On April 23-25, 2023, 2000 people from 47 states and 12 nations spanning five continents came together as one community at the Carnegie Summit 2023 in San Diego. This event marked the 10th anniversary of the Carnegie Summit on Improvement in Education, an annual convening of a community of improvers to connect, share work, learn, and be inspired by each other. It is a place to belong to a larger movement for continuously improving our education system to close opportunity gaps for all our nation’s young people.

The first-time Carnegie Summit attendees were welcomed into the community with open arms and told from the start: “You belong”. In the words of one of the emcees Tinkhani White, “The Summit is a homecoming, where we welcome back those who have been with us, welcome new members to our community, celebrate the community, and bring our whole authentic selves to enrich the community.” Woven throughout the three days was a celebration of joy as an expression of resistance, punctuated by the movement of activist dancers from CONTRA-TIEMPO.

The focus of this 10th Summit centered around the joining of improvement and equity. Tim Knowles, the president of the Carnegie Foundation, opened the event with these powerful words: “Improvement must be about the pursuit of economic and racial justice. Improvement without equity means that achievement gaps don’t close. Improvement with equity means that they can and do.”

Historically, the Carnegie Summit has been the place for educators passionate about improvement science. The community’s collective goals include finding better ways to learn how to improve in general and how to learn fast to achieve quality outcomes reliably at scale, centered around these six core principles of improvement:

1. Identify the specific problem we are trying to solve.
2. Specify what works, for whom, and under what set of conditions.
3. Understand how the current system produces the current outcomes.
4. Measure improvement by tracking key outcomes and processes.
5. Engage in rapid cycles to learn fast, fail fast, and improve quickly, embracing failures as opportunities to learn.
6. Embrace the wisdom of networked communities to accelerate improvements.

There were over 100 sessions and over 50 posters of schools and districts sharing their improvement journeys to engaged audiences.

In recent years, the Carnegie Summit has broadened its tent to include visionary, transformative change for the education sector. With Tim Knowles’ announcement in December about dismantling the Carnegie Unit to shift focus away from ‘seat time’ toward ‘skills’ and Carnegie’s newly announced partnership with Educational Testing Service (ETS) to radically transform assessment, it is clear that the time for a bold and ambitious transformation to our nation’s education system is now.

The XQ Institute joined the Carnegie Summit in 2022 with a vision to improve and reimagine the American high school experience. During the 2023 Summit, XQ hosted two sessions where conference-goers learned about the design journey for two XQ high schools in DC Public Schools and gained hands-on exposure to the XQ Competencies, a comprehensive collection of skills for XQ’s vision of what every American young person should demonstrate mastery of by the time they graduate from high school. The XQ Café was also a popular place to enjoy coffee and chat with other conference-goers about their shared vision for the future of our nation’s education system.

The 10th anniversary Carnegie Summit was a place where like-minded educators came together to be enriched and inspired by each other’s experiences. The education community’s journey from the Summit is toward equity, belonging, connection, joy, and improvement.

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In Part 1, we introduced Arizona State University’s Universal Learner Courses (ULCs) offered through the Accelerate ASU program, in addition to learning how college in the high school can help with closing the opportunity gap by making college-level courses available to every high school learner.

In order to set up high school learners to succeed in these more rigorous college-level courses, high schools can incorporate several approaches to address key challenges and improve their students’ overall experience and course passing rates. A critical first step for high schools when introducing Accelerate ASU as part of college in the high school is to raise awareness across the entire student body, not just the higher-achieving students, of the value of trying a college course in high school, in particular how ULCs are risk-free and low-to-zero cost to students. Having the choice of whether to add the college course to their transcript based on how well they performed can give high school learners and their caregivers peace of mind that this is truly a risk-free opportunity.

Common challenges exist when introducing college in the high school. Below are five proven approaches that many high schools offering Accelerate ASU and ULCs have used to improve the overall experience and success of their high school learners.

Challenge: High school students are very busy.

By using blocks of time during the regular school day to take a ULC, rather than squeezing in extra after-school time, weekends, and summers, students will be more likely to stay on track with the workload and complete the course on time.

Challenge: College courses can be daunting.

Students learn better together, so when a high school is able to place students taking the same ULCs together in cohorts during the same periods, they are better able to support each other throughout the entirety of the course.

Challenge: College courses expect a high level of independence.

Assigning a facilitator to offer support with pacing assignments, understanding content, and checking in on a regular basis (i.e. at least weekly) is extremely beneficial for high school students to acclimate to a college-level course. With the extra support, students can learn tips and tricks on how best to manage their time and deadlines, which is beneficial beyond the course itself.

Challenge: Not all online college courses are engaging.

If high schools have the capacity for facilitators to lead interactive and engaging in-person activities to supplement the online course material and/or utilize supplemental content to reinforce the coursework, it can help make the course material more engaging and ultimately more well-understood, leading to success in the course. Encouraging participation in ASU’s online discussion boards is also a helpful practice to make the course more interactive.

Challenge: There is a steep learning curve for facilitators.

Acknowledging that it also takes some direct experience for facilitators to get up to speed with a particular course is important so that a school can focus its attention on a smaller set of ULCs and improve their support of the course with each additional iteration.

Nonprofit Spotlight: National Education Equity Lab supports 11,000 high school students in their college courses.

National Education Equity Lab (NEEL) is a not-for-profit organization launched three years ago that has been able to scale its college-in-high school model throughout the country by partnering with 15 colleges, including Arizona State University’s Universal Learner Courses (ULCs). NEEL is currently working with over 90 school districts in 29 states, all of which are Title I or Title I-eligible schools. They have served 11,000 students in the past 3 years, of which 2,500 students from 140 high schools have taken ASU ULCs. In addition to making college in the high school accessible to traditionally underserved communities, they also offer additional valuable services, including Career Nights, Application Nights, and FAFSA Student Aid Nights.

In Fall 2022, they offered 12 courses, three of which were ASU ULCs: “Poetry in America: The City from Whitman to Hip Hop”, “Introduction to Sociology”, and “Cloud Foundations”. With thousands of students in the NEEL program, their formula for success contains many of the aforementioned elements, including:

• Students take college courses during the school day in the same classroom, with a teacher in the classroom.
• Uniquely, NEEL college courses also have an online Teaching Fellow, who provides support via Zoom weekly and does grading/provides feedback to the high school students.
• Student eligibility includes a guideline of a GPA of 3.0+, mostly for juniors and seniors, but principals ultimately determine eligibility.
• Schools/districts who partner with NEEL pay for the cost of the course; the course is free to students.

The Accelerate ASU program continues to improve its support of high schools offering ULCs for college in the high school. Future plans include a release of Classroom Guides for all ULCs to contain pacing guidance, discussion topics, checklists for facilitators, and ideas for activities to supplement the courses. The university is also revisiting its assignment policies to increase the likelihood for high school learners to catch up if they fall behind.

By opening up access to college courses to all high school learners and providing high schools with the right tools and support for their learners, the power of early college exposure in high school has the potential to unleash a myriad of possibilities for all of our nation’s young people.

For more, see the first post in this series: Closing the Opportunity Gap with Access to College-Level Courses for Every High School Learner.

The post How High Schools Can Successfully Accelerate College Pathways appeared first on Getting Smart.

The concept of students taking college classes while still enrolled in high school has been around for over 50 years. The benefits of dual enrollment, or concurrent enrollment, are evident with higher rates of high school graduation, college enrollment, and college completion. Dual enrollment programs have historically been more heavily utilized and offered to higher-achieving students, often with counselors as the gatekeepers for determining whether a learner is ready for the rigor of college-level work during high school. Access to dual enrollment can also be dependent on the ability of a high schooler to commute to a local community college or university, as well as be limited to the more well-resourced high schools that have instructors approved to teach college courses. 

Historically underrepresented learners participate in dual enrollment programs at lower rates, and dual enrollment programs are often less available to schools serving lower-income communities and communities of color. Many factors such as high school faculty credentialing, lack of financial resources/scholarships, transportation, etc. all contribute to this challenge.

More recently, as more colleges and universities are offering online classes with transferable college credits, access to college for high school students is broadening. Online courses remove the logistical barriers of commuting and relying on a high school’s ability to offer college courses, which in turn opens the door for all high school learners, regardless of their academic performance, to have a college course experience during high school.

One such university, Arizona State University (ASU), partners with high schools to offer the Accelerate ASU program for high school learners. In a collaborative and supportive learning environment, learners access ASU’s Universal Learner Courses (ULCs) online, designed and assessed by ASU faculty. Some high schools weave relevant college courses concurrently into their high school classrooms and offer targeted support to scaffold high school and college content. Others offer college-level coursework as an additional opportunity outside of their standard classes.

Working closely with high schools, ASU helps to ensure credit recognition and transferability, providing students with a head start in their college education. Teachers and administrators also benefit from ASU’s training and professional development opportunities, enabling them to effectively guide and support students as they navigate these courses. While specific partnerships may differ, the primary goal remains consistent: to empower high school students with accessible, flexible, and affordable college-level learning opportunities.

Why would a high school student want to take a college course?

Enhancement of High School Experience.

College courses can enhance the high school experience by allowing students to take interesting electives that may not be offered by their high school, such as ASU’s “Identity, Service and American Democracy”, “Poetry in America: The City from Whitman to Hip Hop”, or “Introduction to Sociology.” They can also provide a rigorous supplement to core high school content areas, like Math and English. College courses can also be used for those who are in need of credit recovery to help students graduate on time.

Moderate Exposure to College-Level Courses.

For high school students who are not yet sure if they want to go to college, Accelerate ASU offers an interesting opportunity for learners to have a risk-free experiment to see what a college-level course could be. It could help students from families who may have never gone to college form their own identity as future college students. Read on to learn in more depth how Friendship Public Charter School in Washington D.C. has utilized ASU’s ULCs in a systematic way to promote early college exposure in high school for 100% of their students.

More Rigorous Early College Pathway.

High school students who may already know they are college-bound could take all the common first-year general education courses to earn a full year of college credits to save money on tuition. With Accelerate ASU, high school students can feel confident about ASU college credit having high transferability to many colleges and universities that they may be interested in attending. High school students could even earn up to two full years of college credits on a path toward their college degrees.

Head Start to Career.

There are also ASU ULCs that stack up to industry certifications, such as the Google IT Support Mastery Certificate, a five-course certificate intended to prepare for a career in Information Technology. Whether a learner’s timeline to enter the workforce is after high school or post-college, industry certifications hold value and can help bridge students from the classroom to the workforce.

Accelerate ASU can open up a world of possibilities for all high school learners, in particular, because of its risk-free approach. Regardless of their original reason for taking their first college course, exposure to college-level courses during high school has the potential to propel high school students forward on a pathway to college, career, or both.

School Spotlight: Friendship Public Charter School promotes early college exposure for all high school students

Friendship Public Charter School in Washington D.C. has two Title I high schools, Friendship Tech Prep and Friendship Collegiate Academy, collectively serving over 860 students who are predominantly Black (98+%). Friendship has a strong college-going culture, with 100% of students accepted to a four-year college or university. They started using ASU ULCs more than 10 years ago, with an average of 100 students taking ULCs every school year at no cost or risk to them. Because Friendship believes that every student has the potential to go to college, they encourage all of their students starting in 9th grade, regardless of GPA or academic achievement, to take a college course, one of their most popular being ASU’s “Introduction to Health and Wellness.” Nearly every Friendship graduate takes at least one college course throughout their time in high school, with about a 65% passing rate for ASU ULCs.

Every high school student in the country deserves the opportunity to try a college course in high school. Think about what that can do to the mindset of a high school student when in ninth grade they are given the ability to believe that they can go to and succeed in college!

For more, see the second blog post in this series, How High Schools Can Successfully Accelerate College Pathways, on how high schools can succeed using ASU ULCs to experience college in the high school!

The post Closing the Opportunity Gap with Access to College-Level Courses for Every High School Learner appeared first on Getting Smart.

Our nation’s education system has traditionally taken a reactive approach to challenges, such as taking action only when there is negative behavior expressed in the classroom. The issue with responding and intervening only when the problem is noticeable means that too often, the interventions come too late. There are also many learners flying under the radar without obvious external challenges but who are still struggling. Every young person deserves the opportunity to thrive and learn at their best.

In the Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) space, there are two categories of tools: 1) curriculum (e.g. Second Step), and 2) assessment (e.g. Panorama). In the past, SEL assessments tended to be one-time or infrequent for an aggregate pulse of a school’s climate. In recent years, there has been a shift toward more frequent check-ins and personalized feedback, for the purpose of timely, actionable improvement for individual learners.

One tool offering both SEL curriculum and more frequent assessments is Sown To Grow, supported by organizations such as Digital Promise and aligned with CASEL. Sown To Grow facilitates proactive weekly pulse checks of student well-being, while not putting the sole burden on classroom teachers to notice and request interventions for those in need.

According to learning science research, “people learn best when they are in constructive emotional states versus ones of excessive stress or anxiety.” SEL has been proven to improve academic achievement by an average of 11 percentile points. Acknowledging the direct link between a learner’s emotions and motivation to learn is the foundation of Sown To Grow. CEO and Founder, Rupa Gupta, describes SEL as how we support learners so that they can feel seen, supported, and learning at their best. It must be comprised of both:

• empowering students to build their skills and
• providing supports to help students with challenges outside their control.

Learners

At its most basic level of usage, Sown To Grow provides an opportunity for learners to provide weekly check-ins by selecting the emoji that most reflects their mood and a space to type in a short reflection. They can also see a graph of how their mood has shifted over time and their past reflections.

Building a small habit of weekly reflection enables a more positive and proactive approach to student well-being. Students learn to not only recognize when they are having a tough time, but also to notice when things are going well. They can build more resilience and are empowered to take action to overcome their challenges to get back to a more positive place.

Sown To Grow has observed that digital natives are more inclined to share openly in a digital format over talking to an adult. One learner commented: “Even if I have a great relationship with my teacher, for me as a 16-year-old to walk up to an adult and tell them I’m having a tough time, that’s hard. But in an online interface, even though I know that the teacher is reading it, there’s this safety of dropping things in there.”

Teachers

For teachers, they are able to see a dashboard of how the individuals in their classroom are feeling to determine who might need additional support. There are also suggested responses that teachers can use to streamline their feedback process, or they can personalize their response.

Administrators

At the administrative level, Sown To Grow produces a school-wide summary report that flags any learners that may have multiple weeks of negative feeling emojis, as well as alerts to identify individuals who may have a concerning emotional state in need of a more urgent intervention. Counselors and school leaders can see if a teacher has already connected with a particular individual or if they are the first ones to reach out. This allows the burden of noticing students in need to be shared by the primary classroom teachers, counselors, and school leaders, so that there are more opportunities for adults at school to connect and provide support.

While adding “one more thing” to teachers’ growing set of responsibilities is always top of mind and a very valid concern, Sown To Grow is heavily focused on making the tool very easy to use for teachers as well as sharing the responsibility more broadly. After all, at the heart, every teacher cares about each of their learners’ well-being, and so this tool enables them to more proactively and efficiently check in and act as needed.

Another essential component to student well-being and academic health is encouraging an open line of communication between learners and their parents/caregivers. Sown To Grow is committed to protecting student privacy and invites young people to use their voice to talk about any challenges they may be facing, such as using student-led conferences as a space to share their social-emotional data with their parents/caregivers.

For those schools and districts who wish to go beyond the weekly emoji check-ins and reflections, Sown To Grow also offers more advanced capabilities including academic check-ins, academic goal-setting, deeper reflections centered around SEL competencies, and embedded SEL curriculum.

It can be challenging to systematically measure social-emotional well-being of an entire classroom on a frequent basis. With thoughtfully-designed technology, educator capacity can be increased to pay closer attention to something so fundamentally valuable like learner well-being, which in turn impacts one’s ability to learn and perform at their best. As Gupta captures it, “If we can deliver on the three goals of ensuring students are seen, supported, and learning at their best, we’re changing the game for access to rigorous education, well-being, helping students thrive and reach their dreams, even knowing the scope of their dreams.”

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