effects were more severe where campuses stayed closed longer. American students are experiencing a K-shaped recovery, in which gaps between the highest- and lowest-scoring students, already growing before the pandemic, are widening into chasms. In the latest NAEP results released in September, national average scores fell five times as much in reading, and four times as much in math, for the lowest-scoring 10 percent of nine-year-olds as they had for the highest-scoring 10 percent.
11/10 School Board Meeting Recap
Superintendent Durán and the Board reviewed data and assessments in a video presentation, presented usage data from the new online tutoring program PAPER, and provided an update on extended day staff benefits. Additional announcements included updates on the School Bond and the beginning of the "Best of APS" nomination season. Dr. Mayo presented onoperational efficiencyas well as an update on summer school 2023, Mr. Adusumilli, Assistant Superintendent with Information Services, provided an update on the enterprise resource planning (ERP) Status and Ms. Harber, Asst. Superintendent for Facilities and Operations, provided updates on minor construction and major maintenance (MCMM) projects as well as transportation logistical issues.
The Arlington School Board Legislative Package, presented in Richmond for state education policy purposes, was also presented by Ms. Wise, APS Legislative Liaison. The Board voted on Fiscal Year 2023 Federal Pandemic Relief Bonus dollars, Taylor Elementary and Williamsburg Middle School entrance improvements, and the Architecture and Engineering Fee associated with the new ACC capital project.
See the Scorecardhere.
See the full recaphere.
HAPPENING SOON
November 16, 7:00-9:00 PM: Budget Advisory Council meeting at the Arlington Public Schools Syphax Education Center, 2110 Washington Blvd, Arlington, VA 22204 in conference room 452. Learn more.
November 16, 7:00 PM: Equity Profile Dashboard Community Conversations. Register online.
November 28, 4:30-6:30 PM: Open Office Hours with Barbara Kanninen. Learn more.
November 29, 6:30 PM: Work Session Work Session #1 with the Advisory Committee on Teaching and Learning (ACTL). Learn more.
December 1, 7:00 PM: Next School Board Meeting. Sign up to speak.
December 13, 5:30 PM: Work Session on the Virtual Learning Program Learn more and watch.
Did you know you can add the APS calendar to your iphone calendar or google calendar? Check it out!
