The Metropolitan School District of Warren Township: Personalizing Learning by Redefining Where and When Students Learn

Serving over 12,000 students in Indiana, the Metropolitan School District of Warren Township’s mission is to prepare its students “to be self-directed learners who are literate, creative, curious, civic-minded citizens who do meaningful work in school and life beyond school.” As part of the U.S. Department of Education’s Race to the Top-District (RTT-D) initiative, Warren Township was awarded $29 million to provide its students with a more robust and equitable education, including the 75% of the student population that comes from low-income families, by purchasing and implementing new educational resources. Inspired by what Warren administrators and teachers saw while visiting fellow RTT-D grantee Middletown City School District in New York, Warren Township developed a comprehensive plan for implementing personalized learning by prioritizing blended learning in the classroom and beyond.

At the heart of the plan was Warren Township’s decision to provide its students with voice in how, when, and where they learn. In the classroom, this meant that teachers’ lessons would be adjusted based on student feedback, student discussion would become more prevalent than the teachers, students’ choices would increase in rigor and complexity of task, and students would participate in creating a plan for their own learning. To achieve this level of student agency, Warren Township chose to implement a variety of strategies, including deploying a district-wide system to collect and organize student performance data for use in data driven decisions, small group instruction, integrated digital content, and student reflection. Another strategy was to convert devices into individualized active learning tools by allowing students to conduct online research, collaborate online, and make multimedia presentations. In a student and teacher satisfaction survey administered in May 2016, 72% of students felt their teachers knew them better, 80% of teachers felt students were more engaged, and 60% of teachers reported that they enjoyed their job more after implementing personalized learning.....

Aricle originally appeared on the Office of Education Website. Read the full article here.