School of One

I came across the NYC Department of Education's innovative School of One while listening to a podcast. The School of One employs a new educational model using a mixture of teacher-led instruction, independent student learning, virtual learning and one-on-one tutoring.

The most profound aspect of the School of One is the consistent use of differentiated learning methodologies and schedules tailored specifically for each student. The teachers constantly use student achievement data on a daily basis to alter instruction accordingly. Teachers are able to achieve this through the use of technology that apparently uses an algorithm capable of determining and matching up a student's academic needs with learning styles using existing classroom resources. The following video demonstrates this process in more detail.

Click here to watch a streaming web video about the school of one.

The School of One was recently described by the Atlantic Magazine in the article The Littlest Schoolhouse.

Data Wise Improvement Process

Over the past school year I applied the central idea from the book, Data Wise: A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Assessment Results to Improve Teaching and Learning, into my teaching practice by using of formative assessment data to determine student groupings for enrichments and interventions. This book was authored by the professors Richard Murnane, Kathryn Boudett and Elizabeth City of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The main idea proposed in this book is the Data Wise Cycle which involves an eight-step process to help organize school improvement using manageable steps.

In general, the steps of the Data Wise Cycle are:

(1) Organizing for Collaborative Work

(2) Building Assessment Literacy

(3) Preparing a Data Overview

(4) Digging into Student Data

(5) Examining Instruction

(6) Developing an Action Plan

(7) Planning to Assess Progress

(8) Acting and Assessing

Visible Learning, John Hattie

Dr. John Hattie, the author of Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement, recently provided the keynote address at the Data Team Summit in Vail, Colorado. After listening to Dr. Hattie's presentation, I purchased his book

and read it on the flight home. He presents an amazing quantitative analysis of the effects of various educational programs and initiatives. He examined over 50,000 educational studies involving the learning of over 200 million students to determine the typical influence on achievement. He places each upon a single continuum of achievement for comparison. He arrived at an typical effect size of 0.40 as the 'hinge-point' where the effects of the educational innovation enhances achievement that is greater than significantly average. This .040 hinge point creates a standard to judge the efficacy of educational innovations. His findings are quite interesting and thought provoking.

Below is a list of several highly effective educational innovations with the corresponding effect size:

• Acceleration (speed up a year) .88
• Comprehensive interventions for learning disabled students .77
• Feedback .73
• Student-teacher relationships .72
• Teaching study skills .59
• Reading Recovery .50
• Cooperative Learning .41