Education Week - Sizing Up: Blended Learning - S32

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classroom management or instructional-time
allotment-especially in
shorter-length middle school periods-force
teachers to lock up laptop
carts more than they'd like.
"It's not perfect by any means,"
said Ms. Smith.
Still, she insists Cognitive Tutor
Algebra 1, first used as a supplemental
tool by the district, is driving recent
improvements on the Maryland
High School Assessment for that
subject. Between 90 percent and 93
percent of the county's high school
students have passed the graduation-requirement
exam during each
of the past six years, and during
the past five, the proportion scoring
"advanced" has risen steadily from
34.2 percent in 2009 to 41.6 percent
in 2013. (No Anne Arundel County
schools were included in RAND's
research.)
Paper vs. Computer
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Julia Freeland, an education fellow
at the Cambridge, Mass.-based
Clayton Christensen Institute,
which has led the effort to catalog
and categorize blended learning,
agrees that results both from the
RAND study and real-world settings,
such as in Anne Arundel
County, are encouraging. But she
said the field is still lacking granular
research that shows the reasons
that programs like Cognitive Tutor
are effective-research that could
help educators decide whether implementing
the program is worth
the investment.
>>
Although the federal Education
Department paid for the sizeable
study, it may be more difficult to find
a funder for follow-up work that examines
those kinds of questions.
Given that reality, John Watson,
the founder of Evergreen Education
Group, a Colorado-based consult-
ing organization that tracks online
and blended learning trends, said he
hopes the study is considered more
broadly than just in terms of Carnegie
Learning's credibility.
"There are literally dozens of
[blended] math programs," he noted.
"There's no way that we're going to
have $6 million studies done about
dozens of math programs individually.
And so, while this is certainly
a good thing for Carnegie and it's
a good thing broadly for the field, I
want to make sure that it's seen as
part of the validation of the entire
field as much, or more than being
seen as suggesting a particular specific
product."
Ms. Smith is confident that the
program is helping the 2,700 Algebra
1 students across the Anne
Arundel County school system. Yet
even six years after it was introduced,
there are always new challenges,
such as the first year of implementing
the Common Core State
Standards, which she fears could
drag down achievement results.
Perhaps sensing that uneasy tran-
sition, Ms. Brierley's students-most
new to blended learning-appear
mixed on whether they prefer doing
algebra on a screen or in a book.
Celeste Davis, a freshman in Ms.
Brierley's first-period class, actually
would like to see less of the laptops.
"I like working out on the paper
and being able to figure the problems
out," she said. "I think the computer
just doesn't explain it the way
that I read it."
Antony Rutherford, a freshman in
Ms. Brierley's second-period class,
said doing the work on a computer
screen can be a bit more cumbersome
at times.
"I'm kind of an all-around person,"
he said. "I do it a little bit faster on
paper. But on the computer, it's
fine." n
MEASURING MATH GAINS
STUDY:
Author: RAND Corporation
 Funded by U.S. Department
of Education
 Focused on effect of Cognitive
Tutor Algebra 1, a blendedlearning
curriculum
SCOPE:
Two parallel studies
 One followed 18,700 high
school Algebra 1 students, most
of them freshmen
 The second tracked 6,800
middle school Algebra 1
students, almost all 8th graders
METHOD:
 Each population divided into
"control" and "treatment"
groups
 Control group relied on
traditional algebra instruction
 Treatment schools used
Cognitive Tutor
>> See our full list
of blogs at www.
edweek.org/blogs.
 Students in each group given
commercial, standardized
tests at beginning and end of
school year
 Both middle school and high
school participants studied for
two years
S32 | EDUCATION WEEK: SIZING UP BLENDED LEARNING > www.edweek.org/go/blended-learning JANUARY 29, 2014
RESULTS:
 YEAR ONE: The high school
study found a statistically
insignificant trend toward lower
growth within the treatment
group, using Cognitive Tutor,
than within the control group,
using traditional algebra
methods. The middle school
study found virtually no
growth difference between the
treatment and control groups in
the first year.
 YEAR TWO: High school
students using Cognitive Tutor
made significantly
higher academic gains than
their peers, while those in
the middle school Cognitive
Tutor group made statistically
insignificant gains.
For high school students, the
gains for those using Cognitive
Tutor were equivalent to
students moving from the 50th
percentile on the algebra test
to the 58th percentile, when
compared with students taking
traditional algebra courses.
SOURCE: RAND Corporation
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and Alyson Klein's must-read
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Education Week - Sizing Up: Blended Learning

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