In this post, I’d like to summarize the golden nuggets presented by Cynthia McMurry, the COO of TeachFX, from the Changing the Conversation event in Anaheim in August 2021:

To start, Cynthia shared three things that research shows:

• Students who participate more learn more and perform better on various measures of student achievement.

• The benefits of student talk are greatest for our most vulnerable students, such as English learners, students with disabilities, and students from low-income backgrounds.

• Engaging vulnerable subgroups is especially urgent right now as students return to the classroom after a tumultuous 1.5 years.

Cynthia introduced TeachFX’s Equitable Classrooms program, in which seven districts were selected across the US to participate in an extensive analysis of equity dynamics in the classroom. Over 75,000 classes were analyzed, covering 2,300+ teachers and 30,000+ students for visibility into the equity of voice by grade level, school, and subgroups of interest (e.g. race, FRL status, English Learner status). This initiative provided actionable equity data to share across each district to help address the root causes of the so-called opportunity gap.

Next, Cynthia highlighted insights that surfaced from the Equitable Classrooms analysis. Here are snapshots of results from different school and district partners that attendees read and reflected on:

Here's a sample of findings from individual Equitable Classrooms partners: 

• At one school, 61% of students talked <15 seconds in an hour of class% of students talk <15 seconds in an hour of class

• Students who talk more receive higher grades

• English Learner students speak half as much as non-English Learners

• Student talk is highest in Homeroom, lowest in Math and Science

• Students use chat mostly for greetings and logistics

• The vast majority of chats are short and non-academic

  • Median chat length: 2 words

  • Avg chat length: 3.9 words

• Male students speak 1.2x more than female students

• ...but in TeachFX classrooms, female students speak 1.2x more than male students

• Black student talk drops 72% between elementary and secondary, the sharpest decline of any subgroup

These are some of the reflection questions that attendees discussed:

• What might this district do to get English Learners to talk more?

• How does this data make you think differently about how you can address equity gaps in the classroom?

• How might this school rethink its approach to Science and Math instruction to increase student talk?

• How does this data inform your thinking about how best to use the chat function?

• What might TeachFX teachers be doing differently?

• How would you address equity gaps like this at your school?

• What would data like this inspire you to do at your school?

After key takeaways from the Equitable Classrooms data were discussed whole-group, Cynthia concluded by suggesting education leaders must change the conversation about learning loss, how we think about data, and how we use data to create opportunities for equity in the classroom to make school work for students and not the other way around.