This is my best creative hat

Every day there seems to be one more webinar on grading. This is great that more information supporting competency education is becoming available. However, my concern is that they are not contextualized within a school culture or school-wide reform.

Earlier this week in a conversation, Rich DeLorenzo pointed that if one teacher uses proficiency-based grading and the teacher down the hall doesn’t, students, and possibly parents as well, are going to feel a real tension. One of the reasons is that in proficiency-based models we are willing to have the hard conversations “I know Bobby is in 4^th grade but he still is reading at 2^nd grade level”.  That conversation isn’t likely to come up in traditional grading as long as Bobby does his homework, attends school regularly, and demonstrates “good” behavior in  class.  DeLorenzo emphasized “When we eliminate the bell curve we change the goal of education and the pedagogy.”  Is the principal ready to support both kinds of educational models — one focused on making sure that students learn and the other that student do what is expected by the teacher?

When we eliminate the bell curve we change the goal of education and the pedagogy.

Grading, as it is so deeply related to assessment, is going to be one of the big things to change in a school.  However, it needs to be part of a school-wide change.   Grading isn’t a stand-alone practice – personalized classroom management strategies, student voice and choice, adaptive instruction, and transparency are all parts of  redesigning core operations of schools.

So tune in — but put your best analytic and creative hat on while you are listening. If you want to do move foward on proficiency-based grading, ask yourself what are the other changes that are going to need to happen in your school?

Webinars on Grading Past and Present

Today — Proficiency Scales for the Common Core, Marzano Research Laboratory, May 23, 2013 | 4:00 p.m. EDT

Wednesday, May 29, 2013: League of Innovative School Webinar on Proficiency-Based Learning Simplified: Best Practices in Grading and Reporting  | 3:00–4:00 PM EST. Register here.

Thursday, May 30, 2013: Standards-Based Grading and Assessing Student Mastery of Content. REL-NEI’s Northeast College and Career Readiness Research Alliance hosts this Bridge Webinar with Dr. Thomas Guskey to explore emergent research on proficiency-based leraning and graduation requirements, a new approach to assessing student learning and reporting on student progress.|  12:30–2:00 p.m. ET Register here.

As you may know, ACHIEVE has established a Competency-Based Pathways Work Group to examine how competency education may impact assessment, accountability, graduation requirements, and other state policies.  Working with leaders from ten states, Cory Curl and Anne Bowles are providing tools, research, and analysis so that state policymakers can assess opportunities to support competency education.

Cory and Anne have just completed site visits to Maine, Kentucky, Illinois, and Colorado, and shared their findings during a webinar (inspiring me to think about sharing insights that way rather than the blog….Hmm, what do you think?) Given that others had visited as well, we shared our insights. Here are a few of the highlights:

• Danville, Kentucky has been getting attention for their project-based learning  (See the show on PBS.) They see the ACT as a meaningful metric for determining college and career readiness and are moving toward improving ACT scores based on the college ready benchmarks.  Their website explains, “Students are considered to be college-ready by meeting specific benchmark scores for each content-area tested by the ACT. EXPLORE and PLAN also provide benchmark scores that tell us whether or not students are on track to meet those important ACT readiness scores. Scores from these assessments are also included in a school and district’s overall score.” They are now in the process of beginning to weave competency education into their work, keeping a strong focus on equity. (more…)

At what point did leading a school through a continuous improvement process become so confusing? In my educational leadership classes, I spent a great deal of time focusing on what leadership is and developing a philosophy that would guide me. I thought I had it all figured out. I learned the difference between first order and second order change. I was told to have a vision, communicate it regularly, and work to make it a reality. I also needed to remember that I would be leading people and not machines. They will no longer respond to top-down dictates. If you want to make lasting change to improve education, you must include people in the conversation so they can weigh-in before they buy-in. Okay. Simple. I earned an ‘A’, completed my master’s degree, and felt ready to change the world!

Then I became a building leader, and suddenly someone had put a giant slab of granite in front of me, and I could not see a path forward.  I shared my vision, but people pushed back. No matter how hard I tried to communicate, they became more confused, overwhelmed, and exhausted. Even those initially excited about the reforms became skeptical of their possibilities. I was at a loss.

I began to read more and more from leaders and business consultants on how to become a better leader. The words of Bob Sutton, Dan Heath, Lee Cockerell, and John Wooden, amongst others, allowed me to begin forming theories of how I could lead my colleagues. A big breakthrough came when my district chose to partner with the Reinventing Schools Coalition who entered with the “tools” to drive change. Now I had the why, the how, and the tools to do it. (more…)

I am receiving an increasing number of emails from people that have questions about competency-, proficiency-, mastery-, and performance-based education, and I’m sure many of you do as well. Given the increased attention to competency education, we need to make it easier for people to get an answer —  a really solid good answer — that offers the spirit of competency education and considers issues of equity so that we are as effective as possible in early implementation.

So we’ve started a FAQ page(s) on the wiki.  And when I add a new one I am going to put a blog as well because we need your help —

• How might you revise the answer to be more helpful?
• Do you have examples or resources that you can point us to that can help newbies better understand the nuances of the issues?
• Have you done any training on the issue? Could you share with us how you do the training so that we can build up our capacity as a field to teach others what we are learning? (more…)

If you haven’t taken the time to watch the videos at Maine’s Center for Best Practice, I hope you will in the near future.  I don’t think there is anything better to understand the spirit of competency-based approaches. They’ve just released two new ones (see below).

Maine, as you probably know, has started with the goal of creating a personalized, proficiency-based system.  The P2 approach is much more powerful than proficiency-based as a stand-alone approach. The personalization opens the gate to students having voice, choice, and responsibility in their education. Although learner-centered approaches are a set of very precise practices it looks and feels like magic dust sometimes. Just take a look at the faces of the kids in History Day.

If you want to learn more about Maine’s work, join us on Friday for the webinar on state policy with Don Siviski, Maine’s Superintendent of Instruction, and Jason Glass, Iowa’s Education Director. Register Here

———–

History Day: Integrated Performance Assessment features Bruce M. Whittier Middle School and their annual History Day, celebration.  This event allows students to demonstrate proficiency in ELA and Social Studies standards, as well as the Guiding Principals.  Inviting the public in and having 30 members of the public serve as judges of the presentation brings a level of authenticity to the assessment that motivated many students.

The video can be found here:  http://maine.gov/doe/cbp/videos/rsu16b.html (more…)

I think about design a lot.  Indeed, Fast Company is a monthly read. Design is an empowering, creative process. It can also help us rethink the assumptions holding us back.

The way design and the design process is taking hold in education is exciting and sometimes disturbing.

It’s exciting that competency education and time (as in, flexible use of time so students keep working until proficient and extending time to learn anytime) are being included in many of the new sets of design frameworks. For example:

• 2Revs includes “competency-based” in its Learning Model Design Parameters.

• The Carnegie Corporation’s 10 Principles for Secondary School Design “prioritizes mastery of rigorous standards aligned to college & career readiness:
  • Curriculum that enables all students to meet rigorous standards
  • Multiple opportunities for students to show mastery through performance-based assessments
  • Student advancement based on demonstration of mastery of knowledge and skills.”

• Wave IV of Next Generation Learning Challenges “emphasizes redesigned, scalable, whole-school models that combine the best aspects of place-based and online learning with more personalized, mastery-based approaches to result in substantially improved outcomes for students.”

Have you seen other examples of competency-, proficiency-, mastery- or performance-based approaches being built into school or systemic design? Please let us know in the comments section!

• Race to the Top-District competition emphasized personalized and mastery-based. However, the only winner that had a well-developed idea of what a mastery-based system means is Lindsay Unified. Middletown (NY) will be piloting an elementary school model, and Carson City  (NV) is making college level courses available whenever students are ready. Fingers crossed that we’ll see the other grantees dig into what is possible once they start to focus on student learning.

It’s disturbing that we aren’t fully designing around our most underserved students. A mainstream, linear, factory-based assumption is gripping us so tightly (I can’t help but think about the saber-toothed tiger in the tar pits) that we keep designing around the antiquated idea of students as widgets. (more…)

This post was originally published by Knowledgeworks on April 30, 2013.

A truly remarkable education transformation is underway in five New England states – CT, ME, NH, RI, and VT – inspired by the idea that every child can graduate from high school with the skills and knowledge to succeed in life. This transformation – called proficiency-based learning (aka: competency, mastery, or standards-based) – flips the education system on its head, providing multiple pathways, extra time, and intensive supports for a truly customized learning experience.

I was fortunate to experience this transformation first hand last week, thanks to an impressive tour led by the Great Schools Partnership. This organization is impacting every level of the system: from the grassroots coaching partnerships they have with schools and districts throughout the region to the high-level systems change conversations they lead as the coordinator for the New England Secondary Schools Consortium (NESSC). My big take-away from the tour is this: These leaders have the right vision for learning and an incredibly talented team of experts to help make that vision a reality. (more…)

Do you have questions about how other states are transforming their education systems to competency-based schools?

Here is your chance to hear directly from two state leaders and ask all of your questions. Join us for a CompetencyWorks webinar on May 17^th at 3 pm ET on How State Educational Leaders are Advancing Competency Education based on Necessary for Success: Building Mastery of World-Class Skills — A State Policymakers Guide to Competency Education.  Join Susan Patrick, iNACOL; Jason Glass, Iowa Department of Education; and Don Siviski, Maine Department of Education for what promises to be a great conversation. And if you haven’t joined one of our webinars before,  you should expect two great conversations because the chat room is always spinning with exchanges, ideas, and new relationships. You can register here for the webinar.

If you want to get up to speed on state policy issues we have a few resources you might find interesting: (more…)

In the NCLB era of disaggregated student achievement data, we have zoomed in on our population of struggling learners, grouped into their age appropriate cohort.  That up close and personal view of our students has unleashed a demand on our educators to differentiate instruction in order for our struggling students to meet the bar. Differentiation is as much a philosophy and a belief in teaching and learning as it is a set of orientations to the process, product, content, and environment. But is it really possible for teachers to fully differentiate learning in order to meet these student needs?

Prior to working in the world of competency education, I provided many professional development opportunities from courses, workshops, and small group and individual coaching for teachers and school leaders to learn more about this practice we call differentiation.  I know I became a better teacher myself the more my thinking opened up to planning student choice, voice, and readiness in a variety of learning settings for my students.  However, I have some deep-seated doubts about how differentiation has been fully embraced by most educators.  Differentiation is a set of practices in response to teacher reflection.  Yet, many educators are faced with having to teach to specific time-based curricular objectives demanded by programs or local requirements for fidelity to programs that do little to differentiate needs. Many educators are faced with such a wide range of student readiness that it is incredibly challenging to plan for and meet these needs with limited resources.  When asked, many educators say that differentiation is too overwhelming.  They may embrace a particular aspect of differentiation that works for them.  One teacher I know excels in differentiating homework based on formative assessment daily.  Another teacher excels at offering student choice in product.  Yet, many teachers readily admit they know about differentiation, want to differentiate, but don’t have the planning time either alone or collaboratively to pull it off every day. (more…)

Over the past few years we have seen a groundswell of interest and adoption of competency based models for learning. At least 40 states have one or more school districts implementing one of these models and a growing number of states have begun serious conversations about how to redesign their system to ensure students have the extra time, multiple pathways, and supports they need to master content and skills. But despite this paradigm shift, a major road block lies ahead: federal K-12 policy.

At KnowledgeWorks, we have decided to dive head first into this challenge. Last week, we released our first policy brief on competency education titled: An Emerging Federal Role for Competency Education. Our goal is to help policymakers understand the elements of federal law that make it difficult for states to redesign their systems to support competency education at scale.

Here are the accountability barriers we identified in the paper: (more…)