Media Contact
Katherine Dunn
Senior Director
Georgia Policy Labs
Andrew Young School of Policy Studies
[email protected]
ATLANTA — New research from Georgia State University’s Georgia Policy Labs (GPL) finds positive effects on student learning from an online-learning platform used for pandemic recovery.
GPL and its Metro Atlanta Policy Lab for Education (MAPLE) have been working closely with school district partners to measure the efficacy of their recovery strategies in the COVID-19 pandemic’s wake. In its latest study, Assistant Professor Jennifer Darling-Aduana and Associate Professor K. Jurée Capers find that students who used i-Ready, a personalized, adaptive online-learning platform purchased with federal pandemic relief funds, experienced greater standardized test score growth in math and reading than students who did not use the platform. Students using i-Ready gained roughly two additional weeks of instructional growth in math and nearly three weeks in reading. Achievement growth was largest for students who completed around 70 lessons in reading and 50 lessons in math.
i-Ready was especially beneficial for students from historically marginalized communities, particularly students who identify as Black, students eligible for free or reduced-price meals and students with identified intellectual disabilities. Their findings also show that students performed better when teachers monitored how often students used the platform and strategically assigned lessons. Students with lower prior achievement, with prior disciplinary incidents, who identify as male and in lower elementary grades benefited most from the use of teacher-assigned i-Ready lessons, gaining an average of 3.8 weeks of instructional growth in math and 7.5 weeks in reading.
“This study shows that, when districts strategically implement these tools, they can address both pandemic-related learning challenges and long-standing educational disparities,” Darling-Aduana said.
Online adaptive learning platforms have logistical advantages in that district leaders can implement them almost anywhere. These platforms also have higher uptake among students and lower stigma related to other interventions. These findings highlight the crucial role online interventions can play in helping students meet and exceed their pre-pandemic learning levels.
To maximize the effectiveness of these platforms, the authors recommend districts allocate funds to support and/or expand their online infrastructure, increase student access and train teachers on the best practices with these platforms.
To learn more about these results, download the MAPLE report and policy brief HERE.
Featured Researchers
Jennifer Darling-Aduana
Assistant Professor of Learning Technologies
Department of Learning Sciences in the College of Education & Human Development
Jennifer Darling-Aduana, a fellow with Georgia Policy Labs, researches the equity implications of K-12 digital learning and the student-teacher and student-curriculum interactions in these settings that inadvertently contribute to (or can be used to mitigate) social reproduction in the classroom. She holds a Ph.D. in Leadership and Policy Studies from Vanderbilt University and an M.Ed. in Measurement, Evaluation, Statistics and Assessment from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She was also awarded the American Educational Research Association’s Dissertation Grant for her dissertation entitled, “High School Student Experiences and Outcomes in Online Courses: Implications for Educational Equity and the Future of Learning.” She also co-authored a book entitled, "Equity and Quality in Digital Learning: Realizing the Promise in K-12 Education," which was published by Harvard Education Press.
K. Juree Capers
Associate Professor and Director of Master's Programs
Department of Public Management & Policy in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies
Juree Capers, a fellow with the Georgia Policy Labs, does research that focuses on social and racial equity at the intersection of public administration, policy implementation, and race and ethnic politics. She often combines organizational theories, representation and bureaucratic politics research to explain the factors that influence bureaucrats’ decision-making and the implications of this process for historically marginalized populations. Substantively, her research centers on social policy issues, particularly education. It has appeared in the American Review of Public Administration, the International Journal of Public Management, Urban Review and other academic venues. She has received numerous fellowships for her scholarship on education policy and disparities among racial and ethnic groups as well.