Less than two years later, the effort has brought her school a kind of celebrity status. Superintendents and state lawmakers from across the country have begun stopping by this well-wired school in a poor pocket of Southeast Washington — where nearly a third of the students are homeless — to see how they are learning.
While test scores barely budged District-wide this past spring, Ketcham saw an 11-point increase in its math proficiency rate — to 49 percent — and a 4.5-point increase in reading — to 35 percent. Officials attribute the gains to the move to “blended learning.”
D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson has been an advocate of such programs, which combine face-to-face instruction with online personalized learning as a way to improve students’ digital skills and tap into the kind of gadgets that interest them outside of school.
The children at Ketcham, along with Randle Highlands Elementary School, could be among the first in the District to go through their entire school careers learning online part-time. Both schools feed into Kramer Middle School and Anacostia High School, which also have blended-learning programs.
