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BLENDED LEARNING IN DC PUBLIC SHOOLSDANIEL K. LAUTZENHEISER AND TARYN HOCHLEITNERon struggling students, and quickly recording studentmastery. Another difficulty is that many of the studentswe observed lacked basic computer literacy. Severalstudents had trouble with the simple tasks of loggingin to the computer, opening the Google Chrome webbrowser, and finding the Discovery Education portal.One did not know how to adjust the brightness on hisscreen, so he had trouble reading the website.After acknowledging these challenges, Rice remindedus that this particular pilot was just getting started. DiscoveryEducation provides seven days of professionaldevelopment for teachers using their techbooks, andthis particular teacher at Anacostia High School hadyet to attend her first session. We also asked Rice toballpark how many Anacostia students would have thecapability to log into Discovery Education at home todo additional work. He estimated 30 percent. That figurebecame evident when we noticed a student’s firstinstinct when trying to define an unknown word was toconsult the dictionary in lieu of a quick Google search.Given the opportunities for teacher training and as studentsstart to gain familiarity with computer tasks, thelesson would likely have looked significantly different ifwe visited, say, even just a month or two later—not tomention the next school year.What’s Next?The students in the Randle Highlands classroom were,in as orderly a fashion as can be expected for a groupof second graders, progressing through the day’s ELAstation rotations. Eight huddled around the teacheras she instructed them on the nuances of verb conjugation.Another cluster sat at tables practicing independently.Over on the computers, eight more studentswere using an ELA program that read a word aloudand prompted them to type it in correctly. As we stoodacross the room, we saw seven students sitting quietlywith headphones doing their work, while out of theeighth computer blared the program’s instructions. Thestudent there did not have headphones and, given thatthe program is impossible to use without audio, hadto use his computer speakers. This was rather distractingfor another student at a nearby desk who had beenassigned individual reading.Once more we see the promise—tailoredinstruction—and one of the challenges—having theproper equipment—of blended learning. Indeed, thishurdle remains one of the most pervasive for DCPS.Scott Cartland, principal at Wheatley Education Campus,lamented that “relying on so much technology doesbring a different set of worries. Do you have enoughaccess points? Is everything being routed in an efficientway? Do you have the hardware? Do you have the rightsoftware? Do you have the right logins? What happenswhen things crash? It just provides a whole other levelof logistics and costs and things to figure out.”No matter how good the tools are,if students cannot use them, eventhe most promising blended-learningefforts will be derailed.Teachers who are pursuing classroom-level changesalso experience difficulties acquiring the technology theyneed. One teacher we spoke with who is actively tryingto shift her classroom to a blended model said procurementwas by far the biggest obstacle she faced. To implementa station-rotation program in her classroom of 24students, she needed eight computers. After hagglingwith the district, she finally received the eight computersshe needed. Three worked. She improvised, buying fouriPads with $2,500 in discretionary funds and combinedthat with her boyfriend’s old laptop to get the eightmachines she needed. This piecemeal approach is socumbersome that only the most persistent teachers willsee it through. The central office has likewise taken note:Pick explains, “The hardware and the actual mechanicscan get in the way too easily, and teachers should nothave to deal with headphones and power strips and allthat stuff we can easily forget about.”Digital-learning conversations often have the feelof something new and different and edgy. And yet thelogistical elements required for a smooth transition—handling computer shipments, correcting technicalglitches, managing schedule changes, conductingteacher training, and keeping enough headphones instock, for example—are not particularly, well, sexy.12
BLENDED LEARNING IN DC PUBLIC SHOOLSDANIEL K. LAUTZENHEISER AND TARYN HOCHLEITNERJohn Rice’s team, in addition to helping principals andteachers navigate these challenges every day, is pushingto head them off with a long-term vision for blendedlearning in DC, centered on two main goals.First, one of the main concerns about launchingblended-learning programs for the first time, aswe observed at Anacostia High School, is ensuringthat students have the capability to do what is askedof them. No matter how good the tools are, ifstudents cannot use them, even the most promisingblended-learning efforts will be derailed. To mitigatethis problem, DCPS hopes to build “feederpatterns”—implementing blended-learning modelsat each school in an elementary–middle–high schoolchain so students can start learning digital skills ata young age and be prepared for more robustblended-learning elements in later years.Second, Rice hopes to move more schools towarda station-rotation configuration like that at RandleHighlands and Ketcham Elementary Schools. This isnot to limit other blended-learning approaches, such asTeach to One or the Discovery Education techbooks.But DCPS has learned from early efforts that the rotationalmodel is well suited to blend teacher-driven andcomputer-based instruction in a fairly nonintrusiveway for students.As Rice explains, “The small-group teacher-led station,where a teacher is working with a homogenousgroup on very specific skills that has been informedby data from the digital content and other measures,is the most impactful part of a student’s school day,and expanding these stations to additional elementaryschools . . . is important to making sure students getstrong, data-driven, targeted instruction from a teacher.”As blended learning spreads across the district andthe central office grows to keep pace, DCPS centraloffice staff have managed to maintain a careful balancebetween encouraging schools to experiment with differentblended models while simultaneously consolidatingwhat they learn into a coherent district strategy. Todate, the district has largely only partnered with schoolswho are willing participants in the blended-learningprocess; the district sees its primary role as supportingthese schools rather than pushing a uniform model.Will this change over time? If, for example, a newmiddle school adopts the Teach to One program andfinds that the sixth graders who enter it lack the requisitecomputer skills to function in that environment,will the district lean on the local elementary school toramp up its blended efforts? It is an open question thecentral office will have to wrestle with as blended learningcontinues to grow in the district.So, what does the future hold for blended learningin DC? If the past is prologue, expect to see the gradualexpansion of high-quality blended learning acrossthe nation’s capital. DC is a charter-rich city, and thecharter school space is a particularly ripe environmentfor new models. 22 Ingenuity Prep, a blended-learningcharter school that uses a station-rotation model alongwith an extended-day and extended-year schedule,opened in 2013. The school now serves only preschooland kindergarten, but it plans to add a grade each yearthrough grade 12. Rocketship Education is also slatedto open a school in the district in the fall of 2015. Moreschools like this, in addition to the efforts of the blended-learningteam at DCPS, might fuel an increasingappetite for innovative learning environments elsewherein the district.The future looks bright. A successful blended environmentinvolves an appetite for trying new things,strong district and school leadership, teacher buy-in,effective training, and vibrant community partners.It is a recipe that, despite the hard work, the districtis willing to take on because the results appear to beworthwhile. As Ketcham Elementary School’s MaishaRiddlesprigger puts it, despite “some growing pains,”her teachers are supporting the school’s forays intothe blended world because it is “enhancing their classroomsin a way that they probably didn’t imagine.”Notes1. According to the Council of the Great City Schools,about 15 percent of students are educated in one of the 100largest school districts; see www.cgcs.org/Page/75.2. District of Columbia Office of the State Superintendentof Education, “Student Enrollment and Nonresident TuitionAssessed,” October 5, 2012, http://osse.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/osse/publication/attachments/Final%20Report%20Enrollment%20Audit%20Report%203%2011%13
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