Teacher Tim Vandenberg shares how mastery learning worked for his class | Homeroom with Sal

Hi everyone! Sal Khan here for our daily homeroom. For those of you all who are new to this, Khan Academy is a nonprofit with the mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. And when we saw the mass school closures, not just in the United States, but around the world—there's now over 1.4 billion students around the world who normally would go to school who aren't—we realized that above and beyond the resources that Khan Academy has been creating for years and offering for free for teachers, students, and parents, that it's our duty to step up and do more.

So we've been doing things like parent and teacher webinars. We've been publishing things like the daily schedules for different age groups that some of you all might be familiar with, and we are also doing this live stream. It's a way to stay connected in this time of social distancing. It's a way to answer any questions that you might have, and it's also a way to have interesting conversations that are related to what's going on around us. It could be related to education, or it could be related to just the broader environment.

I do want to say a few thank yous. As I mentioned, we're not for profit. We're funded with philanthropic donations. Even before the COVID crisis, we were running at a deficit, and now our traffic on Khan Academy is up about two and a half times. I looked this morning; it's about 2.8 times what it normally is, and so that only increases our costs. So if you're in a position to do so, please think about helping us out: khanacademy.org/donate.

I want to give a special thanks to several corporations who stepped up over the last couple of weeks in record time to help us with this COVID response. These include folks like Bank of America, which was the first to step up, and shortly thereafter, AT&T, Google.org, and Novartis. That's above and beyond many of the foundations, philanthropists, and corporations like Amgen that have funded Khan Academy through the years. As much as that funding helps, I do want to emphasize that we still need more; we're still operating at a significant deficit, so funding at any level helps.

Over the weekend, I put a video out on YouTube, essentially just doing what I just did, so thank you for doing that. Definitely spread the word. I also want to emphasize that we are still running at a deficit and depleting our reserves in order to do what we're doing.

So what we're going to do today, like always—whether you're watching this on YouTube, Facebook, or some other social media channel—this is changing day by day. We're getting fancier every day. But start posting questions! I have access to some of them, and then some of our team members are looking at those questions and they're putting it up on a doc that I can read. But we have a special guest today.

Our special guest today is a teacher by the name of Tim Vandenberg, who teaches sixth-grade students in Hesperian, California. I think there's a couple of really interesting, or many interesting, things to talk to Tim about. When you think about the questions, you can ask questions for me, but also you can post questions—whether you're a teacher, parent, or student—from a really impressive teacher. That'll help us think about how Khan Academy can be used in the classroom for maximum impact, but also maybe some ways to think about how it could be used at home during the closures.

Tim, thanks for joining us!

Tim: Hi Sal! And I actually, I was watching this documentary about Monopoly recently, and beyond being a superstar teacher, you were also—what was it? Number two in the country in Monopoly at the last U.S. championships?

Tim: I played second place, so they say that puts me ranked number two in the country. So it was a lot of fun!

Sal: You're such a sucker, Tim! (Laughter)

Sal: Oh, okay! So we might have a few champions in that group too. So maybe a good place to start—you know, tell us how you've been using Khan Academy in your classroom pre-COVID crisis.

Tim: Well, with Khan Academy, what I decided is I'm going to make my sixth graders go back to the early grade levels, do early math, arithmetic, the lower grade levels on Khan Academy to master and fill the holes, like you've described so well in your many videos that I encourage people to go watch. And by having them go back and review and fill in those gaps, these very low disadvantaged, highly diverse kids who were basically failing their lower grade skills on the state test for California ended up absolutely doing fantastic on their state test results.

Over the last three years, it would have been four years in a row, but California decided not to have state testing this year due to the emergency health situation. But we have a data chart I can show, the absolutely amazing results using mastery learning. I think your team is going to post that up.

So on the left-hand side, you can see how these kids did in fifth grade compared to their California county and district peers. This is compared to the green line on top, which is a passing score in fifth grade, over to a passing score in sixth grade on the right. You see my kids—basically, the average kid in California and the county and district—and my class are very far below grade level. But using the mastery learning model that is so powerful and easy to do on Khan Academy, my kids averaged growing 95 points last year and pretty much the same the last two years before that as well.

Compare that to the average kid in California, who went up just over one point—one point of growth. And that's the best scores I can find over the last three years in California from two years ago. That’s almost 95 times the growth of the average kid in California. That doesn't mean everything's for sure, but that's the hour.

I just want to make sure I understand this chart. What this shows is on the left-hand side, the left point is performance on the fifth grade state test, and then on the right data dot, it forms a sixth grade. So a student who just tracks that green line on the left means they're right at grade level for fifth grade, and then a year later they're right at sixth grade for sixth grade. That would be what essentially the standards or the assessments expect of students—essentially, you get a year of learning in a year.

And it looks like California on average starts fifth grade well below grade level, and then starts sixth grade well below grade level, but ends the year bubble grade level. But there's about a grade level of growth your students?

Tim: Yes! And I think if I read some of your background, 90% of them were below grade level. What you're looking at is the average, but significantly below grade level. You're talking about a high-need student body—100% free and reduced lunch. But over the course of the year, almost all of them being significantly below grade level, to almost all of them being significantly above grade level after a year.

Tim: Exactly. And this is for teachers who might understand as parents may not quite grasp this, but this is absolutely amazing growth. This is real. This is not teaching to the test; this is lives changing. These kids now believe that they can learn math and master math, all thanks to the mastery learning model on Khan Academy.

Sal: Explain how those gaps are actually filled in. What's interesting is these are sixth-grade students, and you're starting them off many times at early learning, which is kindergarten, first, second grade or arithmetic type content. Both could say: Wait, if they're going to go all the way back there, how could they ever get to grade-level content, much less get ahead of grade level?

Tim: During the school year, while still simultaneously teaching and mastering the sixth-grade skills—which is very hard for them because they don't have the foundations—we also require them to go back and do the course challenges and the unit tests for all of the lower grade levels so that that math actually starts to make sense to them. So that they truly become math masters and champions and actually start believing that this is something they can do.

The majority of them, I graduate and send off to honors classes or above grade-level classes in junior high because of this. This is really an idea of, as you could say, even going slow to go fast. We talk a lot about it here at Khan Academy. In a traditional model, let's say a student gets an 80 on their multiplication tables. Then the next year, when they're learning division, they're building it on a weak foundation of multiplication. Or when you get to algebra and there's a decimal, if you only got 70 in fifth-grade decimals, now you're building on a weak foundation, and that might be—or that arguably is—the reason why so many people struggle in math.

You see the data gets worse and worse the farther you advance because those gaps become debilitating. But what you've been able to do is use Khan Academy to allow kids to start early. If they know the material in kindergarten—which most of them know—but some of them might even have a gap or two, they can fill those in. And then by the time they get to that sixth-grade material, now they're ready to move ahead, and you do both of those simultaneously.

Tim: Exactly, and this is life-changing! I encourage every parent at home with their child doing remote learning, every teacher, maybe at least offer this as extra credit or something for the rest of the school year to go back and do those mastery challenges—quickly go through those course challenges, quickly go through lower grades. If it takes them a long time, good! They needed to do that review. If they do it quickly, okay good, now we know what they know, and we can zero in on which particular skills they were struggling with.

But we all know by high school, kids think either they understand math because they really got it, or they think math is just memorizing steps because they really have no clue what's going on. They eventually quit math because they think they just don't have a math brain. Well, Khan Academy can fix that and teach and show that every kid can learn and master math, thanks to growth mindset.

I want to talk a little bit about school closures. I'm curious what you're doing, but staying on the classroom model, which I know there are a lot of teachers listening, I'm sure many students and parents would be curious. You know, when I look at these videos of your classroom, they look highly interactive. There's sometimes the stereotype that when you use technology or blended learning, it can be this "Vulcan" or "Borg" reality where it's just kids on computers.

What do you see as your role if the students are practicing on Khan Academy? They're getting that feedback and a little micro lesson when they need it. What do you see as the role of the teacher in the room?

Tim: The role of the teacher, or the parent, if they're doing this at home with their child, is to be actively engaged, monitoring progress, and helping the kids at the point of need. But after they have first used the Khan videos and the Khan hints, or their classmates or at home, their older siblings or their parents, then the teachers jump in and help as needed.

But first, I teach them to have agency and initiative and take ownership of their own learning. There is the coach—support as needed. But you see these kids; this is normal what you see in the videos. They truly learn to learn mostly on their own, but they know when they need me I'm right there.

Sal: That's a powerful idea because, obviously, you and I— we both like mathematics; we both think it's valuable to learn that. Would you mention that notion of agency? That might be the most important thing of all because then they're off to the races. You've taught them to fish, so to speak.

I want to think about how you're dealing with the school closures. I assume your school has been closed in Hesperian for several weeks. I'm curious what is going on in your district and how you are dealing with the school closures.

Tim: Yeah, our school, our entire district has closed, like I believe all schools in California. Well, it worked out beautifully. The transition—my students took their Chromebooks home, and they just keep going. They just keep leveling up their skill mastery where they were on each of those courses.

We're going to be setting up remote learning real soon here now that the kids are back from spring break. I gave them last week off, but we're going to be doing remote learning, and they're basically on Khan Academy. I had kids yesterday, without even asking, half the class going on Khan Academy without even being asked to, leveling up skills and mastering new things even without me helping them.

Sal: So the model that you— it sounds like you're doing— you already had kids working on Khan Academy before the closures. When the closures happened, it was pretty easy, obviously, to transition in some level because I guess device access is an issue, especially I could imagine for a student population with 100% free and reduced lunch.

But it sounds like y'all had a great program to send the Chromebooks home. I'm curious about internet access, but what you're saying is the kids are able to access it, keep working, and it sounds like you might also be supplementing that with some video conferencing to unblock them if necessary.

Tim: Exactly! Yeah, we do have most kids with Wi-Fi, with internet access. And the ones who don’t, then I supplement through other paper-pencil sort of materials—textbooks and stuff. But the vast majority of the kids can get online because that was the expectation at the start of the year. And those who couldn't, I just found flexible ways to help those who need help.

I'm curious given that it sounds like your kids are continuing to learn. What how are you thinking about the length of the school closures? It looks like it might very well go through the end of the school year. What advice do you have for other teachers, parents, for students on using this time as well as possible, but then also the summer time?

Tim: Absolutely! What a beautiful opportunity to use Khan Academy, which is free—and I'm not paying to say that! Why not use this time at home catching up on all those skills? Go back to kindergarten! Do the course challenge on kindergarten and see if you can finish it, master it all in an hour or two! If not, then you probably needed to review some skills.

Even starting in third grade, there's some very difficult skills that a lot of high schoolers never mastered because they were not on Common Core way back then. Use this time to go back and review skills, fill in those gaps, and make math make sense for you, so you can be a math champion while you're at home doing remote learning.

Teachers and parents, I recommend somehow motivating your kids, your students, your children to use this mastery learning model. This is absolutely life-changing—I've seen it three years in a row now. Four years after this school year, these kids’ lives are absolutely changed. They believe they can learn and master math instead of being a failure at math like 90% of them were at lower grades. They're now in junior high, in high school right now, my alumni, and they are destroying their math classes, doing fantastic!

Sal: Destroying in a good way! I had a little internal giggle when you said that. We're not paying you! Because obviously, it's not for profit; we would love it when people use us, but our costs actually go up, which is why I'm always asking folks for money.

But no, it’s great! This is why we exist. You know, I've only met you, I think we had our first conversation only a few weeks ago, but I've been really blown away. You know, I've spoken and written about a lot of these things in theory, but you've taken it to a whole other level in terms of practice. So I think it's a good time to open it up to some questions.

I see there's questions coming in. So one question from YouTube: Susana Dominguez asks, "Are Mr. V’s students continuing to work on Khan at home now that we are homebound?" It sounds like that is the case. In fact, it sounds like you can't even stop them even when they were off!

Tim: Yeah! What I do is I praise them for those who put in the most effort every day. I use the Khan activity overview data that Khan provides for teachers and parents, and I praise the top 10 kids who put in the most effort, and also the top 10 kids who've leveled up the most skills from the previous day. That really motivates them—that positive reinforcement is awesome!

I have this other question from Facebook. Missy Muller says, "Tim, have you had students that master all K through fifth skills before the year is up? Do you have them move ahead of class into later sixth or seventh grade topics?"

Tim: Right. As a sixth-grade teacher, every year I do have two or three kids who master everything K through six. What I do is I unlock— I call it unlock— but I let them go ahead to pre-algebra and seventh-grade and eighth-grade math, and I let that for credit in a balanced way.

Sal: Wow, that's incredible! Let’s see from Facebook: Nikki Renee asked, "If I set up second-grade math, my child does all the practice quizzes and unit tests, where do you go from there? Do you have to achieve something before it automatically moves you on?"

I could take a quick stab at that one. Essentially yes, once your student gets, say, 90% mastery in second-grade math through unit tests or course challenges, then it would be a good idea to sit, you know, since this is a younger student you're talking about, to then say, "Okay, it looks like you've finished second grade!" And then you can set them a goal to finish third grade, and you can even pace that out.

One of the things we want to work on at Khan Academy, we give you all the daily schedules for different age groups, but just as Tim was mentioning, we have two months through the school year; then we have another three months through the summer. We want to help parents and students and teachers think about goals that are reasonable for different types of students as we go over the next five months. But if your child finishes second grade, absolutely— the system right now won't say immediately go to third grade, but you can sit next to them and say, "Okay, let's start on third grade now."

Alright. So from Facebook, Katie Kelly DeLaDeLeon says, "Hi Tim! I have a hard time navigating the website. How do you assign the mastery model that you teach to your students?"

Tim: Okay, so, as a teacher, you want to make sure your students are signed in under your class in Khan Academy. Then you go under each course and you can set mastery goals for your students. You can even set a date deadline for your students, and what that does is it signals to your kids this is what they should be working on. Then it keeps track, and you can click on that as a teacher and follow the progress as their percentage of mastery goes up.

So I hope that answers Katie's question. That's good feedback for all of us actually. Both of y'all good feedback—Katie, we are always trying to improve the navigation, so we actually like the constructive feedback; we know it can get better.

Sal: Tim’s idea, I actually think I would love to collaborate with you, Tim, on ways to publish goals over the course of especially the next five months. I would love to do it consistent the way you've done it because clearly it's been highly effective, and I think that'll help a lot of parents, students, and teachers.

Someone from YouTube, Dal Lad said, "I don’t understand how students take tests on Khan. I've only seen videos."

So Dal, I think you might only be on the YouTube channel. I encourage you to go to khanacademy.org, and if you go to, you know, there's a menu that says subjects at the top left. If you go there, especially if you look at any of the ones in math or the high school level sciences, including biology, chemistry, physics, economics, principles, you'll see there's a view where you have videos on the left, and on the right, you have practice.

If you click on that, you'll see that as you get things right, it has these what we call mastery mechanics. So as you can see right here on this, this is showing the various lessons, but you can see these mastery points available. And then if you were to click on one of those lessons, then you'll be able to see the various exercises you can do and get feedback. There are different levels you could do it at the skill level. You can do it at a quiz level, unit test level, a mastery challenge level, or a course challenge level. So I encourage you to go to our site and try it all out.

Alright, so other questions—some of these are a little bit more general. So from YouTube, Michael Azar says, "Sal, is there any way I can improve my skills using Khan Academy efficiently?"

I have some ideas and actually I'm curious, Tim, what you think about this. I think the best way to efficiently use Khan Academy is analogous to what you just heard Tim say—that he coaches his students to do. Start at a level that's maybe earlier than your grade level unless you're very, very confident in math, but if you're not, start at an earlier grade level.

I would start with the course challenges because that samples everything in the class. If you're able to get through the course challenges quite easily, you can move on to the next grade level. But if you're not able to move through the course challenges easily, the things that you got wrong, you can then go to those units and then try to get mastery in those units. I would say that's the most efficient way to get mastery at some of your foundational subjects as quickly as possible.

There's also ways, you know, if you're going to learn anything—whether it's math or piano or improve your free throw—it's all about consistency. A lot of times we're all guilty of binge studying or binge exercising, and then we do nothing for a few weeks. It's much better if you can do a solid 30 minutes a day, 40 minutes a day. If you're younger, maybe 20 minutes a day. You're going to see that if you do that consistently, you're going to notice you performing better and looking at the world differently in a matter of a month or two.

Tim: Anything to add to that?

Tim: Yeah! I can't tell you how powerful it is to use the early math course to focus on mastering the number sense concepts, which research has shown is what holds kids—and even adults—back is grasping the true meaning of numbers and place value and fractions. So early math, and then the arithmetic course on Khan Academy is a good summary review of everything basically K through maybe seventh grade. Those are great turbo super fast reviews to get through everything and make sure you truly understand what you need for junior high and high school.

Sal: Then for older students, the pre-algebra course really teaches those basic skills of working the key concepts of algebraic manipulation. One thing I'll add—I’ve seen a lot of parents have a little bit of anxiety when it comes to math and I think this is also an opportunity. Now that we're all socially distanced at home, if you do have some time, maybe even do it next to your child, it's really great modeling for them.

For you to do what Tim has just mentioned: go back to early learning. If you know that material, you'll get through it quite fast, and if it takes you a little bit more time, it's because you needed it. I think that'll change your perspective, and it's very powerful modeling for the students.

Tim: Yeah! I have had a couple of parents do that with their children, and not only does it help the parent, it encourages the child. This year, who is scared of the fractions, mom has been working together with her on her own Khan account and the results are amazing—our state practice tests that we have been taking have been great!

Sal: That’s awesome! Let's see, there's a question from Facebook: Edward Swan says, "Are there plans to match up content with the UK system?"

Sal: So Edward, right now we don't have that. In theory, that could happen in the future, so it's definitely in the realm of possibility. I would say that obviously the UK system is even in the U.S. state-to-state can be a little bit different.

It is different, but especially in math, if you master the progression along the lines that Tim has been talking about—make sure you have a strong foundation—you can go to pretty much any country, and there might be a few standards that are different here or there, you will have a very strong foundation, and you'll feel yourself very fluent in math. The same thing is also true for things like biology, chemistry, physics, if you're thinking about things more at a high school or early college level. So I encourage you to do that, but it is a good nudge for us to think about a mapping to things like the UK system.

For other international folks out there, we do have a Spanish version of Khan Academy: es.khanacademy.org. There is actually a Brazilian Portuguese version of Khan Academy, which that team in Brazil is actually mapping to the Brazilian national common core. We have a team in India that is trying to do similar things. There's also 40 translation projects around the world done by volunteers on top of our platform to make Khan Academy available in some of those other languages.

We're trying to make the tools available where they can curate and align them better to their standards. So we definitely do want things like that to happen.

Sal: Let's see, other questions. From YouTube, Vaishnav Malio says, "Hello, Sal! Academy saved me so much frustration—so much clarity in teaching methods!"

Sal: Well, thank you, Vaishnav! We appreciate that. And the next question I have is from Lisa Nice on Facebook. She is saying her sixth grader is doing well in math, and that’s great! Thanks to being able to use Khan Academy. We love hearing that! That makes, you know, it energizes all of us to hear about how it's helping folks.

Let's see…other questions. Actually, this is an interesting one, and maybe both Tim and I can answer this question from YouTube: crew crewtarthbot says, "Hey Sal, what is the best piece of constructive criticism you received from a parent or a learner?"

Sal: So I think the—you know, we got a little bit of constructive criticism, which I really appreciate a little earlier ago, where I think it was a parent or teacher asking, "Hey, I'm having a little bit difficulty navigating the site." I think that is one that I've heard a few times.

You know, in the early days of Khan Academy, it was in many ways easier to navigate, but now that there are thousands of exercises and thousands of videos and you know, 30 or 40 subjects, it can be a little bit daunting to understand how to navigate. And especially because there are different modalities—teachers can assign unit mastery, course mastery; they can assign individual skills for homework—and so we recognize that we want to be able to simplify it as much as possible.

That's really constructive feedback. I remember the early days of Khan Academy, my penmanship was not so good. I definitely got some constructive feedback about that! For sure, you know, we get positive feedback, and some people like the style that I might instruct. Some people might think I talk too slow or too fast or whatever else, so you know, it's always great to get feedback and think about how we can get better at things.

Tim: You know, any constructive feedback you’d like to highlight?

Tim: The high-stakes constructive feedback that every teacher gets every year is their state test student results. It was very powerful before I used Khan Academy, just seeing, "Wow, it’s not working using the old system." I just can't get these kids caught up in one year, even though I'm working so hard. I gotta try something different!

So I tried this mastery learning model, and that was the best constructive feedback I ever got was realizing I had to change—I got to do something different! And kids ever since in my class have been having their lives changed.

So that helped a lot. Also, I want to think your team is going to post on this the show notes for this webinar—a couple of webinars I recently did explaining how to do mastery learning in the classroom or with your child at home. So be sure to check that out as well.

Sal: No, that's great! And actually, one of those webinar videos, I’ve now included as a link whenever I send an email to folks just so people see that because you know, it's one thing to theoretically know about it, but to hear from an incredible practitioner like yourself and the type of result you're seeing with a high-need population—it’s really inspiring!

So we're all out of time. These live streams go fast. Tim, thank you so much for joining us! I get inspired every time I chat with you.

Tim: Oh no, no!

Sal: Maybe we'll play some Monopoly. I'm finding that that might be some constructive criticism for me when I—you crush me in Monopoly! Learning how to beat you every time!

Sal: But for all of y'all who are listening, thanks for joining! I know this is a really, really hard time for the world, but I think there's a little bit of a silver lining that we're all in this together.

As I'm saying every week, you know, this is a way to connect with each other. I also find a lot of connection, even though it's virtual and abstract, through this live stream. But it's a way to get us through all of these school closures.

I'll throw on another reminder—we are not for profit. If you're in a position to do so, please think about donating to Khan Academy. We need your help; we're operating at a deficit right now. But I look forward to seeing you all in the weeks ahead. We're going to bring more guests, folks like Tim and others, soon.

So with that, stay safe, stay healthy, and I'll see you tomorrow!