School districts strive to give their students all of the tools they need for academic success such as supplemental support. When it comes to tutoring, it’s typical for supplemental instruction not to be offered until a student has already fallen behind. Although this type of tutoring helps students when they’re struggling, it might actually increase their learning gap with peers.
Let’s explore the difference between remediation and acceleration.
Remediation
Remediation is the act of going back and repeating missed skills. Before a student can learn new information, they must learn past concepts that they didn’t fully grasp. When students are focusing on past topics, it delays opportunities to learn new topics with their classmates, putting them behind.
An example of this is a student repeating a grade level or a student learning a past unit while the rest of the class has moved forward. While this may sound like the best way to approach learning, remediation can actually hurt your students rather than helping them. Instead, professionals encourage accelerating into the next concept to encourage overall learning growth.
Acceleration
Acceleration refers to stopping group instruction to quickly re-teach a previous foundational skill or concept. Before moving on with a teacher’s curriculum, the teacher briefly assesses whether the students have grasped what has been taught. In the process of acceleration, the teacher or tutor is likely to pause and repeat concepts several times during the lesson. This ensures that students understand past concepts while teaching new ones.
An example of acceleration is briefly reviewing past concepts while teaching new concepts with checkpoints to review skills or topics that have recently been covered. The purpose of acceleration is to provide more exposure to grade-level essential skills and concepts while aligning support with current classroom instruction.
Accelerate, Don’t Remediate
Data shows that when a student was remedied, he or she had a 44% likelihood of struggling in the next grade-level lessons, while when a student experienced learning acceleration, only 36% were likely to struggle. Overall, students struggled 17% less with acceleration than with remediation.
Students of color and those from low-income families struggled the most throughout the pandemic and are still catching up to their peers. Studies have found that accelerated learning was particularly effective for students of color and those from low-income families.
Another study shows that students who accelerated learning struggled less and learned more than students who started at the same level but experienced remediation instead. Instead of holding students back through remediation, they are able to stay in line with their peers and advance to new topics through accelerated learning.
Don’t slow your students down by removing them from new lessons. Allow them to grow through new concepts with accelerated learning.
About Intervene K-12
Intervene K-12 provides high-dosage accelerated learning within the classroom. Students can close the learning gap while staying in line with their peers through tutoring. Intervene K-12 happens within the classroom to ensure students are getting the most out of their education.