How to Implement Accelerated Learning Successfully

Faced with the pervasive amount of unfinished learning caused by the pandemic, we have been hearing a lot about the benefits of accelerated learning. But what is it? And how can schools and systems do it successfully? To find out, we consulted seven Carnegie Corporation of New York grantees who work year round alongside educators to support the adoption and implementation of high-quality instructional materials: EL Education, Instruction Partners, Learning Forward, OpenSciEd, Rivet Education, Student Achievement Partners, and Teaching Lab. “Acceleration does not mean assigning some students to remediation while others are allowed to fly,” says Ron Berger, senior advisor of teaching and learning at EL Education. “Accelerating learning means moving students into exciting new academic challenges with a growth mindset for their potential.” Below are some additional insights and resources from our grantees. 

What Is Accelerated Learning?

Accelerated learning is:

• deeper learning through complex and meaningful problems and projects
• moving forward into grade-level content, with support
•  prioritizing high-level skills and content and creating teaching and learning pathways
• determining the most efficient and effective way to help students experience grade-level learning based on where they are today
• access to grade-level content despite the absence of some knowledge and skills from previous grades
• identifying the most crucial knowledge and skills that students need and integrating those into lessons
• a long-range plan, building on a foundation of assets, not deficiencies
• assuming all students can learn literally anything with the right instruction and support
• scaffolding up, not down

Accelerated learning is not:

• speeding up (teachers should spend more time on priority units, not less)
• cramming two years of instruction into one
• a one-size-fits-all approach with identical schedules
• information regurgitation or vocabulary memorization
• spending time remediating large chunks of content from prior grades
• a “drill and kill” approach to developing skills
• labeling students into fixed groups based on “catching up” gaps
• holding low expectations for students
• reducing the rigor of grade-level content

How to Implement Accelerated Learning Successfully

Five Takeaways from Corporation Grantees

1. Adopt an acceleration strategy. Convene representatives of all key stakeholder groups to build, execute, and communicate the system or school acceleration plan. Review available data to identify greatest needs and goals. Establish priority standards and content for each course and grade level. Implement a continuous monitoring and improvement cycle to inform next actions.
2. Invest in essential resources for effective acceleration. Allocate federal and state-level recovery funding toward the acceleration strategy. Ensure that high-quality instructional materials, embedded assessments, and prerequisite skill guidance are available for all grade levels and courses. Develop flexible schedules that give grade-level and subject-matter teams substantive time each week to study the curriculum, practice selected lessons, plan for their students, and reflect on their progress. Deploy coaches and facilitators to support implementation of the acceleration strategy. Partner with organizations with demonstrated expertise with your curricula and acceleration.
3. Focus on the whole child. Effective acceleration is a student-centered strategy. Relationships and trust are central. Leverage the guidance within high-quality instructional materials to increase relevancy and meaning for students. Adapt lessons to students’ culture and communities. A commitment to equity means attending to the social-emotional as well as the academic needs of students. 
4. Support educators as they implement acceleration. Review essential elements of curriculum-based professional learning and align professional learning plans to them. Use high-quality instructional materials to focus planning and prioritize learning. Give teachers opportunities to experience, observe, and practice those skills deemed most essential to acceleration.
5.  Engage families and other stakeholders in the acceleration process.  Recent studies affirm the critical role families play in students’ instructional progress. Engage families and other community stakeholders in the acceleration strategy. Leverage guidance available through high-quality instructional materials to identify meaningful tasks for parents and caregivers. Learn ways to increase cultural relevance and meaning for students from their families and community.

Grantee Insights

EL Education

Ron Berger, Senior Advisor, Teaching and Learning

We need to support teachers to empower students to own their learning. This requires strong relationships, assessments that are low-stakes and formative, and ongoing opportunities for students to share strengths, challenges, growth, and goals. We need to communicate that we are invested in the physical, social, and emotional health and growth of all staff and students.

Effective professional learning for teachers to support accelerated learning requires three things: a learning environment that brings out the best in teachers; clarity on the “how” (what strategies are most effective); and clarity on the “what” (curricular content that can push students with high-level texts and tasks and also provide support for unfinished learning).

Instruction Partners

Malika Anderson, Chief Program Officer | Emily Freitag,  Chief Executive Officer | Jilian Lubow, Managing Director of Marketing & Communications | Elizabeth Ramsey, Senior Managing Director of Program Services

Teachers need guidance from their school and district leaders on where and how to allocate their time among the broad array of challenges they will face in their classrooms, how to prioritize strategies that will lead to the greatest impact, and how to translate those strategies to everyday practice. Acceleration cannot happen independent of meaningful relationships with students. Relationships and learning are inseparable. In order to learn, students need to be seen, known, and valued. Relationships are particularly crucial in stressful times.

Learning Forward

Tracy Crow, Chief Strategy Officer | Melinda George, Chief Policy Officer

Leaders share progress openly, celebrate successes, and continually refine processes to advance closer to ambitious goals. School and system leaders create schedules and sustain support to ensure that grade-level and subject-area team collaboration happens regularly, often with their participation as leaders.

OpenSciEd

Matt Krehbiel, Outreach Director | Kate McNeill, Professor of Science, Boston College

Professional learning that supports accelerated learning provides a model for the type of learning that teachers are expected to facilitate with their students. This includes providing opportunities to experience new ways of learning by having teachers put on a “student hat” to internalize what it’s like to be a student in the classroom.

Build and reinforce relationships with the community. Schools that know and value the members of their communities are better positioned to support student learning. This leads to less absenteeism, fewer behavior problems, and more time spent learning in class. Celebrate what really matters. Decide as a community what really matters beyond just test scores and build in structures to celebrate success.

Rivet Education

Alicja Witkowski, Cofounder and Principal Consultant

Build teachers’ understanding of the differences between remediation and acceleration and share the cognitive research and data to support the approach. The strategies associated with accelerating learning may feel counterintuitive or overwhelming to some teachers or contradictory to how they were taught to teach. Helping them understand the rationale and science of learning behind acceleration may help build buy-in and confidence.

Leaders should focus on the actions that are most likely to ensure students have consistent access to grade-appropriate work, teachers have the support they need to deliver lessons well, and caregivers are empowered and equipped to support students at home.

Student Achievement Partners

Sandra Alberti, Designer | Amy Briggs, President

Educators and students would be well served by a clear determination and articulation of a few student-centered priorities and then a strong commitment to not only focus, but also to eliminate distractions. We don’t often spend enough time talking about what we are going to stop doing.

To support implementation of accelerated learning, the content of professional learning must be anchored in standards-aligned curriculum for students and include a strong component for teachers in formative assessment practices that guide effective Tier 1 instruction.

One of the many lessons we have learned over the last year and a half is the importance of authentically and effectively engaging with our families as we set our priorities and as we determine student needs. This must be more than just a compliance checklist. It is an opportunity for true partnership.

Teaching Lab

Sarah Johnson, Chief Executive Officer

Adopt an evidence-based and culturally responsive curriculum and technology platforms that allow for more student practice aligned with that curriculum — and then partner with a curriculum-based professional learning provider. Attend to student trauma. Ensure that every child has an individualized school reentry plan that accounts for counseling and other basic needs. Attending to student emotional health is essential if we care about their academic progress. Choosing between one or the other is inequitable.

The most relevant professional learning occurs when it is connected to what students are being asked to do every day. What students are being asked to do lives in the curriculum. This is why curriculum-based professional learning is hyper-relevant for educators.

Resources for Implementing Accelerated Learning

• “Accelerating Learning in Math: A Guide to Accelerating Learning and Planning Just-in-Time Supports,” Teaching Lab, 2021
• Addressing Unfinished Learning Toolkit, Instruction Partners, 2021
• “Assess and Address Gaps in Student Learning,” The Learning Professional, Learning Forward, August 2020
• The Elements: Transforming Teaching through Curriculum-Based Professional Learning, Jim Short and Stephanie Hirsh, Carnegie Corporation of New York, November 19, 2020
• Family Guides to Support Learning, Seek Common Ground and Student Achievement Partners, 2021
• Fundamental 4: Pandemic Learning Reveals the Value of High-Quality Instructional Materials to Educator-Family-Student Partnerships, Elizabeth Chu, Andrea Clay, Grace McCarty, Columbia Law School Center for Public Research and Leadership, July 2021
• “How We Can Equitably Reopen Schools,” Teaching Lab, 2021
• “Our Kids Are Not Broken,” Ron Berger, The Atlantic, March 20, 2021
• Professional Learning Partner Guide, Rivet Education, 2021

Jim Short is a program director within Carnegie Corporation of New York’s Education program, where he manages the Leadership and Teaching to Advance Learning portfolio. Stephanie Hirsh, former executive director of Learning Forward, is an author and consultant specializing in professional learning, leadership, and systems change.