by Sal Khan, founder and CEO of Khan Academy
Teachers know that meeting the individual needs of each student can accelerate learning. They’re heroic in their efforts to differentiate instruction in classrooms of 25 or more students at various learning levels. But it’s challenging for even the most dedicated teacher to meet the diverse needs of every student. Differentiation is time consuming and intensely manual.
That’s why I’m delighted school districts can now choose MAP Accelerator, a new tool that does the hard work of differentiation for teachers. MAP Accelerator uses MAP Growth scores to automatically generate a personalized, mastery-based learning plan for every student, while keeping the teacher as the instructional decision maker.
We’ve partnered with NWEA, the creator of MAP Growth, to introduce this new resource. Khan Academy and NWEA are excited to empower teachers with a new way to deeply connect interim assessment to actionable classroom learning. Our goal with MAP Accelerator is to reach the children who need our help most.
With MAP Accelerator, we import MAP Growth RIT scores into Khan Academy to automatically place students at their learning edge:
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Teachers review the learning plan that MAP Accelerator recommends for each student. Teachers can adjust suggested goals in the learning plan as they see fit or accept all goals with a single click.
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Students take ownership over their learning as they progress through their personalized plan using Khan Academy’s mastery learning system. We foster student agency because students can move ahead or change directions.
• Districts get an easy-to-implement solution with classroom, school, and district-level reporting; professional learning for teachers; and priority technical support.
We recommend 30 or more minutes per week of student learning on MAP Accelerator. As students advance, teachers can use real-time data to make decisions about classroom instruction, form small groups, and provide one-on-one coaching.
Research shows that use of Khan Academy is associated with greater than expected growth in mathematics. Completing 60% or more of grade-level math on Khan Academy is associated with 1.8 times expected growth on the mathematics portion of MAP Growth.
MAP Accelerator includes math content aligned to MAP Growth for grades three through eight in both English and Spanish. Our mastery learning system is aligned to Common Core State Standards and includes practice exercises with worked solutions, quizzes, unit tests, instructional videos, and articles.
We launched a pilot of MAP Accelerator four months ago with five school districts: Clark County School District in Las Vegas, Nevada, Jefferson County School District in Louisville, Kentucky, and Madera Unified School District, Pajaro Valley Unified School District, and Glendale Unified School District in California. Nearly 180,000 students and thousands of teachers are using MAP Accelerator today. We’re heartened by their progress so far and look forward to great things to come.
The pilot is just the start of an exciting new era for classrooms that use MAP Growth. With MAP Accelerator, teachers can not only see where students are in their learning journey but also pinpoint where they need help and generate a personalized learning plan quickly and easily with the click of a button. Students take ownership of their learning as they progress through Khan Academy’s mastery learning system. We think MAP Accelerator equips teachers to unlock student potential like never before.
To learn more about MAP Accelerator, please visit our partner NWEA’s website.