Year two of Summit Learning in two Kentucky schools

Two middle schools in Kentucky’s Boone County Public School District adopted the Summit Learning program – one of the more frequently discussed digital learning programs – in the 2016-17 school year. We now have two years of KPREP test results for those schools to examine, and I start that process with mathematics changes.

For a little background, Summit originated in California’s Summit Charter Schools around seven years ago and was made available to the Boone County system by Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame, who operates a foundation that finances programs to help teachers get up to speed on how Summit works and to supply the digital support needed.

At least, that is what should happen. But, the implementation of Summit Learning in Boone County was problematic, as you can learn by clicking the “Read more” link below.

For those already up to speed on Summit, let’s look at some actual KPREP results after Summit Learning’s first two years in Boone County’s Camp Ernst Middle School and Conner Middle School.

These tables and graphs compare the KPREP math results for different student groups in Camp Ernst and Connor to the Kentucky statewide middle school average results (click on graphic to enlarge if necessary). The far-right column in each table shows the change in KPREP math proficiency rates between 2015-16 and 2017-18 for each of the listed student groups. When the proficiency rates went down for a student group in a school, the change is shaded in salmon color.

Camp Ernst - Conner - KY - KPREP Math to 2018

There are obvious reasons for concern here. Most student groups, and the student body as a whole (All Students) in both middle schools saw a reduction in their proficiency rate in middle school math between 2015-16 and 2017-18.In both schools, the “all student” math proficiency rate dropped by over 3 percentage points between 2015-16 and 2017-18. In contrast, the state math proficiency rate stayed perfectly flat, so the Summit program’s students fell behind in math over the past two years.

In Camp Ernst, no student group saw math improvement as of the end of year two of Summit Learning.

In Conner, only African-Americans and Hispanics saw improvement over Summit’s first two years of operation. However, while Hispanic improvement quite substantially improved in Conner, that performance stands in very sharp contrast to the Hispanic performance in Camp Ernst, where Hispanic math proficiency dropped quite substantially.

When we examine the statewide average middle school trends, most student groups saw their math proficiency very slightly increase or remain stable between 2015-16 and 2017-18 while the African-American and Hispanic drops were both less than one percentage point.

Several student groups in particular had problems in Summit’s first two years. Students with learning disabilities and those eligible for the federal school lunch program both saw drops in proficiency in both Boone County schools.

Even worse, the students with learning disabilities in both schools performed notably below the math proficiency rate for their counterparts across Kentucky. That is particularly problematic because Boone County is an upscale system by Kentucky’s standards.

The below statewide average math performance for students in the school lunch program in Camp Ernst and the not-much-better-than-statewide average in Conner are also problematic.

White students saw math proficiencies decay in both schools. Of special concern is that drop in white scores in 2016-17 in Camp Ernst that brought that school’s proficiency rate below the statewide average for white students. Camp Ernst’s whites fell still further behind their statewide counterparts in 2017-18.So, at the end of year two of Summit Learning in these two Boone County schools, the results certainly don’t look very encouraging for math. Clearly, Summit Learning certainly isn’t an instantaneous silver bullet and this program needs very close attention.

Here is more background on Summit.

Summit proved very challenging to introduce in the Boone County schools. For many teachers, the digital learning approach is pretty much unknown territory.

Summit’s approach attempts to blend pure digital delivery with more traditional classroom instruction. This approach is known as “blended learning,” but the optimum amount of blending of digital versus classical classroom presentation apparently is still a work in progress.

At an even more basic level, there has been a lot of confusion about what Summit actually is. Is it curriculum, or just supporting material? These questions led to some significant problems with Summit’s adoption in Boone County vis-à-vis Kentucky’s School-Based Decision-Making (SBDM) laws, as we reported last year.

At least in the Bluegrass State, the Kentucky Office of Education Accountability (OEA) has now determined that Summit, as its own web site claims, is indeed a curriculum. However, the OEA says that even if Summit Learning was only supporting material for the school’s chosen curriculum, it still needs to be approved by each school’s SBDM council before it can be legally implemented in a Kentucky school.

However, thanks to the confusion about what Summit really is, SBDM council approval wasn’t obtained before Summit Learning started in Conner and Camp Earnst.

There wasn’t any vetting against Kentucky’s Academic Standards, either. That was also problematic because Summit was created to work in California, not Kentucky.

As a consequence of not conducting proper adoption of Summit under Kentucky’s SBDM laws, several education leaders in Boone County got their fingers rapped by OEA with a requirement for corrective training on the SBDM rules.

Regarding Summit Learning, even two years of performance data is insufficient to draw firm conclusions about an education program, but with trends from two years of KPREP data in hand, there certainly seems to be a possibility that Summit Learning isn’t working as well as it should in the area of math.

Technical Notes:

The math proficiency rate information through 2017 comes from the Kentucky School Report Cards web site for the 2016-2017 school year. The specific location for the scores is under the DELIVERY_TARGETS, PROFICIENCY/GAP tab. You need to click on the links labeled “Middle School - All Students” to open up each academic section to show the scores for student subgroups, which are listed in the “Actual Score” rows.

The new, 2017-18 data came from an “Accountable NAPD Data” Excel spreadsheet from the Kentucky Department of Education’s reporting information for that school term and can be accessed here.