We asked Jill Rogier, Head of Schools to tell us more about ASU Prep Digital. Here’s what we learned:
Q: What’s one innovation or tool you’ve implemented that has made a significant impact on your students or staff?
A: We started a program called “Spark,” which is our virtual K-8 MTSS model. It’s a team-based approach that we feel provides better student support. Because every teacher has particular areas of expertise or giftedness, we wanted to link students who struggle in a specific area with the teacher who is best equipped to help them–even if it’s not their regular teacher.
Spark time is teacher-led, offering small group intervention for students with needs in ELA and math; for middle schools, we include social studies and science. The students meet with teachers as needed for live, hour-long sessions between 2 to 4 times a week. ELA and math benchmarks and assessments help us identify specific gaps and monitor progress.
Spark Time is an “all hands on deck” approach! All elementary and middle school teachers lead small groups. Students who need further intervention qualify for our “Tier 3” intervention time with math and ELA interventionists in a one-on-one or small-group intense intervention offered each day.
We’ve seen excellent results. Across K-5, students who use the Dreambox math program as prescribed have shown an average of 1.2 years of growth this school year. For reading, 72% of students using our approved literacy program have experienced growth at or above expectations for reading and comprehension.
For active middle school students who are using our adaptive literacy program, across all grade levels we’ve seen a 30+ wpm average rate gain in silent reading fluency, and an average gain of 1.5 reading grade-levels this school year. In math, we’ve seen a 7% increase year over year in students identified as either meeting or exceeding math proficiency as measured by our Exact Path diagnostics.
One other tool we added was the AI platform, Magic School, for our teachers and students. We had hoped for an 80% adoption rate among teachers, but we’ve already passed that goal! Our teachers love it. In fact, one of our instructors, Megan Golliday, won Magic’s Schools Teacher of the Year award.
It’s been amazing to see the creativity that Magic School has sparked. Teachers are using it to build lesson plans, design learning games—one teacher even used it to help her write a play for the thespian club! With teacher burnout at an all-time high, tools like Magic School can really lighten the load!
Q: What’s a success story from your program that you’re especially proud of?
A: It’s hard to choose, but I think cheering first-to-college students across the graduation line is a highlight. As part of ASU, we integrate college right into high school. Our students can take two college classes per semester—free of charge. That means students can graduate with 49 college credits that don’t cost them a dime. Some students are so inspired, they even opt to take more credits on their own dime.
As just one example, one of our 2025 graduates overcame a wealth of obstacles and personal issues that caused him to delay graduation. Yet, he has leveraged our hybrid program, called ASU Prep Digital+, to graduate with 35 college credits and a 4.0 GPA. Since he has essentially already completed a year of college, he will attend ASU in the fall as a sophomore with a focus on Biological Sciences, Computer Science, and Mandarin Chinese.
Q: How has being part of DLAC shaped your approach or inspired your work?
A: We see membership in DLAC as critical in several ways. First, it gives staff a broader understanding of the national online learning landscape. In mixing with peers from other programs, we reduce the risk of being stuck in our narratives and silos, and we increase our opportunity to learn from others.
DLAC also gives us a place to contribute to the continuing evolution of the learning industry. Our staff can–and should—be sharing what we are learning from strategies or programs that are resulting in positive student outcomes..
Finally, as hosts and facilitators for the Arizona DLAC affiliate group, we were thrilled to see 25 attendees at our first in-person meet-up at the 2025 DLAC conference in Atlanta. While we’re in the nascent stages for our state affiliate, we are already finding it so helpful to meet up with our Arizona colleagues to share ideas about similar challenges. For example, one school was really struggling with their College and Career Readiness Indicator (CCRI) score, which counts as 20% of an Arizona’s overall accountability score. This is an area we’ve really worked hard to beef up, so we were able to share several effective strategies.
Q: If you could debunk one myth about digital learning, what would it be?
A: Certainly, the notion that digital learning is somehow less rigorous than a face-to-face scenario is a myth that continues to persist. As an affiliate of ASU, students in our program regularly access college courses, either through self-paced programs with wrap-around support, a great option for students who are new to advanced material, or through direct enrollment at ASU. We’ve seen students graduate with as many as 75 college credits–clearly resulting in a significant time and cost savings for a bachelor’s degree.
Quality online learning does not limit the level of achievement. Limitations are all down to program design, unnecessary barriers, and lack of support.
Q: What’s something you wish you had known when you started with digital or hybrid learning?
A: When I started out, it was easy to see how important community and connection would be for online programs. What I wish I had known, though, was just how much intentional design work it takes to build communal elements in a virtual space. In-person relationships often form naturally, but in a digital environment, every opportunity for interaction — whether academic or social — must be deliberately created, supported, and sustained.
If you want to create a chess club, for example, at a physical school, you just tell the students when and where, and they show up. In an online program, everything has to be digitally supported, whether we’re talking about marketing the club, getting kids to sign up online, setting up the online event room space, finding or designing an online chess program–and teaching students to use it!
If I had anticipated the level of structure and creativity needed to foster human connections, we could have designed strong community building programs even earlier.
Q: What’s one thing you hope the future of digital learning will achieve, and how is your program paving the way for that vision?
A: I think we have moved far past the question of “online” versus “face-to-face” learning. We are now leveraging tech for every modality, and from here on out, everything is hybrid. For example, students from our ASU Prep campus schools use ASU Prep Digital for select courses. Likewise, students at ASU Prep Digital can now physically attend various microschools on ASU campuses up to four days each week, depending on the program they choose. They may work face-to-face on projects, and then work on digital courses on their own, then walk together to a lab or a college course on an ASU campus. When and where students learn is increasingly fluid. It makes room for some very creative models.
This fall, we will be opening ASU Prep Tempe, powered by The Levitt Lab. This partnership is a tuition-free, hybrid high school, co-developed with economist Steve Levitt. It will include a self-paced, mastery learning model that combines online learning with in-person seminars, student-led projects, and participation in ASU’s vast learning resources.
Q: What’s one challenge your program has overcome, and how did you tackle it?
A: During the pandemic, many students discovered the flexibilities of online learning and liked the self-agency they had gained, but they still wanted some face-to-face time. They began asking for a hybrid model, so we had to ask ourselves, “Why not?” We developed small programs on various ASU campuses, where students can leverage ASU’s courses and resources, collaborate on projects, and still enjoy all the benefits of the self-paced online environment for most of their academics. We have programs available now on four ASU campuses.
State testing has been another challenge. Each year, we test more than 2,000 digital students in physical locations across Arizona. To improve participation, we secure testing sites within 30 minutes of every enrolled student’s home, coordinate travel and accommodations for staffing, and manage logistics across dozens of locations. The process is very complex. It’s also costly, and it pulls teachers away from their primary duties. A new Senate Bill (1457) will allow remote proctoring and could ease the burden, but implementation details are murky at best. In the meantime, we continue to incentivize testing attendance however we can—such as offering gas cards to parents—to ensure students show up for the multiple days of required testing.
Q: What’s a unique aspect of your program or approach that sets it apart?
A: We are operating in an environment that doesn’t just give us permission to innovate—it requires us to! Our mission is literally to build new models that raise student outcomes everywhere. It’s a mandate that has led to a highly fluid ecosystem of learning models, like the hybrid Digital+ programs I mentioned or our partnership with Sal Khan to operate the Khan World School, which is an international, Socratic-style virtual learning model.
Rather than create the “perfect” model and replicate in cookie cutter fashion, we believe in applying common design principles to multiple challenges. Central to any model, for us, is to build in high degrees of student choice, agency, and support, but each model will have nuances born from local needs and resources.
Second, our relationship with a research university, and our growing embeddedness within it is unique. We are giving students extraordinary access to college content, research, events, professors, scientists, labs—you name it.. By design, we want students to see themselves as already part of ASU, making college a familiar place that is well within reach. As I mentioned, we’re driving down the financial risks of going to college through providing early, no-risk access.
We anticipate that such access will expand downward into K-8 prep and upward into lifetime learning even beyond college. As just one of many examples, ASU’s Dreamworks Learning Lab is a state-of-the-art immersive VR experience on ASU’s campus. Dreamworks is now also available on our Pilgrim Rest campus in Tempe.