Measuring & Addressing Learning Loss With Innovative Diagnostic Tools: California & South Carolina Respond

In this Friday, July 17, 2020, GLR Week 2020 session, Hedy Chang, Executive Director and President of Attendance Works,moderated a conversation with leaders from Education Analytics and two states that have collaborated in developing the Rally Analytics Platform, an innovative interactive platform designed to “diagnose and respond” by helping teachers and school leaders track and reflect on the well-being and academic impacts of COVID-related school closures:

• Jeff Dominitz, Principal Researcher at Education Analytics, offered an overview of the Rally Platform, highlighting how this tool will bring disparate sources of student information into focus. By providing historical student data, formative and progress monitoring data, predictive analytics and survey measures of well-being — and by promoting equity pauses — teachers will have at their fingertips information to diagnose where students are in their learning and where those students will need support and tailored instruction.
• Noah Bookman, Executive Director of CORE Data Collaborative, provided a snapshot of the CORE Districts in California — eight of the largest school districts in the state representing over 1 million students and also including the CORE Data Collaborative that collectively serves 2.4 million students and 180 school systems — and discussed the partnership with Education Analytics and South Carolina. Provided at no cost to CORE Districts, Rally was designed to support teachers and school leaders in efforts to understand and provide for the holistic needs of students in their return to school after months at home and uneven learning opportunities due to the pandemic. Bookman shared two key priorities in developing Rally: 1) an opportunity to see well-being and academic data in one place, and 2) an emphasis on the whole child.
• Stephanie DiStasio, Director of the Office of Personalized Learning at the South Carolina Department of Education, shared the state’s Personalized Learning Educational Learning Framework. The state recognized that COVID-19 would impact their ability to stay on track with the Framework and that teachers would need the right tool to “act as diagnosticians” and focus their planning time on designing the right supports for students. Rally provided the opportunity to empower its teachers by bringing together data and resources in one place and ensuring that all districts, regardless of size or budget, would have access to a meaningful diagnostic tool.

The discussion and Q & A helped raised important questions and issues including how Rally might ensure data on the early years (Rally started with fourth grade, grade levels  linked to state summative data); include data on attendance; and ensure that the tool can also be a resource for parents.

This tool is a work in progress, being developed quickly in real time with ongoing feedback from users. The goal is to support continuous improvement helping users to understand initially the impact of COVID-19 and then, ideally, gain insights into the impact of strategies used during the 2020–21 school year.