What’s New in K-12 Competency Education?

New Policy Resources for ESSA

• iNACOL released Meeting The Every Student Succeeds Act’s Promise: State Policy to Support Personalized Learning, which provides recommendations for state policymakers to support local and statewide efforts to transform student learning in K-12 education. Here is a great article from THE Journal summarizing this report.
• Transforming Education released a new policy brief, Expanding the Definition of Student Success Under ESSA: Opportunities to Advance Social-Emotional Mindsets, Skills, and Habits for Today’s Students.
• KnowledgeWorks released a Visioning Toolkit for Better Assessments to help stakeholders explore new assessment provisions under ESSA and deepen their understanding of assessment models that are now possible under the law.

School Models

• New Hampshire’s Pittsfield Elementary School adopted competency-based, multi-age classroom program.
• Boston Day and Evening Academy (BDEA), an alternative public charter high school serving over-age, under-credited students, is implementing student-centered, competency-based learning. Here’s a glimpse of how BDEA is personalizing learning in action.
• Take virtual school visits to high schools who are rethinking traditional school models through badging, competency education and real-world work.
• This blog explores how Big Picture Learning and Summit Public Schools are building and scaling personalized learning to allow all students to reach their human potential.
• Vermont’s Spaulding High School is discontinuing alphabetic grades in lieu of a standards-based grading system to show how students are demonstrating mastery over competencies.
• Must a classroom be high-tech to make personalized learning work? Read this Hechinger Report article on how one Arizona district is personalizing learning with little data.

Thought Leadership

• Ryan MacDonald (Innovation Lab Network, CCSSO) explains what it’s like to grow up with a learning disability—and explains how personalized learning has the potential to create healthy, supportive learning environments that increases the self-esteem of students with disabilities while also increasing engagement and achievement.
• In this blog, Assessing Doesn’t Mean Testing, Alan Singer explains the difference between testing and assessment and explores how assessments can be used as evidence of student work.
• Carri Schneider (Getting Smart) and Karla Phillips (Foundation of Excellence in Education) explain how competency-based systems create a more transparent, complete, and accurate picture of student achievement than the traditional time-based system.

Grant Opportunities

• The Nellie Mae Education Foundation released a new request for proposals to support a 12 month grant for state education agencies and school districts to adopt and implement the Educator Competencies for Personalized, Learner-Centered Teaching as part of their human capital strategies. View open opportunities here.
• The Barr Foundation released a new request for proposals focused on creating new or improving/growing existing schools and programs that are intentionally designed to support students who are off track for high school graduation. For complete information about this RFP, visit here.

Resources

• The Nellie Mae Education Foundation released a new report titled, Results From a Two-Year Study of the Effects of Extended Learning Opportunities on Student Outcomes in New Hampshire, which provides a comprehensive analysis of extended learning opportunities (ELOs) in New Hampshire. This video tool suite by Students at the Center Hub provides videos on designing and implementing student-centered ELO programs.
• District Reform Support Network released Leading Change: The Emerging Human Capital Landscape in Personalized Learning Initiatives, a study exploring roles, hiring practices, professional development and career pathways to support personalized learning implementation.

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