In response to pandemic-induced school closures, virtual schools across the country saw enrollment rates skyrocket. At Highline Public Schools’ Highline Virtual Academy in Washington state, for example, enrollment increased from 200 students in grades 6-12 to over 600 in just two weeks during September 2021 – a substantial three-fold increase. As brick-and-mortar schools have reopened, […]
Scott Milam is the co-founder and managing director of Afton Partners LLC, a professional services firm focused on forging an alignment between financial strategies and educational priorities. With over 25 years of experience providing management and advisory services for clients in the commercial and public sectors, Scott supports school districts, charter networks, state education agencies, […]
From the onset and through the ongoing duration of the COVID-19 pandemic, schools across the United States had to quickly pivot and adjust to rapidly changing conditions. Dealing with circumstances never before experienced, educators, school leaders, families, and students were tasked with making the most of a school year in the midst of a global […]
Hear from Jason Green, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of LINC, about his learnings from professional development in education during the global pandemic. Strategy Lab About the Author The Always Ready for Learning Strategy Lab was a networked learning community focused on equity and resiliency. The twelve-month, pro bono, cohort-based learning experience supported seven school systems in […]
Reflections from our work with seven districts during the pandemic In our work to support seven school systems from the Strategy Lab through the Real-Time Redesign process, we encountered three powerful takeaways about what it means to advance equity and resiliency in teaching and learning in a school system context. 1. There are sector-wide opportunities […]
Few of us would argue that engaging students in the arts — visual, music, dance — is an important part of school. It’s well documented that arts engagement supports academic and social development, but with competing demands on time and budgets, enrichment in visual arts, music, and dance, historically has taken a secondary seat. So, […]
Looking for ways to assess your students equitably despite their physical locations? With more districts moving to some variation of in-person and remote learning (e.g., hybrid, simultaneous learning, concurrent learning, Zoom-and-Room, and Click-and-Brick), the challenges of supporting students in multiple contexts continue to face educators. Educators not only need to teach students across the virtual […]
The Learning Accelerator is excited to share a newly redesigned website for the Parabola Project, which provides evidence-informed tools to help school leaders identify options for school reopening during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Parabola Project draws on expertise from both the education and health communities with the goal of minimizing health risks to students, staff, […]
Every education leader deserves expert coaching to manage through and beyond COVID-19: Here’s what we learned from trying to deliver on this vision When schools abruptly closed for in-person learning last spring, hundreds of thousands of district and school leaders stepped into extended periods of crisis response and change management. The last year has, for […]
In the spring of 2020, The Learning Accelerator (TLA), a national nonprofit, launched the Always Ready for Learning (ARL) Coaching Network, a partnership among 13 education coaching organizations to provide K-12 leaders with pro-bono, customized guidance to help them improve teaching and learning during the pandemic. A critical challenge that education leaders sought to proactively […]
