Long Term Impact

Quick update on a great back-to-school season for team Short Answer! We've been hard at work leading workshops and trainings with our schools and were honored to host a webinar with Dylan Wiliam on AI & K12 Assessment a few weeks ago (https://lnkd.in/gXsK8HNv). Alexa Sparks & Austin Redick have also been working hard to finalize some major fall updates to Short Answer that we'll begin pushing out next week (https://lnkd.in/gTYgqBX4). Amid all this excitement, we received the super exciting news this morning that we've been named a semifinalist for The Yass Prize! We're so excited to meet our fellow semifinalists next week in NYC and join an amazing community of educators. You can read more about this year's Yass semifinalists here: https://lnkd.in/gmj8RSgC

?? Research report 2! ?? The study shows that kindergarteners using Once at these three schools (168 students) achieved a median percentile rank at the end of this school year that was 29 points higher than it was at the beginning of the year. We’re so encouraged by a single-year effect of this magnitude, and we hope that you’ll join us in congratulating the districts, the schools, the instructors, their Once coaches, and—most of all—the students!?Great work, everyone! Read the full research report below ?? https://lnkd.in/gi2453Rs

Once Instructor Training continues this month in Aiken, South Carolina! This week, we trained more than 100 instructors who will serve students at all 21 elementary schools in AIKEN COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT. We're grateful to be back in Aiken after serving the community last school year. Nathan Patton Michael McKenna Tara Sullivan

Short Answer and the Stanford University Graduate School of Education EdClub are excited to share that we’ll be co-hosting a webinar with Dr. Dylan Wiliam on AI and K12 assessment on Thursday, August 1st from 7-8 PM ET! You can learn more and register here: bit.ly/drdylanwiliam. I can think of few people in the world better qualified to speak on this topic than Dr. Wiliam. If you’re not familiar with his work, he and Dr. Paul Black's research (https://bit.ly/3xREAPI) laid the foundation upon which modern K12 formative assessment is built. On a personal level, Embedded Formative Assessment (bit.ly/3zHBaja) was the first professional development book I was ever assigned as a teacher. To this day, it rarely leaves my backpack. It’s incredible how relevant it is to our current angst about AI and assessment. As I see it, the crux of that angst is this: AI can complete, or help complete, most of the tasks K12 teachers might use to elicit student understanding (especially when it comes to writing). AI is now embedded in technology our students use daily. So students effectively have an “easy button” in their pocket for almost any task we throw at them. What the heck do we do now? How we answer that question seems to increasingly fall along ideological lines. Optimists believe AI is a boon to be embraced: Faster feedback cycles, richer assessment, enhanced creativity, etc. etc. AI has rendered traditional approaches to assessment irrelevant, and that’s okay. Those tasks are now analogous to memorizing the roads or using a map. It’s fine, but we have GPS now. And GPS is better. Rather than fight the inevitable, let’s abstract away boring old assessments and instead focus on “durable skills” like problem-solving, critical thinking, or creativity. Instead of an essay on the Civil War, let’s assess students’ chats with an Abraham Lincoln bot. Instead of quizzes, let's have students use AI to complete creative projects, then assess “reflections on their process.” Pessimists will quickly tell you this is absurd: AI is the impending death of critical, independent thought. It’s a societal “easy button” being built by morally bankrupt capitalists with mixed motives and no understanding of learning science. It prioritizes product over process and confuses performance as learning. Students will mostly use AI to think for them or cheat. As such, conversations on AI and assessment should focus on limiting its influence in K12 classrooms rather than embracing it. In our webinar, I hope to cut across this ideological divide with practical, research-based advice. I truly can’t think of a better person to help us do this than Dr. Wiliam. See you on August 1st! Register here: bit.ly/drdylanwiliam

?? Short Answer Update! ?? As we wrap up the 2023-2024 school year, we're thrilled to share our Educator Experience Case Study: https://lnkd.in/gym4q-fq. The case study combines user interviews, net promoter score (NPS) surveys, and an end-of-year educator experience survey to assess teachers' perceptions of Short Answer's effectiveness this school year. Thank you to all the educators and students who have embraced our platform this year, nnd a massive thank you to the K12 educators that took the time to contribute to this work. Your feedback has been invaluable as we continue to improve Short Answer. Moving forward, we're excited to conduct more rigorous efficacy research to continue to build out our portfolio of efficacy over time: https://lnkd.in/gKShBcCN. Excited for what the future holds! #EdTech #K12Education #StudentEngagement #WritingSkills

Announcing an exciting new case study on the impact of Hilight's partnership with Coffee County School System this year. We're so excited about this case study because it proves that when you make intentional efforts to make sure your teachers and staff feel VALUED, it has ENORMOUS impacts on literally every other initiative you're leading in your district. This year, Coffee County has seen: ???? The fewest number of staff members leave their district in over a decade ?? 14% decrease in total discipline ?? 13% decrease in bus discipline ???? 11% decrease in student absenteeism Also important, Coffee County High School won the State Championships in football ?????? AMAZING things can happen when we make sure our teachers KNOW that the hard, heart work they are doing every day is making a huge difference. Our team is totally inspired by everything we've learned from partnering with Superintendent Dr. Morris Leis, Mr. Lee Mobley, and the entire staff team at Coffee. So grateful our co-founders Claire Smith and Krissy Taft met Dr. Leis at the Institute for Education Innovation's speed-dating event at ASU+GSV Summit and HONORED to be supporting the incredible work happening in Coffee County again next year ????? Check out the full case study here: https://lnkd.in/gzQXNnGw A huge thank you Carrie Conover and @Taylor Martin at educators 2 educators for all the expertise, research, and interviewing you did to put this case study together. #edtech #superintendent #education #teachershortage #studentabsenteeism