🛝 What If Imperfect Programs Are Good Enough?

What this means for educators + more

January 20, 2026

Welcome to Playground Post, a bi-weekly newsletter that keeps education innovators ahead of what's next.

This week's reality check: New Chicago research confirms what many suspected: school attendance still drives learning gains, and schools have more power to fix it than they think. Meanwhile, summer school is proving surprisingly forgiving of implementation mistakes, and some elementary schools are betting that even first graders can handle switching classes like middle schoolers.

💎 Data Gem

Research published in January 2026 found that students participating in AI-enhanced active learning programs achieved test scores 54% higher than those in traditional settings, according to recent statistics.

Summer School Works. Even When It's Not Perfect

Nearly six years after the pandemic began, many academic recovery plans haven't shown big returns. Large-scale tutoring programs, in particular, have struggled. 

Logistical challenges prevented one-on-one instruction from being as effective as promised.

Summer school hasn't had those problems to the same extent.

Even when districts designed summer programs that didn't meet recommendations for best practice, participation still led to small but significant improvements in students' math skills. That's according to a new research brief, a collaboration between 10 large school districts and researchers at NWEA, CALDER at the American Institutes of Research, and Harvard University. 

The districts collectively serve close to 450,000 students.

On average, students in summer school made about 2-3 weeks more progress in math than similar peers who didn't attend. 

There were no statistically significant differences in reading.

"It's easy to write off this type of summer school impact that was small in math as sort of inconsequential," said Emily Morton, a lead research scientist at NWEA. But that's not the right framing, she said. Summer programs can serve large groups of students, meaning even small improvements can "raise the tide" for a district.

Here's what makes this finding notable: the programs didn't meet established best practices.

Pre-pandemic research recommended summer school last 4-6 weeks with 90 minutes of math and 120 minutes of reading daily. 

Most programs in the study were only 15-20 days spread over 3-4 weeks, offering between 45 minutes to two hours of academic instruction.

The finding suggests summer school might be more forgiving of implementation difficulties than other interventions, Morton said. The muted outcomes compared to pre-pandemic studies could relate to not meeting a minimum duration threshold, or other factors that set COVID-era instruction apart.

Summer school's forgiving nature compared to tutoring suggests opportunity for scalable summer program platforms that prioritize broad reach over perfect implementation. Districts need tools that help them design programs meeting the 4-6 week, 90-minute math benchmarks that research supports.

High School Attendance Still Matters. Schools Must Do Something About It.

Does attendance still matter post-COVID? Can schools really do anything about it?

Those are the questions new research from the University of Chicago's Consortium on School Research set out to answer. 

The findings are clear on both counts: yes and yes.

The study compared three pre-pandemic and three post-COVID school years through 2023-24. Chronic absenteeism rose 20 percentage points across all grades. 

Last school year, 40% of Chicago Public Schools students were chronically absent.

The more school days students miss, the lower their test scores and grades. In fact, attendance had an even stronger impact on outcomes than it did before the pandemic.

"All the studies we do suggest that attendance is still vitally important at all grade levels," said Elaine Allensworth, one of the report's authors.

The research also pushes back on the narrative that schools are powerless. 

Campuses with similar student demographics and in similar neighborhoods had markedly different post-pandemic attendance. A school's neighborhood did not appear to be a major factor in COVID-era absenteeism increases.

What did matter? School climate.

At schools that maintained strong attendance, students reported feeling safer, more connected to their teachers and peers, and more challenged and engaged in their classes. 

One finding surprised the researchers: the strength of relationships between teachers and parents played a key role in high school attendance, not just elementary school.

"It's much harder for some students to get to school every day than for others. We have to acknowledge that," Allensworth said. "But you can't just say there's nothing we can do about it. If you don't do anything, the students who have the most barriers will be the ones who will miss the most school."

For education innovators, this research points to demand for tools that help schools build the climate factors driving attendance: student safety perception, teacher-student connection, and academic engagement. 

The role of teacher-parent relationships in high school suggests opportunity for family communication platforms designed for secondary grades, not just elementary.

Elementary Schools Are Having Young Children Switch Classes

About two dozen second graders in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, slung on their backpacks, gathered their Chromebooks, and lined up at the door before heading to English and social studies class across the hall.

While most schools wait until middle school to have students change classes, kids at Louisiana's Baton Rouge Center for Visual and Performing Arts do so starting at age 6 or 7. 

It's part of a strategy known as departmentalizing, or platooning.

As schools contend with a decades-long slump in math scores, some are turning to this approach even for very young students. The share of fourth and fifth grade classrooms operating on this schedule has doubled since 2000, from 15% to 30% in 2021.

The theory: teachers who specialize will be more familiar with content and better able to teach it.

"Teaching today is so different than it was a long time ago, and there are so many demands on them," said Sydney Hebert, magnet site coordinator for the school. "We want to make sure that our teachers are experts in what they're teaching so that they can do a good job of teaching it to the kids."

This may be particularly important for math. 

Studies have shown that some early elementary school teachers experience anxiety about the subject. In a departmentalized setup, it's far less likely that math instruction will get shortchanged by an educator who prefers spending time on other subjects.

But the research on this model is mixed.

A prominent 2018 study in Houston found departmentalizing had a negative effect on test scores, behavior, and attendance, possibly because teachers spend less time with individual students. A 2024 study in Massachusetts found moderate gains in ELA and a significant boost to science scores, but few gains in math.

At San Tan Heights Elementary School in Arizona, the principal proposed that third graders be taught by separate teachers for different subjects after pandemic-era curriculum changes made it harder for educators to master all four subject areas.

"I told them, let's try it for a semester. If it doesn't work at the end of the year, we'll go back," said Henry Saylor-Scheetz.

Ten days into the experiment, teachers said they never wanted to return. By 2023, all K-8 students were departmentalized. 

Teacher retention at the school hit 95%, and it improved from a C rating on its state report card to a B rating.

For innovators, the spread of departmentalizing creates demand for scheduling software that can optimize class rotations and minimize transition time for young students. There might also be opportunities for professional development platforms that help teachers specialize deeply in one subject rather than covering all four.

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