End of year notables

This last blog post of 2023 is covering four varied articles that I’ve found to be interesting recently, but never rose to the level of covering in a full post.
 
1. “Did You Like School? I Didn’t”
This post hit home for me because like the author (a university professor), I see the field of education as mostly made up of people who generally liked their own school experience. This makes sense, of course—why would you spend your life in a field that you disliked during formative years? But that effect is distorting for two reasons. First and obviously, it creates a situation, especially at the leadership and policy level, that favors the status quo because many of the people in a position to create change from within education have a lived experience of personally not having needed that change when they were students. Second—and this is much more speculative—I believe this helps bolster a “burn it down” mentality among some advocates for alternatives to traditional public schools that is also distorting, because these advocates have had a bad experience with mainstream public schools and don’t feel heard.

From the post:

“people like me – educators and educational researchers – need to remind themselves that school is not an unalloyed good.  Too often, I think, we in the education business tend to lose track of the reality that schooling can be a very unpleasant experience for the students going through it.  Often we had a good experience in school, finding ourselves in a positive environment where we thrived, so we decided to go into the education business instead of joining the real world.”
 
The entire post is worth a quick read as a reminder about the range of experiences that students have with their schools and education.
 
2. What Most American Schools do Wrong sounds like another criticism of our field, but in fact it supports an approach that some online and hybrid schools take. After looking at several examples of schools and education systems that produce better than average results, the post explains:

“Those students didn’t have better teachers. They just happened to have the same teacher at least twice in different grades. A separate team of economists replicated the study with nearly a million elementary and middle schoolers in Indiana — and found the same results.
 
Every child has hidden potential. It’s easy to spot the ones who are already sparkling, but many students are uncut gems. When teachers stay with their students longer, they can see beyond the surface and recognize the brilliance beneath.”
 
The post goes on to describe systems in which teachers and students remain together for multiple years, especially at the elementary level. But I think the larger point is that teachers, counselors, or others who have a multi-year working relationship with students get to know those students better, and can help them navigate the serious challenges that most students encounter at some point. And that’s exactly the approach some online and hybrid schools take as they prioritize relationships between students and professional, caring adults.
 
3. How to Get Into College From a Nontraditional High School
This strikes me as an under-appreciated issue in digital learning and school choice circles more broadly, and it’s notable that this article is from US News, not from an educational media outlet. In some ways it’s fairly basic as evidenced by an early paragraph:
 
"Applying to college with a nontraditional high school degree can come with unique challenges. But with planning and communication with their adult educators, students from nontraditional academic backgrounds can boost their chances of gaining admission to college."
 
This issue extends beyond online and hybrid schools of course, but it does quote a counselor from an online school.
 
Of course, university admissions processes are shifting in sometimes confusing ways as well, so getting into college can seem like a moving target even for students from mainstream schools. It’s gratifying to see a light on these issues from a non-traditional school perspective.
 
4. Is This The Secret To Reinventing High School?
Mastery learning has seemed like the next big thing for many years, and perhaps it will always remain just beyond the horizon. This article is notable for two reasons. First, although I sometimes disagree with Rick Hess’s conclusions, his reasoning tends to be thoughtful and well-explained, so when he takes on an issue adjacent to our field I’m interested in his ideas. Second, the links between mastery-based learning and our digital learning field are clear. In fact, Hess mentions:
 
“In an era of online learning, digital tutors, and hybrid instruction, the whole notion of organizing school on the basis of time spent at a desk is increasingly unwieldy. It impedes home-based learning and efforts to revamp career and technical education.”
 
Policy constraints to the growth of online and hybrid learning continue to be under-appreciated. The solution doesn’t have to be an education savings accounts approach, if policymakers would instead start by getting rid of seat-time requirements. Yes, that’s easier said than done. But sometimes I think that advocates have been making that case for so long that it’s easy to forget that the seat-time problem has not been solved. Mastery-based learning advocates are policy allies, regardless of the extent to which they recognize online and hybrid learning as a likely key element of mastery-based systems. As such, it’s valuable for digital learning advocates to be at least familiar with the mastery-based learning movement.
 
 
Thanks to all who comment on our blog posts, send us ideas, and author guests posts! We look forward to continued explorations in 2024 and beyond.