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Key Readiness Assessment Factors in Race to the Top District

Key Readiness Assessment Factors in Race to the Top District

Personalized Learning  |  Blended Learning  |  School Districts  |  Innovative Leadership

Our plates are full here at Education Elements as we work quickly and thoroughly to help districts think through the vision and approach for their Race to the Top District applications. As part of this process, we are often asked about the key factors that lead to a successful transition to personalizing the learning environment through blended learning. We have learned from our experience working with schools and districts across the country and we have built these lessons into the Readiness Assessment we conduct with all of our clients. The highlights of these lessons fall into two broad categories - strong leadership and school culture.

Strong Leadership

While we have identified a number of key readiness factors around moving to a blended learning model we can say with certainty that strong leadership is the most important. Having a strong leader in place that is open to innovation and can generate authentic buy-in among teachers, parents and the students themselves is essential. Some questions to consider include: Is the principal excited about blended learning? Is he or she willing to be an advocate for the types of changes necessary to implement blended learning? Has the principal started to build a culture around using data to drive decisions?

Being a strong leader is not enough; there is also the issue of capacity. Does the principal have the time to dedicate to blended learning? We suggest districts review what other strategic priorities are in place at the school to assess whether it is a good time to introduce a new model. If there are a lot of initiatives underway, or other issues that the principal is focusing on, it may not be the best time.

The Race to the Top District competition explicitly expresses a desire for lower performing schools to be included in the mix. In many of these schools, strong new leaders are already working to turn-around performance. Our experience has shown that these type of leaders who are willing to take on the challenges of low performing schools are also the right kind to lead the transition to high-quality personalized learning environments. RTT-D provides an unusual and exciting opportunity for these schools to gain access to the resources they need to design, build and manage Blended Classrooms that engage every student and make data-driven instruction sustainable.

School Culture

School culture is another key factor in assessing readiness. Blended learning tends to be most successful in schools where teachers have strong and consistent classroom management practices and where collaboration among teachers is encouraged. We also see more improvement in achievement in schools with a data-driven culture where teachers are familiar with using data to drive instruction. Without this culture in place, it can be challenging to implement blended learning and there will often be a steeper learning curve. For schools that do not yet use data, it is important to think about how to begin that cultural shift early.

Within the context of RTT-D, there exists an opportunity for schools that struggle with these essential elements despite the absence of strong leaders and a data-driven culture. For these schools, we suggest that part of a district’s RTT-D plan contain provisions that allow the school to think through the key change management elements. These change management plans should enable more schools to gain access to the type of leadership necessary to make more blended classrooms successful. All schools can implement blended learning, it is just a question of when they get started.

To learn more about other factors to assess readiness, please download our RTT-D Toolkit or email RTT@edelements.com.

About Amy Jenkins - Guest Author

Amy Jenkins was the chief operating officer of Education Elements.

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