As an educator, Justin McCollum, former lead teacher of a successful independent study program in Central California which he now supervises, is dedicated to eradicating the stigma that surrounds alternative education programs, devoted to closing the achievement gap between traditionally high-achieving students and both their socioeconomically-disadvantaged and their minority peers, and committed to facilitating the development in all students of the skills necessary to succeed in the twenty first century.
Thus, McCollum has targeted one of the major challenges faced by the English language learner (ELL) minority population: the California High School Exit Examination (CAHSEE). Failure to pass the CAHSEE, which is comprised of both an English and a mathematics component, is a primary reason for the low graduation rate of ELL students—failure to pass the test prevents nearly one out of every four ELL students from graduating high school, compared to about one out of every thirty non-ELL students.
Consequently, the population of ELL non-high school graduates continues to grow throughout California. Due to a lack of rudimentary skills in English and mathematics and because they are without a high school diploma, these individuals are blocked from many opportunities of educational and economic advancement and quickly become mired in poverty. In addition to increasing pressure on already strained public and social services, society is furnished with individuals lacking self-esteem, which is clearly a mark of social failure. McCollum presumed that providing intervention to struggling ELL students is a primary element of education on which he must focus if his aforementioned goals as an educator are to be realized.
Digital resources have proved to be effective tools in providing intervention to ELL students, especially in mathematics. However, such resources are often expensive and unfeasible for financially-strained rural districts such as the district in which McCollum works. McCollum became interested in the potential power of Khan Academy (www.khanacademy.org) after using the no-cost resource to help himself study for a teacher’s examination—the California Subject Examination Test in mathematics. The clear, straightforward, and humorous methods in which Salman Khan delivered the material allowed McCollum to brush up on high-level calculus in a few hours, despite the fact that it had been nearly a decade since his last advanced math course. And, it was free. All one needs to utilize Khan Academy is the internet, a resource to which most of McCollum's students have ample access. The proverbial light bulb went off in McCollum’s head, and he immediately began plotting to use Khan Academy to help his struggling ELL students.
Thus, McCollum designed an action research project to test the effectiveness of Khan Academy before implementing it into the wider curriculum of the independent study program. He employed a pretest-posttest control group quasi-experimental research design to determine whether and to what degree a relationship exists between a student’s exposure to Khan Academy’s “CAHSEE Example Problems” learning module (treatment) and the same student’s CAHSEE in mathematics score after such exposure. The results were highly impressive.
The research findings indicate a strong positive correlation between student exposure to Khan Academy and an increase in student performance on the mathematics portion of the CAHSEE. In fact, the treatment group not only out-performed the other independent study students of the control group, but its passage rate was much higher than any other campus in the district (which includes one continuation high school and two comprehensive high schools). Thus, students (particularly ELL students) in need of mathematical intervention should utilize this software.
McCollum’s major findings are presented in the detailed poster below. Please note that the file is of a .jpeg format, which allows the user to download and adjust the viewing window. An easier viewing method might be to right-click on the image (PCs), open the "image" or "link" in a new window, zoom in with the magnifying glass tool, and further zoom in through the controls found in the "View" drop down at the top of the screen.
*Kindly note that the experimental group is represented in blue and the control group is represented in red on the first four graphs, as the descriptive text next to each graph may be difficult to read.
McCollum’s research paper, entitled “The Efficacy of Khan Academy for English Language Learners,” will be posted soon.
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