College and Khan Academy: District-wide Strategies for SAT Prep

Are as we continue to admit folks. We want to remind everyone that today's session is being recorded. Feel free to add your questions in the chat. We have a host of Khan Academy folks ready to answer your questions in real time. We are thrilled to have you join us as we explore an exciting partnership between Khan Academy and the College Board.

This collaboration signifies a groundbreaking step forward in educational support and resources specifically designed to enhance Student Success. Today, we'll delve into the unique benefits of the KH Academy District partnership program, which offers schools access to a comprehensive suite of resources tailored to improve SAT preparation and overall academic performance. Our goal is to equip educators and students with vetted, high-quality practice materials that not only boost test scores but also positively impact graduation rates across partnering school districts.

As we navigate through the details of this partnership, you'll learn how Khan Academy's innovative approach to personalized learning can empower students, providing them with the tools they need to improve outcomes on the digital SAT. We'll share insights, success stories, and practical implementation strategies that will help you understand how this partnership can be a game changer for your district.

So sit back and prepare to discover the transformative potential of the KH Academy and College Board partnership. My name is Jamie Grant, and I'll be your host for today. For 20 years, I was a science teacher in both public and independent schools, beginning my journey into the classroom after having completed the DC Teaching Fellows program. During my time as a K-12 educator, I served as a department chairperson, class sponsor, teacher trainer, advisor, and mentor. But since leaving the classroom, I've served in the capacity of a senior customer success manager, grant program director, and currently as a district partnerships manager for the Southeast region.

It is my pleasure to introduce to you our speakers for today: Dianna Klingman, Sarah Thor, both from KH Academy, as well as more reinforcement from the College Board. So with that, we're going to ask them a few questions and chat more about the partnership between Khan Academy and College Board.

Sarah, Sarah Thor brings a wealth of information and experience to our session. She spent her early career as a high school science teacher and building administrator, then transitioned to the College Board, where she dedicated eight years to enhancing educational assessments culminating in her role as the senior director of institutional assessment management. Currently, Sarah serves as a success manager at Khan Academy, where she collaborates with districts and higher education institutions to facilitate the successful implementation of Khan Academy and KMigo. Her expertise will illuminate the benefits of our partnership and show how it can positively impact students across our districts. Welcome, Sarah!

Moren Foran is Vice President of SAT Site Program and Innovation at College Board. She began her career as a teacher in Philadelphia with the New Teacher Project and she was a Teach for America Mentor.

Moren, can you tell us about College Board's mission and what inspires you to do your work every day?

Thanks, Jamie. So, College Board's mission ultimately is to connect students with post-secondary opportunities in college and career. Our goal is to make sure that students understand a bit more about themselves—what they know, what they don't know, and how we can support them in their journey toward their best fit path after high school. As you mentioned, I am also a former educator, and so there's a lot of synergy between College Board and Academy's mission to connect students with those opportunities.

In the SAT suite, the core of what we do helps students understand the knowledge and skills that they are learning in high school every step of the way. When we think about our connection to students and families, we also think about scholarship opportunities and the doors that we unlock to potential future opportunities. We're all about connecting students to that next step on their path to learning and to growth. I think at the end of the day, as people together who are in education and in support of students as learners and educators, as people sort of shepherd in young minds, that is really what drives us forward and connects our work together.

Thanks, Moren.

Sarah, what can you tell us about Khan Academy's mission and how your work on SAT connects to that vision?

Thanks, Jamie. Khan Academy's mission is to provide a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere. And with our partnership with College Board, any student could create a Khan Academy account and access those digital SAT prep courses completely for free. This obviously eliminates the barriers of costly SAT prep; it's for everyone, not just for those who can afford it. It's a fantastic opportunity for students to have this opportunity.

As administrators, you're kind of blind to their progress and how they are using these SAT prep courses. This is where really the power of Khan Academy partnership comes in. You can get valuable insights into the skills that students are working on; you get administrator analytics, access to professional learning support with rostering, access to a district success manager that can help you with your implementation. Also, you could potentially have access to KMigo, which is our one-to-one personal tutor for students and a teacher assistant for all of your teachers. This allows you to be more supportive and more intentional in how you are helping your students prepare for the SAT.

Thank you so much, Sarah. Going back to Moren. Moren, can you tell us about how the partnership came to be?

Yes, so we are, if you can believe it, about to celebrate our 10-year anniversary together as partners. Through this nearly decade-long partnership, we've learned a lot about ourselves, our respective organizations, and the way we most effectively work for and with students. The reason that we sort of embarked on this partnership back in the day is we really believe that it is our role to clear a path for all students to have access to free, high-quality, continuously improving test prep that can be utilized in a variety of ways—whether that's to an individual learner on their own, for a student who's working with a tutor or other support within their school, or maybe most effectively and most importantly, integrated into their classroom experience with the teachers and educators who are supporting students to and through their knowledge that are really assessed on the SAT.

When we think about the SAT, it is essentially an assessment of the core knowledge and skills that students are developing and sort of growing in their courses across high school. Whether that's in math courses or reading and writing courses, each of those skills really builds upon themselves. Year-over-year, students are in their classes building those knowledge and skills that are assessed on the SAT. The digital SAT really measures what matters, and practice makes progress, right? So by having our partnership with Khan Academy so widely available to individual students, we also know that supporting educators with the use of that tool in the classroom really moves the needle when it comes to how students understand the knowledge and skills that are assessed on the test, the type of items that help to assess their knowledge, and really the way that students do that with the caring adults in their lives—whether those are, again, parents, tutors, or educators. That can look really different in terms of a support system for students, and KH Academy really helps us to scale the knowledge and expertise that students will need to be successful not just on the test, but ultimately in connecting them to those resources and supports for college, career, and beyond.

To me, what really inspires the work that we do together is how we think about the learner at the center of everything we do. Some of the features that I love about KH Academy in general, but specifically in the digital SAT course, is it helps students move through foundation all the way up through mastery of the knowledge and skills assessed on the SAT. We've built this partnership by leveraging the items that are written by the makers of the SAT, so authored by College Board, shared with KH Academy, and then KH Academy really helps us to scale the sort of explanations of knowledge and skills that help students refresh their knowledge of what they've already learned in certain classes, and then to see that grow through foundational, advanced, mastery level learning in their KH Academy courses.

As you've heard on this call, many of us come from a background in education. We really think about how do we meet students where they are, and how do we help them sort of track their progress and really grow that knowledge over time? So whether that's through refreshing knowledge or sometimes really learning them for the first time or learning them in a different way, there's so much that KH Academy does to help meet students where they are and to help educators really differentiate their instruction and tailor their work with students through those knowledge and skills.

We've had tremendous impact through official SAT practice, which was the original course that helped to support students through the paper-and-pencil version of the SAT. And now, together in the digital space where our digital natives truly are, we're really thinking differently about how we more meaningfully make space for those connections in a variety of different ways with educators through our partnerships with states, with districts, and with individual schools and educators themselves—whether that's through a coaching model or whether that's through a strategic district-wide adoption of Khan Academy for districts or even thinking about where KMigo has a place for students in really personalizing and tailoring instruction and helping students grow the knowledge and skills that are assessed on the SAT. We just see tremendous growth potential from where we are today, building on that strong nearly decade-long foundation together, and our continued commitment to evolving that and growing those supports for and with students, and in service of schools, districts, and parents.

Thank you so much. That was incredibly insightful. Turning back to Sarah, in your time working across both organizations, what's your perspective on how the partnership has evolved over time?

So, I do remember starting out at College Board about nine years ago when this partnership was beginning to launch, and I remember being really excited to talk to districts about this free official SAT practice. As Maren said, that's when it was called back then—SAT practice—because KH Academy had the content but also had practice materials on our site. As College Board transitioned to digital testing, the practice tests and practice experience are now available in Blue Book, College Board's digital testing application. And that's important because it gives students a chance to get comfortable with the platform that they're actually going to be taking the test on.

Our focus at College Board has shifted to SAT prep, and it's just not the test-prepping type of things like test-taking strategies and time management study skills. We obviously cover that, and that's super important, but really the powerful impact is the high-quality course content that has been created along with College Board. It's mastery-enabled like our other courses are within the platform, and it truly assesses or covers what is assessed on the SAT.

Thank you so much, Sarah. Moren, what are you proud of when you think about the partnership?

Honestly, I'm really proud of the work we've done together and the way that we put the learner at the center of everything that we do. So whether that's thinking about how students are receiving their digital SAT prep courses— that could be sort of on their mobile device, right? Our digital natives have access to maybe just their phone, or maybe it's something they're doing on a school bus—it's the universal access to digital SAT prep in many different spaces through the classroom or on their own. But connecting them to a coach that can really help support that journey becomes even more important to us as we think about students that are taking SAT School Day, PSAT/NMSQT.

That growth over time and each of those sort of assessment moments as benchmarking their progress towards showing what they know on test day and unlocking those future opportunities for and with students. What I think about the millions of learners that we connect to these supports and to educators helping them understand where their students are and where they need to go and grow next, that really inspires my work and how we think about growing the course.

So whether that's through adding additional content together or going to a next level of detail through the videos, articles, worked examples that help students really understand the underlying knowledge and skills that they will build upon as they move through each of the foundational steps of understanding the knowledge and skills assessed on the SAT with the types of items that they will experience in Blue Book, our digital testing application—there's so much work that we do together to build familiarity with the platform students will utilize on test day, but even how to navigate the tools that they will experience.

A great example of this is getting familiar with the Desmos testing calculator that students will use on test day. Knowing how to best leverage that tool that all students have access to is really an incredible piece of our work together. I think at the end of the day what we're all trying to achieve is fully integrating students' understanding of the types of questions and items that students will experience on test day in the moments where they're actually learning those knowledge and skills in the classroom.

To me, that integration is what's going to really help students understand that the SAT isn't something that happens at the end of high school; it's not just in service of college entrance. It's really an assessment that's designed to help students show what they know and what they've learned all throughout high school. Together, by both connecting students with the online course itself but actually the educators who are helping them attain those knowledge and skills throughout high school, that, to me, is the power of our connection together, our reach, and our ability to make meaningful impact at scale for all students.

Thank you so much, Moren. We're going to shift to Sarah, who’s our district success manager. So, can you speak to the support that you provide to districts related to digital SAT prep?

Yes, so part of what I do is I can act as a thought partner with you. We know that every school has different circumstances, and we can provide guidance and resources to support a variety of implementation models. Your district may have designated SAT prep courses that students are required or elected to take, for instance. Or your district may have advisory or seminar win times where you want to engage with SAT prep. And if you could share the screen back again, there we go in the next one, there we go.

So, lots of different ways to implement SAT prep. As I mentioned, designated SAT prep courses, advisory/seminar times. We could also talk to you if you have an after-school or summer school program and you want to utilize SAT prep there. Maybe you aren't able to designate specific times, and you need to embed SAT prep into your core classes. We can help with those strategies.

Then you could also have supportive parents that want to help their students engage with the digital SAT prep classes at home. It is important to engage students and keep them motivated, so we have resources such as data trackers that students can use to monitor their own short and long-term goals. Finally, some of our districts strategically think about four-year plans for SAT prep that use a combination of our SAT prep courses along with our other course content.

One of our district partners with a four-year implementation plan is the School District of Oola County in Florida. Oola has about 70,000 students in over 80 schools, who speak about 100 different languages. The district sets expectations that students are to use KH Academy for 30 minutes a week and to level up two skills per week in grades 9 through 12. Every school has the autonomy for how they want students to get this time, but their fidelity of implementation and creating a culture of expectation has really led to student success, with their graduation rate being at an all-time high of 91%. Oola attributes the use of Khan Academy to much of this success. We have a blog post on our website if you want to learn more about their implementation.

Another success story is Garland in Texas. Garland ISD has over 51,000 students that are outside the Dallas area. Garland administrators emphasize the use of Khan Academy six weeks prior to students taking the SAT, and they expect students to use Khan Academy for 30 minutes a week. The great thing about Garland is that they did their own analysis of students' PSAT and NMSQT and SAT test scores and correlated that to the amount of time that they spent within the platform. They looked at students' scores when they took the PSAT and NMSQT in the fall of their 10th-grade year to the fall of their 11th-grade year. This comparison is shown in the first set of columns on the chart.

Then they looked at their PSAT and NMSQT scores from the fall of their junior year to the SAT in the spring of their junior year, which is that second set of columns. As you can see in the charts, all students did improve their test scores, but students who used Khan Academy for more than 100 minutes had statistically significant higher scores than students who spent less time.

Now, I'd like to pivot to talk about one of the reasons why these districts had so much success using the SAT prep courses, and that's really due to how the courses are structured. College Board makes it known what is assessed on the SAT—it's not a secret. They publish an assessment framework; you can find it on their website. Within the reading and writing section, students are assessed in four different domains: information and ideas, craft and structure, expression of ideas, and standard English conventions.

On the right is a screenshot of the SAT prep course in Khan Academy, and you can see how these units align to those domains. You can also see that there are foundational units, medium units, and advanced units, so that we're scaffolding all of these skills for students to provide additional support. The math course is structured in the same way. There are also four domains assessed on the SAT Math section: algebra, advanced math, geometry and trigonometry, and problem-solving and data analysis. The units are again scaffolded with increasing difficulty and align into those domains being assessed.

Then we can go even deeper into the structure of the assessment and the courses because the courses review all of the skills that are on the SAT. And as Moren mentioned, these skills are enduring skills that students are learning in their classrooms. For example, in the information and ideas domain, one of the skills assessed is command of evidence. Within the screenshot, you will see that command of evidence and all of the skills assessed on the SAT are embedded within our courses.

This is really important because knowing that all of the skills that are assessed on the SAT are in the prep courses is extremely powerful and impactful for students who are preparing to take the SAT. Dianna is going to show you how all of this is demonstrated in our platform.

So Jamie, I'll let you introduce Di.

All right. So Dianna Klingman is an experienced educator with over 20 years in the field, hailing from Flint, Michigan. She has served in various roles including classroom teacher, director of academics, and principal. Dianna is skilled in using AI for SAT prep, and she is passionate about fostering a positive learning environment while empowering students and educators alike.

Well, hello everyone, and thank you, Jamie, for that introduction. So now on the screen, what you see is the landing page of what your students will see when they begin working in the digital SAT courses. So kind of thinking about what Sarah just said previously about how they're aligned, now we're going to look at how these courses are formatted. Each one of these courses, as she mentioned, is broken down into units, and within these units, students now have access to some learning tools, articles, and videos that help break down some of those key concepts that may be hard for them.

Students can watch a video, they can read an article, students can also practice their learning through practice exercises. They can also take quizzes as well as unit tests. Now once a student begins working in the platform, one way that they can track how they're doing is through this section here, which is our mastery dashboard. On this mastery dashboard, students in real-time will get feedback on how they're doing on each one of these skills based on our four mastery levels. Our four mastery levels are attempted, familiar, proficient, and mastered. This allows students to be able to see what are those areas that they still need to work on or what are those areas that they're okay, you know, that they're mastering.

The goal for all of your students will be for them to get into this purple area—this proficient and mastered. Now this, along with the ability for teachers to track student progress, is all available free on our platform. But I'm a former building principal, so I know the ability to look at analytics for my building and look at data is very important. So now let me show you that if you partner with Khan Academy, how you'll be able to have access to this data and leverage it. You'll be able to get to your administrator dashboard by clicking on your name, and you'll see that there is an option for you to go to your administrator dashboard.

Now when you go into this, this wide array of data, you're going to see very high level on this landing page how your district or your school is doing. Now, if you are a building principal, you're only going to have access to your data. But if you are a district-level administrator, you’ll be able to see all the schools that are in your specific district. When you look at the landing page, you're going to see very high level. You'll be able to track the activation of your students and teachers. You'll be able to see how your students are doing when it comes to them getting in that purple area we were just talking about—how many of those skills are in that proficient or mastered area.

You can also track KMigo usage, our AI tool that was kind of mentioned earlier. You can track learning minutes—how many minutes the students in your school or your district are spending within the platform—and then you can also see skills leveled up. So, are they improving, going from that attempted to familiar or even familiar to proficient?

Now on the left-hand side, along with that assistance as well from your district support manager, that will help you kind of be able to interpret this data, on the left-hand side you're able to drill down a little bit more into your data. So over here when we look at activation, if I drill down, I can see that I can monitor activation by school, I can do it by grades, I can also do it by teacher. So, for example, if I want to look at my teachers here, I'm able to see all of my teachers, I'm able to see if their accounts are activated, the number of students that are rostered to them, and then whether or not their students have activated their accounts as well as started an activity.

This is just a great way to find out who are those teachers that need that little bit of support with getting started, getting the students on the platform, and getting them started and utilizing that digital SAT content. Now once everybody's accounts are activated, and I see that students’ accounts are activated, then the next thing I may want to start looking at is progress—how are we doing, right? So then when I go over here to progress, and if I drill down, now I'm able to see a couple of different options. I can see it by course, I can see it by school, I can see it by grades, teachers, and even skills.

So if I wanted to start looking at how are the students doing in my digital SAT courses, I can click on courses, and now I'm brought to what is a called of our progress by course report here. I can filter by specific date range, my school, my grades, and then I can also just scroll down and find my digital SAT, and then I'm now able to see how my students are doing and how much time they're spending in the platform.

So here I see here’s my digital SAT Math course. I see the number of students that are in this course, and once your teachers are part of their professional development, they'll be trained on how to add this course so that you as the administrator can start tracking progress. So here it shows me the number of students that are rostered in this course, their learning minutes—how are they spending time within this time frame—how many skills did they work on, the average number of skills they worked on within this time frame, and then did they level up? Did they go from that attempted to familiar, or familiar to proficient?

Then also, I'm able to track how many of those skills landed in that purple. I can also drill down and look at it by school, and then within my school, start looking at those specific teachers, and then from those specific teachers, I can also look at specific students. So if you have a teacher come to you and say, “You know, Dianna's having a hard time in her digital SAT Math course with leveling up,” this is a way you can start, you know, you’ll have your own set of data to be able to look at Dianna and then say, “Okay, this is how you, you know, this is,” and start that conversation with your teacher and see how the two of you can work together to support your student.

You also have the ability to monitor KMigo usage, so you can look at usage as well as activity. In a world where your students are utilizing KMigo in that digital SAT course because you know they’re stuck and they really need that extra support, we can go here to activity. Now here I can see what activities my students are utilizing KMigo on. And when I go here with them using it with an exercise, I can drill down, and when I drill down, I can see the course. Here’s my digital SAT Math course. And so when I drill down here, now I'm able to even see what specific units they worked on as well as the number of students who utilized this as well.

So if I see that I have a lot of students using it, great. If I see I have a small number of students using it, then that can be a conversation, maybe in a PLC or with my teachers around how can we increase this usage, or what is the root cause as to how our students are having issues with utilizing KMigo.

Also, on your admin dashboard, you do have access to resources—everything from Khan Academy administrator guide, which is a step-by-step guide that will guide you through not only navigating the platform but also how to work, how to read these reports as well. And then we also have our Khan Academy for Educators course. These are very detailed videos in which we go through, we show you kind of step by step how to have a successful implementation as well.

And now, we're going to also begin. Jamie's going to talk to you a little bit about how you can use AI for SAT prep.

Thank you! Thank you so much, Di. Let me just go ahead and share my screen.

All right, so I am going to show you the student experience using KMigo, which is an on-demand student tutor available 24/7 specifically for SAT preparation when used in conjunction with the KH Academy SAT resources. So, on my screen, you can see the explore foundations and algebra course on the digital SAT suite of courses. We see like, you know, other KH Academy courses, progression is rooted in mastery, and this is something Dianna showed you a few minutes ago.

We also see that, you know, when we hit the start button, we see that students experience the familiar feel of all the other Khan Academy courses. So if we go ahead and get started with a question, we see that KMigo is there right there to help students work through exercises should they need assistance. And so what's really nice is that students can begin a session simply by using a prompt bubble or by typing or speaking their question into the designated area.

So, from the teacher's perspective, KMigo is their version of receiving assistance through teacher tools, which include things like lesson planning, receiving a class snapshot, and getting a list of recommended assignments. By utilizing those teacher tools, I'm so sorry, by utilizing those teacher tools, teachers can get assistance with progress on SAT prep, group students based on recent work, and help meet students' needs in less time.

Now, safety and privacy are paramount. We are committed to ensuring that kids are safe and their information is private. With the KMigo partnership, teachers and administrators have full visibility into everything that students are working on and chatting about. Our guardrails ensure that students are safe and monitored at all times.

In addition, the Socratic method of questioning by KMigo ensures that students think deeply during their SAT practice without ever getting the answers directly. As we near the end of this webinar, we wanted to highlight the district partnership difference. As most of you know, many of Khan Academy's resources and tools are free. KH Academy houses the only SAT prep course created in partnership with College Board on our platform. Visitors have access to all standards-aligned courses, including the digital SAT course, progress monitoring, and growth on SAT prep, and students and teachers, excuse me, can create targeted assignments as needed.

As mentioned before, practice test scores from the College Board Blue Book app prompt students to visit Khan Academy to practice skill improvement as part of a district partnership. Our partners benefit from automated seamless rostering, administrator reporting, professional learning for teachers and administrators, a district success manager, and access to our AI student tutor, KMigo.

As a reminder, our teacher tools are free, but our district partners receive access to our enterprise KMigo tools. Last but not least, we'd like to introduce you to our district partnerships team. Danielle Sullivan covers our Northeast territory. Renee Venegas, myself, and Mark Jameson cover our South and Southeast regions. Jason F spearheads partnerships in the Midwest. Jason Hovy and Chelsea Hatcher together cover the Western region of the United States.

With that, if you are interested in a district partnership with Khan Academy, scan this QR code, which will put you in touch with our district team. As a reminder, participants who RSVP'd to this event will have access to the video recording. Thank you for joining us today. And a special thank you to Mor Reinforan for joining us. We are eternally grateful for your time and the continued collaboration and partnership between College Board and Khan Academy. Thank you.