Blended Learning: Expanding Educational Opportunities for Rural School Students (or Not)?Robert R. Pritchard, Superintendent

Mexico Academy and Central School District

RSA Annual Conference, July 9, 2012

Presentation outline

Introduction Delimitations Questions Impact of Marginalizing High Achieving Students Summary & Conclusions Recommendations for Future Study

IntroductionProblem Statement: Students in Rural, high-poverty school districts do not have the same access to Advanced Placement and/or Honors courses as students in wealthier school districts.Purpose: to determine if and how the course-taking patterns of students at Mexico High School (a rural, low-wealth school) was influenced by the introduction of AP Course offerings in Physics, Chemistry and Biology via blended learning.Significance: How may school administrators influence the achievement gap for high-poverty, rural school students by examining how, if at all, blended learning instructional practices influence student enrollments in science electives?

Delimitations

The results of this study may only be generalizable to other school districts that have a similar need-to-resource capacity.

There may be other factors that influence student course-taking behavior beyond structural considerations, but ability grouping was the only factor considered in this study

Mexico High School Case Study

Prior to 2011-12 school year, no AP course offerings in the physical or life sciences (Chem, Bio, Physics).

Summer of 2011 – initial discussions with principal, superintendent, dually certified teacher (Chem and Physics), and director of technology.

High school guidance counselor solicits enrollment of 6 students in AP Chemistry and 6 students in AP Physics in a “Flex” classroom

What is Blended Learning?

A means of instructional delivery where student learns at least in part at a supervised brick-and-mortar location away from home and at least in part through online delivery with some element of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace.

It has the potential to increase student access to advanced courses or further alienate students already assigned to a learning “niche.”

Blended learning models Programs with a Flex model feature an online

platform that delivers most of the curricula. Teachers provide on-site support on a flexible and adaptive as-needed basis through in-person tutoring sessions and small group sessions. Many dropout recovery and credit-recovery blended programs fit into this model (e.g., NovaNet).

Other models include: Face-to-Face Driver, Rotation, Online Lab, Self-Blend, Online Driver (Horn & Staker, 2011)

The spectrum from purely on-line (digital/avatar) to purely face-to-face (analog/human) is dynamic and is student-based.

Questions How did Blended Learning increase student access to

more rigorous academic programming in the physical and life sciences? ANSWER: It did not (directly)… “Tracked” high-achieving students who were

already marginalized Sorting low-SES students into a low-track

curriculum perpetuates the “Matthew Effect” in education (Walberg and Tsai, 1983). Intro to Foods – really?

Starts early but is cemented in middle school as a small cohort of high performers are tracked into an accelerated program (Pritchard, 2012)

Good news…Pilot (indirectly) created an “AP Craze” a.k.a, The Race to Somewhere. AP enrollments tripled in one year.

GRADE 6 TO 7 – HETEROGENEOUS PLACEMENT

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GRADE 7 TO 8 – IMPACT OF ABILITY GROUPING

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Summary and conclusions

Rural school district communities that perceive themselves as lacking capacity (financial, intellectual, emotional, or otherwise) may unnecessarily restrict student access to higher-level programming in math and science.

Blended learning has proven to be a successful instructional system for struggling students (via NovaNet credit recovery) but has reinforced the “niche” status of AP courses as exceptional, and off-limits. Are there more effective bl models?

Sorting students by ability level does not improve student performance for low-tracked students at the middle school in STEM, and further narrows and alienates the cohort of high achievers.

Recommendations for future study Why do rural schools marginalize the top

performing students in the sciences in light of the Matthew Effect? (Blended learning creates a rationale niche programming).

How do we shift the culture to include rigorous academic programming in the sciences? What curriculum changes need to occur to make this shift? Universal Acceleration (Burris, 2003), math and science “compression” at the middle school, Math in Focus, Go Math, Cultural Literacy, etc…

What are the class size and instructional grouping considerations associated with AP implementation in the sciences? Tennessee STAR (Finn & Achilles, 1990), Track/No-Track studies (multiple authors).