Go Back or Push Forward? Schools Look to ‘Acceleration’ to Fill Pandemic Learning Gaps
Summer school is getting an overhaul in Washington, D.C. this year.
Schools are designing programs to help students learn key concepts they missed during the pandemic, while also getting them ready for what’s coming next school year. Fourth and fifth graders may design roller coasters, while second and third graders could dive into the debate over who deserves a public monument.
The goal is to get students excited about school, and to help students who need it most without making them feel like they’ve fallen completely off track. And those programs have a new name: “acceleration academies.”
“We want to stay forward-looking and recognize that we don’t want to just reteach all of last year’s content,” said Corie Colgan, who heads the school district’s office of teaching and learning. Acceleration, she said, “shifts you to think about OK, how can we speed up this process?”
It’s a term popping up across the country as school districts look to fill in learning gaps after more than a year of interrupted learning.
Read the full article in Chalkbeat.
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Imali Ariyarathne, seventh-grade teacher at Langston Hughes Academy, introduces her students to the captivating world of science.
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