SAILs program teaches kids math, could save state millions
By Tim Omarzu
Deb Weiss' math class at Red Bank High School may earn a place in Tennessee education history.
Three years ago, her classroom was ground zero for SAILS, or Seamless Alignment and Learning Support, a online remedial math class that's sweeping the state. According to its supporters, it shows promise to solve the widespread problem of college freshman who need remedial coursework when they show up unprepared from high school.
This so-called "13th grade" is said to cost Tennessee and other states millions of dollars in a variety of ways. One is the extra money spent at community colleges on remedial classes - about $18 million in Tennessee last year. Another is the estimated lost income and taxes when students discouraged by having to take remedial classes drop out of college, never to return, thereby lowering their lifetime earnings.
To address this problem, educators from Chattanooga State Community College and the Hamilton County Department of Education got together in 2012 and created the SAILS program. It basically boils down to having students work through math problems on a computer until they understand each concept while a math teacher stands by to help.
It sounds simple. But the results are phenomenal, according to Robert Denn, dean of the Honors Program at Chattanooga State who helped develop the program.
"It's transforming education in Tennessee, because it's spreading like wildfire across the state," Denn said. "Red Bank High School - that's where it all started."
Statewide, 10,908 students enrolled this past school year in SAILS and 9,944 students finished the course, he said, which is a 91 percent completion rate.
"That is unheard of in a project this size," Denn said.
Those results have been consistent since the beginning, he said.
In the spring of 2012, when Weiss taught the inaugural SAILS class at Red Bank, 20 out of 22 student finished.
This past school year, Hixson High School had 46 seniors who participated; they all passed, Denn said. At Howard High School, which has been ranked as one of the of lowest-performing schools in Chattanooga, 33 out of 35 students passed the SAILS class.
"So don't tell me they can't do math," Denn said.
State savings
State officials have seen the program's success and done some math themselves.
"This year, we saved families $11.9 million in tuition that students would have had to pay for remedial courses," said Mike Krause, executive director of Tennessee's Drive to 55 Alliance, which aims to boost the share of Tennesseans who have college degrees from about 32 percent now to 55 percent by the year 2025.
"We believe this [SAILS] initiative is crucial for the state reaching Drive to 55," Krause said.
State funding for SAILS has grown steadily.
After the initial success at Red Bank High School, the Tennessee Board of Regents in March 2012 gave a $117,000 grant to expand SAILS into 10 Chattanooga-area high schools. In the 2013-14 budget, the state spent $1.1 million, Denn said, which increased to $2.45 million in 2014-15.
Starting in the fall, the state has earmarked $2.5 million in what Denn called "permanent" funding for SAILS. The funding helps pay for 30 SAILS field coordinators who help teachers around the state.
"We just ended year two of the state-wide scale up," Denn said. "We're going to serve 18,000 students next [school] year."
How it works
SAILS is for students who score less than 19 in their junior year on the math section of the ACT college placement test.
While teachers at Chattanooga State and Hamilton County's public school system developed the curriculum, SAILS is built on an online platform developed by Pearson, a British multi-national corporation that's the world's largest education company.
"We didn't have to build SAILS from the ground up," Chattanooga State spokeswoman Eva Lewis said. "We integrated it with an existing [platform]."
SAILS doesn't use schools' traditional "lecture, notes, homework" format, Denn said. Like Khan Academy, a nonprofit, educational organization that offers free online courses, SAILS instruction includes videos and interactive exercises. Students work at their own pace and master topics before they proceed.
"The students have to get it," Denn said. "They have to get the subject before they move on."
Faster students who do "get it" can plow ahead.
"Students that are ready to move forward, they don't have to wait," Denn said.
One advantage that online learning has over a traditional classroom, Krause said, is that students who don't understand a concept don't have to raise their hand and draw attention to themselves, which can be embarrassing for some.
Expanding to other classes?
Warren Nichols, vice chancellor for community colleges at the Tennessee Board of Regents, calls himself a "huge supporter" of SAILS.
"What this really is, when you break it down to its fundamentals, it's meeting students where they are," Nichols said.
Red Bank High School's SAILS class still does well, Weiss said.
"This year at Red Bank, we had a 98 percent [SAILS] graduation rate," she said. "They go to college, and they're ready to take that college class."
"SAILS makes sense and it's good for kids," said Weiss, who's taught since 1984. "It has great potential. It's as great as the individual schools make it."
Chattanooga State University is developing a SAILS English language arts program that will be tried this fall as a pilot program in five high schools. It will use the NROC platform developed by the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education, a nonprofit education organization funded partially by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Because SAILS seems to work so well, Tennessee educators are looking at possibly expanding it to regular classes - not just remedial work.
A study of the feasibility of that is underway. The Tennessee Department of Education, in conjunction with Tennessee Higher Education Commission and researchers at Harvard University's Center for Education Policy Research and Vanderbilt's Peabody College, is conducting research on the effectiveness of SAILS, identifying successful practices that could be applied to other areas and subjects, said Ashley Ball, spokeswoman for the state department of education. The study is being funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Denn said.
"We are excited to see the results of this research and use it to make informed decisions that help Tennessee students," Ball said.