What’s Next? Identifying & Advancing Initiatives to Accelerate Learning Recovery

“How do we take this moment that feels really hard, and say, ‘What can we do better’? … ‘How does research and how [does the way] we’re mobilizing knowledge and disseminating knowledge [need to] change, so that if this happens again—and listen, whether it’s a snow day, or a natural disaster, or a hurricane: this is going to happen again—and we need to be better prepared to serve our communities and get that knowledge, get that research and mobilize that understanding on the ground.”
— Erin Mote, XPrize Jury member and founder of InnovateEDU  

This GLR Learning Tuesdays session, hosted on November 1, 2022, responded to the 2022 NAEP scores and the crisis of learning loss, exploring strategies for accelerating equitable learning recovery. CGLR’s John Gomperts engaged Mark Schneider of the Institute of Education Science (IES) in a discussion about the work of IES, the statistics, research and evaluation arm of the U.S. Department of Education, and the need for the reprioritization of evidence-based and research-backed teaching and learning approaches.

Erin Mote, currently a jury member for the XPrize, introduced the XPrize’s Digital Learning Challenge, its intersection with the research sector and the sense of urgency we all feel to reverse learning loss. Rebecca Griffiths shared the work that SRI is doing in conjunction with IES to identify and lift up approaches that work, identify where there are gaps and determine how to implement effective approaches in a saturated market. Attendees also heard from Deborah Peart of My Mathematical Mind as she shared why those who care about education should be putting as much effort into math instruction and learning research, and why “mathing” should be used as a verb along with reading and writing given its foundational importance in learning.

“We created a society where it’s acceptable to just not math. No—math deserves a verb. We have to do something about the language around it, and how we train teachers so that they can heal from their own math trauma, so that they can actually deliver math instruction with competence, confidence and comfort.”
— Deborah Peart, Founder of My Mathematical Mind