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District Administration
How Miami-Dade aims to tackle the ‘COVID slide’
Three-phase plan offers personalized summer school, early start and extended school day to 'most fragile' students
By: Matt Zalaznick
May 27, 2020
Personalized learning in summer school and an early start to the
2020-21 academic year anchor Miami-Dade County Public Schools
Superintendent Alberto Carvalho’s equity plan to close achievement gaps
caused by the coronavirus.
“It is our goal to turn what has been a very disruptive health crisis
into an academic opportunity,” Carvalho tells District Administration.
“Our goal is to reach academic stabilization, by the end of 2020-21
school year, for groups of students who have always demonstrated
achievement gaps.”
Even before schools shut down, educators in the nation’s fourth-largest
school district were growing concerned that closures would further
widen achievement gaps for its most fragile students, including
English-language learners, students living in poverty and students in
special education.
The first phase of Securing Opportunities for Academic Recovery, or
SOAR, is a two-part summer school that will begin online on June 8 and
be highlighted by low teacher-to-student ratios and personalized
instruction.
The focus will be on credit recovery, summer reading and remediation
for students with disabilities, students with an excessive amount of
absences, and students who did not engage in distance learning. While
the district distributed 114,000 digital devices and achieved close to
100 percent connectivity for online learning, not all students attended
online classes regularly, Carvahlo says.
If the coronavirus outbreak eases and health restrictions are loosened,
students would return to classrooms for portions of the second summer
session. These classes will provide extra support for students who will
be moving up grade levels without passing end-of-year proficiency
tests, all of which were canceled.
“We fear, based on academic fragility, that if we do not accelerate
these students to their full potential, they may be at risk of being
held back next year or not graduate,” Carvahlo says.
Miami-Dade’s early start offers equity
In phase two, all of the district’s schools will open early, on July
27, for a two-week session serving about 46,000 students who are
demonstrating low levels of academic performance, as well as for
students with disabilities and English language learners.
This represents about 25% of the district’s enrollment.
Delivering some instruction in person would be “ideal” during this
phase, which also will feature low student-teacher ratios and
individualized instructions, Carvahlo says.
Finally, the school day will be extended in 2020-21 at 25 schools where
administrators have the highest concerns about students performing
below expectations.
Students will get extra support and remediation, and also be assigned a virtual tutor to help drive academic progress.
Long-term impact of online learning
The online-learning experience has not only given parents much
appreciation for the jobs teachers and educators do but has also gotten
many families more involved in their children’s educations.
Carhavlo says he doesn’t expect to see a reversal on either count.
“I don’t think the normal we abandoned 7-8 weeks ago is ever going to
come back,” he says. “Parents will now be making decisions in terms of
the models for education that they feel suit their children best.”
When the school year begins, for instance, some parents may want their
children to remain home to participate in online learning while others
will want their students back in classrooms. Still, others will choose
a blend of the two, Carvahlo says.
Social distancing guidelines in place when school resumes will almost
certainly require districts to bring students in on alternate days. But
some of these approaches may remain even after the coronavirus is
controlled.
“I envision for this school year and for years to come that more and
more parents will exercise their voice for how, when and by whom their
children are educated,” he says.
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