Equity Begins with Our Educators

An Existential Crisis

In American public education today, there is a lot of talk about equity–we hear about diversity, equity and inclusion, about leveling the playing field, about ensuring the same high-quality opportunities for all kids. But when you dig deeper, what is actually being done in this regard? With increasing intolerance in our society as evidenced by a rise in white supremacy and acts of violence against ethnic, racial, and religious minorities, and with a larger portion of kids than at any point in modern American history accessing free and reduced lunch (a proxy for identifying people struggling against poverty), something fundamental needs to shift in how schools address this crisis. 

There are many important things that can be done to improve outcomes for all kids, such as rethinking school structures (including budgets, schedules, policies, and curriculum), teacher practices (instruction and assessment) and school culture.  Each of those elements–structures, practices, and culture–is a critical part of creating more equitable schools and systems. However, given that teachers and school leaders have by far the largest effect on learner outcomes, why aren’t we doing everything we can to impact their ability to be more successful by improving their practice? With this in mind, I propose that access to high-quality lifelong learning is an essential strategy and should be a key part of your district’s equity work.

Approaches to Increase Equity of Access

While all districts, CMOs and independent schools provide some form of professional learning and development opportunities for teachers, is it meeting the needs of educators?  Is it more of a compliance exercise versus the training and support that can shift an educator’s trajectory?  Does it come with the incentive structures that can propel an educator to a next level of their earning potential?

I am not challenging the assumption that professional learning exists; rather, I am challenging that it is of high quality and builds from prior knowledge, honors prior knowledge, is deeply job-embedded and appropriately incentivizes learning and earning potential. A powerful learning experience gives educators  new knowledge and skills they need to be more successful with their students. Educator burnout is real and there is the need to resuscitate passion, to reconnect educators with their “why” in order to inspire them to persist and grow through these moments.

The role of educator learning should not only help them move up the career ladder (and the salary scale) but also revive them, making them better at what they do. At the United Nations, UNESCO’s Institute for Lifelong Learning shares that “many universities continue to prioritize academic excellence and research, with less attention being paid to widening access and participation to learning opportunities. Achieving the vision expressed through the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and precisely articulated in SDG 4, requires a substantial transformation of higher education institutions into lifelong learning institutions.” This learning is essential to ensuring that educators can be more successful and find greater fulfillment through their work. 

At 2Revolutions, we started with the question, “How do we make professional learning more respectful, relevant, and appropriately incentivized for educators?” As we enter 2023, we are redoubling our efforts on two fronts–learning design and cost–to meaningfully increase equity of access for all educators.

A Different Kind of Learning Design

Making a dramatic shift from the compliance-oriented, “sit and get” norm, our learning design is fully job-embedded. It honors prior knowledge and extrinsically motivates educators with an opportunity to earn credit or a next degree, almost always correlated to a bump in pay or better positioning them for their next role. We are working with great higher education partners around the country to ensure that all of the learning in our graduate programs and communities of practice is competency-based and applied in the specific context of the participant’s role as a teacher or someone who supports teachers.

• Competency-based means that there are no seat time expectations nor is there the expectation that learners should regurgitate information; if, on Day 2 of a course, you are ready to successfully complete the summative assessment, then you can and should. Make an appointment with your professor to verbally present and defend a body of evidence that supports your assertion of competence. 

• Additionally, there are no “papers.” Each learning experience culminates with the presentation of evidence to substantiate that you learned something, applied it within your relevant context, and now can do that thing with comprehension of what you did, why you did it, how you did it, and how you can do it better next time.

In addition to pedagogic shifts, the architecture of educator learning needs to shift. To better support working professionals, we offer different configurations, from micro-learning for one credit to more flexible configurations of 3, 9, 15, and 30 credits. Working professionals are juggling a lot in their lives- what best meets your learning needs when factoring in time commitment and cognitive load? 

With an understanding that one size fits none, we have taken our library of more than 40 graduate courses and disaggregated them to ~150 unique performance indicators. We are now able to customize for districts/networks by assembling the learning that your system wants and needs, rather than providing you with one or two options.

Lowering the Barrier of Price

We are also aiming to significantly increase educator access to these powerful learning experiences by working with our higher education partners to dramatically lower the costs of the learning. We have aggressive goals of driving the cost down for North American and European educators, as well as for Global South educators. Our existing programs are priced well below average for a postsecondary institution offering graduate education. The average tuition for a master’s degree during the 2018-2019 school year was $19,792, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The average cost for graduate programs at all private colleges was $26,597. Assuming an average of 30 credit hours per program, the average cost per credit hour for a master's degree was $659.73 across all schools with data available (NCES, 2020). 2Revolutions’ programs are priced between $333-$415/credit depending on the size of the enrolled cohort. But we can and will go further. And for our learners in the Global South, we aspire to go much further, dropping tuition dramatically. 

Another innovation we are exploring is alternative pricing based on prior knowledge. Say you have just begun an assessment course. On Day 2, you are confident that you know and could demonstrate competency from applied learning in your context. What if your time to successfully complete the learning experience determined the cost, thereby incentivizing you to learn and demonstrate more quickly the things you know and understand, without disincentivizing you to take more time in areas where you need greater support? While we’re not there yet, this is something that we plan to work on in the coming year.

We won’t get there alone. But in partnership with a range of innovative higher education institutions, we are revolutionizing the design and accessibility of high-quality lifelong learning for educators to drive their learning and their earning potential. If we collectively pull that lever, we can make meaningful progress toward equitable and learner-centered schools and systems.