Tech & Learning.com - Stem Learning - October 2022

CONTENTS

By Erik Ofgang

By Susan Gentz

By Erik Ofgang

By Erik Ofgang

By Erik Ofgang

WHAT FOUR ATYPICAL SHOCKS ARE COMING IN EDUCATION?

By Susan Gentz

We all keep hearing about the fiscal cliff headed our way after Covid relief funds come to an end. September 2024 will bring forth a great shift in the education market. Marguerite Roza and her team at Edunomics Lab out of Georgetown University are predicting not only the end of the stimulus dollar, but three other atypical shocks for education finance.

It’s one thing to know that the shocks are coming, but even more to know the date of when one will begin. Let’s first take a look at each one of these shocks.

WHAT ARE THE 4 ATYPICAL SHOCKS ON THE HORIZON?

None of these atypical shocks should come to a surprise to anyone who understands how the market works. The team at Edunomics Lab did an excellent job succinctly predicting what these shocks will be (the extent of each shock will be unknown for some time):

Federal funding will end: Fiscal Cliff (September 2024)

Enrollment is declining

Inflation and labor

Economic slowdown (recession)

for a potential wild ride in education over the next few years

PREDICTING SHOCKS

1FEDERAL FUNDING OBLIGATION DEADLINE

We all know it’s coming: The deadline for obligation from the $190 billion dollars allotted to ESSER will either be spent or returned back to the federal government. (For what purpose, we do not know. It could be turned into competitive education grants, or it could be sent to a completely different government agency.)

Regardless of what happens, it will no longer be at the discretion of the district to spend. At the current rate, districts across the nation will need to draw down approximately $5 billion/month to meet the spending deadline.

This is significant in itself, but after the dollars drop off, there are still three other shocks to consider.

2

DECLINING ENROLLMENT

This is a short-term and a long-term problem. The headlines have all shown how large urban districts, especially, have seen a decline in enrollment. In fact, The 74 reports that, “The Oakland Unified Public Schools offers a preview of what other districts with declining enrollment and birth rates will soon confront — the painful and unpopular decision to close schools. In February, the district, which saw a 5.6% enrollment decline compared to last year, decided it would close seven schools over the next two years. Four others will merge or reduce grade levels.”

Regardless of why there is declining enrollment, many leaders will face hard decisions, and a shock to their budgets, in the coming years.

3 INFLATION AND LABOR

We’ve all felt inflation over the last few months, this summer reaching an all time historic 40-year high of 9.1%.

Districts are not immune to inflation and it will have a great impact on

the labor market. Typically, districts will be able to give raises in the 3% to 5% range with COLA and steps. The use of federal funds to hire educators paired with inflation will up that number to the 5% to 8% range.

This is huge and as we know, most of a district’s budget (somewhere in the ballpark of 85%) is for human capital. Inflation will have a great impact on the budgets moving forward.

4 ECONOMIC SLOWDOWN (RECESSION)

A national recession will hit states differently. A lot of how hard this one shocks districts is the structure in which the state funds districts.

Historically, a district that funds districts based off of property taxes have fared better during hard economic times, while states that rely on sales tax have a less stable mechanism that depends on citizens spending their money. Not to say that states that rely on sales tax are immune, as the housing bubble was proof of that. More foreclosures mean less taxes to allocate for schools.

THIS IS HARD

Between the market, test scores, chronic absenteeism, and school safety, sometimes being in education is hard and emotionally taxing.

Over the next couple of weeks we will be unpacking each of these shocks in deeper detail, and looking back at history to see which districts handled these problems with the most grace and success, and we’re going to share what they did with you. We hope that this will help you to examine your own districts and provide strategies to help “absorb the shock” (be a shock absorber, if you will.) Come back for the history and lessons, stay for the great plays on words.

WHY MORE STATES ARE REQUIRING COMPUTER SCIENCE CLASSES

More and more states are requiring computer science classes be offered at all schools.

By Erik Ofgang

Despite ongoing efforts to offer more computer science class options in K-12 public schools across the country, a new report found that significant disparities still exist in who has access to these courses.

“Computer science is really foundational to what students need to be able to learn and do not just for their careers but for their post-high school academic careers and for their family security,” says the report’s co-author Sean Roberts, Vice President of Government Affairs for the nonprofit Code.org. The report was released by Code.org, the Computer Science Teachers Association, and the Expanding Computing Education Pathways Alliance.

COMPUTER SCIENCE

REQUIRING COMPUTER SCIENCE INCREASES ACCESS FOR YOUNG WOMEN

Five states currently require students to complete computer science classes to graduate high school. While that may not sound like many, that number represents significant progress since the beginning of 2022. “In the past year, we’ve gone from having two states having this graduation requirement to three more adding requirements,” Roberts says.

Nevada and South Carolina were the first states in the country to make computer science a graduation requirement for high school students. Arkansas, Tennessee, and Nebraska have recently passed similar policies.

Nevada and South Carolina have seen significant benefits from the requirement. “The national average for young women participating in high school computer science courses is 32 percent; in South Carolina, it’s 47 percent,” Roberts says. “More young women took a computer science course in South Carolina this year than in North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, and Alabama combined. Roughly the same number of young women took a computer science course in South Carolina as in Texas, and Texas has a population six times greater.”

This type of progress is why the policy appeals to many states. “We’ve struggled for so long to ensure equitable access to computer science courses, but when only 32 percent of the participants are young women

nationally, I don’t think you can say access is really equitable,” Roberts says. “That’s really the driving force behind this for a lot of states, they want to ensure that every student has this opportunity.”

PROGRESS, YET INEQUITIES PERSIST

Beyond the five states that make computer science coursework a graduation requirement, 27 states now require schools to offer computer science courses. This is a significant increase from 2017, when only four states had such a requirement.

“For the first time the majority of states in the United States require computer science to be taught in all their high schools,” Roberts says.

The report also found 53 percent of U.S. high schools offer foundational computer science, an increase from 51 percent last year and 35 percent in 2018.

Despite this progress, inequities persist. Hispanic and Latino students represent only 20 percent of those participating in foundational computer science courses, despite representing 27 percent of teens in high school. Students living in poverty account for 52 percent of all students yet only 36 percent are enrolled in computer science courses.

“We’re still in a position where if you are a Black student, or Hispanic or Latino or Native American, you’re less likely to attend a school that offers computer science,” Roberts says.

However, if you offer it, students from all backgrounds will come.

“One of the things that’s really interesting to come out of the report though is when students attend a school that offers computer science, generally they take it,” Roberts says. “It really just is a matter of making sure we’re providing those opportunities for students.”

ADVERTORIAL

Creating a Framework to Ensure Math Success

ow can school districts combine print and digital resources to transform math teaching and ensure success for all students? To answer this question, New Perspectives on Learning and DreamBox Learning hosted an event for math coordinators in which attendees learned about tools that can support effective instruction to create a consistent highquality learning experience for all students, even when faced with teacher shortages.

To learn more about how the combination of New Perspectives on Learning and DreamBox solutions transformed the culture around math instruction in their districts, Tech & Learning spoke with Susan L. Austin, Superintendent of the Groton Public School District in Connecticut, and Laurie Rossback, Executive Director of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment for the Durango School District in Colorado.

wonderful tools for teaching that can help teachers and their students excel in the math classroom,” says Austin, a former middle school math teacher. “It’s our teachers who get to know those kids and quickly find out what they already know how to do and know what the next steps are to help accelerate their learning and move forward. That’s where the heart of the

HOW SCHOOL DISTRICTS COMBINE PRINT AND DIGITAL RESOURCES

A key to successful math education is often effectively combining print and digital resources to maximize student learning in both online and face-to-face settings and to be able to seamlessly switch from one to the other when needed.

Images taken at the

reception

“New Perspectives and DreamBox are

Rossback says, “Contexts for Learning Mathematics (CFLM), a new K-5 math program published by New Perspectives on Learning, goes hand-in-hand with the digital resources offered by DreamBox. Oftentimes the digital solution is this extra thing that kids do if there’s time, or it’s really at the teacher’s discretion,” she says. However, in the Durango School District, educators have integrated the digital and print resources. It’s really that balance of wanting students to spend the majority of their time at school collaborating with each other, solving complex problems, and having to develop innovative solutions. But then the digital component really is allowing us to track individual student progress and provide further personalized options,” explains Rossback.

SUPPORTING HIGH-QUALITY LEARNING FOR ALL STUDENTS

At the Groton Public Schools, the emphasis is on having students and teachers realize they are mathematicians at work and that the math problems they solve have real-world implications.

Combining print and digital math resources pays dividends for math students.

ADVERTORIAL

“If we’re measuring, we might be building benches in third grade, and we actually build the benches,” says Austin. “It’s very contextual problem-solving and it’s so engaging for kids. They’re measuring for an art show, designing subway systems, or they’re packing puzzle pieces.”

Students also learn collaboratively. “Kids are constructing their answers to problems in groups and think tanks, and they’re publishing it on the wall, and kids are doing a gallery walk – walking around to see how their peers are thinking, asking questions, making comments, posting their wonderings on this,” Austin says.

This all works hand-in-hand with DreamBox, which is utilized for about a third of the time during math workshops and helps teachers meet students where they are. “The whole purpose of DreamBox is to really complete lessons because DreamBox has a strong mathematical engine in and of itself that detects where kids are in their productive struggle and what they need next,” she says.

SUPPORTING MATH TEACHERS

In addition to print resources, New Perspectives Online offers an on-demand personalized professional support system –a robust online platform for professional learning. “The online PD platform is a critical piece given that for many teachers it is a different way of teaching math and of thinking about math compared to what our own experiences were as students, but also our own experiences in education,” Rossback says. These teacher resources are self-paced and offer different levels of immersion, from a unit overview and help with the mathematics, to deeper studies of exemplary teaching of each of the units and analysis of real student work samples.

The platform also facilitates collaboration between teachers. “[It allows] a group of teachers to sit together during a planning session, and especially during first-year implementation, there is that void of ‘What does this look like? What does this sound like? What does it look like to do this number string well?’” Rossback says.

Meanwhile, DreamBox personalizes the activities and options for students along the same learning pathways as the CFLM program. This helps students who are stuck but also those who are excelling. “For us, it’s been a lot about acceleration,” Rossback says.

FINDING THE FORMULA FOR SUCCESS

Teaching math with the New Perspectives on Learning units and DreamBox has already led to success in the Durango School District and the Groton Public School System. Durango only recently implemented the change in curriculum, so school-wide data is not available, but last year one 5th-grade math class that participated during a pilot program had the highest rate of growth in the district’s state assessments. Now that the new approach to math has been implemented district-wide, Rossback says they’re seeing more enthusiasm for math from the community. “Teachers have reported they’re excited, and students are excited about the games and the collaborative nature of the math workshop.”

The Groton Public School System has seen significant success since it began implementing the New Perspectives on Learning CFLM units and DreamBox for its math curriculum five years ago. Two schools in the district have earned National Blue Ribbon awards and its math culture has been energized.

“Over the five years, we’ve seen significant change in how teachers are teaching mathematics. We see more engagement from our students,” Austin says.

To learn more about how New Perspectives on Learning is transforming classrooms into vibrant mathematical communities, email them here

To learn more about how DreamBox Learning is driving student learning, request a demo here

USING TELEPRESENCE ROBOTS IN SCHOOL

Telepresence robots can bring students who cannot attend school into the classroom in a more immersive manner than video conferencing.

By Erik Ofgang

The use of telepresence robots in education might seem new or science fiction-like to some but Dr. Lori Aden has been helping to facilitate students and their telepresence robots for almost a decade.

Aden is the program coordinator for Region 10 Education Service Center, one of 20 regional service centers that support school districts in Texas. She oversees a small fleet of 23 telepresence robots that are deployed as needed to assist students in the region.

These telepresence robots act as avatars for students who cannot attend school long-term for various health or other reasons, providing a more immersive experience than video conferencing via a laptop.

“It puts the control of learning back in the student’s hands,” Aden says. “If there is group work, the child can drive the robot over to the little group. If the teacher moved over to the other side of the classroom, the laptop was gonna stay one direction unless another person moves it. [With the robot] the child can actually just twist and turn and drive the robot.”

TELEPRESENCE ROBOTS

TELEPRESENCE ROBOT TECHNOLOGY

Telepresence robots are produced by several companies. Region 10 in Texas works with VGo robots produced by VGo Robotic Telepresence, a division within Massachusetts-based Vecna Technologies.

Steve Normandin, product manager at Vecna, says they have about 1,500 VGo robots currently deployed. In addition to being used in education, these robots are also utilized by the healthcare industry and other industries, and can be purchased for under $5,000 or rented for a few hundred dollars per month.

The robot moves at a slow pace that is designed to be harmless. “You’re not going to hurt anybody,” Normandin says. During a demo for this story, a Vecna employee logged into the VGo at the company’s office and intentionally crashed the device into the company’s printer – neither device was harmed.

Students can press a button that causes the robot’s lights to flash indicating they have their hand raised, like an in-class student might do. However, Normandin believes the best part about VGos in school settings is they allow students to interact with classmates in the hallways between classes and one-on-one or in small groups. “Nothing’s better than being there personally yourself, but this is a far cry from just the laptop or the iPad with FaceTime,” he says.

Aden agrees. “The social aspect is huge,” she says. “It just lets them be a kid. We even dress the robots up. We’ll put a t-shirt on or we’ve had little girls put tutus and bows on theirs. It’s just a way to help them feel as normal as possible being around other kids in the classroom.”

Other children also learn by interacting with the remote student. “They’re learning empathy, they’re learning that not everybody is as lucky as they are not as healthy as they are. It’s a two-way street there,” Aden says.

TELEPRESENCE ROBOT TIPS FOR EDUCATORS

Region 10 students who have utilized the robots have included those with severe physical or cognitive impairments, ranging from car accident victims to cancer patients and immunocompromised students. Telepresence robots have also been used as avatars by students who have had behavioral problems and are not yet ready to be reintegrated fully with other students.

Setting up a student with a robot does take some time, however, so they’re not deployed for students with short-term absences such as a vacation or temporary

TELEPRESENCE ROBOTS

illness. “If it’s only a couple of weeks, it’s not worth it,”

Aden says.

Aden and colleagues at Region 10 regularly talk with educators in Texas and beyond about effectively using the technology and they have put together a resource page

Ashley Menefee, an instructional designer for Region 10 who helps oversee the robot telepresence program, says that educators looking to deploy robots should check the wifi at the school beforehand. Sometimes wifi may work great in one area but the student’s route will take them to a place where the signal is weaker. In these instances, the school will need a wifi booster or the student will need a “bot buddy” who can put the robot on a dolly and take it between classes.

For teachers, Menefee says the secret to effectively integrating a remote student into the class via robot is to ignore the technology as much as possible. “We really suggest that they treat the robot as if it was a student in the classroom,” she says. “Make sure that the students feel like they’re included in the lesson, ask them questions.”

Aden adds that these devices don’t put the same type of strain on teachers that hybrid classes conducted via video conferencing did in the early stages of the pandemic. In those situations, the teacher had to adjust their audio and camera and master in-class and remote management simultaneously. With the VGo, “The child has full control of that robot. The teacher doesn’t have to do a darn thing.”

THE BENEFITS OF EARLY STEM EDUCATION

Fostering young children’s natural curiosity and love for exploration can be key to a lifelong STEM connection.

By Erik Ofgang

Teaching students STEM early in their lives can help establish a lifelong connection between the student and scientific understanding and exploration that is at the heart of STEM, say advocates and a growing body of research.

Young children are innately curious and eager to explore the world. Helping facilitate that enthusiasm can fuel an ongoing interest in key STEM concepts.

STEM EDUCATION

WHAT THE RESEARCH SAYS

The Center for Childhood Creativity writes, “Even before a child’s first birthday, she is capable of making inferences, drawing conclusions about cause and effect, and reasoning about the probability of events.”

A 2016 study that followed 7,750 children from kindergarten through eighth grade found that the earlier children learned about the world, the more successful they were at science. On the other hand, students with minimal early general knowledge struggled with science subjects by the third grade and were still struggling by the eighth grade.

In a 2014 study, researchers found that preschool mathematics ability predicts mathematics achievement through age 15, even after accounting for early reading, cognitive skills, and family and child characteristics. Perhaps more significantly, growth in mathematical ability between children that were 54 months old and first grade was found to be an even stronger predictor of adolescent mathematics achievement. Together these results highlight the importance of pre-kindergarten mathematics and early math learning.

More recently, at ISTE in 2022, a researcher at Eastern Connecticut State University presented the results from a pilot study that showed children aged 4-6 saw statistically significant increases in their math abilities after participating in four coding sessions with a robot toy designed to teach coding.

EMPHASIS ON PLAY AND COLLABORATION BETWEEN PARENTS AND SCHOOLS IS KEY FOR EARLY STEM

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop New America produced STEM Starts Early: Grounding Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education in Early Childhood, in 2017. The report noted that while educators and parents are enthusiastic and capable of supporting early STEM learning, many from both groups experience

“anxiety, low self-confidence, and gendered assumptions about STEM topics, which can transfer to their children and students.”

The report authors advise that, “Both groups can benefit from reconsidering STEM in the context of developmentally-informed, playful learning—like block play, gardening, and exploring puzzles—which engages their own and their children’s curiosity and wonder.”

Connecting this sense of wonder, play, and fun, with STEM early on can stay with children throughout their academic careers and lives. “We know from research that a lot of times by middle school, students have already developed stereotypes about what is for them, or what they might be good at,” says Sean Roberts, Vice President of Government Affairs for the nonprofit Code.org, which advocates for more computer science education in schools. “It’s not an easy thing to overcome those stereotypes or ingrained attitudes.”

When it comes to computer science, Roberts says the key is heading off a stereotype before it forms. “Ensure that there are plenty of opportunities to expose students to the subject matter with a variety of applications that reflect where they’re at, and their interests,” he says.

Another common misconception is that STEM learning for children needs to involve screens. This isn’t true, not even for computer science. “You don’t have to be on a computer every day to learn the tenets of computer science,” Roberts says. “A lot of what is taught in computer science overlaps with things we’ve already been teaching in schools, like sequential thinking, following directions. Those kinds of things are common throughout subject areas and computer science just applies them in a different way.”

STUDENT TECH TEAMS: 5 TIPS FOR HAVING STUDENTS WORK AND LEARN ON THE JOB

Members of student tech teams provide their districts with much-needed tech assistance and gain valuable real-world experience in the process.

By Erik Ofgang

There is nothing quite like on-the-job training, which is why many schools have launched student tech teams that allow young IT enthusiasts work alongside district IT professionals.

These student tech supporters have different functions at different schools but many help with everything from tier one troubleshooting to more advanced hardware deconstruction and reconstruction. Participating students gain valuable work skills and, in return, can help take the strain off districts that might be struggling with staffing.

“It really decreases the burden on the district IT, and the school IT, to have a student provide that tier one troubleshooting,” says Michael Mades,

technical project director at Digital Promise. Mades helps oversee the Verizon Innovative Learning Schools program, which is a collaboration between Verizon and Digital Promise that seeks to equip every student and teacher at select middle and high schools across America with a device and internet access. Participating schools are also encouraged to develop these student tech teams.

Mades has experience mentoring students in these teams as a former district IT leader and has also worked with many districts in his current role to help launch similar student tech teams across the country. As such, he’s gained valuable insight for undertaking such an effort.

EXPERIENCE

1TREAT IT LIKE A REAL JOB

“We really encourage [student tech team facilitators] to treat this like a job for these kids,” Mades says. “So have them apply, have them get letters of recommendation, have them do an interview, provide them with training so that at the end of the day the students have a reallife experience here that will give them skills that they can then take and potentially advance into a tech career down the road.”

2 REMEMBER: THE PROGRAM DOESN’T HAVE TO COST ANYTHING

Students who participate in the program don’t need to get paid. Instead, their participation can be part of a work studies program. This is how the program worked when Mades was a district IT director.

“The ‘pay’ the students were getting was the credit, and they were also getting knowledge and skill,” he says. However, Mades still required his students to take their positions seriously. “They showed up every day, they had expectations, they had jobs and tasks they had to get done. And they left with employability skills after high school, they could become a tech anywhere because they had that foundation,” he says.

3 RECRUIT STUDENTS WHO MAY BE OVERLOOKED

Student tech teams provide an opportunity to encourage success for a student who may not have been successful in other school programs.

“We say, don’t take those rock star kids that are in everything. Find those

students in your school who haven’t found a place yet, those students who need a place to shine,” Mades says.

The program can be an opportunity for students who have creativity but haven’t found the right outlet for it yet. “In some of our schools, they do promotional videos, they do training videos, they do teacher workshops and parent workshops,” Mades says.

4SEEK OUT THE HACKERS

“Find those hackers, those kids who are causing trouble in your network and bring them on board, because when they find out their job is now to protect the network, they’re now working with you and supporting you, and there’ll be your eyes and ears in the schools,” Mades says. “They’ll actually work for you and make you better, once you’ve earned their trust.”

5

MAKE THE WORK MEANINGFUL

Tech teams that Mades works with through the Verizon Innovative Learning Schools program have different makeups and different approaches based on their school and district needs. However, he says the successful ones all provide challenging and fulfilling work opportunities for the students.

“It isn’t just coming in and wiping off the computers in the computer lab once a week, it has to be something that’s going to provide the students a chance of feeling like they’ve accomplished something,” he says. The work should make students feel fulfilled, help them gain skills, and show them they have the potential for growth at the school.