Secrets of Success in Our Most High-Use School Districts

By Kristen DiCerbo, Khan Academy’s chief learning officer

There has been a lot of discussion in education circles recently about the use of edtech tools and, more specifically, the central question of how to get more students to use a tool that we know will help them learn.

Learning is hard and requires significant mental effort. A recent meta-analysis, which combined results from 170 studies, showed a clear and consistent relationship between expending mental effort and negative feelings. We should not expect that students are going to intrinsically want to engage in learning activities. Instead, we need to consider system-level supports to encourage use.

The school districts we work with are showing us the way.

In our highest-use school districts, more than 20% of students reach our recommended usage of 30 minutes per week (totaling 18 or more hours over the course of a school year).

These high-use school districts have three strategies in common:

• They enroll in our professional development programs for teachers and our implementation support for administrators.
• They set district-level goals for learning and track progress toward their goals.
• They dedicate time to practice every week in their school schedules.

We’re sharing these strategies to help more people understand the ideal usage of Khan Academy and to show what is possible. To be clear, we have more work to do to help all districts reach recommended use because 10% of our district learners reach the mark. Here is more information about how all districts can work with us to boost usage:

Professional development for teachers by teachers and implementation support for administrators

Over the past couple of years, we’ve hired a team of former educators who fan out across the country and provide in-person and virtual professional development for teachers. We offer a suite of sessions that can be tailored for each school district, starting with Introduction to using Khan Academy and progressing to topics like ELL strategies to empower learners and Diving into data for instructional leaders.

In addition, we also field a team of implementation specialists who work at the district level to support administrators in optimizing their use of data and tools from Khan Academy to drive strong instructional practices. These specialists are former teachers, instructional coaches, and principals. They meet with our district partners monthly and provide technical assistance and strategic support to help administrators interpret and use practice data from Khan Academy, as well as other information about student progress, to drive student success.

Districts that engage in our educator-led professional development sessions and implementation support see greater usage of Khan Academy in their schools and classrooms.

Setting district-level goals for learning

High-use school districts set district-wide goals for learning and designate a point person who monitors progress toward goals using data gathered in Khan Academy. This includes a plan to use Khan Academy to help achieve the goal. We meet with the district point person on a regular basis. Our implementation specialists work with the district point person to use insights from data to drive learning across schools in the district.

Dedicated time for practice

Our highest-use school districts build practice on Khan Academy into their schedules. Khan Academy is used to provide scaffolding and immediate feedback as students work through problems and quizzes. Their teachers, principals, and administrators can see detailed reports on student progress, including critical insights into which students are behind and why and which students are ahead. Practice on Khan Academy is scheduled two to three times per week across the entire district.

Looking ahead

While high-use districts lead the way, we’re focused on helping all our district partners increase usage in a meaningful way. After all, even baby steps matter. We demonstrated this year that just one hour per school year leads to a gain in achievement. The more students practice, the more they learn!

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