Blended Learning - Breaking Down Barriers

Source:
Horn, M. B., GU, A., & Evans, M. (2015). Knocking Down Barriers. Education Digest, 80(8), 18-25.

Summary:

Three authors from the Clayton Christensen Institute explain how California superintendents from several districts are implementing blended learning. They met and discusses the barriers that came up and solutions to those barriers. There were three categories that the barriers fell into, redesigning teacher roles given contract provisions, purchasing and managing technology and infrastructure, and recognizing online classes as valid for universities in California.

 Redesigning Teacher Roles
-Barrier: Elementary teachers have interdisciplinary credentials vs. specialized subjects
-Workaround: Teach English Language Development

-B: Secondary Level teachers have specialized credentials
-W: Teach together in a large space

-B: Per ADA, students need supervision by certified professionals
-W: Open sight lines - certified teacher who can see students

-B: Class size limits
-W: Average the students per teacher across the grade level

-B: Teacher union contracts
-C: Side-letter agreement restructuring the professional day to allow more flexibility

Technology and Infrastructure
-B: Bids for contracts over $50,000
-W: Borrow request for proposals from other districts and tweak them

-B: California guarantees that students can' pay fees to access ED - BYOD could be violation
-W: Don'r require BYOD - provide devices for those who don't have them

-B: Providing access at home and school to all
-W: Allow BYOD and supplement, look for foundations and grants

Postsecondary Approval
-B: UC and CSU require freshmen to have completed certain courses in high school - approval for online classes has changed and creates a lag
-W: Don't designate whether the class was online or face to face on transcript

There is also a list of 11 suggestions from the superintendents.
1. Use qualified substitutes
2. Train learning coaches
3. Develop a professional development center
4. Create professional development time outside of the school day
5. Encourage teachers to design
6. Rely on early adopters
7. Ensure clear communication channels
8. Don't bring admin into classes early on
9. Build a wall around costs
10. Make some decisions centrally
11. Know what's free

Reflection:
I was unaware that there were multiple districts in California taking on a blended learning approach in their schools. Most of these barriers and suggestions are general enough that they could directly benefit almost any school, while the others that are more specific to California could be tweaked to fit. I'd like to look up more information about these districts in California to see how they implement the blended learning in actuality, after reading about their workarounds to the barriers they've come across. How successful have they found this approach to be? What does the community think about it? This has caused me to think of all kinds of other questions.