Dear Educators,
During this last year filled with so much change and uncertainty, all of us across DPS have been committed to ensuring students who are experiencing learning loss due to the pandemic have supports in place to accelerate their learning. Thank you to you, our educators, who have worked so hard to make online and in-person learning work for all our students despite all the obstacles.
As we continue to focus on our students' learning, we are taking a multi-faceted approach across our family of schools to an education focused on acceleration rather than remediation. We know students should always have access to these key resources: grade-appropriate assignments, strong instruction, deep engagement in the learning, and high expectations from teachers.
We have been working in consultation with national experts to create and share a vision for accelerating student learning. Based on this, we have identified four evidence-based focus areas for accomplishing this, and we are accountable to regularly sharing updates about these focus areas with the superintendent and Board of Education as part of our crisis priorities updates:
-
Enhanced best first instruction through a focus on grade-level content with support for students needing prerequisite skills. These are provided while students are engaged in the grade-level content.
-
Extended learning is available to reinforce core content that is culturally relevant, and engages students in groups of 8 to 12.
-
Intensive tutoring for students with the greatest need, through individualized instruction for one or two students that meets them where they are and connects to what is taught in the classroom.
-
Social-emotional learning that supports students' social-emotional needs and is embedded in core instruction.
To help, schools have been provided with additional funds to support accelerated student learning, mitigate learning loss, provide additional instruction time, provide differentiated instruction, and offer professional learning for teachers including enhanced online teaching practices.
We value collaboration in meeting the needs of all students; therefore, we will collect feedback from staff and the community in February and March. Based on this feedback, design teams, including educators, will convene in March and April to provide final recommendations on the four focus areas described above. We will share more information regarding plans for these design groups in the coming weeks. The recommendations from these design groups will be shared with the community and schools will begin implementation of the plan beginning in April and continuing through the summer.
This work is something that will take time to fully implement, and we are planning a multi-year approach. Thank you in advance for your continued support, and for everything you're doing for our students to keep them learning and feeling supported.
Many thanks,
Tamara and Mike
