Jill Barshay

The Hechinger Report compares math progress of almost 1,000 high school students to determine the effects of ChatGPT use on learning.

The Hechinger Report compares math progress of almost 1,000 high school students to determine the effects of ChatGPT use on learning.

A new national analysis tracked 400,000 high schoolers

Dual enrollment is exploding. During the 2022-23 school year, nearly 2.5 million high school students took college classes, simultaneously earning high school and college credits. That’s up from 1.5…

An experiment put remedial math students into ninth grade algebra and many succeeded

An experiment put remedial math students into ninth grade algebra and many succeeded.

In the fall of 2019, four high schools in a San Francisco Bay Area district shook up many of their ninth grade math classes. Students had traditionally been separated into more than five math courses by achievement level, from remedial to very advanced, and the district wanted to test what would happen if they combined their bottom three levels into one. Half of the students in those levels were randomly assigned to learn together, and half remained in their traditional tracks so that researchers could compare the difference.

On this week's Education Gadfly Show podcast, Jill Barshay, author of The Hechinger Report's “Proof Points” column, joins Mike and David to discuss her recent article on the surprising effects of colleges eliminating remedial courses. Then, on the Research Minute, Amber shares a study examining the impact of Washington's academic acceleration policies on high school students.

An experiment put remedial math students into ninth grade algebra and many succeeded. Students in the lowest level who were part of the experiment skipped remedial math and were able to learn algebra with the majority of ninth graders. The experiment also meant that average, grade-level students were learning alongside peers who lacked foundational math skills. Why did this succeed?