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Over the past few weeks I have been trying to get an idea of how schools can gain a better understanding of the losses students are facing as a result of distance learning during the pandemic. The COVID slide is real and by the very fact that it will have been over a year since school closures it will be that much more severe than the well documented Summer Slide, which results from the two months when students are not in classrooms.
Together with my friend Joe Clausi, of the Traveling Principal, we are designing a simple ten question quiz school leaders can take to gain some clarity of how ready their students and teachers are for the fall. The quiz will prompt leaders to simply assign a score of 1-4 for specific stakeholder engagement and LCAP subgroups. Think of those quizzes you can take on Facebook that prompt you with a few simple questions and then show you what Disney Princess you are or “Cook a stir fry and we will guess your age”... Don’t worry, this won’t be on facebook nor will it offer nonsensical suggestions.
Our goal is singular, to help schools gain clarity on their readiness to return in the fall based on their experience and performance during the pandemic. The idea came about when we began to analyze LCAP subgroups and realized that it would be helpful to create a resource that schools could use to generate a scorecard that is granular - meaning it would highlight specific aspects of the school community. This design is important because if a school took the short quiz and received a score of 37/40 they might think they are ready for the transition back to school in the fall. However, with their scorecard they would see that their EL population earned 1 out of 4. This data can help schools implement targeted intervention for those specific students in the fall.
We think these 10 prompts will paint a more accurate picture of a school’s readiness for the fall and whether or not targeted intervention is needed:
Rate overall performance and engagement for each LCAP Subgroup:
To get a more accurate assessment of the schools readiness to return in the fall ideally a school leader would share the quiz with her staff, students, and families the school serves. Our hope is to aggregate the feedback from all stakeholders and share their scorecard with the school leader and the school community.
I would truly love your feedback on this idea. Do you think this can help? Would school leaders take this quiz? Do you think they would share it with their staff and school community? Did we leave any anything out of the quiz? Thanks in advance for taking a moment to leave a comment.
Be well,
Mitch
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I think this is a great idea and I think leaders would welcome this data. We are all trying to figure out how to quantify this loss as well as head in the right direction and any data that can help us hone in on what is important is invaluable.