C-108 Part 4: Case StudiesCommon Core.^54 The Common Core was developed as a
cooperative effort by state governments seeking to clarify
and benchmark national learning standards. While edu-
cation leaders in Texas are free to ignore the Common
Core, a study of nationwide state standards showed that
what Texas considers “proficient” was the lowest in the
nation and well below what national tests deem profi-
cient.^55 While newer versions of the state achievement test
are thought to be more rigorous, a school district that
ignores the Common Core may risk failing to prepare
its students to compete in the national market for college
admittance.
“The Common Core standards are really good for
preparing kids for college,” Sehba Ali says. “We’ll find the
overlaps. We’ll find the holes. We’ll align to the Common
Core and the TEKS [Texas learning standards].”^56
One tool that many teachers have used to develop
and share curriculum materials is BetterLesson. Adopted
by KIPP schools nationwide in the 2010–11 school year,
BetterLesson is a Web-based curriculum document
storage and retrieval tool developed by a young Boston-
based company.^57 Teachers can use the Web site to search
for, download, and upload lesson plans, worksheets,
PowerPoint presentations, and other curriculum materi-
als. It connects KIPP educators across the country with
each other and with teachers from other high-perform-
ing schools. With most teachers nationally aligning solely
to the Common Core, however, KIPP Houston teachers
may have less opportunity to leverage BetterLesson.The Promise of Technology
Some see Web applications like BetterLesson as the tip of
the iceberg when it comes to using information technol-
ogy (IT) to improve school performance.
Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen
predicts that digital learning will be a “disruptive inno-
vation” that revolutionizes education in the coming
decade.^58 Proponents of digital learning technologies
herald its ability to give students immediate feedback
and individualized learning experiences. Some Learning
Management Systems (LMS) allow teachers to manage
student assignments and track performance on one digi-
tal hub, cutting down on routine paper management and
data analysis tasks.
Many teachers and schools are experimenting with
various combinations of traditional and digital learn-
ing. These “blended learning” models can range from
classrooms in which students rotate between comput-
ers, small group instruction, and independent work, to
schools in which students self-manage larger blocks oftime for online learning. KIPP first entered the world
of blended learning in 2010, with the opening of KIPP
Empower Academy in Los Angeles. KIPP Empower,
an elementary school that will serve grades K–4 at full
enrollment, uses a rotational blended learning model as
a way to give students a highly personalized education
with a small-group classroom feel.
Inspired by the success of KIPP Empower, educators
in other KIPP regions, including KIPP Houston, have
begun implementing elements of blended learning. For
example, KIPP Courage, founded in Houston in summer
2012, incorporates blended learning in most of its class-
rooms. In addition to a computer lab where students use
software to learn either Spanish or English or engage
in individualized math practice problems, almost every
classroom has a set of inexpensive netbooks, which stu-
dents use to do research or access online learning activ-
ities. The principal, Eric Schmidt, says he combined the
digital learning with practices he picked up from other
KIPP schools during his Fisher Fellowship.^59
Although it is a young experiment, Schmidt says it
has helped a high percentage of their students reach their
learning goals (see Exhibit 8). “One of the unintended
consequences of this model has been our flexibility with
human capital,” Schmidt says. “We had two teachers call
in sick unexpectedly, but we didn’t have to request any
substitute teachers because teachers or administrators
who had planning times could cover the computer lab
and still get their work done.”^60
Schmidt says the next step, which he hopes to
accomplish before next school year, is to find an online
Learning Management System to tie the disparate pieces
of digital learning together into one system.
Matt Bradford, the Director of Knowledge
Management, works within the IT department for KIPP
Houston. Bradford and others in his department help
support the back-end management of KIPP Houston
IT initiatives; for example, by ensuring that the district’s
digital student rosters can interface with the various
online programs. He sees potential in using IT resources
to track student learning but says the big issues are which
platform to use and standardization.^61
“There’s a lot of piloting of projects around the dis-
trict without consistency from school to school. Schools
might not agree to use similar systems, which makes it
difficult to support,” Bradford says.^62 Sehba Ali believes
the focus needs to remain on recruiting and developing
excellent teachers, noting, “I come from the Bay Area,
where the word on the street is that we will put a lot
of computers in classrooms and that will solve all our
problems. But technology is only good in the hands of