Student Achievement

Want to Accelerate Students’ Learning? Don’t Forget About Wraparound Services

By Alyson Klein — June 27, 2022 2 min read
Female high school student running on the stairs leads to an opportunity to success
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

School and district leaders pushing for accelerated learning may not be thinking about the role that wraparound services for kids and their families—mental health counseling, food banks, transportation, and small group instruction—play in making sure their efforts are successful.

But they should be, concludes a report presented at the International Society for Technology in Education’s annual conference here.

Those wraparound services were pivotal to the success of Lindsay Unified, a high-poverty school district in California’s central valley, where students generally made progress during virtual instruction, even as kids in other districts with similar demographics lost academic ground, said Beth Holland, one of the study’s authors and a partner at the nonprofit Learning Accelerator in an interview.

The strategies can be applied to the kind of accelerated learning many districts are focusing on now.

If “we aren’t addressing the real needs of the whole child, how are we going to expect them to be able to engage in [the] kind of deep learning” needed for acceleration, she said. She and her co-author, Caitlin McLemore, an education technology consultant, analyzed historical data from iReady, an instructional platform which offers online assessments, to determine how Lindsay students fared during the pandemic.

See Also
Image of a digital device.
Marianna Ivanenko/iStock
Classroom Technology Accelerating Learning: Tech Advice to Make It Happen
Alyson Klein, July 20, 2021
7 min read

Particularly eye-catching: While in many places, students classified as English language learners, migrants, or homeless, struggled during the 2020-21 school year, in Lindsay Unified those students generally advanced academically.

“These differences in progress are striking and certainly a testament to the efforts of the district to ensure that learners continued to grow during distance learning,” said the report.

When the pandemic hit in March of 2020, the district made sure every child had a working Chromebook and access to the internet, and provided paper, pencils, books, crayons, and more to students at home.

What’s more, even when schools remained largely virtual, the district allowed small cohorts of students to return to the building where they could participate in online learning in a classroom along with a handful of their peers and a paraprofessional or other staff member who could help ensure that the virtual instruction went smoothly.

Parent communication was also a cornerstone of the district’s strategy. School counselors and staff told the researchers there was “regular, constant” communication with families and care-givers through text messaging, phone, evening Zoom meetings, and even home visits.

Lindsay Unified does not have particularly high student achievement compared with more advantaged districts. And elementary school students generally advanced further than older kids.

Still, Lindsay’s emphasis on wraparound supports—and the study’s focus on student progress rather than overall achievement—could provide a model for other districts looking to strengthen and evaluate their acceleration efforts, Holland said.

“I think the big piece is that it’s replicable, this idea that we are focusing on growth rather than a single test score,” Holland said. “And how do we really celebrate that progress? Because when we think about acceleration, we want to accelerate growth. We’re not necessarily trying to accelerate a number.”

Events

Jobs Virtual Career Fair for Teachers and K-12 Staff
Find teaching jobs and other jobs in K-12 education at the EdWeek Top School Jobs virtual career fair.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Student Achievement From Our Research Center Who's the Real Audience for A-F and Numeric Grades? Hint: It's Not the Students
Traditional grading systems help parents—as well as colleges and universities—get a sense of how students are doing, educators say.
2 min read
Happy African American elementary boy showing his family exam results with the red letter A.
E+
Student Achievement Opinion Who Better to Serve as Tutors Than Teachers? Here's One Way It's Being Done
As schools struggle to address learning loss, absenteeism, and staffing, outside organizations are working to fill in.
8 min read
Image shows a multi-tailed arrow hitting the bullseye of a target.
DigitalVision Vectors/Getty
Student Achievement Opinion Grade Inflation Teaches Students We Don't Mean What We Say
Education leaders need to stand up for rigor, and they need to support classroom teachers who are committed to putting that into practice.
4 min read
Image shows a multi-tailed arrow hitting the bullseye of a target.
DigitalVision Vectors/Getty
Student Achievement Q&A 3 Must-Haves for Effective Tutoring
A national expert on tutoring highlights effective practices for schools.
3 min read
Young school boy writing in a notebook while sitting in a library with an educator.
iStock/Getty