EQUITABLE ACCELERATED LEARNING
Literacies and math for oregon's k-8 students
The Equitable Accelerated Learning K-8 Project (ALK-8) was a collaborative effort between Oregon State University’s College of Education and the Oregon Department of Education, with an ultimate aim to mitigate students' unfinished grade-level learning, particularly in math and literacy, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The ALK-8 project enhanced Oregon K-12 school systems’ response to the widespread educational disruptions that affected students, teachers, and families, particularly those in under-resourced communities and those affected disproportionately, such as students experiencing disabilities, multi-language learners, and those in rural regions. The initiative supported both these specific student populations and all Oregon K-8 students, by equipping educators with new strategies and tools that address educational challenges teachers face within their local contexts.
Video: A Unique Partnership: Equitable Accelerated Learning K-8

This innovative partnership centered on educators and their expertise, assuming that educators are best positioned to identify accurate, meaningful, and pressing problems of practice, organize educator groups around these, and co-develop plans and resources to address these identified problems while staying aware of the concerns of the populations they serve (i.e., students, families, communities). The project Leadership Team reached out to educators statewide to elicit educators’ problems-of-practice for groups of educators that could function as funded “Working Groups” and evaluated these proposed projects based on feasibility and alignment with the ALK8 Project goals, including their promise for shareable materials and outcomes that could be of service to Oregon educators state-wide.
Working Groups
Sixteen (16) Working Groups ultimately received funding, and most enacted their projects from late Fall 2023 through August 2024. The 16 Working Groups and their 23 associated Working Group leaders engaged more than 725 educators, including teachers, instructional specialists, instructional leaders, administrators, and other school support staff, as Working Group participants. These participants represented 99 school districts across Oregon, more than 50% of Oregon’s 197 school districts. Working Group participants co-designed practical, largely locally tailored solutions to address their problems of practice, all attending to mitigating inequities in the K12 education system, resulting in hundreds of deliverables that the Oregon Department of Education will distribute. The working group deliverables included a variety of resources for different audiences, including professional development resources, teacher lesson plans, and planning resources aligned to the Working Groups’ foci.
Learn more about the Working Groups
Oregon Educators’ Summit
Working Group participants showcased their processes and materials at the statewide Oregon Educators’ Summit, designed and organized by OSU project leaders, on August 6 and 7, 2024. This statewide event brought together 737 educators and education professionals from 23 of 36 Oregon counties and 69 Oregon school districts (28% of which hadn’t had representatives in working groups) as well as local, state, and national experts. The Summit provided a platform for participants to showcase and learn about individual Working Group projects, share innovative educational ideas and resources, and engage in professional development through workshops, interactive presentations, and plenary sessions led by local, state, and national experts. The two-day event hosted over 50 sessions and fostered networking opportunities, allowing educators to connect, collaborate, share challenges, and learn about research-confirmed ideas on literacy, mathematics, social-emotional learning, special education, multilingual literacy, and rural education. Approximately 75% of the 737 educators and 28% of the 69 Oregon School districts who attended the Summit had not previously participated in a Working Group or the ALK8 project in another way.
The ALK-8 project leadership aimed to empower K-8 instructional leaders to facilitate professional communities that prioritize asset-based approaches, effectively addressing and dismantling inequities in teaching and learning statewide. It sought to create an educational environment where educators had ownership of and access to high-quality professional learning opportunities concerning accelerating diverse students’ content literacies, research-based instructional resources that could be implemented in their professional contexts, and a sustainable community of professionals with shared interests and concerns for ongoing and collective educational improvement. The ALK-8 Project directly engaged representatives from 60% of Oregon school districts through school district or ESD staff participation in Working Groups or as Summit attendees. The ALK-8 project supported these educators in nearly 1.5 million person-hours of professional learning, thus laying a strong foundation for improving educational outcomes statewide. By building on established state and local networks, ALK-8 leaders designed and shared resources and expanded professional communities to have long-lasting impacts on Oregon’s educational system, helping to ensure that all students can succeed and thrive in a rich, robust, and supportive learning environment.