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"content": "\u003cp>NEW YORK — At New York City’s Urban Assembly Maker Academy high school in lower Manhattan, two things immediately stand out. First, its teachers are rarely standing at the front of the classroom dispensing facts and figures for students to dutifully transcribe. Instead, they’re constantly on the move, going from table to table facilitating group discussions and providing feedback as students work. Second, the students reflect the \u003ca href=\"https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/newyorkcitynewyork/PST045217\">racial diversity of the city\u003c/a>. Within one of the nation’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/ny-norflet-report-placeholder/Kucsera-New-York-Extreme-Segregation-2014.pdf\">most segregated school systems\u003c/a>, Maker Academy has attracted a mix of black, Latino, white and Asian students in which no single group makes up less than 10 percent or more than 46 percent of the population.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is the most diverse school that I’ve ever been a part of in my 15 years in education,” says school principal Luke Bauer. “We have kids from the projects and kids who take Ubers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The school’s leaders made diversity a priority before it even opened five years ago, Bauer says, when they chose not to use grades or test scores as admissions criteria. They also embraced a nontraditional educational model. Like a growing number of schools around the country, Maker Academy uses a \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/im-not-successful/\">mastery-based learning\u003c/a> model, in which static letter grades on one-off tests and assignments are jettisoned in favor of detailed feedback that students use to revise their work as they progress toward mastery of clearly defined skills. Instead of receiving a C grade on an essay, for example, a student’s evaluation may include a 1 out of 4 in reasoning, a 2 out of 4 in evidence and a 3 out of 4 in communication, with an opportunity to submit additional drafts throughout the semester.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The results are promising. The school saw \u003ca href=\"https://tools.nycenet.edu/guide/2018/#dbn=02M282&report_type=HS\">90 percent\u003c/a> of its inaugural class graduate in 2018 while surpassing the citywide average in \u003ca href=\"https://tools.nycenet.edu/dashboard/#dbn=02M282&report_type=HS&view=City\">measures of college readiness\u003c/a>. It ranks high on the education department’s annual school quality surveys, and it’s becoming increasingly attractive to families, with five times more applicants than seats available, according to the most recent city data.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With 1.1 million students in 1,800 schools, New York City’s school system is the largest in the country. By the \u003ca href=\"https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2QOeF7EP10RV0V3SkFBLVIyR1k/view\">city’s own count\u003c/a>, roughly 70 percent of its schools are segregated by race and income. The result is essentially a two-tiered system of public education — academically thriving schools for students from white and affluent families, and underperforming schools that almost exclusively serve black and Latino students from low-income families.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and his schools chancellor, Richard Carranza, have made racial and socioeconomic equity a priority. A panel commissioned by the mayor recently \u003ca href=\"https://www.schooldiversity.nyc/\">released a report \u003c/a>calling for schools to mirror the demographics of their surrounding neighborhoods and to implement principles of culturally responsive education as a way to combat the city’s \u003ca href=\"https://patch.com/new-york/brooklyn/achievement-gap-widens-nyc-students-color-report\">persistent achievement gap\u003c/a>. At Maker Academy and about three dozen other mastery-based schools in the city, culturally responsive teaching practices are already taking root. These schools are also among the most diverse in the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_53246\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-53246\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2019/03/Diallo_81042-800x0-c-default.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2019/03/Diallo_81042-800x0-c-default.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2019/03/Diallo_81042-800x0-c-default-160x120.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2019/03/Diallo_81042-800x0-c-default-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Maker Academy teacher Gerry Irrizary works with students in his Design Principles class. \u003ccite>(Amadou Diallo for The Hechinger Report)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Yet support for these schools within the education department has been lukewarm. A small division that has served as a conduit for sharing information and best practices among the mastery-based schools is now down to a two-person staff, as department resources have shifted to more publicized efforts like a $23 million-dollar anti-bias training program for teachers. This may be a missed opportunity. While mastery-based learning isn’t explicitly linked to racial or economic equity, education experts say that any school willing to make the leap from traditional grades to a complex rubric of individualized student assessments most likely already has supports in place to tackle the difficult, messy work they say is necessary to ensure that children of every background can succeed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“From the minute we opened we had a very diverse population and we needed to navigate that,” says Danielle Salzberg, principal of Frank McCourt High School, on the Upper West Side, which opened in 2010. “Kids come with different educational backgrounds … different socioeconomic backgrounds. We opened our doors fully aware that we were going to be meeting different kids’ needs in different kinds of ways.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To meet those needs, Salzberg and her team turned to a mastery-based model.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s the best way to provide feedback to students that allows them to understand themselves and be empowered as learners,” Salzberg says. “We focus a lot on student engagement. What are we doing to challenge their thinking and not just have them be compliant?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The school is thriving. With 20 percent of its 400-plus students diagnosed with a learning disability and about half of its kids coming from families in economic need, McCourt nonetheless outperforms citywide averages on state-mandated Regents exams, graduation rates and postsecondary enrollment. Students describe the school as offering a much different experience than what they were used to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This school wasn’t my first choice, so I didn’t have big expectations,” says college-bound senior Kendra Castro. What Kendra found once she arrived was a deeper level of student-teacher interaction than at her previous schools. A typical class may begin with the instructor in “teacher mode,” going over the day’s agenda for a few minutes, but the rest of the time is spent engaging directly with students as they work, providing feedback and support.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When kids struggle, teachers go to them,” she says. “Math especially can be hard for people. Here I’ve seen people struggle with it, but never for the whole semester.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Support extends beyond teacher interventions. With a schoolwide emphasis on working in groups, students’ most-used academic resources are often their peers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In middle school we always did work as an individual,” says Rosalia Minyeti, an 11th-grader from the Bronx who found the adjustment challenging. “I didn’t like working in groups at first. But then, in classes where the work was more ambitious, I found that being in a group made it easier to understand things.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Working in groups provides a benefit to students who have already mastered the material as well. “Teaching something to someone actually helps me learn it better,” says Kendra.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But implementing a mastery-based approach is difficult work, even in schools like McCourt and Maker Academy that have adopted it from the day they opened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Mastery-based learning is a complete paradigm shift for most teachers,” says Salzberg. “It means thinking about grading as a way to provide feedback, and not a random act that we do because the quarter is ending.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_53245\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-53245\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2019/03/Diallo_81007-800x0-c-default.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2019/03/Diallo_81007-800x0-c-default.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2019/03/Diallo_81007-800x0-c-default-160x120.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2019/03/Diallo_81007-800x0-c-default-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">student at Maker Academy tries his hand at sneaker design. \u003ccite>(Amadou Diallo for The Hechinger Report)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>City schools that have adopted mastery-based practices — from large, highly competitive schools like Staten Island Technical High School to small, narrowly focused programs like the Young Women’s Leadership School of the Bronx — have gotten some support from a small unit, the Mastery Collaborative, tucked away in the education department’s Office of Leadership. It was launched in 2015 out of a recognition that schools adopting mastery-based principles were often doing so in isolation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We started the program as a community of practitioners,” says program director and co-founder Joy Nolan. “Our model was, let’s share resources, let’s have these conversations about [mastery-based] practice.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today it serves as a conduit for 37 member schools to exchange expertise regularly. And Nolan says that inquiries about the program from potential members have increased every year. Schools in the collaborative are united not only by an embrace of mastery-based learning but also by the desire to serve a diverse student population. An analysis of Department of Education data by The Hechinger Report found that 29 of the 37 schools either meet the city’s current standard of a racially representative school or reflect (within five percentage points) their borough’s demographic makeup for at least two ethnic groups.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nolan emphasizes that the schools in the collaborative came to mastery-based learning on their own. Her program does not mandate curricula or evaluate practices. It is, however, seen by the schools as a valuable resource.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What the Mastery Collaborative has done for a lot of schools is to get educators out of their own buildings,” says Maker Academy principal Bauer. “Visiting other schools is the best professional development that exists. There’s no slide deck that is going to lead to seeing new things and being able to apply them to your school.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a system where segregation is the norm, one of the biggest challenges for schools that seek to embrace diversity is creating an environment in which students from all backgrounds can excel. In 2016 the Mastery Collaborative began hosting anti-bias workshops for teachers and staff, spurred by member schools’ ongoing interest in culturally responsive education practices. Credited in large part to the work of educator Gloria Ladson-Billings, culturally responsive education is, first and foremost, a recognition that the academic disparities seen along racial and socioeconomic lines come from systemic practices that minimize anything other than the dominant culture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zaretta Hammond, the author of the book “Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain,” describes a vicious cycle in which low-income students of color begin their education in under-resourced schools with less-experienced teachers, then fall behind academically so that even if they get opportunities to attend a high-performing school later, they arrive grade levels behind their more affluent peers. Culturally responsive teaching seeks to address the inequity, not by dumbing down the curriculum, Hammond says, but by igniting students’ intellectual curiosity through rigorous content reflecting real-world issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers must understand, Ladson-Billings argues, that academic outcomes say more about the education system than the child. “If a kid isn’t reading,” she says, “it can’t be the kid that’s the problem, it has to be the method.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Creating a culturally responsive school environment isn’t achieved by putting up posters of African-American heroes or celebrating Cinco de Mayo, say proponents. It requires teachers and administrators to examine the biases and assumptions they carry, how those affect their relationships with students and, in turn, the students’ ability to master a challenging curriculum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s really hard and deep work for the adults in the building,” says Natasha Capers, coordinator for the NYC Coalition for Educational Justice, a parent-led nonprofit advocating the adoption of a culturally responsive curriculum in city schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“How do we make sure our schools are warm and welcoming environments for students across race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender presentation?” she asks. “It’s in thinking about how we deliver content, why we’re talking about the subjects we’re talking about, how we connect instruction to students’ everyday lives.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mastery-based schools, with their emphasis on feedback and revision, seem to be particularly well-suited to this challenge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Traditionally, when you’re talking about serving large numbers of children of color in particular, they don’t get feedback,” says Hammond. “What they get is ‘You got it wrong.’ Mastery-based learning works by creating feedback that is timely and corrective.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maker Academy’s assistant principal, Liz Dowdell, puts an emphasis on academic rigor. “If we’re really putting an appropriate challenge in front of kids, they are going to fail at first,” she says. “Our job is to … support them to revise and make it better.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McCourt principal Salzberg stresses that this approach is relevant for all kids, whether their challenges are tied to racial or gender identity, economic status or parental expectations of high achievement: “Part of what we’re doing in CRE is finding the ways in which the kids are engaging or not engaging in the curriculum, and every kid is presenting us with some information about what’s getting in their way. We want to break through that to make sure every kid feels like they’re being met where they need to be met.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Culturally responsive education is still a largely unstudied model. “You’ll see a lot of instances of cultural responsiveness in a particular classroom but not systemwide,” says Leah Peoples, a researcher at New York University’s Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools who is studying it. “With the Mastery Collaborative we’re talking about places that are implementing this across entire schools.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inside the city’s education department, however, reaction to these schools’ achievements is notably muted. Despite the city’s announced \u003ca href=\"https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2018/08/15/carranza-aims-to-speed-up-anti-bias-training-for-educators-calling-it-a-cornerstone-to-school-improvement/\">mandatory anti-bias training\u003c/a> for all teachers and school administrators, the deputy chief of staff to the chancellor, David Hay, doesn’t view mastery-based learning as the only or even the preferred method for implementing culturally responsive practices. “You can have CRE in any kind of school, no matter what their guiding philosophy is, if people are willing to do the work,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He doesn’t see great potential for significant numbers of schools across the city emulating the work of schools in the Mastery Collaborative. “[Mastery] is something these schools have chosen to participate in,” he says, noting that such a dramatic move from traditional grading and evaluation may not be a good fit in other school communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once a five-person operation, the Mastery Collaborative program was down to one full-time employee until a few weeks ago when a second was added, and the number of member schools declined from 43 to 37 in the past year. Asked about future program resources, Hay said, “We’re very happy with where the program is right now … [it] has got some great things going for it but there are other models that do, as well.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schools in the Mastery Collaborative have long been doing the heavy lifting required to achieve what the mayor and chancellor’s initiatives seek to promote: equity in both admissions and academic achievement. Without additional support, the question is whether an approach with a promising record of success can spread to schools with like-minded leadership, or whether the opportunity to attend diverse, high-performing schools will remain limited to a handful of the city’s children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/access-does-not-equal-equity/\">culturally responsive education\u003c/a> was produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/\">\u003cem>The Hechinger Report\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://us2.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=66c306eebb323868c3ce353c1&id=d3ee4c3e04\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletter\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>NEW YORK — At New York City’s Urban Assembly Maker Academy high school in lower Manhattan, two things immediately stand out. First, its teachers are rarely standing at the front of the classroom dispensing facts and figures for students to dutifully transcribe. Instead, they’re constantly on the move, going from table to table facilitating group discussions and providing feedback as students work. Second, the students reflect the \u003ca href=\"https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/newyorkcitynewyork/PST045217\">racial diversity of the city\u003c/a>. Within one of the nation’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/ny-norflet-report-placeholder/Kucsera-New-York-Extreme-Segregation-2014.pdf\">most segregated school systems\u003c/a>, Maker Academy has attracted a mix of black, Latino, white and Asian students in which no single group makes up less than 10 percent or more than 46 percent of the population.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is the most diverse school that I’ve ever been a part of in my 15 years in education,” says school principal Luke Bauer. “We have kids from the projects and kids who take Ubers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The school’s leaders made diversity a priority before it even opened five years ago, Bauer says, when they chose not to use grades or test scores as admissions criteria. They also embraced a nontraditional educational model. Like a growing number of schools around the country, Maker Academy uses a \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/im-not-successful/\">mastery-based learning\u003c/a> model, in which static letter grades on one-off tests and assignments are jettisoned in favor of detailed feedback that students use to revise their work as they progress toward mastery of clearly defined skills. Instead of receiving a C grade on an essay, for example, a student’s evaluation may include a 1 out of 4 in reasoning, a 2 out of 4 in evidence and a 3 out of 4 in communication, with an opportunity to submit additional drafts throughout the semester.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The results are promising. The school saw \u003ca href=\"https://tools.nycenet.edu/guide/2018/#dbn=02M282&report_type=HS\">90 percent\u003c/a> of its inaugural class graduate in 2018 while surpassing the citywide average in \u003ca href=\"https://tools.nycenet.edu/dashboard/#dbn=02M282&report_type=HS&view=City\">measures of college readiness\u003c/a>. It ranks high on the education department’s annual school quality surveys, and it’s becoming increasingly attractive to families, with five times more applicants than seats available, according to the most recent city data.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With 1.1 million students in 1,800 schools, New York City’s school system is the largest in the country. By the \u003ca href=\"https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2QOeF7EP10RV0V3SkFBLVIyR1k/view\">city’s own count\u003c/a>, roughly 70 percent of its schools are segregated by race and income. The result is essentially a two-tiered system of public education — academically thriving schools for students from white and affluent families, and underperforming schools that almost exclusively serve black and Latino students from low-income families.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and his schools chancellor, Richard Carranza, have made racial and socioeconomic equity a priority. A panel commissioned by the mayor recently \u003ca href=\"https://www.schooldiversity.nyc/\">released a report \u003c/a>calling for schools to mirror the demographics of their surrounding neighborhoods and to implement principles of culturally responsive education as a way to combat the city’s \u003ca href=\"https://patch.com/new-york/brooklyn/achievement-gap-widens-nyc-students-color-report\">persistent achievement gap\u003c/a>. At Maker Academy and about three dozen other mastery-based schools in the city, culturally responsive teaching practices are already taking root. These schools are also among the most diverse in the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_53246\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-53246\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2019/03/Diallo_81042-800x0-c-default.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2019/03/Diallo_81042-800x0-c-default.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2019/03/Diallo_81042-800x0-c-default-160x120.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2019/03/Diallo_81042-800x0-c-default-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Maker Academy teacher Gerry Irrizary works with students in his Design Principles class. \u003ccite>(Amadou Diallo for The Hechinger Report)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Yet support for these schools within the education department has been lukewarm. A small division that has served as a conduit for sharing information and best practices among the mastery-based schools is now down to a two-person staff, as department resources have shifted to more publicized efforts like a $23 million-dollar anti-bias training program for teachers. This may be a missed opportunity. While mastery-based learning isn’t explicitly linked to racial or economic equity, education experts say that any school willing to make the leap from traditional grades to a complex rubric of individualized student assessments most likely already has supports in place to tackle the difficult, messy work they say is necessary to ensure that children of every background can succeed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“From the minute we opened we had a very diverse population and we needed to navigate that,” says Danielle Salzberg, principal of Frank McCourt High School, on the Upper West Side, which opened in 2010. “Kids come with different educational backgrounds … different socioeconomic backgrounds. We opened our doors fully aware that we were going to be meeting different kids’ needs in different kinds of ways.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To meet those needs, Salzberg and her team turned to a mastery-based model.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s the best way to provide feedback to students that allows them to understand themselves and be empowered as learners,” Salzberg says. “We focus a lot on student engagement. What are we doing to challenge their thinking and not just have them be compliant?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The school is thriving. With 20 percent of its 400-plus students diagnosed with a learning disability and about half of its kids coming from families in economic need, McCourt nonetheless outperforms citywide averages on state-mandated Regents exams, graduation rates and postsecondary enrollment. Students describe the school as offering a much different experience than what they were used to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This school wasn’t my first choice, so I didn’t have big expectations,” says college-bound senior Kendra Castro. What Kendra found once she arrived was a deeper level of student-teacher interaction than at her previous schools. A typical class may begin with the instructor in “teacher mode,” going over the day’s agenda for a few minutes, but the rest of the time is spent engaging directly with students as they work, providing feedback and support.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When kids struggle, teachers go to them,” she says. “Math especially can be hard for people. Here I’ve seen people struggle with it, but never for the whole semester.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Support extends beyond teacher interventions. With a schoolwide emphasis on working in groups, students’ most-used academic resources are often their peers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In middle school we always did work as an individual,” says Rosalia Minyeti, an 11th-grader from the Bronx who found the adjustment challenging. “I didn’t like working in groups at first. But then, in classes where the work was more ambitious, I found that being in a group made it easier to understand things.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Working in groups provides a benefit to students who have already mastered the material as well. “Teaching something to someone actually helps me learn it better,” says Kendra.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But implementing a mastery-based approach is difficult work, even in schools like McCourt and Maker Academy that have adopted it from the day they opened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Mastery-based learning is a complete paradigm shift for most teachers,” says Salzberg. “It means thinking about grading as a way to provide feedback, and not a random act that we do because the quarter is ending.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_53245\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-53245\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2019/03/Diallo_81007-800x0-c-default.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2019/03/Diallo_81007-800x0-c-default.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2019/03/Diallo_81007-800x0-c-default-160x120.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2019/03/Diallo_81007-800x0-c-default-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">student at Maker Academy tries his hand at sneaker design. \u003ccite>(Amadou Diallo for The Hechinger Report)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>City schools that have adopted mastery-based practices — from large, highly competitive schools like Staten Island Technical High School to small, narrowly focused programs like the Young Women’s Leadership School of the Bronx — have gotten some support from a small unit, the Mastery Collaborative, tucked away in the education department’s Office of Leadership. It was launched in 2015 out of a recognition that schools adopting mastery-based principles were often doing so in isolation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We started the program as a community of practitioners,” says program director and co-founder Joy Nolan. “Our model was, let’s share resources, let’s have these conversations about [mastery-based] practice.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today it serves as a conduit for 37 member schools to exchange expertise regularly. And Nolan says that inquiries about the program from potential members have increased every year. Schools in the collaborative are united not only by an embrace of mastery-based learning but also by the desire to serve a diverse student population. An analysis of Department of Education data by The Hechinger Report found that 29 of the 37 schools either meet the city’s current standard of a racially representative school or reflect (within five percentage points) their borough’s demographic makeup for at least two ethnic groups.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nolan emphasizes that the schools in the collaborative came to mastery-based learning on their own. Her program does not mandate curricula or evaluate practices. It is, however, seen by the schools as a valuable resource.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What the Mastery Collaborative has done for a lot of schools is to get educators out of their own buildings,” says Maker Academy principal Bauer. “Visiting other schools is the best professional development that exists. There’s no slide deck that is going to lead to seeing new things and being able to apply them to your school.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a system where segregation is the norm, one of the biggest challenges for schools that seek to embrace diversity is creating an environment in which students from all backgrounds can excel. In 2016 the Mastery Collaborative began hosting anti-bias workshops for teachers and staff, spurred by member schools’ ongoing interest in culturally responsive education practices. Credited in large part to the work of educator Gloria Ladson-Billings, culturally responsive education is, first and foremost, a recognition that the academic disparities seen along racial and socioeconomic lines come from systemic practices that minimize anything other than the dominant culture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zaretta Hammond, the author of the book “Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain,” describes a vicious cycle in which low-income students of color begin their education in under-resourced schools with less-experienced teachers, then fall behind academically so that even if they get opportunities to attend a high-performing school later, they arrive grade levels behind their more affluent peers. Culturally responsive teaching seeks to address the inequity, not by dumbing down the curriculum, Hammond says, but by igniting students’ intellectual curiosity through rigorous content reflecting real-world issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers must understand, Ladson-Billings argues, that academic outcomes say more about the education system than the child. “If a kid isn’t reading,” she says, “it can’t be the kid that’s the problem, it has to be the method.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Creating a culturally responsive school environment isn’t achieved by putting up posters of African-American heroes or celebrating Cinco de Mayo, say proponents. It requires teachers and administrators to examine the biases and assumptions they carry, how those affect their relationships with students and, in turn, the students’ ability to master a challenging curriculum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s really hard and deep work for the adults in the building,” says Natasha Capers, coordinator for the NYC Coalition for Educational Justice, a parent-led nonprofit advocating the adoption of a culturally responsive curriculum in city schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“How do we make sure our schools are warm and welcoming environments for students across race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender presentation?” she asks. “It’s in thinking about how we deliver content, why we’re talking about the subjects we’re talking about, how we connect instruction to students’ everyday lives.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mastery-based schools, with their emphasis on feedback and revision, seem to be particularly well-suited to this challenge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Traditionally, when you’re talking about serving large numbers of children of color in particular, they don’t get feedback,” says Hammond. “What they get is ‘You got it wrong.’ Mastery-based learning works by creating feedback that is timely and corrective.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maker Academy’s assistant principal, Liz Dowdell, puts an emphasis on academic rigor. “If we’re really putting an appropriate challenge in front of kids, they are going to fail at first,” she says. “Our job is to … support them to revise and make it better.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McCourt principal Salzberg stresses that this approach is relevant for all kids, whether their challenges are tied to racial or gender identity, economic status or parental expectations of high achievement: “Part of what we’re doing in CRE is finding the ways in which the kids are engaging or not engaging in the curriculum, and every kid is presenting us with some information about what’s getting in their way. We want to break through that to make sure every kid feels like they’re being met where they need to be met.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Culturally responsive education is still a largely unstudied model. “You’ll see a lot of instances of cultural responsiveness in a particular classroom but not systemwide,” says Leah Peoples, a researcher at New York University’s Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools who is studying it. “With the Mastery Collaborative we’re talking about places that are implementing this across entire schools.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inside the city’s education department, however, reaction to these schools’ achievements is notably muted. Despite the city’s announced \u003ca href=\"https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2018/08/15/carranza-aims-to-speed-up-anti-bias-training-for-educators-calling-it-a-cornerstone-to-school-improvement/\">mandatory anti-bias training\u003c/a> for all teachers and school administrators, the deputy chief of staff to the chancellor, David Hay, doesn’t view mastery-based learning as the only or even the preferred method for implementing culturally responsive practices. “You can have CRE in any kind of school, no matter what their guiding philosophy is, if people are willing to do the work,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He doesn’t see great potential for significant numbers of schools across the city emulating the work of schools in the Mastery Collaborative. “[Mastery] is something these schools have chosen to participate in,” he says, noting that such a dramatic move from traditional grading and evaluation may not be a good fit in other school communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once a five-person operation, the Mastery Collaborative program was down to one full-time employee until a few weeks ago when a second was added, and the number of member schools declined from 43 to 37 in the past year. Asked about future program resources, Hay said, “We’re very happy with where the program is right now … [it] has got some great things going for it but there are other models that do, as well.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schools in the Mastery Collaborative have long been doing the heavy lifting required to achieve what the mayor and chancellor’s initiatives seek to promote: equity in both admissions and academic achievement. Without additional support, the question is whether an approach with a promising record of success can spread to schools with like-minded leadership, or whether the opportunity to attend diverse, high-performing schools will remain limited to a handful of the city’s children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/access-does-not-equal-equity/\">culturally responsive education\u003c/a> was produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/\">\u003cem>The Hechinger Report\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://us2.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=66c306eebb323868c3ce353c1&id=d3ee4c3e04\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletter\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Why Competency-Based Education Is Exciting And Where It May Stumble",
"title": "Why Competency-Based Education Is Exciting And Where It May Stumble",
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"content": "\u003cp>Educators all over the world are thinking creatively about ways to transform the traditional education system into an experience that will propel students forward into the world ready to take on its complex challenges. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/tag/competency-based-education\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Competency-based education\u003c/a> has\u003ca href=\"https://www.competencyworks.org/about/competency-education/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> piqued the interest\u003c/a> of many communities because of its promise to make learning a more personal experience for students. In a competency-based model, children move through school based on their ability to demonstrate proficiency in skills and content, not by how many hours they spent sitting in class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers have long faced the difficult task of designing lessons for a group of students who are not all alike. Students come to school with different exposure to academic opportunities, disparate lived experiences, and unique interests and passions. For decades teachers have tried to impart a set curriculum in a limited amount of time to this heterogeneous group of students. And regardless of whether all students grasped the concepts and skills, for the most part students moved forward with their age cohort to the next grade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now some are \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/39820/what-does-a-school-need-to-enable-learning-based-on-student-competency\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">questioning this time-based approach\u003c/a> to learning. They wonder what sitting in a classroom for a predetermined number of instructional hours says about what students know and can do. They argue some students are ready for more challenges, while others need more support. They say it’s unfair to shepherd everyone along at the same pace. Wouldn’t it make more sense if everyone could move at their own pace, investigate their unique interests and demonstrate their knowledge in the ways that are most meaningful to them? In its purest form, that’s what proponents of competency-based education want to see.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Several states in New England have passed legislation making it easier for schools to adopt competency-based systems, and online platforms like \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/49617/its-time-for-a-deeper-conversation-about-how-schools-use-technology\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Summit Learning\u003c/a> have spread a version of the idea to schools around the country. For many parents and educators it’s exciting to think that each student could move at their own pace through the curriculum with guidance and support from teachers. However, the discussion around competency-based education raises big questions about how teachers manage classrooms filled with learners at different stages of learning, the potential drawbacks to such a system, and whether it may inadvertently perpetuate inequality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the rush to fix a problem, it’s easy to forget the history behind the system we have. \u003ca href=\"https://www.carnegiefoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Carnegie_Unit_Report.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Carnegie Unit\u003c/a>, also known as the credit hour, was a grassroots solution to unreliable standards for college admissions educators faced in the late 19th century based on in-person inspections and exams. That system didn’t scale and it offered a limited curriculum. In an effort to open up various pathways to and through college, educators developed the idea of the credit hour, so that different courses that met an agreed-upon number of credit hours would be considered roughly equivalent by colleges.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The current system based on the Carnegie Unit has proven durable in part because it has allowed an eclectic mix of institutions to work together. No two classrooms are exactly alike, but the credit hour allows students to be considered equally prepared.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you think of it as a currency, then currencies are defined by the institutions or collective space in which you can use that currency and it’s honored at face value,” said \u003ca href=\"http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~ehutt/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ethan Hutt\u003c/a>, assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership at the University of Maryland-College Park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, Hutt maintains, the current system puts significant trust in educator professionalism. The whole system is based on the fact that a student sitting in a U.S. history class in Maryland is learning roughly the same things as a student in California. Colleges are trusting high school teachers to do a good job. That trust is built into many public universities, where the top high school graduates may be guaranteed admission to one of the state’s colleges and into less-selective colleges where a high school diploma serves as the basis for admission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That trust also allows students to move and change schools without losing credit for work they’ve completed. Hutt worries that while it’s a known fact that all U.S. history classes are not created equally, many competency-based systems are developed so locally that it would be difficult for another district or state to recognize the learning a student has done.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Often when people talk about competency-based education, they don't really think about who it is that’s going to accept this measure, this certification,” Hutt said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He's concerned that in an effort to make sure students have key skills, educators pursuing competency-based models will end up cut off from the larger system. In order to validate the learning for a wider audience, the same educators who hope to create a more open-ended system could end up relying on standardized tests to demonstrate that learning has happened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, “there’s a small concern that if you go to a competency-based system that’s not validated by standardized tests, people may rely strictly on school reputation when recognizing these competencies -- a decision with obvious equity implications,\" Hutt said. He worries that without addressing the other structural inequalities in the system, competency-based education will be yet another “innovation” that gives \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/23196/is-it-time-to-reconsider-ap-classes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">more affluent students a leg up\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the practical concerns with how competency-based reforms are implemented, and their effect on equity, there are already schools and districts \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/41061/steps-to-help-schools-transform-to-competency-based-learning\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">tackling these issues\u003c/a>. In \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/35947/going-all-in-how-to-make-competency-based-learning-work\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">New Hampshire\u003c/a>, some schools have used recent legislation as an opportunity to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/36020/step-by-step-the-journey-towards-freedom-from-grade-levels-competency-education\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">rethink what schools look like\u003c/a>, while others have used it as an opening to make \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/36109/finding-the-most-creative-ways-to-help-students-advance-at-their-own-pace\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">other instructional shifts\u003c/a>. And in Maine, some of the challenges Hutt raises have led to \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/as-states-push-for-news-ways-of-learning-some-kids-and-parents-feel-left-behind/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">pushback\u003c/a> from teachers and parents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPnNoHSg-YU\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MIT professor \u003ca href=\"https://cyber.harvard.edu/people/jreich\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Justin Reich\u003c/a> is interested in the conversation around competency-based education because it touches on some fundamental problems in the system right now. He’s not convinced competency-based systems will be the solution for everyone, but he has seen positives come out of communities who are trying to implement it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It forces or compels people to think really carefully about what it is we want students to know, to do, to believe, and to have conversations that are not just within one person’s classroom or department, but across departments, “ Reich said. “They’re thinking really carefully about what it looks like for students to be on a trajectory.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That kind of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/47273/four-ways-school-leaders-can-support-meaningful-innovation\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">coherence is key to innovative change\u003c/a>, Reich said. And often it's the incremental changes, not the huge innovations, that \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0002831217700078?journalCode=aera\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ultimately transform systems\u003c/a>. So while competency-based education in its most radical form may not end up being a viable solution for many schools, elements of the reform may make a big difference for educators and students where these conversations are happening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At competency-based schools Reich has visited, school is still recognizable to him. The differences are more subtle; teaches are on the same page about what students need to know and be able to do at each stage of their learning. Students know what the expectations are, and there’s a clear system to track students through their progression.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s not a total transformation where in the same room there’s a kid working on calculus and another kid just getting started on something else,” Reich said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reich and his colleagues will be exploring the intricacies of competency-based education in a \u003ca href=\"https://www.edx.org/course/competency-based-education-the-why-what-and-how\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">free online course offered by EdX\u003c/a> beginning Jan. 31, 2019. Participants will hear from experts and on-the-ground practitioners about the positive and negatives of competency-based models. Reich hopes teachers, district leaders, school board members, parents and community members will participate in the six-week course so they can go back to their communities and start informed conversations about the best way forward in their unique contexts.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Advocates of competency-based education see it as a way to free students from age-based cohorts and seat-time. But there may be drawbacks to this innovative approach, too.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Educators all over the world are thinking creatively about ways to transform the traditional education system into an experience that will propel students forward into the world ready to take on its complex challenges. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/tag/competency-based-education\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Competency-based education\u003c/a> has\u003ca href=\"https://www.competencyworks.org/about/competency-education/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> piqued the interest\u003c/a> of many communities because of its promise to make learning a more personal experience for students. In a competency-based model, children move through school based on their ability to demonstrate proficiency in skills and content, not by how many hours they spent sitting in class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers have long faced the difficult task of designing lessons for a group of students who are not all alike. Students come to school with different exposure to academic opportunities, disparate lived experiences, and unique interests and passions. For decades teachers have tried to impart a set curriculum in a limited amount of time to this heterogeneous group of students. And regardless of whether all students grasped the concepts and skills, for the most part students moved forward with their age cohort to the next grade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now some are \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/39820/what-does-a-school-need-to-enable-learning-based-on-student-competency\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">questioning this time-based approach\u003c/a> to learning. They wonder what sitting in a classroom for a predetermined number of instructional hours says about what students know and can do. They argue some students are ready for more challenges, while others need more support. They say it’s unfair to shepherd everyone along at the same pace. Wouldn’t it make more sense if everyone could move at their own pace, investigate their unique interests and demonstrate their knowledge in the ways that are most meaningful to them? In its purest form, that’s what proponents of competency-based education want to see.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Several states in New England have passed legislation making it easier for schools to adopt competency-based systems, and online platforms like \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/49617/its-time-for-a-deeper-conversation-about-how-schools-use-technology\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Summit Learning\u003c/a> have spread a version of the idea to schools around the country. For many parents and educators it’s exciting to think that each student could move at their own pace through the curriculum with guidance and support from teachers. However, the discussion around competency-based education raises big questions about how teachers manage classrooms filled with learners at different stages of learning, the potential drawbacks to such a system, and whether it may inadvertently perpetuate inequality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the rush to fix a problem, it’s easy to forget the history behind the system we have. \u003ca href=\"https://www.carnegiefoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Carnegie_Unit_Report.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Carnegie Unit\u003c/a>, also known as the credit hour, was a grassroots solution to unreliable standards for college admissions educators faced in the late 19th century based on in-person inspections and exams. That system didn’t scale and it offered a limited curriculum. In an effort to open up various pathways to and through college, educators developed the idea of the credit hour, so that different courses that met an agreed-upon number of credit hours would be considered roughly equivalent by colleges.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The current system based on the Carnegie Unit has proven durable in part because it has allowed an eclectic mix of institutions to work together. No two classrooms are exactly alike, but the credit hour allows students to be considered equally prepared.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you think of it as a currency, then currencies are defined by the institutions or collective space in which you can use that currency and it’s honored at face value,” said \u003ca href=\"http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~ehutt/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ethan Hutt\u003c/a>, assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership at the University of Maryland-College Park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, Hutt maintains, the current system puts significant trust in educator professionalism. The whole system is based on the fact that a student sitting in a U.S. history class in Maryland is learning roughly the same things as a student in California. Colleges are trusting high school teachers to do a good job. That trust is built into many public universities, where the top high school graduates may be guaranteed admission to one of the state’s colleges and into less-selective colleges where a high school diploma serves as the basis for admission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That trust also allows students to move and change schools without losing credit for work they’ve completed. Hutt worries that while it’s a known fact that all U.S. history classes are not created equally, many competency-based systems are developed so locally that it would be difficult for another district or state to recognize the learning a student has done.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Often when people talk about competency-based education, they don't really think about who it is that’s going to accept this measure, this certification,” Hutt said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He's concerned that in an effort to make sure students have key skills, educators pursuing competency-based models will end up cut off from the larger system. In order to validate the learning for a wider audience, the same educators who hope to create a more open-ended system could end up relying on standardized tests to demonstrate that learning has happened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, “there’s a small concern that if you go to a competency-based system that’s not validated by standardized tests, people may rely strictly on school reputation when recognizing these competencies -- a decision with obvious equity implications,\" Hutt said. He worries that without addressing the other structural inequalities in the system, competency-based education will be yet another “innovation” that gives \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/23196/is-it-time-to-reconsider-ap-classes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">more affluent students a leg up\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the practical concerns with how competency-based reforms are implemented, and their effect on equity, there are already schools and districts \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/41061/steps-to-help-schools-transform-to-competency-based-learning\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">tackling these issues\u003c/a>. In \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/35947/going-all-in-how-to-make-competency-based-learning-work\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">New Hampshire\u003c/a>, some schools have used recent legislation as an opportunity to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/36020/step-by-step-the-journey-towards-freedom-from-grade-levels-competency-education\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">rethink what schools look like\u003c/a>, while others have used it as an opening to make \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/36109/finding-the-most-creative-ways-to-help-students-advance-at-their-own-pace\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">other instructional shifts\u003c/a>. And in Maine, some of the challenges Hutt raises have led to \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/as-states-push-for-news-ways-of-learning-some-kids-and-parents-feel-left-behind/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">pushback\u003c/a> from teachers and parents.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/ZPnNoHSg-YU'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/ZPnNoHSg-YU'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>MIT professor \u003ca href=\"https://cyber.harvard.edu/people/jreich\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Justin Reich\u003c/a> is interested in the conversation around competency-based education because it touches on some fundamental problems in the system right now. He’s not convinced competency-based systems will be the solution for everyone, but he has seen positives come out of communities who are trying to implement it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It forces or compels people to think really carefully about what it is we want students to know, to do, to believe, and to have conversations that are not just within one person’s classroom or department, but across departments, “ Reich said. “They’re thinking really carefully about what it looks like for students to be on a trajectory.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That kind of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/47273/four-ways-school-leaders-can-support-meaningful-innovation\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">coherence is key to innovative change\u003c/a>, Reich said. And often it's the incremental changes, not the huge innovations, that \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0002831217700078?journalCode=aera\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ultimately transform systems\u003c/a>. So while competency-based education in its most radical form may not end up being a viable solution for many schools, elements of the reform may make a big difference for educators and students where these conversations are happening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At competency-based schools Reich has visited, school is still recognizable to him. The differences are more subtle; teaches are on the same page about what students need to know and be able to do at each stage of their learning. Students know what the expectations are, and there’s a clear system to track students through their progression.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s not a total transformation where in the same room there’s a kid working on calculus and another kid just getting started on something else,” Reich said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reich and his colleagues will be exploring the intricacies of competency-based education in a \u003ca href=\"https://www.edx.org/course/competency-based-education-the-why-what-and-how\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">free online course offered by EdX\u003c/a> beginning Jan. 31, 2019. Participants will hear from experts and on-the-ground practitioners about the positive and negatives of competency-based models. Reich hopes teachers, district leaders, school board members, parents and community members will participate in the six-week course so they can go back to their communities and start informed conversations about the best way forward in their unique contexts.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Different Definitions of Personalized Learning Conflict, Cause Confusion",
"title": "Different Definitions of Personalized Learning Conflict, Cause Confusion",
"headTitle": "MindShift | KQED News",
"content": "\u003cp>If you do a Google image search for \"classroom,\" you'll mostly see one familiar scene: rows or \u003ca href=\"https://www.google.com/search?biw=1340&bih=687&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=wcCzW9fEGsO0_Aa7waqgCw&q=classroom&oq=classroom&gs_l=img.3..35i39j0i67l2j0j0i67j0j0i67l2j0l2.2586.3508..3726...0.0..0.58.472.9......1....1..gws-wiz-img.N2J3HsobZNs\">groups of desks\u003c/a>, with a spot at the front of the room for the teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One teacher, many students: It's basically the definition of school as we know it, going back to the earliest days of the Republic. \"We couldn't afford to have an individual teacher for every student, so we developed a way of teaching large groups,\" as John Pane, an education researcher at the RAND Corporation, puts it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pane is among a wave of education watchers getting excited by the idea that technology may finally offer a solution to the historic constraints of one-to-many teaching.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's called personalized learning: What if each student had something like a private tutor, and more power over what and how they learned?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pane is the lead author of one of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2042.html\">few empirical studies \u003c/a>to date of this idea, published late last year. It found that schools using some form of personalized learning were, on average, performing better ( there were some wrinkles we'll talk about later on).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"In a personalized system,\" he says, \"students are receiving instruction exactly at the point where they need it.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's a concept grounded in the psychology of motivation, learning science and growing technologies like artificial intelligence (AI). And the hype around it is blowing up. Personalized learning is the No. 1 educational technology priority around the country, according to a recent survey by the Center for Digital Education, a news service that promotes ed-tech. More than nine out of 10 districts polled said they were directing devices, software and professional development resources toward personalized learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Personalized learning is also a major priority of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (which is a supporter of NPR's education coverage) and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The \u003ca href=\"http://www.attoreassociates.com/news/chan-zuckerberg-push-ambitious-new-vision-personalized-learning/\">commitment \u003c/a>by the Facebook founder's philanthropy is expected to run into the hundreds of millions of dollars per year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_52538\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 200px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-52538\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/competencybased_custom-c47994889baab2af2d34521336b54bf61812a348.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/competencybased_custom-c47994889baab2af2d34521336b54bf61812a348.jpg 200w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/competencybased_custom-c47994889baab2af2d34521336b54bf61812a348-160x160.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/competencybased_custom-c47994889baab2af2d34521336b54bf61812a348-32x32.jpg 32w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/competencybased_custom-c47994889baab2af2d34521336b54bf61812a348-50x50.jpg 50w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/competencybased_custom-c47994889baab2af2d34521336b54bf61812a348-64x64.jpg 64w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/competencybased_custom-c47994889baab2af2d34521336b54bf61812a348-96x96.jpg 96w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/competencybased_custom-c47994889baab2af2d34521336b54bf61812a348-128x128.jpg 128w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/competencybased_custom-c47994889baab2af2d34521336b54bf61812a348-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Competency-based education. \u003ccite>(Drew Lytle for NPR )\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But there's already a backlash to the idea: it's drawn teacher, parent and student protests--even walkouts--in several states.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So what is personalized learning, exactly? The term has buzz, for sure. But it's also a bit — or more than a bit — baggy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, in speaking about it with more than a dozen educators, technologists, innovation experts and researchers, I've developed a theory: \"Personalized learning\" has become a \u003ca href=\"https://macaulay.cuny.edu/eportfolios/purves17/2017/09/03/janus-faced-trickster/\">Janus-faced \u003c/a>word, with at least two meanings in tension:\u003c/p>\n\u003col>\n\u003cli>The use of software to allow each student to proceed through a pre-determined body of knowledge, most often math, at his or her own pace.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>A whole new way of doing school, not necessarily focused on technology, where students set their own goals. They work both independently and together on projects that match their interests, while adults facilitate and invest in getting to know each student one-on-one, both their strengths and their challenges.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ol>\n\u003cp>Which vision of personalization will prevail? Pace alone, or \"Personalize it all\"? And what proportion of the hype will be realized?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>At your own pace \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first version of personalization is less radical and, by that token, already more common. It's the selling point of software programs, primarily in math, that are already found in millions of classrooms around the country. Two examples are McGraw Hill's ALEKS and Khan Academy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a traditional 3rd grade classroom, the teacher may give a test one Friday on adding and subtracting numbers up to a thousand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Let's say you don't quite get it, and you bomb that test. On the following Monday, the teacher will introduce multiplication. What are the chances that you're going to grasp the new concept? And what about the student sitting next to you? She already learned her multiplication tables over the summer. She's doodling in her notebook and passing notes during the lesson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sal Khan, the founder of Khan Academy, defines personalization by pace. He tells me: \"It's about every student getting to remediate if necessary, or accelerate if they can.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Khan Academy is a giant online library, viewed by tens of millions of people worldwide, of multiple-choice practice exercises and short instructional videos, with the strongest offerings in STEM disciplines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In theory, it's possible to follow Khan's roadmap \u003ca href=\"https://www.khanacademy.org/exercisedashboard\">step-by-step\u003c/a>, node by node, from simple counting all the way through AP calculus. Students, parents or teachers can keep track of progress using a dashboard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When it comes to the transformation of education, \"I strongly believe the biggest lever is moving from fixed-pace to mastery-based education,\" Khan says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What he means by \"mastery-based,\" is that students move on to the next topic only when they are ready. It's simple in concept, yet it's not the way school usually works.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In our example of a third grader using Khan or another software system, you'd get the chance to keep doing practice problems and watching videos on addition and subtraction. You wouldn't move on until you'd answered a certain number of problems correctly. Your teacher would be put on notice that you haven't quite grasped the concept \u003cem>before \u003c/em>you bombed a test, so she could give you extra help. Meanwhile, your friend could move from multiplication on to division and beyond.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_52544\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-52544\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/proficiency_vs_mastery_custom-a57fb7ea362d0b72b9edc22ac02f6f93eba08e9d-s800-c85.jpg\" alt=\"Proficiency vs. mastery\" width=\"800\" height=\"398\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/proficiency_vs_mastery_custom-a57fb7ea362d0b72b9edc22ac02f6f93eba08e9d-s800-c85.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/proficiency_vs_mastery_custom-a57fb7ea362d0b72b9edc22ac02f6f93eba08e9d-s800-c85-160x80.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/proficiency_vs_mastery_custom-a57fb7ea362d0b72b9edc22ac02f6f93eba08e9d-s800-c85-768x382.jpg 768w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/proficiency_vs_mastery_custom-a57fb7ea362d0b72b9edc22ac02f6f93eba08e9d-s800-c85-240x119.jpg 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/proficiency_vs_mastery_custom-a57fb7ea362d0b72b9edc22ac02f6f93eba08e9d-s800-c85-375x187.jpg 375w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/proficiency_vs_mastery_custom-a57fb7ea362d0b72b9edc22ac02f6f93eba08e9d-s800-c85-520x259.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Proficiency vs. mastery \u003ccite>(Drew Lytle for NPR )\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>With Khan Academy, you can show \"mastery\" by getting a certain number of questions right in a row. Khan Academy has recently introduced more assessments, so that more of the exercises in their free library can be used in this way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So there you have it. Personalized learning: a cost-effective, efficient way to improve direct instruction through pacing, while giving young people a little more autonomy. What's not to love?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jade Davis has thoughts about that. She's an expert in emerging technologies in education, and the director of digital project management at Columbia University Libraries. When she thinks of personalized learning, \"I think of kids with machines that have algorithms attached to them that move them through learning at the pace where the student is.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Does that excite her?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"No, it doesn't,\" she answers. \"Because learning is a collaborative process. When you take away the ability for people to make things together, I think you lose something.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, she adds, there's another issue. Many recent critics have pointed out how biases, such as racial biases, can be baked into all kinds of algorithms, from search engines to credit ratings. Davis argues that educational software is no exception. \"It's going to sort students. It's going to stereotype, put up roadblocks and make assumptions about how students should be thinking.\" In other words, what's sold as \"personalization\" can actually become dehumanizing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers, I point out, can and do show biases as well. Point taken, she says. But, \"teachers can attempt to remedy their bias ... teachers are learners in the space, too, but software is not.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Equating personalized learning simply with pacing is \"a fairly large problem,\" according to Susan Patrick, the president and CEO of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning. She says part of the issue is that personalization has become a flimsy marketing term, with\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\"\u003c/strong>software vendors putting a sticker on a product because there's variation in pacing.\" That, she says, \"does not equal a truly personalized approach.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I also talked to Ted Dintersmith. He's a technology venture capitalist who has visited schools in all 50 states. He presents himself as an expert, not in education, but in innovation, and is the author of \u003cem>What School Could Be, \u003c/em>which features teachers talking about the promise of education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Dintersmith, the at-your-own-pace model falls well short of what personalization could be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"If it's plopping down some obsolete or irrelevant curriculum on a laptop and letting every kid go at their own pace, It's hard to get excited about that,\" he says. \"If it's giving students more voice, helping them find their own talents in distinct ways, that's better.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When it comes to software like Khan Academy, \"I think it's a fair criticism to say most of what's on Khan has kids listening to lectures and practicing and taking multiple-choice tests to get good at some low-level procedure\" — such as multiplication, say — \"that the device they're working on does perfectly, instantly.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_52540\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 200px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-52540\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/interestdriven_custom-f6950a13ceafc41f6971ed8f5fb96f860ba48d0e.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/interestdriven_custom-f6950a13ceafc41f6971ed8f5fb96f860ba48d0e.jpg 200w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/interestdriven_custom-f6950a13ceafc41f6971ed8f5fb96f860ba48d0e-160x160.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/interestdriven_custom-f6950a13ceafc41f6971ed8f5fb96f860ba48d0e-32x32.jpg 32w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/interestdriven_custom-f6950a13ceafc41f6971ed8f5fb96f860ba48d0e-50x50.jpg 50w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/interestdriven_custom-f6950a13ceafc41f6971ed8f5fb96f860ba48d0e-64x64.jpg 64w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/interestdriven_custom-f6950a13ceafc41f6971ed8f5fb96f860ba48d0e-96x96.jpg 96w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/interestdriven_custom-f6950a13ceafc41f6971ed8f5fb96f860ba48d0e-128x128.jpg 128w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/interestdriven_custom-f6950a13ceafc41f6971ed8f5fb96f860ba48d0e-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Interest-driven education. \u003ccite>(Drew Lytle for NPR )\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>That's not good enough for the demands of the 21st century, Dintersmith adds. \"Being pretty good — even very good — at the same thing that everyone else is pretty good to very good at doesn't get you anywhere. You really want bold, audacious, curious, creative problem-solving kids that embrace ambiguity.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He believes letting students choose more about what, and how, they learn is the way to awaken those qualities: letting them go off-roading, not merely letting them move at their own pace through a \"closed course\" of facts and skills that's already been set up for them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Learn what you want\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When you leave behind the narrow path of personalization simply as a matter of pacing, you enter a world that is broader. To some people that's more exciting, but it's also more difficult to sum up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"At the beginning of a fad there's a naming problem,\"Rich Halverson says. He's an education professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has spent the last few years traveling around the country to see personalized learning in action at public schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He's found that, \"what schools call personalized varies considerably,\" and also that \"a lot of schools are doing personalized learning, but don't call it that.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, he's managed to identify some key common elements:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the schools he's studied, students meet regularly, one on one, with teachers. They set individual learning goals, follow up and discuss progress. All of this may be recorded using some simple software, like a shared Google Doc. It's kind of like a schoolwide version of special education, with an IEP — an individualized education program — for every student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This sounds simple, but face-to-face interaction is \"expensive,\" says Halverson. Think 28 meetings of 15 minutes each — that's a full day of a teacher's time, somewhere between once a week and once a month. In fact, the entire school day, week, year may need to be reconfigured to allow for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some schools Halverson has studied, especially charter schools with more freedom, have remade the curriculum to emphasize group projects and presentations, where students can prove the necessary knowledge and skills while pursuing topics that interest them. Students are grouped by ability and interest, not age, and may change groups from subject to subject or day to day. Scheduling and staffing is necessarily fluid; even the building may need to be reconfigured for maximum flexibility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\"I love school!\"\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>James Murray is the principal of Waukesha STEM Academy, a K-8 charter school in Wisconsin that is one of Halverson's exemplars. It has elements of at-your-own-pace, software-enabled learning: In middle school, students have the ability to take whatever math they need, from 4th grade through calculus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There's also flexible scheduling, with Tuesday and Thursday \"flex time\" blocks for whatever students want to do, Murray said. On any give day, a student can say, \" 'If I need to work on a science lab, I go do that. When I'm done, I go to another class.'\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Murray says a lot of parents will ask, \" 'Well what if my kid just takes gym class every day?' \" The answer is, with guidance and feedback, \"They really start to advocate for themselves and they start to understand what they need to do and why.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By middle school, his students propose their own long-term \"capstone\" projects, which range from raising money for a women's shelter to sharing their love of go-kart racing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_52541\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 200px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-52541\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/selfefficacy_custom-dbacb1074105b63db49e91a4ed3a1a567bd9519f.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/selfefficacy_custom-dbacb1074105b63db49e91a4ed3a1a567bd9519f.jpg 200w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/selfefficacy_custom-dbacb1074105b63db49e91a4ed3a1a567bd9519f-160x160.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/selfefficacy_custom-dbacb1074105b63db49e91a4ed3a1a567bd9519f-32x32.jpg 32w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/selfefficacy_custom-dbacb1074105b63db49e91a4ed3a1a567bd9519f-50x50.jpg 50w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/selfefficacy_custom-dbacb1074105b63db49e91a4ed3a1a567bd9519f-64x64.jpg 64w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/selfefficacy_custom-dbacb1074105b63db49e91a4ed3a1a567bd9519f-96x96.jpg 96w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/selfefficacy_custom-dbacb1074105b63db49e91a4ed3a1a567bd9519f-128x128.jpg 128w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/selfefficacy_custom-dbacb1074105b63db49e91a4ed3a1a567bd9519f-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Self-efficacy \u003ccite>(Drew Lytle for NPR )\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Sounds like fun. And indeed, a common element to personalized learning schools, Halverson has found, is that \"when it's done well, there's a lot of parent and teacher enthusiasm.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amy Bigelow is one of those enthusiastic parents. Her daughter started this fall at Murray's school, Waukesha STEM Academy. She's says she's seeing her daughter \"thrive\" and grow in self-confidence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"She can think outside the box, and be creative and work with her hands,\" Bigelow says. \"She has classes with seventh-graders, eighth-graders. It allows her to be with people on the same level, not based off age or grade, and that's been a refreshing outlook, too.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, when her daughter was in fifth grade, Bigelow said, \"she would come home from school just in a funk at the end of the day.\" But now? \"She came home the first week and she said, 'Mom — I'm learning, but it doesn't feel like I'm learning.' \"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>John Pane, the researcher at Rand, says this enthusiasm comes from two places. The first is that students care more about their learning when they have an element of choice and agency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amy Bigelow agrees: \"There are so many opportunities ... for her to be able to be empowered and take her schooling into her own hands.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The second point, Pane says, is that students care more about learning when they feel that teachers know them personally. And that happens through those regular one-on-one meetings, and through kids having the chance to share their passions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's what Halverson calls, \"an effort to build the instruction on a personal relationship: 'What do you need to know and how can I guide you to get there?' \"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\"It's hard to implement.\"\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So there you have it. Personalized learning: a transformative, labor-intensive approach giving students ownership over their learning. What's not to love?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, Sal Khan, for one, is a bit dismissive of what he calls this 'flavor' of interest-driven personalization. \"We're all learning about factoring polynomials,\" he says, \"but you're doing it in a context of something that interests you, say soccer, and I'm doing it in the context of something that interests me, say architecture. Or maybe there's instruction in different modalities. That's not the type that we focus on. There's not evidence it's effective, and it's hard to implement.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The research by Pane and his colleagues bears this view out, to a point. Their study of charter networks that were early adopters of personalized learning found large average effects on student achievement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But a second study by Pane, with a more diverse set of schools, found a smaller average positive effect, which included negative impacts on learning at \"a substantial number\" of schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"So that, to me, is a warning sign that personalized learning appears not to be working every place that people are trying it,\" says Pane. \"While conceptually they are good ideas, when you come down to analyzing it there are potential pitfalls.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One emerging issue is that, as the \"fad\" spreads, teachers may not always be getting the supports they need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_52545\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 600px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-52545\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/differentiation_custom-184e6b57fb1296c174f9bdcbe10a87e6e12c6bd4-s800-c85.jpg\" alt=\"Differentiation\" width=\"600\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/differentiation_custom-184e6b57fb1296c174f9bdcbe10a87e6e12c6bd4-s800-c85.jpg 600w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/differentiation_custom-184e6b57fb1296c174f9bdcbe10a87e6e12c6bd4-s800-c85-160x96.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/differentiation_custom-184e6b57fb1296c174f9bdcbe10a87e6e12c6bd4-s800-c85-240x144.jpg 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/differentiation_custom-184e6b57fb1296c174f9bdcbe10a87e6e12c6bd4-s800-c85-375x225.jpg 375w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/differentiation_custom-184e6b57fb1296c174f9bdcbe10a87e6e12c6bd4-s800-c85-520x312.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Differentiation \u003ccite>(Drew Lytle for NPR )\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For a \u003ca href=\"https://www.crpe.org/publications/personalized-learning-crossroads\">report published in 2018\u003c/a> by the Center on Reinventing Public Education, researchers interviewed and surveyed hundreds of teachers at schools that had received funding from the Gates Foundation to design and implement personalized learning. They found that, while many teachers were wildly enthusiastic, they were often left on their own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They had little guidance to set meaningful learning outcomes for students outside the state frameworks of standardized tests. And, they had little support at the school- or district-level to change key elements of school, like age-based grouping or all-at-once scheduling. So personalization efforts often didn't spread beyond pilot classrooms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The case of Summit Learning is another example of personalized learning's growing pains. It's a personalized learning platform that originated at a California-based charter school network called Summit Public Schools. After investments from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and some work from Facebook engineers, the platform and curriculum, plus training, was offered up for free, and has been adopted by almost 400 schools around the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Summit Learning is different from single-subject systems like ALEKS. It's been advertised more like a whole-school personalized learning transformation in a box: from mentoring sessions with teachers to \"playlists\" of lessons in every subject. The company says that participating schools are reporting academic gains for students who start out behind, as well as \"greater student engagement, increased attendance, better behavior.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But not everyone loves the program. It's drawn teacher, parent and student protests in \u003ca href=\"https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-12-20-connecticut-school-district-suspends-use-of-summit-learning-platform\">Cheshire, CT\u003c/a>; \u003ca href=\"https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2017/03/06/facebook-program-school-causes-controversy/97711414/\">Boone County, KY\u003c/a>; \u003ca href=\"https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/remove-the-summit-personalized-learning-program\">Fairview Park City\u003c/a> in Ohio; \u003ca href=\"https://www.indianagazette.com/news/directors-vote-to-scale-back-summit-learning-program/article_b3bc086a-e4d1-11e7-8c95-57ffb928e16e.html\">Indiana Area School District\u003c/a> in Indiana, PA; \u003ca href=\"http://www.clearwatertribune.com/news/top_stories/summit-learning-under-fire-gains-attention-and-lots-of-criticism/article_da14721a-74b2-11e8-8a35-33a44ea23f1d.html\">Clearwater County, ID\u003c/a>, and recently in \u003ca href=\"https://nypost.com/2018/11/10/brooklyn-students-hold-walkout-in-protest-of-facebook-designed-online-program/amp/?fbclid=IwAR2ATi_LGGl4QS1Y9OS1VaPMbbttTdwO9hCJRh6rkDekZbswldqfdzHtBn0&__twitter_impression=true\">New York City\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some have privacy concerns about students' personal data reportedly being shared with Microsoft, Amazon and other companies. Some object to the quality of the curriculum and supplementary materials. Some say students are getting distracted by working on the laptop or merely Googling for answers to quizzes. Some just don't want to learn on their own at their own pace.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's annoying to just sit there staring at one screen for so long,\" Mitchel Storman, a ninth grader at the Secondary School for Journalism in Brooklyn, told the\u003ca href=\"%20the%20Secondary%20School%20for%20Journalism%20in%20Park%20Slope\">\u003cem> New York Post\u003c/em> \u003c/a>at a student walkout earlier this month. \"You have to teach yourself.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Summit shared with NPR a letter from Andrew Goldin, the Chief Program Officer of Summit Learning, to the principal of the Secondary School for Journalism, Livingston Hilaire. Goldin stated that the school lacked enough laptops, Internet bandwidth, and teacher training to successfully implement the program, and recommended that they suspend it immediately for 11th and 12th graders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Backlash to the backlash\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Is personalized learning, aided by computers, destined to be just another ed reform flash-in-the-pan? Will it have a narrow impact in just a few subjects? Or will it be transformative, and is that a good thing?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the Gates Foundation experience suggests, the future of personalized learning may hinge on what kinds of supports are offered teachers. The experience of the state of Maine is instructive here too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2012, Maine became the first state to adopt what's called a \"proficiency-based diploma.\" The idea behind it was that instead of needing to pass a certain set of classes to graduate, students in Maine now had to show they were \"proficient\" in certain skills and subjects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To comply with the new law, many districts adopted \"proficiency-based learning.\" The new system shared elements of personalized learning, like students being allowed to re-do assignments and work at their own pace. Yet schools received little funding or guidance on how to implement these changes, leaving some teachers lost and overwhelmed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heather Finn, a veteran math teacher at a high school in central Maine, told NPRit was \"impossible ... so, so frustrating.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It works really well, like, the first month,\" Finn says. Then, students started to progress at different speeds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"So I have the kids who are on pace, and I have the kids who are perpetually, always behind. And it got to the point where I had 20 kids in 20 spots.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This past April, Maine lawmakers heard complaints from parents and teachers, as well as the statewide teachers union. Three months later, Gov. Paul LePage \u003ca href=\"https://www.pressherald.com/2018/07/20/bill-to-roll-back-proficiency-based-diplomas-becomes-law/\">signed a bill \u003c/a>to make \"proficiency-based diplomas\" optional. Some districts have already declared that they're leaving the new system behind and will return to a more traditional education style.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some districts, though, like Kennebec Intra-District Schools in Maine, aren't going back. Kaylee Bodge, a fourth-grader at Marcia Buker Elementary School, says the appeal is simple. \"We get to make choices instead of the teacher choosing. If you like something and you want to do that first, you get to do that first.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=The+Future+Of+Learning%3F+Well%2C+It%27s+Personal&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>If you do a Google image search for \"classroom,\" you'll mostly see one familiar scene: rows or \u003ca href=\"https://www.google.com/search?biw=1340&bih=687&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=wcCzW9fEGsO0_Aa7waqgCw&q=classroom&oq=classroom&gs_l=img.3..35i39j0i67l2j0j0i67j0j0i67l2j0l2.2586.3508..3726...0.0..0.58.472.9......1....1..gws-wiz-img.N2J3HsobZNs\">groups of desks\u003c/a>, with a spot at the front of the room for the teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One teacher, many students: It's basically the definition of school as we know it, going back to the earliest days of the Republic. \"We couldn't afford to have an individual teacher for every student, so we developed a way of teaching large groups,\" as John Pane, an education researcher at the RAND Corporation, puts it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pane is among a wave of education watchers getting excited by the idea that technology may finally offer a solution to the historic constraints of one-to-many teaching.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's called personalized learning: What if each student had something like a private tutor, and more power over what and how they learned?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pane is the lead author of one of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2042.html\">few empirical studies \u003c/a>to date of this idea, published late last year. It found that schools using some form of personalized learning were, on average, performing better ( there were some wrinkles we'll talk about later on).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"In a personalized system,\" he says, \"students are receiving instruction exactly at the point where they need it.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's a concept grounded in the psychology of motivation, learning science and growing technologies like artificial intelligence (AI). And the hype around it is blowing up. Personalized learning is the No. 1 educational technology priority around the country, according to a recent survey by the Center for Digital Education, a news service that promotes ed-tech. More than nine out of 10 districts polled said they were directing devices, software and professional development resources toward personalized learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Personalized learning is also a major priority of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (which is a supporter of NPR's education coverage) and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The \u003ca href=\"http://www.attoreassociates.com/news/chan-zuckerberg-push-ambitious-new-vision-personalized-learning/\">commitment \u003c/a>by the Facebook founder's philanthropy is expected to run into the hundreds of millions of dollars per year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_52538\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 200px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-52538\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/competencybased_custom-c47994889baab2af2d34521336b54bf61812a348.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/competencybased_custom-c47994889baab2af2d34521336b54bf61812a348.jpg 200w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/competencybased_custom-c47994889baab2af2d34521336b54bf61812a348-160x160.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/competencybased_custom-c47994889baab2af2d34521336b54bf61812a348-32x32.jpg 32w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/competencybased_custom-c47994889baab2af2d34521336b54bf61812a348-50x50.jpg 50w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/competencybased_custom-c47994889baab2af2d34521336b54bf61812a348-64x64.jpg 64w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/competencybased_custom-c47994889baab2af2d34521336b54bf61812a348-96x96.jpg 96w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/competencybased_custom-c47994889baab2af2d34521336b54bf61812a348-128x128.jpg 128w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/competencybased_custom-c47994889baab2af2d34521336b54bf61812a348-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Competency-based education. \u003ccite>(Drew Lytle for NPR )\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But there's already a backlash to the idea: it's drawn teacher, parent and student protests--even walkouts--in several states.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So what is personalized learning, exactly? The term has buzz, for sure. But it's also a bit — or more than a bit — baggy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, in speaking about it with more than a dozen educators, technologists, innovation experts and researchers, I've developed a theory: \"Personalized learning\" has become a \u003ca href=\"https://macaulay.cuny.edu/eportfolios/purves17/2017/09/03/janus-faced-trickster/\">Janus-faced \u003c/a>word, with at least two meanings in tension:\u003c/p>\n\u003col>\n\u003cli>The use of software to allow each student to proceed through a pre-determined body of knowledge, most often math, at his or her own pace.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>A whole new way of doing school, not necessarily focused on technology, where students set their own goals. They work both independently and together on projects that match their interests, while adults facilitate and invest in getting to know each student one-on-one, both their strengths and their challenges.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ol>\n\u003cp>Which vision of personalization will prevail? Pace alone, or \"Personalize it all\"? And what proportion of the hype will be realized?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>At your own pace \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first version of personalization is less radical and, by that token, already more common. It's the selling point of software programs, primarily in math, that are already found in millions of classrooms around the country. Two examples are McGraw Hill's ALEKS and Khan Academy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a traditional 3rd grade classroom, the teacher may give a test one Friday on adding and subtracting numbers up to a thousand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Let's say you don't quite get it, and you bomb that test. On the following Monday, the teacher will introduce multiplication. What are the chances that you're going to grasp the new concept? And what about the student sitting next to you? She already learned her multiplication tables over the summer. She's doodling in her notebook and passing notes during the lesson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sal Khan, the founder of Khan Academy, defines personalization by pace. He tells me: \"It's about every student getting to remediate if necessary, or accelerate if they can.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Khan Academy is a giant online library, viewed by tens of millions of people worldwide, of multiple-choice practice exercises and short instructional videos, with the strongest offerings in STEM disciplines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In theory, it's possible to follow Khan's roadmap \u003ca href=\"https://www.khanacademy.org/exercisedashboard\">step-by-step\u003c/a>, node by node, from simple counting all the way through AP calculus. Students, parents or teachers can keep track of progress using a dashboard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When it comes to the transformation of education, \"I strongly believe the biggest lever is moving from fixed-pace to mastery-based education,\" Khan says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What he means by \"mastery-based,\" is that students move on to the next topic only when they are ready. It's simple in concept, yet it's not the way school usually works.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In our example of a third grader using Khan or another software system, you'd get the chance to keep doing practice problems and watching videos on addition and subtraction. You wouldn't move on until you'd answered a certain number of problems correctly. Your teacher would be put on notice that you haven't quite grasped the concept \u003cem>before \u003c/em>you bombed a test, so she could give you extra help. Meanwhile, your friend could move from multiplication on to division and beyond.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_52544\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-52544\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/proficiency_vs_mastery_custom-a57fb7ea362d0b72b9edc22ac02f6f93eba08e9d-s800-c85.jpg\" alt=\"Proficiency vs. mastery\" width=\"800\" height=\"398\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/proficiency_vs_mastery_custom-a57fb7ea362d0b72b9edc22ac02f6f93eba08e9d-s800-c85.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/proficiency_vs_mastery_custom-a57fb7ea362d0b72b9edc22ac02f6f93eba08e9d-s800-c85-160x80.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/proficiency_vs_mastery_custom-a57fb7ea362d0b72b9edc22ac02f6f93eba08e9d-s800-c85-768x382.jpg 768w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/proficiency_vs_mastery_custom-a57fb7ea362d0b72b9edc22ac02f6f93eba08e9d-s800-c85-240x119.jpg 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/proficiency_vs_mastery_custom-a57fb7ea362d0b72b9edc22ac02f6f93eba08e9d-s800-c85-375x187.jpg 375w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/proficiency_vs_mastery_custom-a57fb7ea362d0b72b9edc22ac02f6f93eba08e9d-s800-c85-520x259.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Proficiency vs. mastery \u003ccite>(Drew Lytle for NPR )\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>With Khan Academy, you can show \"mastery\" by getting a certain number of questions right in a row. Khan Academy has recently introduced more assessments, so that more of the exercises in their free library can be used in this way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So there you have it. Personalized learning: a cost-effective, efficient way to improve direct instruction through pacing, while giving young people a little more autonomy. What's not to love?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jade Davis has thoughts about that. She's an expert in emerging technologies in education, and the director of digital project management at Columbia University Libraries. When she thinks of personalized learning, \"I think of kids with machines that have algorithms attached to them that move them through learning at the pace where the student is.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Does that excite her?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"No, it doesn't,\" she answers. \"Because learning is a collaborative process. When you take away the ability for people to make things together, I think you lose something.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, she adds, there's another issue. Many recent critics have pointed out how biases, such as racial biases, can be baked into all kinds of algorithms, from search engines to credit ratings. Davis argues that educational software is no exception. \"It's going to sort students. It's going to stereotype, put up roadblocks and make assumptions about how students should be thinking.\" In other words, what's sold as \"personalization\" can actually become dehumanizing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers, I point out, can and do show biases as well. Point taken, she says. But, \"teachers can attempt to remedy their bias ... teachers are learners in the space, too, but software is not.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Equating personalized learning simply with pacing is \"a fairly large problem,\" according to Susan Patrick, the president and CEO of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning. She says part of the issue is that personalization has become a flimsy marketing term, with\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\"\u003c/strong>software vendors putting a sticker on a product because there's variation in pacing.\" That, she says, \"does not equal a truly personalized approach.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I also talked to Ted Dintersmith. He's a technology venture capitalist who has visited schools in all 50 states. He presents himself as an expert, not in education, but in innovation, and is the author of \u003cem>What School Could Be, \u003c/em>which features teachers talking about the promise of education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Dintersmith, the at-your-own-pace model falls well short of what personalization could be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"If it's plopping down some obsolete or irrelevant curriculum on a laptop and letting every kid go at their own pace, It's hard to get excited about that,\" he says. \"If it's giving students more voice, helping them find their own talents in distinct ways, that's better.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When it comes to software like Khan Academy, \"I think it's a fair criticism to say most of what's on Khan has kids listening to lectures and practicing and taking multiple-choice tests to get good at some low-level procedure\" — such as multiplication, say — \"that the device they're working on does perfectly, instantly.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_52540\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 200px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-52540\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/interestdriven_custom-f6950a13ceafc41f6971ed8f5fb96f860ba48d0e.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/interestdriven_custom-f6950a13ceafc41f6971ed8f5fb96f860ba48d0e.jpg 200w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/interestdriven_custom-f6950a13ceafc41f6971ed8f5fb96f860ba48d0e-160x160.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/interestdriven_custom-f6950a13ceafc41f6971ed8f5fb96f860ba48d0e-32x32.jpg 32w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/interestdriven_custom-f6950a13ceafc41f6971ed8f5fb96f860ba48d0e-50x50.jpg 50w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/interestdriven_custom-f6950a13ceafc41f6971ed8f5fb96f860ba48d0e-64x64.jpg 64w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/interestdriven_custom-f6950a13ceafc41f6971ed8f5fb96f860ba48d0e-96x96.jpg 96w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/interestdriven_custom-f6950a13ceafc41f6971ed8f5fb96f860ba48d0e-128x128.jpg 128w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/interestdriven_custom-f6950a13ceafc41f6971ed8f5fb96f860ba48d0e-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Interest-driven education. \u003ccite>(Drew Lytle for NPR )\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>That's not good enough for the demands of the 21st century, Dintersmith adds. \"Being pretty good — even very good — at the same thing that everyone else is pretty good to very good at doesn't get you anywhere. You really want bold, audacious, curious, creative problem-solving kids that embrace ambiguity.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He believes letting students choose more about what, and how, they learn is the way to awaken those qualities: letting them go off-roading, not merely letting them move at their own pace through a \"closed course\" of facts and skills that's already been set up for them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Learn what you want\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When you leave behind the narrow path of personalization simply as a matter of pacing, you enter a world that is broader. To some people that's more exciting, but it's also more difficult to sum up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"At the beginning of a fad there's a naming problem,\"Rich Halverson says. He's an education professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has spent the last few years traveling around the country to see personalized learning in action at public schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He's found that, \"what schools call personalized varies considerably,\" and also that \"a lot of schools are doing personalized learning, but don't call it that.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, he's managed to identify some key common elements:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the schools he's studied, students meet regularly, one on one, with teachers. They set individual learning goals, follow up and discuss progress. All of this may be recorded using some simple software, like a shared Google Doc. It's kind of like a schoolwide version of special education, with an IEP — an individualized education program — for every student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This sounds simple, but face-to-face interaction is \"expensive,\" says Halverson. Think 28 meetings of 15 minutes each — that's a full day of a teacher's time, somewhere between once a week and once a month. In fact, the entire school day, week, year may need to be reconfigured to allow for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some schools Halverson has studied, especially charter schools with more freedom, have remade the curriculum to emphasize group projects and presentations, where students can prove the necessary knowledge and skills while pursuing topics that interest them. Students are grouped by ability and interest, not age, and may change groups from subject to subject or day to day. Scheduling and staffing is necessarily fluid; even the building may need to be reconfigured for maximum flexibility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\"I love school!\"\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>James Murray is the principal of Waukesha STEM Academy, a K-8 charter school in Wisconsin that is one of Halverson's exemplars. It has elements of at-your-own-pace, software-enabled learning: In middle school, students have the ability to take whatever math they need, from 4th grade through calculus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There's also flexible scheduling, with Tuesday and Thursday \"flex time\" blocks for whatever students want to do, Murray said. On any give day, a student can say, \" 'If I need to work on a science lab, I go do that. When I'm done, I go to another class.'\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Murray says a lot of parents will ask, \" 'Well what if my kid just takes gym class every day?' \" The answer is, with guidance and feedback, \"They really start to advocate for themselves and they start to understand what they need to do and why.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By middle school, his students propose their own long-term \"capstone\" projects, which range from raising money for a women's shelter to sharing their love of go-kart racing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_52541\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 200px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-52541\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/selfefficacy_custom-dbacb1074105b63db49e91a4ed3a1a567bd9519f.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/selfefficacy_custom-dbacb1074105b63db49e91a4ed3a1a567bd9519f.jpg 200w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/selfefficacy_custom-dbacb1074105b63db49e91a4ed3a1a567bd9519f-160x160.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/selfefficacy_custom-dbacb1074105b63db49e91a4ed3a1a567bd9519f-32x32.jpg 32w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/selfefficacy_custom-dbacb1074105b63db49e91a4ed3a1a567bd9519f-50x50.jpg 50w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/selfefficacy_custom-dbacb1074105b63db49e91a4ed3a1a567bd9519f-64x64.jpg 64w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/selfefficacy_custom-dbacb1074105b63db49e91a4ed3a1a567bd9519f-96x96.jpg 96w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/selfefficacy_custom-dbacb1074105b63db49e91a4ed3a1a567bd9519f-128x128.jpg 128w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/selfefficacy_custom-dbacb1074105b63db49e91a4ed3a1a567bd9519f-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Self-efficacy \u003ccite>(Drew Lytle for NPR )\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Sounds like fun. And indeed, a common element to personalized learning schools, Halverson has found, is that \"when it's done well, there's a lot of parent and teacher enthusiasm.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amy Bigelow is one of those enthusiastic parents. Her daughter started this fall at Murray's school, Waukesha STEM Academy. She's says she's seeing her daughter \"thrive\" and grow in self-confidence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"She can think outside the box, and be creative and work with her hands,\" Bigelow says. \"She has classes with seventh-graders, eighth-graders. It allows her to be with people on the same level, not based off age or grade, and that's been a refreshing outlook, too.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, when her daughter was in fifth grade, Bigelow said, \"she would come home from school just in a funk at the end of the day.\" But now? \"She came home the first week and she said, 'Mom — I'm learning, but it doesn't feel like I'm learning.' \"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>John Pane, the researcher at Rand, says this enthusiasm comes from two places. The first is that students care more about their learning when they have an element of choice and agency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amy Bigelow agrees: \"There are so many opportunities ... for her to be able to be empowered and take her schooling into her own hands.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The second point, Pane says, is that students care more about learning when they feel that teachers know them personally. And that happens through those regular one-on-one meetings, and through kids having the chance to share their passions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's what Halverson calls, \"an effort to build the instruction on a personal relationship: 'What do you need to know and how can I guide you to get there?' \"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\"It's hard to implement.\"\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So there you have it. Personalized learning: a transformative, labor-intensive approach giving students ownership over their learning. What's not to love?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, Sal Khan, for one, is a bit dismissive of what he calls this 'flavor' of interest-driven personalization. \"We're all learning about factoring polynomials,\" he says, \"but you're doing it in a context of something that interests you, say soccer, and I'm doing it in the context of something that interests me, say architecture. Or maybe there's instruction in different modalities. That's not the type that we focus on. There's not evidence it's effective, and it's hard to implement.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The research by Pane and his colleagues bears this view out, to a point. Their study of charter networks that were early adopters of personalized learning found large average effects on student achievement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But a second study by Pane, with a more diverse set of schools, found a smaller average positive effect, which included negative impacts on learning at \"a substantial number\" of schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"So that, to me, is a warning sign that personalized learning appears not to be working every place that people are trying it,\" says Pane. \"While conceptually they are good ideas, when you come down to analyzing it there are potential pitfalls.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One emerging issue is that, as the \"fad\" spreads, teachers may not always be getting the supports they need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_52545\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 600px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-52545\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/differentiation_custom-184e6b57fb1296c174f9bdcbe10a87e6e12c6bd4-s800-c85.jpg\" alt=\"Differentiation\" width=\"600\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/differentiation_custom-184e6b57fb1296c174f9bdcbe10a87e6e12c6bd4-s800-c85.jpg 600w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/differentiation_custom-184e6b57fb1296c174f9bdcbe10a87e6e12c6bd4-s800-c85-160x96.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/differentiation_custom-184e6b57fb1296c174f9bdcbe10a87e6e12c6bd4-s800-c85-240x144.jpg 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/differentiation_custom-184e6b57fb1296c174f9bdcbe10a87e6e12c6bd4-s800-c85-375x225.jpg 375w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2018/11/differentiation_custom-184e6b57fb1296c174f9bdcbe10a87e6e12c6bd4-s800-c85-520x312.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Differentiation \u003ccite>(Drew Lytle for NPR )\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For a \u003ca href=\"https://www.crpe.org/publications/personalized-learning-crossroads\">report published in 2018\u003c/a> by the Center on Reinventing Public Education, researchers interviewed and surveyed hundreds of teachers at schools that had received funding from the Gates Foundation to design and implement personalized learning. They found that, while many teachers were wildly enthusiastic, they were often left on their own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They had little guidance to set meaningful learning outcomes for students outside the state frameworks of standardized tests. And, they had little support at the school- or district-level to change key elements of school, like age-based grouping or all-at-once scheduling. So personalization efforts often didn't spread beyond pilot classrooms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The case of Summit Learning is another example of personalized learning's growing pains. It's a personalized learning platform that originated at a California-based charter school network called Summit Public Schools. After investments from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and some work from Facebook engineers, the platform and curriculum, plus training, was offered up for free, and has been adopted by almost 400 schools around the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Summit Learning is different from single-subject systems like ALEKS. It's been advertised more like a whole-school personalized learning transformation in a box: from mentoring sessions with teachers to \"playlists\" of lessons in every subject. The company says that participating schools are reporting academic gains for students who start out behind, as well as \"greater student engagement, increased attendance, better behavior.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But not everyone loves the program. It's drawn teacher, parent and student protests in \u003ca href=\"https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-12-20-connecticut-school-district-suspends-use-of-summit-learning-platform\">Cheshire, CT\u003c/a>; \u003ca href=\"https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2017/03/06/facebook-program-school-causes-controversy/97711414/\">Boone County, KY\u003c/a>; \u003ca href=\"https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/remove-the-summit-personalized-learning-program\">Fairview Park City\u003c/a> in Ohio; \u003ca href=\"https://www.indianagazette.com/news/directors-vote-to-scale-back-summit-learning-program/article_b3bc086a-e4d1-11e7-8c95-57ffb928e16e.html\">Indiana Area School District\u003c/a> in Indiana, PA; \u003ca href=\"http://www.clearwatertribune.com/news/top_stories/summit-learning-under-fire-gains-attention-and-lots-of-criticism/article_da14721a-74b2-11e8-8a35-33a44ea23f1d.html\">Clearwater County, ID\u003c/a>, and recently in \u003ca href=\"https://nypost.com/2018/11/10/brooklyn-students-hold-walkout-in-protest-of-facebook-designed-online-program/amp/?fbclid=IwAR2ATi_LGGl4QS1Y9OS1VaPMbbttTdwO9hCJRh6rkDekZbswldqfdzHtBn0&__twitter_impression=true\">New York City\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some have privacy concerns about students' personal data reportedly being shared with Microsoft, Amazon and other companies. Some object to the quality of the curriculum and supplementary materials. Some say students are getting distracted by working on the laptop or merely Googling for answers to quizzes. Some just don't want to learn on their own at their own pace.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's annoying to just sit there staring at one screen for so long,\" Mitchel Storman, a ninth grader at the Secondary School for Journalism in Brooklyn, told the\u003ca href=\"%20the%20Secondary%20School%20for%20Journalism%20in%20Park%20Slope\">\u003cem> New York Post\u003c/em> \u003c/a>at a student walkout earlier this month. \"You have to teach yourself.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Summit shared with NPR a letter from Andrew Goldin, the Chief Program Officer of Summit Learning, to the principal of the Secondary School for Journalism, Livingston Hilaire. Goldin stated that the school lacked enough laptops, Internet bandwidth, and teacher training to successfully implement the program, and recommended that they suspend it immediately for 11th and 12th graders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Backlash to the backlash\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Is personalized learning, aided by computers, destined to be just another ed reform flash-in-the-pan? Will it have a narrow impact in just a few subjects? Or will it be transformative, and is that a good thing?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the Gates Foundation experience suggests, the future of personalized learning may hinge on what kinds of supports are offered teachers. The experience of the state of Maine is instructive here too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2012, Maine became the first state to adopt what's called a \"proficiency-based diploma.\" The idea behind it was that instead of needing to pass a certain set of classes to graduate, students in Maine now had to show they were \"proficient\" in certain skills and subjects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To comply with the new law, many districts adopted \"proficiency-based learning.\" The new system shared elements of personalized learning, like students being allowed to re-do assignments and work at their own pace. Yet schools received little funding or guidance on how to implement these changes, leaving some teachers lost and overwhelmed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heather Finn, a veteran math teacher at a high school in central Maine, told NPRit was \"impossible ... so, so frustrating.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It works really well, like, the first month,\" Finn says. Then, students started to progress at different speeds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"So I have the kids who are on pace, and I have the kids who are perpetually, always behind. And it got to the point where I had 20 kids in 20 spots.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This past April, Maine lawmakers heard complaints from parents and teachers, as well as the statewide teachers union. Three months later, Gov. Paul LePage \u003ca href=\"https://www.pressherald.com/2018/07/20/bill-to-roll-back-proficiency-based-diplomas-becomes-law/\">signed a bill \u003c/a>to make \"proficiency-based diplomas\" optional. Some districts have already declared that they're leaving the new system behind and will return to a more traditional education style.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some districts, though, like Kennebec Intra-District Schools in Maine, aren't going back. Kaylee Bodge, a fourth-grader at Marcia Buker Elementary School, says the appeal is simple. \"We get to make choices instead of the teacher choosing. If you like something and you want to do that first, you get to do that first.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=The+Future+Of+Learning%3F+Well%2C+It%27s+Personal&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Five Ways to Sustain School Change Through Pushback, Struggle and Fatigue",
"title": "Five Ways to Sustain School Change Through Pushback, Struggle and Fatigue",
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"content": "\u003cp>Teaching through projects, interrogating the value of grades, attempting to make learning more meaningful and connected to young people’s lives and interests, thoughtful ways of using technology to amplify and share student work. These are just some of the ways teaching and learning are changing. But moving to these kinds of learning environments is a big shift for many teachers, schools, and districts; it’s hard to sustain change once the shiny newness wears off. That’s when people tend to slip back into \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2017/06/23/why-unlearning-old-habits-is-an-essential-step-for-innovation/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">old habits\u003c/a>, relying on what they know best. The transformation requires a leader who understands how to manage the change process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Sustained modes of change can be incredibly meaningful and yield for your community in huge ways, but you have to be incredibly intentional in order to make space for these things to happen,” said \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/dlaufenberg\">Diana Laufenberg\u003c/a> at an EduCon 2018 session about how to lead through change. Laufenberg is the executive director of \u003ca href=\"https://www.inquiryschools.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Inquiry Schools\u003c/a>, a nonprofit working with schools around the country to make these shifts. She has come to the conclusion that there are five pillars to sustaining change: permission, support, community engagement, accountability and staying the course.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>PERMISSION\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many educators have become accustomed to working in a suffocating system that doesn’t allow room for their professional judgment or creativity. Leaders have to give teachers permission to try new things in their classrooms in order to gain educator support for the changes. It’s easy to say “give them permission to fail,” but much harder to be clear about exactly what that means in a teacher’s daily life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Most of these adults have been successful,” Laufenberg said, “so then when you tell them to try things they’re bad at or not successful at, you need to tell them it’s OK, and give them a structure to get better.” She suggests giving teachers specific examples.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">'There needs to be a real timeline of three to five years, where you understand you are on a path of change, and you have to hold the line.'\u003ccite>Diana Laufenberg, Executive Director of Inquiry Schools\u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>The principal of Enosburg Falls High School in Vermont, Erik Remmers, gave several of his teachers permission to experiment with getting rid of grades in their class. Teachers wanted to do a competency-based assessment model in the hopes it would train students to focus on learning instead of grades. The teachers tested the approach by waiting until the end of the first quarter to give grades, updating students on their progress through conferences instead. Remmers made sure the two teachers clearly communicated the goals and expectations to students and parents, but then he took the heat when parents felt uncertain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I like to frame it as permission to learn,” said \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MrChase\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Zac Chase\u003c/a>, a Language Arts coordinator for St. Vrain Valley Schools who co-presented with Laufenberg. “We assume that people are really good at learning, but learning is really hard, especially for teachers because we’re used to making other people do it.” And learning how to teach in new ways often requires teachers to \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2017/01/03/how-one-teacher-let-go-of-control-to-focus-on-student-centered-approaches/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">feel uncomfortable and disoriented\u003c/a> at times.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Often a leader thinks they are giving teachers permission to try, fail and learn, but teachers don’t trust that the permission won’t eventually be revoked. Laufenberg suggests that leaders and teachers forecast together how the experiment or change might play out, and what permission will be needed down the road. Naming those things early, and getting verbal agreement from a leader, can free that teacher up to confidently experiment.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nSUPPORT\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers have a lot going on, and while it’s tempting to think that setting them lose to try to fail will transform every classroom, in reality there are always bumps along the way. \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2017/10/30/when-coaching-teachers-has-curiosity-as-its-primary-goal/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Teachers need support\u003c/a> through those moments, and once again, it helps to forecast what support might be needed, confirm it is available at the start, and make sure teachers know how to ask for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In San Marcos, California, the district is pushing teachers to use technology to let kids create and showcase their work with a broader audience. There’s also a lot of \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2017/03/06/how-schools-can-face-the-bad-habits-that-inhibit-meaningful-changes/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">pushback and fear from educators\u003c/a>. It’s \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/adinasullivan\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Adina Sullivan\u003c/a>’s job to support their skill building, highlight teacher successes, and support teachers to go deeper after an initial attempt. Sullivan says it helps when teachers are willing to acknowledge their fears or concerns so she can address them. She bases her support on a strengths-based approach, pointing out brave teacher attempts and successes as often as possible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The goal is to build the capacity of the teachers and leaders in the system gradually over time. That means the level of support should gradually diminish; if the changes don’t continue without the highest levels of support, something is wrong. Another way to offer support is by connecting teachers doing similar things so they can learn from one another. Whatever the support, it’s unrealistic to ask teachers or systems to change without it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Big school changes don’t just affect the educators in the building, so bringing students and parents into the conversation early is crucial. And as learning shifts to become more interdisciplinary, connected and real-world focused, there may also be \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/06/16/interests-to-internships-when-students-take-the-lead-in-learning/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">community partners who can help support the vision\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">How do we help create the “Ideal Graduate”? We have to become teachers who foster those traits in our Students... \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/learningmatters?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#learningmatters\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/shouttheawesomeHCS?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#shouttheawesomeHCS\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/DFlowTeaches?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@DFlowTeaches\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/PDamianeas?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@PDamianeas\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/nickieducate?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@nickieducate\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://t.co/DkSUkgZiRO\">pic.twitter.com/DkSUkgZiRO\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>— Melissa Thomas (@melissa13thomas) \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/melissa13thomas/status/968217117114945536?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 26, 2018\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>“I walk into meetings assuming that everyone is on my side, whether they know it or not,” Chase said. Assuming good intent and getting other people excited about the vision of change helps provide energy to teachers and administrators as they slog through work that can feel hard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The gradeless experiment at Enosburg Falls High School has since grown into a schoolwide effort to abandon all traditional grades. It started five years ago when teachers began moving to standards-based grading. But the more they tried to focus on learning, the more grades got in the way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We tried to use different scales to change things up,” said Gabrielle Marquette, who taught junior English at the time and is now the district innovation coach. “And the reality is kids were focused on the grade and not the learning.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The whole staff decided to go to a \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/07/09/steps-to-help-schools-transform-to-competency-based-learning/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">competency-based model \u003c/a>with the incoming ninth-grade class, but knew it would be a big change for parents. Their engagement efforts started early and focused on personal, relationship-based strategies. For example, before the year started teachers invited incoming eighth-graders and their families to come to the school, eat pizza, and talk about what learning would look like.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They also introduced every ninth-grade parent to the online system measuring competency individually. Teachers volunteered to walk each parent through the online portal, explained what the visualizations meant, and answered questions with nearly a hundred families. “It was way more one-on-one conversations and really just trying to be personal about it,” Marquette said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shifting to the new grading system has been hard for everyone. The competencies aren’t pegged to grade level and each assignment might include only a few competencies, so it can be hard to tell how a student is progressing. Teachers who were excited about the change initially are struggling. But despite the challenges of upending the traditional school model, the community tends to trust those working at the school. The intense community engagement and transparency around the goals and reasons for the change have given the educators some breathing room to figure out how to make it work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>ACCOUNTABILITY\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This word is fraught with peril and has all sorts of connotations,” Laufenberg acknowledged. “But if you do something, and faculty has been through all kinds of initiative burn, and there’s no wraparound to make sure it’s happening in a productive way, there’s a good chunk of faculty who will sit and wait it out until that next initiative comes through.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to gaining community support, giving teachers permission to try new things and supporting them as they experiment, leaders have to check in to make sure the changes are happening. Laufenberg worked for a district where all the elements of support were in place and the principal instructed teachers to leave their doors open so he could pop in and make sure things were moving forward. In rebellion, the teachers turned the lights off and taught in the dark.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We had to have this massive intervention,” Laufenberg said. “We gave you all these things, you said you got it, we gave you the permission, but no one was doing it.” Especially when teachers are used to a new initiative every year, it’s important that leadership send a consistent message and ensure it is happening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Henry County Schools in Georgia is a big district spanning 50 schools in urban, suburban and rural areas. For the past four years, they’ve been steadily shifting toward a more \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/02/02/what-do-we-really-mean-when-we-say-personalized-learning/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“personalized” approach to learning\u003c/a>. Each year eight or nine schools in the district go through a \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/10/24/why-a-schools-master-schedule-is-a-powerful-enabler-of-change/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">redesign process\u003c/a>, so some schools haven’t started the change while others are several years down the road. It’s an unwieldy change process, but \u003ca href=\"https://schoolwires.henry.k12.ga.us/site/Default.aspx?PageID=60175\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">one with a clear vision\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For us the full answer is kids being good decision-makers about what they learn and how they learn,” said \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/karennole?lang=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Karen Perry\u003c/a>, the district’s coordinator of personalized learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp2dGeQwyAU?rel=0&w=640&h=360]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To keep schools accountable to the redesign plans they set forth, Perry sends teams of people representing different roles in the district to evaluate how well schools are implementing and give feedback. The school itself will have done some self-evaluation and compiled a portfolio of evidence to show how they are carrying out their vision. The district also provides a school change rubric that helps provide consistency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perry says the model is based on a long-standing district practice of “loose and tight.” Schools have always had a lot of autonomy in Henry County, and they still do, as long as they are moving toward personalized learning. For example, the district says schools must have some kind of \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/01/12/how-schools-build-a-positive-culture-through-advisory/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">advisory\u003c/a>, but the school decides how it looks, where it fits in the schedule and what curriculum it follows. The district says \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/07/10/how-writing-down-specific-goals-can-empower-struggling-students/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">kids need to be setting goals\u003c/a>, but the school decides what that looks like in practice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The outside team highlight bright spots at the school and areas of growth, based on the school’s own plan and the district rubric. “Almost always those things come back in ways that schools already knew,” Perry said. But the advantage of having an outside group of educators present is that they may have some new ideas about how to solve the issue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perry says often the district has supportive resources that she can send to the school. For example, if a school’s teachers are struggling to make \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2018/02/22/the-six-must-have-elements-of-high-quality-project-based-learning/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">projects deep and rigorous, \u003c/a>she can send them a project-based learning coach, or recommend teachers visit another school in the district that has already confronted that problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">I had the opportunity to sit in on an amazing K class \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MCE_HCS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@MCE_HCS\u003c/a>! It is clear that these Ss are offered rigorous opportunities for learning and they actively monitor their progress! \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/ensuringsuccess?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#ensuringsuccess\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/shouttheawesomeHCS?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#shouttheawesomeHCS\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/mcemustang?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@mcemustang\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/DFlowTeaches?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@DFlowTeaches\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/JulezRulez71?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@JulezRulez71\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/McCraryJennifer?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@McCraryJennifer\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://t.co/8n9Yjdl8QT\">pic.twitter.com/8n9Yjdl8QT\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>— Melissa Thomas (@melissa13thomas) \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/melissa13thomas/status/958509670649466884?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">January 31, 2018\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>“It’s this balance of mostly support, but some accountability as well. You’ve got to do what you said you were going to do,” Perry said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This project has also created more upward accountability. For example, as the schools began to make changes, their principals made it clear they needed the ability to flexibly staff their schools. And, they want more \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2017/02/15/can-micro-credentials-create-meaningful-professional-development-for-teachers/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">individualized professional development\u003c/a> keyed toward their specific redesign plans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Principals have been asking for this school redesign rubric for a long time,” Perry said. The district created it in response to principal feedback. “What they want is an outside point of view because they’re down in it all the time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The district has also recognized that in order to sustain this change, they need leaders excited about it. The \u003ca href=\"https://schoolwires.henry.k12.ga.us/Page/46561\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">GOLD Academy\u003c/a> is a district leadership program centered on what it means to lead change. District professionals who want to improve or assistant principals who want to become principals can enroll, challenge their beliefs, think with a systems lens, and ultimately become the “bench” that will hop into action when leadership positions open up. Kerry hopes this emphasis on leadership will help sustain the changes they’ve made.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>STAYING THE COURSE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There needs to be a real timeline of three to five years, where you understand you are on a path of change, and you have to hold the line,” Laufenberg said. “You can tweak, but the big idea, you’ve got to give it some time to take hold.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She says when leaders don’t do this the staff stops trusting them. She knows that this kind of \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2017/10/22/how-school-leaders-can-attend-to-the-emotional-side-of-change/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">change work is hard\u003c/a> and that at times it will feel easier to start over with something else, but she also believes that when change can be sustained it’s incredibly rewarding work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After four years in Henry County, Perry is already seeing the effects of staying the course. Despite the inevitable challenges, schools that are just entering the redesign phase are still enthusiastic about the process and the goals. Even better, “the quality of their conversation is so much better than our first cohort because we’re so much farther down the road,” Perry said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schools that have gone through the process later are learning from those that came before and they’re seeing success. And it’s easier for teachers to buy into the vision when they can see a class that looks just like theirs down the road, already succeeding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The district needs to be consistent in the message that this is what we’re doing in Henry County schools,” Perry said. And despite the fact that her district is on its third superintendent since the project began, that message remains loud and clear. In fact, the new superintendent came to the district because she wanted to be part of the innovation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Laufenberg cautions change leaders to attend to all five of these areas to successfully make change. “This is a constant, persistent conversation you have to have in your system when you talk about changing something,” she said. “It’s all these things in concert with each other and constant re-evaluation of the full picture.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She suggests scheduling ways to check in with people in various roles across the district on each of these pillars to make sure the change effort stays on track. It’s possible to continue pushing forward without one of these elements in place, but it’s a lot harder.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Sustaining transformative change to complicated school systems is hard work, requiring leaders to attend to five pillars: permission, support, community engagement, accountability and staying the course.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Teaching through projects, interrogating the value of grades, attempting to make learning more meaningful and connected to young people’s lives and interests, thoughtful ways of using technology to amplify and share student work. These are just some of the ways teaching and learning are changing. But moving to these kinds of learning environments is a big shift for many teachers, schools, and districts; it’s hard to sustain change once the shiny newness wears off. That’s when people tend to slip back into \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2017/06/23/why-unlearning-old-habits-is-an-essential-step-for-innovation/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">old habits\u003c/a>, relying on what they know best. The transformation requires a leader who understands how to manage the change process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Sustained modes of change can be incredibly meaningful and yield for your community in huge ways, but you have to be incredibly intentional in order to make space for these things to happen,” said \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/dlaufenberg\">Diana Laufenberg\u003c/a> at an EduCon 2018 session about how to lead through change. Laufenberg is the executive director of \u003ca href=\"https://www.inquiryschools.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Inquiry Schools\u003c/a>, a nonprofit working with schools around the country to make these shifts. She has come to the conclusion that there are five pillars to sustaining change: permission, support, community engagement, accountability and staying the course.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>PERMISSION\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many educators have become accustomed to working in a suffocating system that doesn’t allow room for their professional judgment or creativity. Leaders have to give teachers permission to try new things in their classrooms in order to gain educator support for the changes. It’s easy to say “give them permission to fail,” but much harder to be clear about exactly what that means in a teacher’s daily life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Most of these adults have been successful,” Laufenberg said, “so then when you tell them to try things they’re bad at or not successful at, you need to tell them it’s OK, and give them a structure to get better.” She suggests giving teachers specific examples.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">'There needs to be a real timeline of three to five years, where you understand you are on a path of change, and you have to hold the line.'\u003ccite>Diana Laufenberg, Executive Director of Inquiry Schools\u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>The principal of Enosburg Falls High School in Vermont, Erik Remmers, gave several of his teachers permission to experiment with getting rid of grades in their class. Teachers wanted to do a competency-based assessment model in the hopes it would train students to focus on learning instead of grades. The teachers tested the approach by waiting until the end of the first quarter to give grades, updating students on their progress through conferences instead. Remmers made sure the two teachers clearly communicated the goals and expectations to students and parents, but then he took the heat when parents felt uncertain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I like to frame it as permission to learn,” said \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MrChase\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Zac Chase\u003c/a>, a Language Arts coordinator for St. Vrain Valley Schools who co-presented with Laufenberg. “We assume that people are really good at learning, but learning is really hard, especially for teachers because we’re used to making other people do it.” And learning how to teach in new ways often requires teachers to \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2017/01/03/how-one-teacher-let-go-of-control-to-focus-on-student-centered-approaches/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">feel uncomfortable and disoriented\u003c/a> at times.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Often a leader thinks they are giving teachers permission to try, fail and learn, but teachers don’t trust that the permission won’t eventually be revoked. Laufenberg suggests that leaders and teachers forecast together how the experiment or change might play out, and what permission will be needed down the road. Naming those things early, and getting verbal agreement from a leader, can free that teacher up to confidently experiment.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nSUPPORT\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers have a lot going on, and while it’s tempting to think that setting them lose to try to fail will transform every classroom, in reality there are always bumps along the way. \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2017/10/30/when-coaching-teachers-has-curiosity-as-its-primary-goal/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Teachers need support\u003c/a> through those moments, and once again, it helps to forecast what support might be needed, confirm it is available at the start, and make sure teachers know how to ask for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In San Marcos, California, the district is pushing teachers to use technology to let kids create and showcase their work with a broader audience. There’s also a lot of \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2017/03/06/how-schools-can-face-the-bad-habits-that-inhibit-meaningful-changes/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">pushback and fear from educators\u003c/a>. It’s \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/adinasullivan\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Adina Sullivan\u003c/a>’s job to support their skill building, highlight teacher successes, and support teachers to go deeper after an initial attempt. Sullivan says it helps when teachers are willing to acknowledge their fears or concerns so she can address them. She bases her support on a strengths-based approach, pointing out brave teacher attempts and successes as often as possible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The goal is to build the capacity of the teachers and leaders in the system gradually over time. That means the level of support should gradually diminish; if the changes don’t continue without the highest levels of support, something is wrong. Another way to offer support is by connecting teachers doing similar things so they can learn from one another. Whatever the support, it’s unrealistic to ask teachers or systems to change without it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Big school changes don’t just affect the educators in the building, so bringing students and parents into the conversation early is crucial. And as learning shifts to become more interdisciplinary, connected and real-world focused, there may also be \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/06/16/interests-to-internships-when-students-take-the-lead-in-learning/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">community partners who can help support the vision\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">How do we help create the “Ideal Graduate”? We have to become teachers who foster those traits in our Students... \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/learningmatters?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#learningmatters\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/shouttheawesomeHCS?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#shouttheawesomeHCS\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/DFlowTeaches?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@DFlowTeaches\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/PDamianeas?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@PDamianeas\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/nickieducate?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@nickieducate\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://t.co/DkSUkgZiRO\">pic.twitter.com/DkSUkgZiRO\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>— Melissa Thomas (@melissa13thomas) \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/melissa13thomas/status/968217117114945536?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 26, 2018\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>“I walk into meetings assuming that everyone is on my side, whether they know it or not,” Chase said. Assuming good intent and getting other people excited about the vision of change helps provide energy to teachers and administrators as they slog through work that can feel hard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The gradeless experiment at Enosburg Falls High School has since grown into a schoolwide effort to abandon all traditional grades. It started five years ago when teachers began moving to standards-based grading. But the more they tried to focus on learning, the more grades got in the way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We tried to use different scales to change things up,” said Gabrielle Marquette, who taught junior English at the time and is now the district innovation coach. “And the reality is kids were focused on the grade and not the learning.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The whole staff decided to go to a \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/07/09/steps-to-help-schools-transform-to-competency-based-learning/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">competency-based model \u003c/a>with the incoming ninth-grade class, but knew it would be a big change for parents. Their engagement efforts started early and focused on personal, relationship-based strategies. For example, before the year started teachers invited incoming eighth-graders and their families to come to the school, eat pizza, and talk about what learning would look like.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They also introduced every ninth-grade parent to the online system measuring competency individually. Teachers volunteered to walk each parent through the online portal, explained what the visualizations meant, and answered questions with nearly a hundred families. “It was way more one-on-one conversations and really just trying to be personal about it,” Marquette said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shifting to the new grading system has been hard for everyone. The competencies aren’t pegged to grade level and each assignment might include only a few competencies, so it can be hard to tell how a student is progressing. Teachers who were excited about the change initially are struggling. But despite the challenges of upending the traditional school model, the community tends to trust those working at the school. The intense community engagement and transparency around the goals and reasons for the change have given the educators some breathing room to figure out how to make it work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>ACCOUNTABILITY\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This word is fraught with peril and has all sorts of connotations,” Laufenberg acknowledged. “But if you do something, and faculty has been through all kinds of initiative burn, and there’s no wraparound to make sure it’s happening in a productive way, there’s a good chunk of faculty who will sit and wait it out until that next initiative comes through.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to gaining community support, giving teachers permission to try new things and supporting them as they experiment, leaders have to check in to make sure the changes are happening. Laufenberg worked for a district where all the elements of support were in place and the principal instructed teachers to leave their doors open so he could pop in and make sure things were moving forward. In rebellion, the teachers turned the lights off and taught in the dark.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We had to have this massive intervention,” Laufenberg said. “We gave you all these things, you said you got it, we gave you the permission, but no one was doing it.” Especially when teachers are used to a new initiative every year, it’s important that leadership send a consistent message and ensure it is happening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Henry County Schools in Georgia is a big district spanning 50 schools in urban, suburban and rural areas. For the past four years, they’ve been steadily shifting toward a more \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/02/02/what-do-we-really-mean-when-we-say-personalized-learning/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“personalized” approach to learning\u003c/a>. Each year eight or nine schools in the district go through a \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/10/24/why-a-schools-master-schedule-is-a-powerful-enabler-of-change/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">redesign process\u003c/a>, so some schools haven’t started the change while others are several years down the road. It’s an unwieldy change process, but \u003ca href=\"https://schoolwires.henry.k12.ga.us/site/Default.aspx?PageID=60175\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">one with a clear vision\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For us the full answer is kids being good decision-makers about what they learn and how they learn,” said \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/karennole?lang=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Karen Perry\u003c/a>, the district’s coordinator of personalized learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/Cp2dGeQwyAU?rel=0'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/Cp2dGeQwyAU?rel=0'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To keep schools accountable to the redesign plans they set forth, Perry sends teams of people representing different roles in the district to evaluate how well schools are implementing and give feedback. The school itself will have done some self-evaluation and compiled a portfolio of evidence to show how they are carrying out their vision. The district also provides a school change rubric that helps provide consistency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perry says the model is based on a long-standing district practice of “loose and tight.” Schools have always had a lot of autonomy in Henry County, and they still do, as long as they are moving toward personalized learning. For example, the district says schools must have some kind of \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/01/12/how-schools-build-a-positive-culture-through-advisory/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">advisory\u003c/a>, but the school decides how it looks, where it fits in the schedule and what curriculum it follows. The district says \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/07/10/how-writing-down-specific-goals-can-empower-struggling-students/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">kids need to be setting goals\u003c/a>, but the school decides what that looks like in practice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The outside team highlight bright spots at the school and areas of growth, based on the school’s own plan and the district rubric. “Almost always those things come back in ways that schools already knew,” Perry said. But the advantage of having an outside group of educators present is that they may have some new ideas about how to solve the issue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perry says often the district has supportive resources that she can send to the school. For example, if a school’s teachers are struggling to make \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2018/02/22/the-six-must-have-elements-of-high-quality-project-based-learning/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">projects deep and rigorous, \u003c/a>she can send them a project-based learning coach, or recommend teachers visit another school in the district that has already confronted that problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">I had the opportunity to sit in on an amazing K class \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MCE_HCS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@MCE_HCS\u003c/a>! It is clear that these Ss are offered rigorous opportunities for learning and they actively monitor their progress! \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/ensuringsuccess?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#ensuringsuccess\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/shouttheawesomeHCS?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#shouttheawesomeHCS\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/mcemustang?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@mcemustang\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/DFlowTeaches?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@DFlowTeaches\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/JulezRulez71?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@JulezRulez71\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/McCraryJennifer?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@McCraryJennifer\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://t.co/8n9Yjdl8QT\">pic.twitter.com/8n9Yjdl8QT\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>— Melissa Thomas (@melissa13thomas) \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/melissa13thomas/status/958509670649466884?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">January 31, 2018\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>“It’s this balance of mostly support, but some accountability as well. You’ve got to do what you said you were going to do,” Perry said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This project has also created more upward accountability. For example, as the schools began to make changes, their principals made it clear they needed the ability to flexibly staff their schools. And, they want more \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2017/02/15/can-micro-credentials-create-meaningful-professional-development-for-teachers/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">individualized professional development\u003c/a> keyed toward their specific redesign plans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Principals have been asking for this school redesign rubric for a long time,” Perry said. The district created it in response to principal feedback. “What they want is an outside point of view because they’re down in it all the time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The district has also recognized that in order to sustain this change, they need leaders excited about it. The \u003ca href=\"https://schoolwires.henry.k12.ga.us/Page/46561\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">GOLD Academy\u003c/a> is a district leadership program centered on what it means to lead change. District professionals who want to improve or assistant principals who want to become principals can enroll, challenge their beliefs, think with a systems lens, and ultimately become the “bench” that will hop into action when leadership positions open up. Kerry hopes this emphasis on leadership will help sustain the changes they’ve made.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>STAYING THE COURSE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There needs to be a real timeline of three to five years, where you understand you are on a path of change, and you have to hold the line,” Laufenberg said. “You can tweak, but the big idea, you’ve got to give it some time to take hold.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She says when leaders don’t do this the staff stops trusting them. She knows that this kind of \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2017/10/22/how-school-leaders-can-attend-to-the-emotional-side-of-change/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">change work is hard\u003c/a> and that at times it will feel easier to start over with something else, but she also believes that when change can be sustained it’s incredibly rewarding work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After four years in Henry County, Perry is already seeing the effects of staying the course. Despite the inevitable challenges, schools that are just entering the redesign phase are still enthusiastic about the process and the goals. Even better, “the quality of their conversation is so much better than our first cohort because we’re so much farther down the road,” Perry said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schools that have gone through the process later are learning from those that came before and they’re seeing success. And it’s easier for teachers to buy into the vision when they can see a class that looks just like theirs down the road, already succeeding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The district needs to be consistent in the message that this is what we’re doing in Henry County schools,” Perry said. And despite the fact that her district is on its third superintendent since the project began, that message remains loud and clear. In fact, the new superintendent came to the district because she wanted to be part of the innovation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Laufenberg cautions change leaders to attend to all five of these areas to successfully make change. “This is a constant, persistent conversation you have to have in your system when you talk about changing something,” she said. “It’s all these things in concert with each other and constant re-evaluation of the full picture.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She suggests scheduling ways to check in with people in various roles across the district on each of these pillars to make sure the change effort stays on track. It’s possible to continue pushing forward without one of these elements in place, but it’s a lot harder.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Multiage classrooms are not common in public elementary schools, but when they exist they aren't a huge surprise. Montessori schools have celebrated the benefits of mixed age groups for decades, but the practice hasn't often \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/09/12/where-are-all-the-public-montessori-high-schools/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">spread to high school\u003c/a>. But several schools are developing a high school experience that \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/06/16/going-all-in-how-to-make-competency-based-learning-work/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">isn't tied to grade level\u003c/a>. Some of the positives include extra time for students who enter high school behind to catch up, stronger relationships with teachers who have students for two years, and new mentoring and collaboration roles for the older students in a group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But multiage classrooms can also be difficult to manage and require buy-in from teaching staff. In his \u003ca href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/05/inside-a-multiage-classroom/525624/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">article\u003c/a> for The Atlantic Stuart Miller writes:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>For multiage classrooms to work, schools need to set their curriculums and teaching schedules differently. Curtin and Hill will teach one curriculum to this year’s crop of ninth- and 10th-graders. Next year they will teach a different curriculum to a new set of ninth-graders merging with the rising 10th-graders they had the previous year. The following year they’ll return to the first curriculum, so that each group gets both years’ worth of material. Students who return for extra time have thus seen the material before and ideally have a better chance to grasp the concepts the second time around. (Larsen adds that for poor children, whose schooling is often plagued by change, either in their home lives or by teacher turnover, this looping and being around older kids offers a vital stabilizing effect.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sumner allows that the age-segregated world does intrude in the form of standardized tests—his students typically take the state test in eighth and 10th grade and the SAT or ACT in 11th grade, no matter where they are within the school’s three divisions.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>This model could potentially make it easier for teachers to meet each student at his or her level, but for it to be most effective it also requires a smaller student load than what many high school teachers currently have. There also isn't a lot of research yet to support the model empirically, although its proponents say it adds flexibility for both under and overachieving students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/05/inside-a-multiage-classroom/525624/\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Multiage classrooms are not common in public elementary schools, but when they exist they aren't a huge surprise. Montessori schools have celebrated the benefits of mixed age groups for decades, but the practice hasn't often \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/09/12/where-are-all-the-public-montessori-high-schools/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">spread to high school\u003c/a>. But several schools are developing a high school experience that \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/06/16/going-all-in-how-to-make-competency-based-learning-work/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">isn't tied to grade level\u003c/a>. Some of the positives include extra time for students who enter high school behind to catch up, stronger relationships with teachers who have students for two years, and new mentoring and collaboration roles for the older students in a group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But multiage classrooms can also be difficult to manage and require buy-in from teaching staff. In his \u003ca href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/05/inside-a-multiage-classroom/525624/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">article\u003c/a> for The Atlantic Stuart Miller writes:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>For multiage classrooms to work, schools need to set their curriculums and teaching schedules differently. Curtin and Hill will teach one curriculum to this year’s crop of ninth- and 10th-graders. Next year they will teach a different curriculum to a new set of ninth-graders merging with the rising 10th-graders they had the previous year. The following year they’ll return to the first curriculum, so that each group gets both years’ worth of material. Students who return for extra time have thus seen the material before and ideally have a better chance to grasp the concepts the second time around. (Larsen adds that for poor children, whose schooling is often plagued by change, either in their home lives or by teacher turnover, this looping and being around older kids offers a vital stabilizing effect.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sumner allows that the age-segregated world does intrude in the form of standardized tests—his students typically take the state test in eighth and 10th grade and the SAT or ACT in 11th grade, no matter where they are within the school’s three divisions.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>This model could potentially make it easier for teachers to meet each student at his or her level, but for it to be most effective it also requires a smaller student load than what many high school teachers currently have. There also isn't a lot of research yet to support the model empirically, although its proponents say it adds flexibility for both under and overachieving students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/05/inside-a-multiage-classroom/525624/\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>As the cost of college tuition rises and students emerge with ever more debt, the interest in alternative paths to higher education has increased. The \u003ca href=\"http://www.ed.gov/blog/2015/07/innovation-and-quality-in-higher-education/\" target=\"_blank\">Department of Education is supportive\u003c/a> of competency-based higher education models that allow students to demonstrate their proficiency in the areas necessary for their degree without requiring a fixed number of courses or credits. Instead, students move through the material at their own pace, from home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Advocates for competency-based university degrees say the model opens up higher education to more people with a lower price tag and more flexibility. While that could be true for the motivated, self-directed learner who thrives learning on her own, other research shows that learning is a profoundly social process. What is lost when students are learning from home, at their own pace, even if it is one-on-one with a professor?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In \u003ca href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/a-college-without-classes/400115/\" target=\"_blank\">her Atlantic article\u003c/a> Alana Semuels writes:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Still, it can be difficult for students to push themselves through the curriculum without deadlines or lectures. In the past year, for instance, Kippnick’s father has had heart surgery, her family has moved back to Michigan, they bought a house and started to renovate it. It’s been nearly impossible to find time to study, but that’s where her mentor comes in, offering sympathy while still urging her to keep working. WGU students must complete a minimum number of courses each term to stay in good academic standing, but if they have family issues, they can take a term break and resume their studies later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Skipping the classroom has its advantages. Kippnick says that when she went to community college in Michigan, many of her fellow students weren’t focused and would waste class time by goofing off or by not preparing ahead of time. Now, the only person that slows Kippnick down is herself. She says that prepares her for being disciplined in the working world, too.\"\u003cbr>\nhttp://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/a-college-without-classes/400115/\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>As the cost of college tuition rises and students emerge with ever more debt, the interest in alternative paths to higher education has increased. The \u003ca href=\"http://www.ed.gov/blog/2015/07/innovation-and-quality-in-higher-education/\" target=\"_blank\">Department of Education is supportive\u003c/a> of competency-based higher education models that allow students to demonstrate their proficiency in the areas necessary for their degree without requiring a fixed number of courses or credits. Instead, students move through the material at their own pace, from home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Advocates for competency-based university degrees say the model opens up higher education to more people with a lower price tag and more flexibility. While that could be true for the motivated, self-directed learner who thrives learning on her own, other research shows that learning is a profoundly social process. What is lost when students are learning from home, at their own pace, even if it is one-on-one with a professor?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In \u003ca href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/a-college-without-classes/400115/\" target=\"_blank\">her Atlantic article\u003c/a> Alana Semuels writes:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Still, it can be difficult for students to push themselves through the curriculum without deadlines or lectures. In the past year, for instance, Kippnick’s father has had heart surgery, her family has moved back to Michigan, they bought a house and started to renovate it. It’s been nearly impossible to find time to study, but that’s where her mentor comes in, offering sympathy while still urging her to keep working. WGU students must complete a minimum number of courses each term to stay in good academic standing, but if they have family issues, they can take a term break and resume their studies later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Skipping the classroom has its advantages. Kippnick says that when she went to community college in Michigan, many of her fellow students weren’t focused and would waste class time by goofing off or by not preparing ahead of time. Now, the only person that slows Kippnick down is herself. She says that prepares her for being disciplined in the working world, too.\"\u003cbr>\nhttp://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/a-college-without-classes/400115/\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>It’s no longer a given that if a child spends twelve years in school, he or she will learn enough to succeed in higher education or a career. To address this issue, some educators are taking bold measures to help students. Traditionally, classes move forward, covering the curriculum according to schedule. Students are taught the same materials at the same pace. If a student fails to learn a skill, he or she accepts that result and moves on to the next topic with the rest of the class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Competency-based learning, on the other hand, insists on mastery of subjects and provides students the time to learn; the students are not marched past failure. There are challenges to this \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/tag/competency-based-education/\">methodology\u003c/a> as well, but it is slowly gaining acceptance and has been around long enough to develop some best practices. School districts that have seen success with this model carefully laid the groundwork for this fundamental change away from a traditional model of education. They also designed the infrastructure that supports it and learned some big lessons during implementation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Competency-based learning, often called mastery-learning, at its core involves five elements:\u003c/p>\n\u003col>\n\u003cli>Students advance when they master the content and skills, not because they squeaked by with a C or a D grade.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Transparency about where students stand empowers them and enables educators to better tailor instruction to their individual needs.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Assessment is a continual part of the learning cycle, not a final judgment at a time when a student has no hope of changing the outcome.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Educators offer timely support, often daily, on any part of the required material.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Students must be able to demonstrate that they can transfer their knowledge to new contexts, applying skills to challenges they’ve never seen before. This often means developing life-long habits of learning.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ol>\n\u003cp>“It’s not just about pacing,” said Chris Sturgis, author of the report \u003ca href=\"http://www.competencyworks.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/iNCL_CWIssueBrief_Implementing_v5_web.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">“Implementing Competency Education in K-12 Systems: Insights from Local Leaders”\u003c/a> by CompetencyWorks. “It’s much more about flexibility of resources, time and effort to make sure students are successful.” Competency education is often conflated with flexible pacing because in both models students in the same classroom are working on different aspects of the curriculum. However, competency education requires a much bigger revisioning of the school system beyond the traditional paradigm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What we are talking about here is a complete restructure,” said Virgil Hammonds, who just wrapped up a stint as superintendent of RSU2 in Maine and previously led competency efforts in \u003ca href=\"http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2012/10/17/01competency.h06.html\" target=\"_blank\">Lindsay, California\u003c/a>. He likened the process to a home-remodel where the whole building is knocked down to its foundation and built anew.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>LAYING THE GROUNDWORK\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To undertake this kind of big project a district needs to take a \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/07/06/beyond-academics-what-a-holistic-approach-to-learning-could-look-like/\" target=\"_blank\">systems approach to teaching and learning\u003c/a>, gathering input from all the stakeholders, listening carefully, incorporating those ideas in real ways into the plan and developing a strong shared vision and district culture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"kYIcae4jvfSl6lM3ugvS6uYWsJyvpurL\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I have come to firmly believe that if this part isn’t done well then districts may have difficulty implementing with fidelity since the culture of the traditional system remains intact,” said Robert Crumley, superintendent of \u003ca href=\"http://www.edutopia.org/chugach-school-district-reform\" target=\"_blank\">Chugach School District\u003c/a> in Alaska.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It took Chugach almost three years to complete this ramping up phase. Crumley and his staff held dozens of community meetings, inviting parents, students, educators, business leaders and community members to share their input for a new vision of school that put students at the center. The district already had a lot of unflattering data telling them they needed to try something new or else fall behind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the initial input-gathering period, the superintendent and the school board made a public five-year commitment to making changes based on that input. “That public commitment was instrumental in staff having confidence that we were going to continue with this,” Crumley said. He’s well aware of “initiative fatigue” that many educators feel when new education fads come and go. But the public commitment helped gain their trust, as did the obvious incorporation of their ideas into the new plan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crumley also took the time to empower the staff in his district, focusing on retention, not finding new teachers that already fit the mold. To do this, Crumley worked on helping his staff have a growth mindset about their efforts and \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/03/03/when-school-leaders-empower-teachers-better-ideas-emerge/\" target=\"_blank\">empowered them\u003c/a> with three simple motivators:\u003c/p>\n\u003col>\n\u003cli>Engage in complex work with a sense of mastery.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Engage with other people.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Give them some autonomy over what they do and how and when to do it.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ol>\n\u003cp>“When you empower people you are actually giving up a little of your power and handing it to someone else,” Crumley said. “That can be a little scary for some people, but it generally garners greater results for the system in the long term.” Crumley even found that some of the loudest voices pushing back against the changes soon became his strongest allies. When they saw that their concerns were listened to and addressed, those vocal opponents who were often charismatic leaders in their school communities, saw their way toward the shared vision.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Often times their concerns were valid concerns that we needed to address and they helped us address them,” Crumley said. If a teacher felt so misaligned with the new system that they didn’t want to work there, the district helped them find work elsewhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We need to model the conditions of innovation and problem-solving as principals and district administrators,” Crumley said. That means not letting bureaucracy get in the way of innovation. It means creating the conditions where staff feel they are safe to experiment and tinker with their practice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>BUILD UP INFRASTRUCTURE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many districts trying to implement a competency education don’t spend the necessary time ramping up to this kind of sweeping reform, instead jumping right into designing the infrastructure as though it is a technical problem. But without the buy-in of the community, school board, staff and students, the reform effort is likely to flop. The infrastructure must be built on a strong foundation.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">“We need to model the conditions of innovation and problem-solving as principals and district administrators.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>When those shared values are in place it becomes imperative that the competencies students are expected to learn are completely transparent. “We’re no longer the teacher who is holding the secret of how to earn that top-level grade,” Hammonds said. “Instead we say, ‘here are the expectations for rigor and a clear scale for how to achieve it.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers need to work together to clearly define the scale for how students will achieve mastery and what qualities will be included. While all students are held accountable for the same high expectations and the same competencies, they will each show their mastery in different ways. Teachers have to be ready for that variance, embrace it, and know what they are looking for to maintain rigorous standards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>TRANSITIONING INTO COMPETENCY EDUCATION\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s no “right way” to transition into such a drastically different way of thinking about school because the unique factors of each district and community will play a big role. Asking the community what they want their graduates to look like is a good way to start. Preparing students for what the new system will be like and preparing them to take on more autonomy and agency is also crucial.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"alignleft long\">\n\u003ch3>Clarifying questions to help define pedagogical approach:\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>ž\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cem>What do we know about the different ways to motivate and engage students? ž\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cem>Where does student agency fit in learning?\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cem>What role do habits of learning play, and how can they be developed in students?\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cem>What does the research tell us about effective instructional practices?\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cem>What are the types of assessment, and what role do they play in achievement?\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cem>What types of learning experiences are needed to help students reach graduation goals?\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cem>Given your current student population, their academic needs, and their life and learning experiences, how might this inform your school design or pedagogical approach?\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cem>What challenges and educational needs can online and blended learning help you address?\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cem>How do parents and the community at large think about these questions?\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Clearly defining the competences and the indicators is one step. Designing rubrics that clearly link back to those competencies is another equally important step that often gets overlooked. In hindsight, Hammonds wishes his team had spent more time designing the assessment rubrics. “When assessment goes beyond the level of retrieval (the goal of this kind of system), it is extra important to define things like what reflection looks like,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://pittsfield-nh.com/sau/\" target=\"_blank\">Pittsfield School District\u003c/a> in New Hampshire had a slightly easier journey to competency than Alaska or Maine because the state passed a law requiring high schools to implement competency education by 2008. That law has been ignored or implemented with \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/06/16/going-all-in-how-to-make-competency-based-learning-work/\" target=\"_blank\">varying degrees of effectiveness\u003c/a> in different parts of the state, but it did help provide some support as schools began to define indicators of competencies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For two years Pittsfield educators did research, visited other schools and began identifying teacher leaders who would pilot ideas in their classrooms. Those teacher-leaders eventually put together “Do’s and Don’ts” for peers based on early experimentation. In the first year, the district devoted a lot of resources to writing the competencies, checking them against a rigor tool the state provided and training teachers, said Derek Hamilton, dean of operations for Pittsfield School District.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A panel of excited teachers who deeply understood competency education dug into the district’s current grading practices and policies, revising them to fit the competency model. They wanted to be sure teachers felt they could be consistent from class-to-class and grade-to-grade. Teachers got student feedback on whether the competencies were clear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the second year, the district presented the competencies they’d developed to the community. While parents had been clear about the general skills and dispositions they wanted students to graduate with, they hadn’t participated in the nitty-gritty competency writing and they needed to be brought up to speed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the third year, Pittsfield implemented the system throughout their 7-12th grade classes. It was bumpy at first, but Hamilton said when students led conferences with their parents and teachers, it all started to become clear. The parents could see how their child’s work connected to the rubric. This stage helped solidify support.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We understood that in order to make this transformation we needed to find time to do it,” Hamilton said. School starts late once a week so teachers can have professional development time that's crucial to working out the kinks in the new system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first several years gave teachers and administrators a lot to reflect on, and in the fourth year teachers saw the need to better support students moving ahead or behind pace. They also implemented a support block on Wednesdays entirely dedicated to one-on-one support. They recognized that if time were truly flexible for students, then educator resources needed to be available in the summer too. Teachers began holding office hours, for which the district paid them, to support students who were still working on competencies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These early adopters are continuously engaged in a process of reflection and fine-tuning to improve the education they are offering. Just as the competency education model acknowledges that learners are individuals with unique interests and learning needs, so too educators need space to figure out this new style of teaching. While the concept of only moving a student forward when they can clearly demonstrate mastery of content and skills sounds simple, it’s a big departure from the traditional model and requires a period of adjustment in a supportive environment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Read the full report, \u003ca href=\"http://www.competencyworks.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/iNCL_CWIssueBrief_Implementing_v5_web.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">\"Implementing Competency Education in K-12 Systems: Insights from Local Leaders\" \u003c/a>for many more details and examples of how to implement a competency-based approach.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Some best practices around implementing competency-based learning are beginning to emerge, especially for schools looking to make the leap from traditional structures. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>It’s no longer a given that if a child spends twelve years in school, he or she will learn enough to succeed in higher education or a career. To address this issue, some educators are taking bold measures to help students. Traditionally, classes move forward, covering the curriculum according to schedule. Students are taught the same materials at the same pace. If a student fails to learn a skill, he or she accepts that result and moves on to the next topic with the rest of the class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Competency-based learning, on the other hand, insists on mastery of subjects and provides students the time to learn; the students are not marched past failure. There are challenges to this \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/tag/competency-based-education/\">methodology\u003c/a> as well, but it is slowly gaining acceptance and has been around long enough to develop some best practices. School districts that have seen success with this model carefully laid the groundwork for this fundamental change away from a traditional model of education. They also designed the infrastructure that supports it and learned some big lessons during implementation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Competency-based learning, often called mastery-learning, at its core involves five elements:\u003c/p>\n\u003col>\n\u003cli>Students advance when they master the content and skills, not because they squeaked by with a C or a D grade.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Transparency about where students stand empowers them and enables educators to better tailor instruction to their individual needs.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Assessment is a continual part of the learning cycle, not a final judgment at a time when a student has no hope of changing the outcome.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Educators offer timely support, often daily, on any part of the required material.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Students must be able to demonstrate that they can transfer their knowledge to new contexts, applying skills to challenges they’ve never seen before. This often means developing life-long habits of learning.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ol>\n\u003cp>“It’s not just about pacing,” said Chris Sturgis, author of the report \u003ca href=\"http://www.competencyworks.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/iNCL_CWIssueBrief_Implementing_v5_web.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">“Implementing Competency Education in K-12 Systems: Insights from Local Leaders”\u003c/a> by CompetencyWorks. “It’s much more about flexibility of resources, time and effort to make sure students are successful.” Competency education is often conflated with flexible pacing because in both models students in the same classroom are working on different aspects of the curriculum. However, competency education requires a much bigger revisioning of the school system beyond the traditional paradigm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What we are talking about here is a complete restructure,” said Virgil Hammonds, who just wrapped up a stint as superintendent of RSU2 in Maine and previously led competency efforts in \u003ca href=\"http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2012/10/17/01competency.h06.html\" target=\"_blank\">Lindsay, California\u003c/a>. He likened the process to a home-remodel where the whole building is knocked down to its foundation and built anew.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>LAYING THE GROUNDWORK\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To undertake this kind of big project a district needs to take a \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/07/06/beyond-academics-what-a-holistic-approach-to-learning-could-look-like/\" target=\"_blank\">systems approach to teaching and learning\u003c/a>, gathering input from all the stakeholders, listening carefully, incorporating those ideas in real ways into the plan and developing a strong shared vision and district culture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I have come to firmly believe that if this part isn’t done well then districts may have difficulty implementing with fidelity since the culture of the traditional system remains intact,” said Robert Crumley, superintendent of \u003ca href=\"http://www.edutopia.org/chugach-school-district-reform\" target=\"_blank\">Chugach School District\u003c/a> in Alaska.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It took Chugach almost three years to complete this ramping up phase. Crumley and his staff held dozens of community meetings, inviting parents, students, educators, business leaders and community members to share their input for a new vision of school that put students at the center. The district already had a lot of unflattering data telling them they needed to try something new or else fall behind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the initial input-gathering period, the superintendent and the school board made a public five-year commitment to making changes based on that input. “That public commitment was instrumental in staff having confidence that we were going to continue with this,” Crumley said. He’s well aware of “initiative fatigue” that many educators feel when new education fads come and go. But the public commitment helped gain their trust, as did the obvious incorporation of their ideas into the new plan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crumley also took the time to empower the staff in his district, focusing on retention, not finding new teachers that already fit the mold. To do this, Crumley worked on helping his staff have a growth mindset about their efforts and \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/03/03/when-school-leaders-empower-teachers-better-ideas-emerge/\" target=\"_blank\">empowered them\u003c/a> with three simple motivators:\u003c/p>\n\u003col>\n\u003cli>Engage in complex work with a sense of mastery.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Engage with other people.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Give them some autonomy over what they do and how and when to do it.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ol>\n\u003cp>“When you empower people you are actually giving up a little of your power and handing it to someone else,” Crumley said. “That can be a little scary for some people, but it generally garners greater results for the system in the long term.” Crumley even found that some of the loudest voices pushing back against the changes soon became his strongest allies. When they saw that their concerns were listened to and addressed, those vocal opponents who were often charismatic leaders in their school communities, saw their way toward the shared vision.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Often times their concerns were valid concerns that we needed to address and they helped us address them,” Crumley said. If a teacher felt so misaligned with the new system that they didn’t want to work there, the district helped them find work elsewhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We need to model the conditions of innovation and problem-solving as principals and district administrators,” Crumley said. That means not letting bureaucracy get in the way of innovation. It means creating the conditions where staff feel they are safe to experiment and tinker with their practice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>BUILD UP INFRASTRUCTURE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many districts trying to implement a competency education don’t spend the necessary time ramping up to this kind of sweeping reform, instead jumping right into designing the infrastructure as though it is a technical problem. But without the buy-in of the community, school board, staff and students, the reform effort is likely to flop. The infrastructure must be built on a strong foundation.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">“We need to model the conditions of innovation and problem-solving as principals and district administrators.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>When those shared values are in place it becomes imperative that the competencies students are expected to learn are completely transparent. “We’re no longer the teacher who is holding the secret of how to earn that top-level grade,” Hammonds said. “Instead we say, ‘here are the expectations for rigor and a clear scale for how to achieve it.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers need to work together to clearly define the scale for how students will achieve mastery and what qualities will be included. While all students are held accountable for the same high expectations and the same competencies, they will each show their mastery in different ways. Teachers have to be ready for that variance, embrace it, and know what they are looking for to maintain rigorous standards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>TRANSITIONING INTO COMPETENCY EDUCATION\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s no “right way” to transition into such a drastically different way of thinking about school because the unique factors of each district and community will play a big role. Asking the community what they want their graduates to look like is a good way to start. Preparing students for what the new system will be like and preparing them to take on more autonomy and agency is also crucial.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"alignleft long\">\n\u003ch3>Clarifying questions to help define pedagogical approach:\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>ž\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cem>What do we know about the different ways to motivate and engage students? ž\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cem>Where does student agency fit in learning?\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cem>What role do habits of learning play, and how can they be developed in students?\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cem>What does the research tell us about effective instructional practices?\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cem>What are the types of assessment, and what role do they play in achievement?\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cem>What types of learning experiences are needed to help students reach graduation goals?\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cem>Given your current student population, their academic needs, and their life and learning experiences, how might this inform your school design or pedagogical approach?\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cem>What challenges and educational needs can online and blended learning help you address?\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cem>How do parents and the community at large think about these questions?\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Clearly defining the competences and the indicators is one step. Designing rubrics that clearly link back to those competencies is another equally important step that often gets overlooked. In hindsight, Hammonds wishes his team had spent more time designing the assessment rubrics. “When assessment goes beyond the level of retrieval (the goal of this kind of system), it is extra important to define things like what reflection looks like,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://pittsfield-nh.com/sau/\" target=\"_blank\">Pittsfield School District\u003c/a> in New Hampshire had a slightly easier journey to competency than Alaska or Maine because the state passed a law requiring high schools to implement competency education by 2008. That law has been ignored or implemented with \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/06/16/going-all-in-how-to-make-competency-based-learning-work/\" target=\"_blank\">varying degrees of effectiveness\u003c/a> in different parts of the state, but it did help provide some support as schools began to define indicators of competencies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For two years Pittsfield educators did research, visited other schools and began identifying teacher leaders who would pilot ideas in their classrooms. Those teacher-leaders eventually put together “Do’s and Don’ts” for peers based on early experimentation. In the first year, the district devoted a lot of resources to writing the competencies, checking them against a rigor tool the state provided and training teachers, said Derek Hamilton, dean of operations for Pittsfield School District.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A panel of excited teachers who deeply understood competency education dug into the district’s current grading practices and policies, revising them to fit the competency model. They wanted to be sure teachers felt they could be consistent from class-to-class and grade-to-grade. Teachers got student feedback on whether the competencies were clear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the second year, the district presented the competencies they’d developed to the community. While parents had been clear about the general skills and dispositions they wanted students to graduate with, they hadn’t participated in the nitty-gritty competency writing and they needed to be brought up to speed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the third year, Pittsfield implemented the system throughout their 7-12th grade classes. It was bumpy at first, but Hamilton said when students led conferences with their parents and teachers, it all started to become clear. The parents could see how their child’s work connected to the rubric. This stage helped solidify support.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We understood that in order to make this transformation we needed to find time to do it,” Hamilton said. School starts late once a week so teachers can have professional development time that's crucial to working out the kinks in the new system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first several years gave teachers and administrators a lot to reflect on, and in the fourth year teachers saw the need to better support students moving ahead or behind pace. They also implemented a support block on Wednesdays entirely dedicated to one-on-one support. They recognized that if time were truly flexible for students, then educator resources needed to be available in the summer too. Teachers began holding office hours, for which the district paid them, to support students who were still working on competencies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These early adopters are continuously engaged in a process of reflection and fine-tuning to improve the education they are offering. Just as the competency education model acknowledges that learners are individuals with unique interests and learning needs, so too educators need space to figure out this new style of teaching. While the concept of only moving a student forward when they can clearly demonstrate mastery of content and skills sounds simple, it’s a big departure from the traditional model and requires a period of adjustment in a supportive environment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Read the full report, \u003ca href=\"http://www.competencyworks.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/iNCL_CWIssueBrief_Implementing_v5_web.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">\"Implementing Competency Education in K-12 Systems: Insights from Local Leaders\" \u003c/a>for many more details and examples of how to implement a competency-based approach.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "What Does a School Need to Enable Learning Based on Student Competency?",
"title": "What Does a School Need to Enable Learning Based on Student Competency?",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_36701\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/07/what-makes-an-extreme-learner/mindshift1_illo2_72/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-36701\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/Mindshift1_illo2_72.jpg\" alt=\"By Jane Mount/MindShift\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-36701\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/Mindshift1_illo2_72.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/Mindshift1_illo2_72-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/Mindshift1_illo2_72-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">By Jane Mount/MindShift\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Many teachers have long been frustrated with static, canned curriculum that doesn’t seem connected to kids' lives, and testing requirements that drive the learning experience. So they, often in partnership with daring leaders, are pushing back, trying to find ways to meet the long-held goal of educators: Meeting each student’s needs and helping all to be successful. Three main ways schools are attempting this work are through technology use, an emphasis on personalizing learning and moving toward a mastery-based or competency-based evaluation system. While not all the same, these approaches share some commonalities and require significant structural changes to the education system if they are to be implemented well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A CompetencyWorks report, \u003ca href=\"http://www.competencyworks.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/CompetencyWorks-Maximizing-Competency-Education-and-Blended-Learning.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">“Maximizing Competency Education and Blended Learning: Insights from Experts,”\u003c/a> looks at ways that the movement for personalization dovetails with blended learning and competency-based learning to achieve a more student-centered approach to school. The report also identifies some key system changes that would support the grass-roots work that has already begun.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report defines personalized learning as “tailor[ing] learning to students’ strengths, needs, interests and experiences.” The authors are careful to point out that adaptive learning software that allows \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/02/what-do-we-really-mean-when-we-say-personalized-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">self-paced learning is not the same thing as personalized learning\u003c/a>. Good teachers are crucial to help students identify their learning strengths and weaknesses, to offer various learning modalities and to push students to apply their learning to their personal interests. No two students are the same, and a personalized model recognizes the same tools and approaches won’t be appropriate for every student.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">'The accountability system right now is getting in the way of what’s right for kids.'\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Competency education refers to a break from the traditional time-based school model. Rather than moving students on to the next grade with their age-based cohort, regardless of gaps in their foundational knowledge, educators allow students to move on only when they have demonstrated mastery of topics. This can lead to a chaotic classroom, with students at many different stages in their learning, which is partly why many competency-based schools rely on technology to help meet students' varied needs along the way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we just keep doing what we’re doing today, we are still going to end up with kids with huge gaps, even if they advance incrementally,” said Susan Patrick, president and CEO of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.inacol.org/\" target=\"_blank\">International Association for K-12 Online Learning\u003c/a> (iNACOL) and co-author of the report. She notes that some critics of competency education worry it will widen opportunity gaps as advanced students move quickly ahead, leaving struggling students even further behind. Patrick says that shouldn’t happen if teachers hold all students to high standards and make sure to examine data on student learning every day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In a competency-based system you have to know where every student is when they come in, be honest about that and address those learning gaps,” Patrick said. She doesn’t believe that it works to rely exclusively on technology to help students catch up. Too often digital tools are used to drill struggling students and get them “back on track.” But without opportunities to research, analyze and apply learning, those students are not being given the same chance to dive deeply into their learning, part of a good personalized program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>LEADERSHIP\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Transformation of this kind requires a \u003ca href=\"http://www.competencyworks.org/understanding-competency-education/virgel-hammonds-six-insights-into-leadership/\" target=\"_blank\">special kind of leader\u003c/a>, one that our current training programs aren’t producing. While there are many excellent leaders in education, they have often picked up their adaptive leadership qualities on their own, out of necessity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You are talking about a whole significant, complex transformation of the system, from being one around time -- which is quite frankly easier to manage -- to one that is around learning and meeting every student’s needs,” Patrick said. That takes a clear long-term vision and the ability to plan five to 10 years ahead. During a transformation of this magnitude, even the best-laid plans shift, challenges arise and adjustments will be needed. The change leader has to manage every eventuality as it pops up, while being \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/03/when-school-leaders-empower-teachers-better-ideas-emerge/\" target=\"_blank\">careful not to do so in a top-down way\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"p0o4DscWxKpF7g8O8oEuzjGytj8JoTwE\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For this kind of transformation to work, leaders have to work cooperatively with everyone in the school and broader community. Often districts start the communication and outreach process three years before implementing a plan. This step is easy to overlook, but is crucial to success. Teachers, parents and students are at the core of the education system, and if they aren’t co-designers of the process it won’t succeed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The goal should be to create a shared understanding of why change is needed, what parents and community members want for their children, and how district leaders can work together to build a shared purpose for all stakeholders,” the report notes. That requires districts to engage often and transparently.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since this work is still quite new, one of the strongest assets innovative leaders have is one another. Strong professional learning communities, with exemplars of what has worked and even observation of one another’s progress, can help move the work forward. Leaders should be given credit for finding their own professional learning opportunities, especially since there is so little formally recognized training that teaches leaders how to be catalysts for whole-system transformation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>ACCOUNTABILITY RULES\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There is a real lack of knowledge of how much this is holding back the education leaders who are leading competency-based models,” Patrick said. Some district leaders are even running two parallel accountability models, one to satisfy federal and state testing requirements and another that fits with their competency-based model. That takes resources and time, which are both in short supply.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_39850\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/03/what-does-a-school-need-to-enable-learning-based-on-student-competency/competencyworks/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-39850\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-39850\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/03/CompetencyWorks-300x403.png\" alt='From the CompetencyWorks report, \"Maximizing Competency Education and Blended Learning: Insights from Experts.\"' width=\"300\" height=\"403\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">From the CompetencyWorks report, \"Maximizing Competency Education and Blended Learning: Insights from Experts.\"\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“You start to really see how, in the broader system, issues are frozen into place,” Patrick said. “We need new structures that are competency-based and personalized.” She points to the fact that state and federal accountability measures are predicated on the time-based, age-cohort model of teaching common for over a century. It \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/04/report-federal-rules-impede-competency-based-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">offers little flexibility\u003c/a> to districts trying to meet the needs of today’s students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Patrick would like to see modular assessment offered at public libraries. Rather than taking one point-in-time standardized test meant to encapsulate all a student has learned in a year, students would take a test at the end of each module, whenever they finish it. “Then you are actually aligning the accountability system to student-centered learning,” Patrick said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The modular accountability system Patrick suggests would offer a way for students to show their growth. Right now, if a ninth-grade teacher has a student who comes in at a fourth-grade reading level and she helps him improve to a sixth-grade reading level, he still performs poorly on the ninth-grade test. She gets no credit for the growth she helped that student achieve. “The accountability system right now is getting in the way of what’s right for kids,” Patrick said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers have always wanted to provide their students with individualized support, but they often haven’t had the resources to accomplish that goal. Now technology can help by offering a diverse set of tools to be used when appropriate. Technology has the potential to help schools break away from a time-based model and give teachers insights into student understanding. While not a silver bullet, and ineffective in the hands of a teacher without a plan, when the right tech tool is used at the right time with the right student, it can support mastery for every student.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_36701\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/07/what-makes-an-extreme-learner/mindshift1_illo2_72/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-36701\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/Mindshift1_illo2_72.jpg\" alt=\"By Jane Mount/MindShift\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-36701\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/Mindshift1_illo2_72.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/Mindshift1_illo2_72-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/Mindshift1_illo2_72-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">By Jane Mount/MindShift\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Many teachers have long been frustrated with static, canned curriculum that doesn’t seem connected to kids' lives, and testing requirements that drive the learning experience. So they, often in partnership with daring leaders, are pushing back, trying to find ways to meet the long-held goal of educators: Meeting each student’s needs and helping all to be successful. Three main ways schools are attempting this work are through technology use, an emphasis on personalizing learning and moving toward a mastery-based or competency-based evaluation system. While not all the same, these approaches share some commonalities and require significant structural changes to the education system if they are to be implemented well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A CompetencyWorks report, \u003ca href=\"http://www.competencyworks.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/CompetencyWorks-Maximizing-Competency-Education-and-Blended-Learning.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">“Maximizing Competency Education and Blended Learning: Insights from Experts,”\u003c/a> looks at ways that the movement for personalization dovetails with blended learning and competency-based learning to achieve a more student-centered approach to school. The report also identifies some key system changes that would support the grass-roots work that has already begun.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report defines personalized learning as “tailor[ing] learning to students’ strengths, needs, interests and experiences.” The authors are careful to point out that adaptive learning software that allows \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/02/what-do-we-really-mean-when-we-say-personalized-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">self-paced learning is not the same thing as personalized learning\u003c/a>. Good teachers are crucial to help students identify their learning strengths and weaknesses, to offer various learning modalities and to push students to apply their learning to their personal interests. No two students are the same, and a personalized model recognizes the same tools and approaches won’t be appropriate for every student.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">'The accountability system right now is getting in the way of what’s right for kids.'\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Competency education refers to a break from the traditional time-based school model. Rather than moving students on to the next grade with their age-based cohort, regardless of gaps in their foundational knowledge, educators allow students to move on only when they have demonstrated mastery of topics. This can lead to a chaotic classroom, with students at many different stages in their learning, which is partly why many competency-based schools rely on technology to help meet students' varied needs along the way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we just keep doing what we’re doing today, we are still going to end up with kids with huge gaps, even if they advance incrementally,” said Susan Patrick, president and CEO of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.inacol.org/\" target=\"_blank\">International Association for K-12 Online Learning\u003c/a> (iNACOL) and co-author of the report. She notes that some critics of competency education worry it will widen opportunity gaps as advanced students move quickly ahead, leaving struggling students even further behind. Patrick says that shouldn’t happen if teachers hold all students to high standards and make sure to examine data on student learning every day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In a competency-based system you have to know where every student is when they come in, be honest about that and address those learning gaps,” Patrick said. She doesn’t believe that it works to rely exclusively on technology to help students catch up. Too often digital tools are used to drill struggling students and get them “back on track.” But without opportunities to research, analyze and apply learning, those students are not being given the same chance to dive deeply into their learning, part of a good personalized program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>LEADERSHIP\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Transformation of this kind requires a \u003ca href=\"http://www.competencyworks.org/understanding-competency-education/virgel-hammonds-six-insights-into-leadership/\" target=\"_blank\">special kind of leader\u003c/a>, one that our current training programs aren’t producing. While there are many excellent leaders in education, they have often picked up their adaptive leadership qualities on their own, out of necessity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You are talking about a whole significant, complex transformation of the system, from being one around time -- which is quite frankly easier to manage -- to one that is around learning and meeting every student’s needs,” Patrick said. That takes a clear long-term vision and the ability to plan five to 10 years ahead. During a transformation of this magnitude, even the best-laid plans shift, challenges arise and adjustments will be needed. The change leader has to manage every eventuality as it pops up, while being \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/03/when-school-leaders-empower-teachers-better-ideas-emerge/\" target=\"_blank\">careful not to do so in a top-down way\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For this kind of transformation to work, leaders have to work cooperatively with everyone in the school and broader community. Often districts start the communication and outreach process three years before implementing a plan. This step is easy to overlook, but is crucial to success. Teachers, parents and students are at the core of the education system, and if they aren’t co-designers of the process it won’t succeed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The goal should be to create a shared understanding of why change is needed, what parents and community members want for their children, and how district leaders can work together to build a shared purpose for all stakeholders,” the report notes. That requires districts to engage often and transparently.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since this work is still quite new, one of the strongest assets innovative leaders have is one another. Strong professional learning communities, with exemplars of what has worked and even observation of one another’s progress, can help move the work forward. Leaders should be given credit for finding their own professional learning opportunities, especially since there is so little formally recognized training that teaches leaders how to be catalysts for whole-system transformation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>ACCOUNTABILITY RULES\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There is a real lack of knowledge of how much this is holding back the education leaders who are leading competency-based models,” Patrick said. Some district leaders are even running two parallel accountability models, one to satisfy federal and state testing requirements and another that fits with their competency-based model. That takes resources and time, which are both in short supply.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_39850\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/03/what-does-a-school-need-to-enable-learning-based-on-student-competency/competencyworks/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-39850\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-39850\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/03/CompetencyWorks-300x403.png\" alt='From the CompetencyWorks report, \"Maximizing Competency Education and Blended Learning: Insights from Experts.\"' width=\"300\" height=\"403\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">From the CompetencyWorks report, \"Maximizing Competency Education and Blended Learning: Insights from Experts.\"\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“You start to really see how, in the broader system, issues are frozen into place,” Patrick said. “We need new structures that are competency-based and personalized.” She points to the fact that state and federal accountability measures are predicated on the time-based, age-cohort model of teaching common for over a century. It \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/04/report-federal-rules-impede-competency-based-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">offers little flexibility\u003c/a> to districts trying to meet the needs of today’s students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Patrick would like to see modular assessment offered at public libraries. Rather than taking one point-in-time standardized test meant to encapsulate all a student has learned in a year, students would take a test at the end of each module, whenever they finish it. “Then you are actually aligning the accountability system to student-centered learning,” Patrick said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The modular accountability system Patrick suggests would offer a way for students to show their growth. Right now, if a ninth-grade teacher has a student who comes in at a fourth-grade reading level and she helps him improve to a sixth-grade reading level, he still performs poorly on the ninth-grade test. She gets no credit for the growth she helped that student achieve. “The accountability system right now is getting in the way of what’s right for kids,” Patrick said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers have always wanted to provide their students with individualized support, but they often haven’t had the resources to accomplish that goal. Now technology can help by offering a diverse set of tools to be used when appropriate. Technology has the potential to help schools break away from a time-based model and give teachers insights into student understanding. While not a silver bullet, and ineffective in the hands of a teacher without a plan, when the right tech tool is used at the right time with the right student, it can support mastery for every student.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "More Colleges Offer Competency-Based Degree Programs",
"title": "More Colleges Offer Competency-Based Degree Programs",
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"content": "\u003cp>Competency-based education is in vogue — even though most people have never heard of it, and those who have can't always agree on what it is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A report out today from the American Enterprise Institute says a growing number of colleges and universities are offering, or soon will offer, credits in exchange for direct demonstrations of learning. That's a big shift from credit hours — the currency of higher education for more than a century — which require students to spend an allotted amount of time with instructors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \"competency\" might be a score on a standardized exam or a portfolio of work. These are types of credit familiar to most people: think AP exams. But they are being applied to core requirements, not just used for skipping electives or introductory courses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"wnGCmNgr2MhNot7xflqcOFA9aKB0JdX0\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And in a newer, even more experimental trend, institutions such as Western Governor's University are offering entire degree programs that allow students to move at their own pace, completing assignments and assessments as they master the material.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The major argument in favor of \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/10/07/353930358/competency-based-education-no-more-semesters\">competency-based programs\u003c/a> is that they will offer nontraditional students a more direct, more affordable path to a degree. This argument is especially made on behalf of older students who can earn college credits based on prior workplace or life experience. The AEI report, by Robert Kelchen, found that nine out of 10 competency-based students are over 25.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The business and instructional models of competency-based degree programs are diverse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some, like Straighterline and Capella University, are for-profits; others, like Southern New Hampshire University's College for America Program, are nonprofits, while still others, like University of Maryland University College or Rio Salado College, are part of public university or community college systems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the numbers are large. Most programs don't report their competency-based enrollment, but there are nine colleges that are entirely competency-based; these nine colleges alone enroll more than 140,000 undergraduates and 57,000 graduate students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From a racial, ethnic, and gender standpoint, these colleges resemble college enrollments as a whole. This, conversely, makes them less \"nontraditional\" than some other mainly online programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whether competency-based programs will really save students money is a bigger question.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Exams, like CLEP, UExcel, or ACE, cost less than $100 for three college credits. And online programs like Western Governor's University have \"all you can eat\" pricing models, where students pay a fixed rate every six months for all the credits they can earn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These usually represent savings over other online programs. But time is money. A student who is studying only part-time and progressing more slowly than the average may end up paying more, not less, than in a traditional program. And, some of these newer offerings aren't eligible for federal student aid, which drives students who can't pay into the expensive private loan market.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, the report notes, the federal government is moving to offer Pell Grants to more of these nontraditional programs as they become more widely accepted as quality options for gaining skills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Competency-Based+Degree+Programs+On+The+Rise&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\" alt=\"\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Competency-based education is in vogue — even though most people have never heard of it, and those who have can't always agree on what it is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A report out today from the American Enterprise Institute says a growing number of colleges and universities are offering, or soon will offer, credits in exchange for direct demonstrations of learning. That's a big shift from credit hours — the currency of higher education for more than a century — which require students to spend an allotted amount of time with instructors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \"competency\" might be a score on a standardized exam or a portfolio of work. These are types of credit familiar to most people: think AP exams. But they are being applied to core requirements, not just used for skipping electives or introductory courses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And in a newer, even more experimental trend, institutions such as Western Governor's University are offering entire degree programs that allow students to move at their own pace, completing assignments and assessments as they master the material.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The major argument in favor of \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/10/07/353930358/competency-based-education-no-more-semesters\">competency-based programs\u003c/a> is that they will offer nontraditional students a more direct, more affordable path to a degree. This argument is especially made on behalf of older students who can earn college credits based on prior workplace or life experience. The AEI report, by Robert Kelchen, found that nine out of 10 competency-based students are over 25.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The business and instructional models of competency-based degree programs are diverse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some, like Straighterline and Capella University, are for-profits; others, like Southern New Hampshire University's College for America Program, are nonprofits, while still others, like University of Maryland University College or Rio Salado College, are part of public university or community college systems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the numbers are large. Most programs don't report their competency-based enrollment, but there are nine colleges that are entirely competency-based; these nine colleges alone enroll more than 140,000 undergraduates and 57,000 graduate students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From a racial, ethnic, and gender standpoint, these colleges resemble college enrollments as a whole. This, conversely, makes them less \"nontraditional\" than some other mainly online programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whether competency-based programs will really save students money is a bigger question.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Exams, like CLEP, UExcel, or ACE, cost less than $100 for three college credits. And online programs like Western Governor's University have \"all you can eat\" pricing models, where students pay a fixed rate every six months for all the credits they can earn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These usually represent savings over other online programs. But time is money. A student who is studying only part-time and progressing more slowly than the average may end up paying more, not less, than in a traditional program. And, some of these newer offerings aren't eligible for federal student aid, which drives students who can't pay into the expensive private loan market.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, the report notes, the federal government is moving to offer Pell Grants to more of these nontraditional programs as they become more widely accepted as quality options for gaining skills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Competency-Based+Degree+Programs+On+The+Rise&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\" alt=\"\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Finding the Most Creative Ways to Help Students Advance At Their Own Pace",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cimg class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-36559\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/480339879-e1403926572876.jpg\" alt=\"480339879\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/480339879-e1403926572876.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/480339879-e1403926572876-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/480339879-e1403926572876-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"div_for_spokenlayer_player\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">In 2005, New Hampshire’s Department of Education set a \u003ca href=\"http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/02/08/20proficiency_ep.h31.html?tkn=YURFXnBJpl0xJ%2BqTaVArqDOMe%2BXv7zFgObIv&cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS1\" target=\"_blank\">policy requiring schools to implement a competency-based system\u003c/a>, but didn't define the specific skills each school would be expected to master. State education leaders hoped that the policy would push schools towards a system in which students would not advance unless they could demonstrate proficiency in every core competency. But schools across the state have interpreted the directive in very different ways and set those competencies both broadly and narrowly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"There wasn't any training nor was there funding for it,” said Ryan Kaplan, Principal of \u003ca href=\"http://www.windhamsd.org/whs/\" target=\"_blank\">Windham High School\u003c/a> in New Hampshire.\" Every school had to figure it out on their own.” Windham is in its fifth year of existence and is still working for official accreditation from the state. While it might seem easier to start an alternative teaching and assessment practice like competency-based learning in a new school, Windham educators have focused efforts elsewhere. The school has interpreted competencies broadly and has maintained a traditional grading system based on the 100 point scale, averaging scores on various assignments to get a passing grade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>PRIORITIZING INNOVATIONS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The question of student pace -- the main feature of a competency-based system -- has not been the most important to Windham teachers and administrators. Instead, the school staff has worked hard to integrate technology effectively into its curriculum. It’s one of the only New Hampshire public schools to have a one-to-one Apple laptop program, and is entirely wireless. Teachers are working to build up their course offerings with rigorous, rich learning experiences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Where we have found the ability to be innovative is in the classroom instruction and looking at designing competencies to reflect what we really want students to know and do, and how are we going to know that they can do those things,” said Bethany Bernasconi, Dean of Science and Engineering at Windham. Faculty has interpreted competencies as broad, overarching themes where students should be proficient. In science, there are three: content, research and lab work.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"How do you do it with 30 students in a classroom. What does it look like and how does it work?\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Bernasconi is skeptical of allowing each student to move at his own pace through content, worrying that a system like that will lose its rigor. She teaches some units in a mastery-based style, but only chooses topics that lend themselves to a clear leveling-up of knowledge, like genetics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"How can I be effective and an excellent teacher when I’m trying to teach everything at once?\" Bernasconi said. She teaches from a student-driven inquiry standpoint and can’t imagine helping students moving at 12 different paces. As it is, she helps students interpret the driving question in an assignment, facilitates lab experiences, manages lab material and acts as a resource to students throughout the day. She doesn’t see all that being possible if students are all in different phases of the process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think that where folks struggle with it is the infrastructure for it,” Bernasconi said. “How do you do it with 30 students in a classroom. What does it look like and how does it work?” In her genetics unit when she gives up some control over pacing, technology has been very helpful. She has a YouTube channel with video podcast lessons that students can check when they need help. But she’s skeptical of relinquishing her class to technology entirely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I get nervous about taking the human element completely out of it,” Bernasconi said. “A discussion in my class is really powerful. It’s interactive; the students are asking questions; they’re challenging each other’s thinking.” If students were moving at completely different paces it would be harder to leverage that community element of learning, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re still wrestling with what this means because we’re still designing new courses and we’re still growing,” Bernasconi said. She is clear that Windham has a lot of learning to do and that it doesn’t have everything figured out. But she’d rather focus on making classroom experiences creative and rich for each student than on pacing. And, despite the time-bound nature of classes at Windham, many of Bernasconi’s teaching methods are in line with the overall goal of a competency-based system -- personalizing education for each student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"d3a3489bb09499d53a5a6dad841214b4\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In biology, Bernasconi has moved away from requiring all students to demonstrate their knowledge in the same way. Her students write essays, take tests, make videos, create models and generally use their creativity to show they know the information. “We have a lot of creativity and freedom to do those things,” Bernasconi said. She also encourages students to find entry points into the material that inspire them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“To give over control of your classroom to your students, to trust them to learn and use the tools and the environment you’ve created -- it’s terrifying,” Bernasconi said. “And the first time I did it I had no idea what I would get back. I was blown away by what students produced.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>COMMUNITY PUSHBACK\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The innovative teaching practices that Bernasconi and her colleagues exhibit, coupled with good test scores (top five in the state) and high achieving students haven’t inspired Windham’s teachers or parents to care much about moving towards the time-flexible education system that competency-based models offer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You are fighting against learned behaviors,” Kaplan said. “We have learned a traditional system that we’ve been using for 100 years.” Parents and taxpayers don’t see why that system should change. In fact, they see competency-based education as an intervention for low-performing districts, not for them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have teachers doing incredibly innovative things, but using a more traditional way of assessing it,” Kaplan said. “We don’t have a system where you have to pass every competency in the course.” Students can still average out to a passing grade and advance to the next level, even with holes in their knowledge. It’s that exact scenario that competency-based learning is meant to prevent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In a true competency system you would need to pass everything and there would be no social promotion,” Kaplan said. “It’s where I feel we need to go. It’s happening, but slowly.” Without the support of teachers, parents and district leadership, and operating as a first-year principal, there’s not a lot Kaplan can do to push the agenda forward more quickly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>EXPERIMENTING AND RETREATING FROM COMPETENCIES\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kaplan feels better about the lack of progress Windham has made towards a more authentic competency-based system when he thinks about \u003ca href=\"http://www.campbellhs.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Campbell High School\u003c/a>. The school opened 14 years ago with the intention of being entirely competency-based, long before there were state laws requiring schools to take that route.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In a true competency based system -- and we opened with it -- you did not have a letter grade,” said Dennis Perreault, a veteran social studies teacher at Campbell. “You were either advanced, proficient or NC (not demonstrating competent).” In less than a year local education officials told Campbell to get rid of that system and adopt a traditional A-F grading system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What was kept is if you don’t pass a competency, you don’t pass the course,” Perreault said. Similar to Windham, each department has its own set of competencies. For social studies they are fairly broad: Comprehension, analysis, evaluation, research and writing for the social sciences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think we’re doing a lot of what we set out to do, but we’re just not doing it in the manner that we thought we would be doing it,” Perreault said. For example, the school has a policy that all students can retake any assessment that is part of their grade in recognition that each student learns differently. Perreault is comfortable with the middle path the community decided on because at its essence he thinks it allows for personalization.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The essence of competency is that you individualize learning for every kid,” Perreault said. His teaching style is essentially socrative, with lots of projects and in-depth analysis demonstrated through essays. That’s the kind of performance-based assessment he’s interested in seeing. He has a hard time imagining opening assessment up to more creative, “show what you know” projects in his discipline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think performance based assessment is best in the sciences,” Perreault said. “We have a lot of science and math teachers who use it because they have an end product that can be a display product.” He’s not ready to invent that wheel for social studies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Campbell High opened with a big dream, basing the school on competencies before the community was ready to embrace it. Perreault feels it has kept the essence of that program even if the assessments and grading look fairly traditional and any competency recovery tends to happen during the summer or as an extended learning opportunity online. Ultimately, if the state had a more specific vision for how schools should implement its competency-based learning policy, it should have been more explicit with schools, Perreault said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bethany Bernasconi agrees. “There’s great danger in a good initiative that’s not done well,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cimg class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-36559\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/480339879-e1403926572876.jpg\" alt=\"480339879\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/480339879-e1403926572876.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/480339879-e1403926572876-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/480339879-e1403926572876-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"div_for_spokenlayer_player\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">In 2005, New Hampshire’s Department of Education set a \u003ca href=\"http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/02/08/20proficiency_ep.h31.html?tkn=YURFXnBJpl0xJ%2BqTaVArqDOMe%2BXv7zFgObIv&cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS1\" target=\"_blank\">policy requiring schools to implement a competency-based system\u003c/a>, but didn't define the specific skills each school would be expected to master. State education leaders hoped that the policy would push schools towards a system in which students would not advance unless they could demonstrate proficiency in every core competency. But schools across the state have interpreted the directive in very different ways and set those competencies both broadly and narrowly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"There wasn't any training nor was there funding for it,” said Ryan Kaplan, Principal of \u003ca href=\"http://www.windhamsd.org/whs/\" target=\"_blank\">Windham High School\u003c/a> in New Hampshire.\" Every school had to figure it out on their own.” Windham is in its fifth year of existence and is still working for official accreditation from the state. While it might seem easier to start an alternative teaching and assessment practice like competency-based learning in a new school, Windham educators have focused efforts elsewhere. The school has interpreted competencies broadly and has maintained a traditional grading system based on the 100 point scale, averaging scores on various assignments to get a passing grade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>PRIORITIZING INNOVATIONS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The question of student pace -- the main feature of a competency-based system -- has not been the most important to Windham teachers and administrators. Instead, the school staff has worked hard to integrate technology effectively into its curriculum. It’s one of the only New Hampshire public schools to have a one-to-one Apple laptop program, and is entirely wireless. Teachers are working to build up their course offerings with rigorous, rich learning experiences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Where we have found the ability to be innovative is in the classroom instruction and looking at designing competencies to reflect what we really want students to know and do, and how are we going to know that they can do those things,” said Bethany Bernasconi, Dean of Science and Engineering at Windham. Faculty has interpreted competencies as broad, overarching themes where students should be proficient. In science, there are three: content, research and lab work.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"How do you do it with 30 students in a classroom. What does it look like and how does it work?\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Bernasconi is skeptical of allowing each student to move at his own pace through content, worrying that a system like that will lose its rigor. She teaches some units in a mastery-based style, but only chooses topics that lend themselves to a clear leveling-up of knowledge, like genetics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"How can I be effective and an excellent teacher when I’m trying to teach everything at once?\" Bernasconi said. She teaches from a student-driven inquiry standpoint and can’t imagine helping students moving at 12 different paces. As it is, she helps students interpret the driving question in an assignment, facilitates lab experiences, manages lab material and acts as a resource to students throughout the day. She doesn’t see all that being possible if students are all in different phases of the process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think that where folks struggle with it is the infrastructure for it,” Bernasconi said. “How do you do it with 30 students in a classroom. What does it look like and how does it work?” In her genetics unit when she gives up some control over pacing, technology has been very helpful. She has a YouTube channel with video podcast lessons that students can check when they need help. But she’s skeptical of relinquishing her class to technology entirely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I get nervous about taking the human element completely out of it,” Bernasconi said. “A discussion in my class is really powerful. It’s interactive; the students are asking questions; they’re challenging each other’s thinking.” If students were moving at completely different paces it would be harder to leverage that community element of learning, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re still wrestling with what this means because we’re still designing new courses and we’re still growing,” Bernasconi said. She is clear that Windham has a lot of learning to do and that it doesn’t have everything figured out. But she’d rather focus on making classroom experiences creative and rich for each student than on pacing. And, despite the time-bound nature of classes at Windham, many of Bernasconi’s teaching methods are in line with the overall goal of a competency-based system -- personalizing education for each student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In biology, Bernasconi has moved away from requiring all students to demonstrate their knowledge in the same way. Her students write essays, take tests, make videos, create models and generally use their creativity to show they know the information. “We have a lot of creativity and freedom to do those things,” Bernasconi said. She also encourages students to find entry points into the material that inspire them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“To give over control of your classroom to your students, to trust them to learn and use the tools and the environment you’ve created -- it’s terrifying,” Bernasconi said. “And the first time I did it I had no idea what I would get back. I was blown away by what students produced.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>COMMUNITY PUSHBACK\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The innovative teaching practices that Bernasconi and her colleagues exhibit, coupled with good test scores (top five in the state) and high achieving students haven’t inspired Windham’s teachers or parents to care much about moving towards the time-flexible education system that competency-based models offer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You are fighting against learned behaviors,” Kaplan said. “We have learned a traditional system that we’ve been using for 100 years.” Parents and taxpayers don’t see why that system should change. In fact, they see competency-based education as an intervention for low-performing districts, not for them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have teachers doing incredibly innovative things, but using a more traditional way of assessing it,” Kaplan said. “We don’t have a system where you have to pass every competency in the course.” Students can still average out to a passing grade and advance to the next level, even with holes in their knowledge. It’s that exact scenario that competency-based learning is meant to prevent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In a true competency system you would need to pass everything and there would be no social promotion,” Kaplan said. “It’s where I feel we need to go. It’s happening, but slowly.” Without the support of teachers, parents and district leadership, and operating as a first-year principal, there’s not a lot Kaplan can do to push the agenda forward more quickly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>EXPERIMENTING AND RETREATING FROM COMPETENCIES\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kaplan feels better about the lack of progress Windham has made towards a more authentic competency-based system when he thinks about \u003ca href=\"http://www.campbellhs.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Campbell High School\u003c/a>. The school opened 14 years ago with the intention of being entirely competency-based, long before there were state laws requiring schools to take that route.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In a true competency based system -- and we opened with it -- you did not have a letter grade,” said Dennis Perreault, a veteran social studies teacher at Campbell. “You were either advanced, proficient or NC (not demonstrating competent).” In less than a year local education officials told Campbell to get rid of that system and adopt a traditional A-F grading system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What was kept is if you don’t pass a competency, you don’t pass the course,” Perreault said. Similar to Windham, each department has its own set of competencies. For social studies they are fairly broad: Comprehension, analysis, evaluation, research and writing for the social sciences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think we’re doing a lot of what we set out to do, but we’re just not doing it in the manner that we thought we would be doing it,” Perreault said. For example, the school has a policy that all students can retake any assessment that is part of their grade in recognition that each student learns differently. Perreault is comfortable with the middle path the community decided on because at its essence he thinks it allows for personalization.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The essence of competency is that you individualize learning for every kid,” Perreault said. His teaching style is essentially socrative, with lots of projects and in-depth analysis demonstrated through essays. That’s the kind of performance-based assessment he’s interested in seeing. He has a hard time imagining opening assessment up to more creative, “show what you know” projects in his discipline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think performance based assessment is best in the sciences,” Perreault said. “We have a lot of science and math teachers who use it because they have an end product that can be a display product.” He’s not ready to invent that wheel for social studies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Campbell High opened with a big dream, basing the school on competencies before the community was ready to embrace it. Perreault feels it has kept the essence of that program even if the assessments and grading look fairly traditional and any competency recovery tends to happen during the summer or as an extended learning opportunity online. Ultimately, if the state had a more specific vision for how schools should implement its competency-based learning policy, it should have been more explicit with schools, Perreault said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_36314\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-36314\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/179279964_8e0675c135_z.jpg\" alt=\"D. Sharon Pruitt\" width=\"640\" height=\"393\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/179279964_8e0675c135_z.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/179279964_8e0675c135_z-400x246.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/179279964_8e0675c135_z-320x197.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">D. Sharon Pruitt\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">\u003ca href=\"http://web.sau17.org/index.php/schools-188/high-school\" target=\"_blank\">Sanborn High School\u003c/a> in New Hampshire was a mediocre school with mediocre test scores. When the state passed a policy mandating that schools develop a competency-based system -- advancing students based on mastery of specific skills and concepts instead of time spent in each grade -- school leaders seized on the model as a way to turn the entire school around from the bottom up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It hasn’t been an easy task and the journey isn’t complete, but in the past five years, Sanborn has moved away from many practices that have long defined traditional high schools, said \u003ca href=\"http://srhsprincipalsblog.blogspot.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Brian Stack, Sanborn’s principal\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In some ways we were building this model with the hope it would all work out,” Stack said. Sanborn is one of the few comprehensive public high schools in New Hampshire going after competency-based teaching and assessment aggressively. Most other schools in the state showing leadership in competency are charter schools whose systems don’t easily map to Sanborn’s existing infrastructure and staffing. “It’s not like we are a new school where we can say this is going to be our model and hire accordingly,” Stack said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the enormity of the task, Sanborn staff had the long game in mind. “When you really think about it, what you are trying to do is teach students skills and knowledge that they can transfer into the world later in life,” said Mark Giuliucci, a freshman social studies teacher at Sanborn. “When you look at it that way, competency makes all the difference in the world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>SMALL LEARNING COMMUNITIES\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sanborn has not reached the extreme conclusion of a mastery-based system in which students would move through different skills and concepts completely at their own pace, unbound from any age-based cohort. In that respect, Sanborn still looks fairly traditional, with freshmen, sophomore, junior and senior classes. But both Stack and Giuliucci insist that a key part of Sanborn’s transition has been dividing the teaching staff into smaller learning communities working together to support individual students and being responsible as a group for meeting competencies across subject areas.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"It's very freeing from my perspective to be able to teach the most logical way.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>A team of five teachers share a group of students, who stay with them for the whole year -- a little like a middle school model. Teachers share information about how students are progressing through competencies and have complete control over student schedules for three to four hours each day. They distribute students to different teachers depending on where they need to strengthen their skills. It’s a collaborative, creative approach and it allows teachers to share the responsibility for competencies like collaboration and critical thinking that are needed in every subject area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We can realign kids in ways that traditional classrooms would never do,” Giuliucci said. He often doesn’t have the same students from day to day. The team of freshmen social studies teachers are shuffling students around based on where they are at in meeting the competencies. That’s especially important for freshmen who come in at very different levels of maturity and academic preparation, Giuliucci said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The small learning community model has worked especially well with the freshmen class. The school has cut down the number of first year students who fail by 80 percent. Working together to identify struggling students and get them the supports they need weaves a stronger safety net.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>TEACHING AND ASSESSING WITH COMPETENCIES\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the competency-base system measures learning and progression very differently from traditional models based on time, classrooms at Sanborn don’t look as different as one might think. A lot of instruction is project-based because teachers are no longer trying to get students to warehouse knowledge -- they want them to learn how to think critically and apply knowledge. “In our classes we’ll give an assessment -- it might be a project or an essay -- and there’s no such thing as late work,” Giuliucci said. “If you are competent, you are done and if you aren’t we go back and get you competent.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sounds simple, but it’s actually pretty chaotic -- in a good way, Giuliucci said. In a recent project Giuliucci asked his students to pick a character from the French Revolution and write a blog post obituary discussing the important events of the time and how that history affected the world today. Some kids were done quickly, others took longer or struggled to show they could connect the events of the past to the present.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“To cope with this chaos we’ve created flex classes for kids who need to be retaught something,” Giuliucci said. “They can sign up for these classes to go back and get the re-assessment and instruction they need.” This process is often called competency recovery and it happens at the moment the student demonstrates a lack of mastery, not at the end of the course when she’s about to fail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_36026\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-36026\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/pond-work2-300x168.jpg\" alt=\"Sanborn Sophomores Work with field consultants from the University of New Hampshire at Pow Wow Pond in Kingston, NH. (Brian Stack)\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sanborn Sophomores Work with field consultants from the University of New Hampshire at Pow Wow Pond in Kingston, NH. (Brian Stack)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“You are creating ways for students to demonstrate their competence,” Giuliucci said. The hard part is separating intertwined competencies and evaluating them individually. “It’s really freeing to kids who traditionally struggle,” Giuliucci said. “I’m not saying you won’t learn how to write in my class, but your inability to write is not going to impact your ability to demonstrate your ability at these other competencies.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Grading based on competencies can be a headache. Teachers no longer divide a course up into assignments, quizzes and tests, assigning a percentage to each one. Instead, teachers have a drop down menu of competencies they need to teach, which they link to different assignments. Teachers are grading students on how well they perform on assessment tasks and if they’ve mastered all the competencies they get a letter grade and pass the course.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think we are going to a model where we will print two different transcripts,” Stack said. “One that is competency-based and one that is course based. Depending on what [students] go on to do next, one might be better than another.” So far, Sanborn teachers have been translating the complex competency system they have developed into a single letter grade at the end of the year. School leaders didn’t want to accidentally hurt graduating seniors’ chances at getting into college because the school’s model is so different. Changing report cards slowly has also given the community a chance to get on board with all the changes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stack has been in conversations with some colleges who say they’d appreciate a more granular view of what a student can do. In fact, providing the competency report card could transform college admissions. “It’s not that we are taking info away from schools, we’re giving them more information if they want it,” Stack said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sanborn is slowly moving away from some of the markers of a traditional school, like the 100 point scale. Stack says they were aware that if they attempted to do everything at once the change would be too great for the community to accept. Instead, they’ve been phasing in different aspects of a mastery-based system as the community seems ready for them. “This year when our kids finish classes in June, the 100 point scale is going away,” Stack said. Kids always got rubrics explaining how they did on different competencies, but teachers used to translate that into a percentage. Now students will just get the letter grade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>COMMUNITY BUY-IN\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Sanborn school leaders decided to make the transition to a competency-based system they did so aggressively and transparently. “We’ve been very upfront about why we think this is a better model,” Stack said. They held lots of community meetings and made sure parents understood what the model would look like.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You really have to sell the parents and sell the community on why you are doing it,” Giuliucci said. “You have to explain to them why the competency-based model is better than the system they grew up with.” Parents have expectations from schools that can be hard to reconcile with the competency-based system. Receiving honors is a good example. Sanborn used to honor the top 10 percent of its students. Now, any student who reaches a certain grade point average gets honored. That led some parents to question whether the standards had been lowered, but Stack explained some classes are just stronger than others and those students shouldn’t be penalized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"80a80fd499f80ad73acdbf94950f79de\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Every year that we’ve had this model it has become easier and easier for parents to understand it and follow it,” Stack said. He acknowledges there were questions and concerns, but says the community never pushed back strongly against the school’s move.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some teachers who weren’t happy with the change moved to other districts. Others weren’t comfortable with it right away, so Stack moved them to teach upper division students. The changes began with the incoming freshmen class and were slowly phased in throughout the school, so hesitant educators had time to acclimate. “It’s been a struggle for some of our teachers, but it’s also been a release for some of them too because we took away some of those hard decisions for teachers,” Stack said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stack admits that not every Sanborn teacher has completely bought into the new system even five years later, but he says it’s much harder to hide teaching practices when so much teaching and preparation is done collaboratively. Stack looks at teacher gradebooks to make sure their assessments meet the set criteria. He observes classes and checks in on how well teachers work with their professional learning communities. “If you don’t buy into the philosophy of the company or corporation, dont’ fake it,” Stack said. “Pick a place that matches what you believe in.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stack and Giuliucci both expressed the desire to move towards a more pure form of competency-based education that would allow students to progress with no consideration for age or time. They aren’t there yet, partly because the technology supports for this kind of system are slim.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“To be truly not time bound in how we organize our school, we need kids to have platforms where they can move at their own pace,” Stack said. “Part of that comes down to technology resources. It’s a lot easier to do that when kids can do some online coursework, some traditional coursework and some extended learning opportunities.” Sanborn has close to one computer for every two students, but they are school-based devices and aren’t enough to totally free up the system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We haven’t quite organized ourselves so that if a kid is finished in February he can move into the next course,” Stack said. In fact, there aren’t many good tech tools to support the kind of flexibility Sanborn already has. “I don’t think there is one great technology out there supporting competency education,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sanborn needs a very flexible student information and grading system that lets all teachers access all the competencies and report them out to parents in an easily digestible way. In contrast, most gradebook software is based on the credit hour system the majority of schools still use. “There aren’t too many systems out there that are savvy enough to break down a course to say if a student is proficient in six areas then they get credit for the course,” Stack said. And his teachers are breaking course credit down into far more competencies than just six.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The other big technical stumbling block is scheduling software flexible enough to handle Sanborn’s constantly shifting priorities. Most software is based on a master schedule drawn up in the beginning of the year. But Sanborn teachers are sending students to different classes every day depending on what they need -- there is no standardization. “On-the-fly scheduling is not something that’s built regularly into scheduling software,” Stack said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s also more complicated for counselors to track whether a student is on track to graduate. In a traditional school it’s a question of whether the student has the credits or not. “Now you have kids who’ve completed a course, but are missing one competency so they have to do competency recovery and that’s something we have to track,” Stack said. Not to mention online courses a student has taken or extended learning opportunities like internships, which are also part of a final grade and assessment of competency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>ARE THE CHANGES PAYING OFF?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sanborn hasn’t been doing competency-based learning long enough to have firm statistics on whether students are leaving better prepared for the challenges of the world. Their AP scores are the same, although their Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) scores are up. The dropout rate is down, along with course failures, and Stack is seeing 25 percent fewer discipline referrals. “There are early indicators that things are working, but it will be really telling in the next two to three years as to how are data is changing,” Stack said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sanborn administrators are also in the process of surveying students and teachers to gauge their experience. “Anecdotally I think people would tell you the climate and culture of our school has changed ten fold,” Stack said. Teachers are happier. They like the flexibility of working with a small group of peers, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s very freeing from my perspective to be able to teach the most logical way,” Giuliucci said. “I have not given a multiple choice, fill in the blank test in years now and I don’t miss it.” He likes giving students multiple ways to show their learning, including the freedom to create artistic works like movies or songs using the technology available to them. It’s gratifying to see students who might lose motivation keep trying. “It gives them an opportunity to feel that they struggle at this particular thing, but they can show their knowledge in some other way,” Giuliucci said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>THE FUTURE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All the elementary and middle schools in Sanborn’s district are now competency-based, which will continue to smooth out the bumps the high school has experienced. New incoming freshmen will be used to the system, and teachers will have much more granular information about who their students are and what they already know.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_36314\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-36314\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/179279964_8e0675c135_z.jpg\" alt=\"D. Sharon Pruitt\" width=\"640\" height=\"393\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/179279964_8e0675c135_z.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/179279964_8e0675c135_z-400x246.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/179279964_8e0675c135_z-320x197.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">D. Sharon Pruitt\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">\u003ca href=\"http://web.sau17.org/index.php/schools-188/high-school\" target=\"_blank\">Sanborn High School\u003c/a> in New Hampshire was a mediocre school with mediocre test scores. When the state passed a policy mandating that schools develop a competency-based system -- advancing students based on mastery of specific skills and concepts instead of time spent in each grade -- school leaders seized on the model as a way to turn the entire school around from the bottom up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It hasn’t been an easy task and the journey isn’t complete, but in the past five years, Sanborn has moved away from many practices that have long defined traditional high schools, said \u003ca href=\"http://srhsprincipalsblog.blogspot.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Brian Stack, Sanborn’s principal\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In some ways we were building this model with the hope it would all work out,” Stack said. Sanborn is one of the few comprehensive public high schools in New Hampshire going after competency-based teaching and assessment aggressively. Most other schools in the state showing leadership in competency are charter schools whose systems don’t easily map to Sanborn’s existing infrastructure and staffing. “It’s not like we are a new school where we can say this is going to be our model and hire accordingly,” Stack said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the enormity of the task, Sanborn staff had the long game in mind. “When you really think about it, what you are trying to do is teach students skills and knowledge that they can transfer into the world later in life,” said Mark Giuliucci, a freshman social studies teacher at Sanborn. “When you look at it that way, competency makes all the difference in the world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>SMALL LEARNING COMMUNITIES\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sanborn has not reached the extreme conclusion of a mastery-based system in which students would move through different skills and concepts completely at their own pace, unbound from any age-based cohort. In that respect, Sanborn still looks fairly traditional, with freshmen, sophomore, junior and senior classes. But both Stack and Giuliucci insist that a key part of Sanborn’s transition has been dividing the teaching staff into smaller learning communities working together to support individual students and being responsible as a group for meeting competencies across subject areas.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"It's very freeing from my perspective to be able to teach the most logical way.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>A team of five teachers share a group of students, who stay with them for the whole year -- a little like a middle school model. Teachers share information about how students are progressing through competencies and have complete control over student schedules for three to four hours each day. They distribute students to different teachers depending on where they need to strengthen their skills. It’s a collaborative, creative approach and it allows teachers to share the responsibility for competencies like collaboration and critical thinking that are needed in every subject area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We can realign kids in ways that traditional classrooms would never do,” Giuliucci said. He often doesn’t have the same students from day to day. The team of freshmen social studies teachers are shuffling students around based on where they are at in meeting the competencies. That’s especially important for freshmen who come in at very different levels of maturity and academic preparation, Giuliucci said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The small learning community model has worked especially well with the freshmen class. The school has cut down the number of first year students who fail by 80 percent. Working together to identify struggling students and get them the supports they need weaves a stronger safety net.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>TEACHING AND ASSESSING WITH COMPETENCIES\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the competency-base system measures learning and progression very differently from traditional models based on time, classrooms at Sanborn don’t look as different as one might think. A lot of instruction is project-based because teachers are no longer trying to get students to warehouse knowledge -- they want them to learn how to think critically and apply knowledge. “In our classes we’ll give an assessment -- it might be a project or an essay -- and there’s no such thing as late work,” Giuliucci said. “If you are competent, you are done and if you aren’t we go back and get you competent.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sounds simple, but it’s actually pretty chaotic -- in a good way, Giuliucci said. In a recent project Giuliucci asked his students to pick a character from the French Revolution and write a blog post obituary discussing the important events of the time and how that history affected the world today. Some kids were done quickly, others took longer or struggled to show they could connect the events of the past to the present.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“To cope with this chaos we’ve created flex classes for kids who need to be retaught something,” Giuliucci said. “They can sign up for these classes to go back and get the re-assessment and instruction they need.” This process is often called competency recovery and it happens at the moment the student demonstrates a lack of mastery, not at the end of the course when she’s about to fail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_36026\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-36026\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/pond-work2-300x168.jpg\" alt=\"Sanborn Sophomores Work with field consultants from the University of New Hampshire at Pow Wow Pond in Kingston, NH. (Brian Stack)\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sanborn Sophomores Work with field consultants from the University of New Hampshire at Pow Wow Pond in Kingston, NH. (Brian Stack)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“You are creating ways for students to demonstrate their competence,” Giuliucci said. The hard part is separating intertwined competencies and evaluating them individually. “It’s really freeing to kids who traditionally struggle,” Giuliucci said. “I’m not saying you won’t learn how to write in my class, but your inability to write is not going to impact your ability to demonstrate your ability at these other competencies.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Grading based on competencies can be a headache. Teachers no longer divide a course up into assignments, quizzes and tests, assigning a percentage to each one. Instead, teachers have a drop down menu of competencies they need to teach, which they link to different assignments. Teachers are grading students on how well they perform on assessment tasks and if they’ve mastered all the competencies they get a letter grade and pass the course.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think we are going to a model where we will print two different transcripts,” Stack said. “One that is competency-based and one that is course based. Depending on what [students] go on to do next, one might be better than another.” So far, Sanborn teachers have been translating the complex competency system they have developed into a single letter grade at the end of the year. School leaders didn’t want to accidentally hurt graduating seniors’ chances at getting into college because the school’s model is so different. Changing report cards slowly has also given the community a chance to get on board with all the changes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stack has been in conversations with some colleges who say they’d appreciate a more granular view of what a student can do. In fact, providing the competency report card could transform college admissions. “It’s not that we are taking info away from schools, we’re giving them more information if they want it,” Stack said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sanborn is slowly moving away from some of the markers of a traditional school, like the 100 point scale. Stack says they were aware that if they attempted to do everything at once the change would be too great for the community to accept. Instead, they’ve been phasing in different aspects of a mastery-based system as the community seems ready for them. “This year when our kids finish classes in June, the 100 point scale is going away,” Stack said. Kids always got rubrics explaining how they did on different competencies, but teachers used to translate that into a percentage. Now students will just get the letter grade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>COMMUNITY BUY-IN\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Sanborn school leaders decided to make the transition to a competency-based system they did so aggressively and transparently. “We’ve been very upfront about why we think this is a better model,” Stack said. They held lots of community meetings and made sure parents understood what the model would look like.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You really have to sell the parents and sell the community on why you are doing it,” Giuliucci said. “You have to explain to them why the competency-based model is better than the system they grew up with.” Parents have expectations from schools that can be hard to reconcile with the competency-based system. Receiving honors is a good example. Sanborn used to honor the top 10 percent of its students. Now, any student who reaches a certain grade point average gets honored. That led some parents to question whether the standards had been lowered, but Stack explained some classes are just stronger than others and those students shouldn’t be penalized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Every year that we’ve had this model it has become easier and easier for parents to understand it and follow it,” Stack said. He acknowledges there were questions and concerns, but says the community never pushed back strongly against the school’s move.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some teachers who weren’t happy with the change moved to other districts. Others weren’t comfortable with it right away, so Stack moved them to teach upper division students. The changes began with the incoming freshmen class and were slowly phased in throughout the school, so hesitant educators had time to acclimate. “It’s been a struggle for some of our teachers, but it’s also been a release for some of them too because we took away some of those hard decisions for teachers,” Stack said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stack admits that not every Sanborn teacher has completely bought into the new system even five years later, but he says it’s much harder to hide teaching practices when so much teaching and preparation is done collaboratively. Stack looks at teacher gradebooks to make sure their assessments meet the set criteria. He observes classes and checks in on how well teachers work with their professional learning communities. “If you don’t buy into the philosophy of the company or corporation, dont’ fake it,” Stack said. “Pick a place that matches what you believe in.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stack and Giuliucci both expressed the desire to move towards a more pure form of competency-based education that would allow students to progress with no consideration for age or time. They aren’t there yet, partly because the technology supports for this kind of system are slim.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“To be truly not time bound in how we organize our school, we need kids to have platforms where they can move at their own pace,” Stack said. “Part of that comes down to technology resources. It’s a lot easier to do that when kids can do some online coursework, some traditional coursework and some extended learning opportunities.” Sanborn has close to one computer for every two students, but they are school-based devices and aren’t enough to totally free up the system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We haven’t quite organized ourselves so that if a kid is finished in February he can move into the next course,” Stack said. In fact, there aren’t many good tech tools to support the kind of flexibility Sanborn already has. “I don’t think there is one great technology out there supporting competency education,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sanborn needs a very flexible student information and grading system that lets all teachers access all the competencies and report them out to parents in an easily digestible way. In contrast, most gradebook software is based on the credit hour system the majority of schools still use. “There aren’t too many systems out there that are savvy enough to break down a course to say if a student is proficient in six areas then they get credit for the course,” Stack said. And his teachers are breaking course credit down into far more competencies than just six.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The other big technical stumbling block is scheduling software flexible enough to handle Sanborn’s constantly shifting priorities. Most software is based on a master schedule drawn up in the beginning of the year. But Sanborn teachers are sending students to different classes every day depending on what they need -- there is no standardization. “On-the-fly scheduling is not something that’s built regularly into scheduling software,” Stack said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s also more complicated for counselors to track whether a student is on track to graduate. In a traditional school it’s a question of whether the student has the credits or not. “Now you have kids who’ve completed a course, but are missing one competency so they have to do competency recovery and that’s something we have to track,” Stack said. Not to mention online courses a student has taken or extended learning opportunities like internships, which are also part of a final grade and assessment of competency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>ARE THE CHANGES PAYING OFF?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sanborn hasn’t been doing competency-based learning long enough to have firm statistics on whether students are leaving better prepared for the challenges of the world. Their AP scores are the same, although their Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) scores are up. The dropout rate is down, along with course failures, and Stack is seeing 25 percent fewer discipline referrals. “There are early indicators that things are working, but it will be really telling in the next two to three years as to how are data is changing,” Stack said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sanborn administrators are also in the process of surveying students and teachers to gauge their experience. “Anecdotally I think people would tell you the climate and culture of our school has changed ten fold,” Stack said. Teachers are happier. They like the flexibility of working with a small group of peers, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s very freeing from my perspective to be able to teach the most logical way,” Giuliucci said. “I have not given a multiple choice, fill in the blank test in years now and I don’t miss it.” He likes giving students multiple ways to show their learning, including the freedom to create artistic works like movies or songs using the technology available to them. It’s gratifying to see students who might lose motivation keep trying. “It gives them an opportunity to feel that they struggle at this particular thing, but they can show their knowledge in some other way,” Giuliucci said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>THE FUTURE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All the elementary and middle schools in Sanborn’s district are now competency-based, which will continue to smooth out the bumps the high school has experienced. New incoming freshmen will be used to the system, and teachers will have much more granular information about who their students are and what they already know.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_35949\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/arrows.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-35949\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/arrows.jpg\" alt=\"Getty Images\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/arrows.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/arrows-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/arrows-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Getty Images\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">New Hampshire is the first state to change its education policies to credit high school students -- and soon elementary and middle school students, too -- for progressing based on what they've mastered, not the number of hours they spend in school. Known as a competency-based system, the idea is to define the core skills and concepts students should master and only move them forward once they’ve achieved mastery of every competency rather than their \"seat time.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In traditional schools, students progress if their average grade is high enough, which may leave room for holes in their understanding of concepts they’ll need in future classes. In the most alternative application of a competency-based system, age-based grade levels would disappear and students would move through concepts at their own pace, regardless of age or grade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"ef2da9db7f9b1ac8a170c74cf5511ff6\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Advancing students based on their mastery of subjects is now the state policy of New Hampshire, but a long history of local control over education means the policy is being implemented very differently in every school district. “Local government, whether at the town, city or county level, takes a state mandate and interprets it locally,” said Julia Freeland, research fellow at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.christenseninstitute.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Christensen Institute\u003c/a> and author of \u003ca href=\"http://www.christenseninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/From-policy-to-practice.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">\u003cem>From Policy to Practice: How Competency Based Education is Evolving in New Hampshire\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. “It creates an interesting dynamic in terms of uniformity across the state.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some New Hampshire schools were already reorganizing school instruction, schedules and expectations around teaching competencies before the state passed its policy in 2005. Those schools -- often charters or alternative schools -- had a big jump start over traditional comprehensive high schools that had been operating the same way for more than 100 years. A few of those traditional schools embraced the move to competency-based education as a way to improve struggling performance. Others found ways to design their competencies to fit in with what they were already doing. Those schools still look very traditional.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What we saw really lacking was the core concept that students would be advancing upon mastery,” Freeland said. “If they truly were moving by mastery they would have flexible pacing.” Schools that stay on the semester system, divided by subject area and age, and assigning grades on a 100-point scale aren’t embracing the spirit of the state’s move to a competency-based system. “There are schools calling what they’re doing competency-based but aren’t really allowing for flexible pacing,” Freeland said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>STATE’S ROLE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New Hampshire education officials originally laid out the competencies they expected schools to cover along with how they should be assessed through state law. But those directives were taken out of the legislation when school administrators balked at losing some of the local control central to New Hampshire’s identity. That change took away the state’s ability to enforce its competency-based system uniformly. Instead, the state education department has tried to create resources and support for districts as they implement the law.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\u003cstrong>\"What we saw really lacking was the core concept that students would be advancing upon mastery. If they truly were moving by mastery they would have flexible pacing.\"\u003c/strong>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“The state is taking a really proactive role as technical support for those districts that do want to move more in the direction of a fully competency-based approach,” Freeland said. Education department officials drafted recommended competencies that districts could adopt or revise. They have been bringing teachers and leaders together -- possible for a small state like New Hampshire -- to talk about the challenges and opportunities different districts are facing and to share best practices. The state has tried to play a think tank-like role, doing the research and development work that can take so much time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re being hands-on in terms of providing resources and being hands off in terms of telling people what to do,” Freeland said. One of those resources is flexible online professional development, meant to allow teachers to learn about what the policy shift means for their classrooms whenever they have time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The mistake we made early on is we probably didn’t do enough professional development as we should have,” said Paul Leather, deputy commissioner of education. Leather is in charge of implementing the department’s programs, and he knows educator buy-in is crucial to making this dramatic shift in teaching practices, and that his department does not have that buy-in everywhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One of the things we forget is that the current batch system has been in place for 100 years and all the infrastructure was created over time to support it,” Leather said. “It doesn’t work that well but it’s easy to implement.” Supporting a move away from the familiar has been a challenge without any power to enforce the law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s got to be meaningful to [teachers],” Leather said. “They have to choose that this is something that will make education better for their kids.” He’s trying to make his department the most effective resource it can be so teachers see the value in moving along the path to a more pure form of competency-based teaching.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>DEVELOPING PERFORMANCE-BASED ASSESSMENTS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One key change is how teachers assess student work. At schools where very little change has taken place, teachers are grading in the same way they always have, although they may be looking for the competencies the school had defined as they do so. The focus is still on end-of-course tests or essays and on the state exams-- soon to be the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium tests. Leather is trying to encourage the state’s educators to use performance-based assessments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Schools will be determining proficiency of students over time using a bank of validated performance assessments and we will have a calibration and moderation process that is multi-district and within schools and districts,” Leather said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New Hampshire’s department of education has been working with Stanford researcher Linda Darling-Hammond and the\u003ca href=\"https://edpolicy.stanford.edu/projects/1188\" target=\"_blank\"> Innovation Lab Network\u003c/a> to build up a bank of worthy performance assessments that districts can use. “We want to be able to validate and demonstrate reliability around demonstrations of proficiency in one school and classroom versus another school and classroom,” Leather said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Leather hopes that once this bank of assessments is complete, schools will use them as the primary means of assessing competency. If the assessments are validated by outside researchers and used statewide, he hopes educators will feel more confident that they measure learning as well or better than the tests that some teachers still rely on now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you are going to go to scale with this work then you really have to create the environment and the infrastructure to support the work,” Leather said. He doesn’t think teachers should have to reinvent the wheel every time they try to assess student learning. He’d even like to eventually have a bank of benchmark performance-based tasks that teachers could use mid-year when students are ready to demonstrate mastery on a particular competency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Leather said he’s been careful not to tie any of the innovation work on competency-based learning to teacher evaluation. “You can’t design it in a way where [teachers] are held accountable to a summative-based assessment,” Leather said. If teachers were evaluated based on student scores on end-of-year tests, their evaluation system would be out of sync with the goal of allowing students to show their learning in a variety of ways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, Leather doesn’t believe education in the United States will ever be personalized without a competency-based system. “You can’t truly do personalized learning and also continue to have common expectations without competencies,” Leather said. “They take state standards and put them in the hands of students, teachers and parents and make them real for them.” But the sporadic implementation of a competency-based system across New Hampshire shows that even with supportive statewide policies, on-the-ground progress is a slow process.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_35949\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/arrows.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-35949\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/arrows.jpg\" alt=\"Getty Images\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/arrows.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/arrows-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/arrows-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Getty Images\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">New Hampshire is the first state to change its education policies to credit high school students -- and soon elementary and middle school students, too -- for progressing based on what they've mastered, not the number of hours they spend in school. Known as a competency-based system, the idea is to define the core skills and concepts students should master and only move them forward once they’ve achieved mastery of every competency rather than their \"seat time.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In traditional schools, students progress if their average grade is high enough, which may leave room for holes in their understanding of concepts they’ll need in future classes. In the most alternative application of a competency-based system, age-based grade levels would disappear and students would move through concepts at their own pace, regardless of age or grade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Advancing students based on their mastery of subjects is now the state policy of New Hampshire, but a long history of local control over education means the policy is being implemented very differently in every school district. “Local government, whether at the town, city or county level, takes a state mandate and interprets it locally,” said Julia Freeland, research fellow at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.christenseninstitute.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Christensen Institute\u003c/a> and author of \u003ca href=\"http://www.christenseninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/From-policy-to-practice.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">\u003cem>From Policy to Practice: How Competency Based Education is Evolving in New Hampshire\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. “It creates an interesting dynamic in terms of uniformity across the state.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some New Hampshire schools were already reorganizing school instruction, schedules and expectations around teaching competencies before the state passed its policy in 2005. Those schools -- often charters or alternative schools -- had a big jump start over traditional comprehensive high schools that had been operating the same way for more than 100 years. A few of those traditional schools embraced the move to competency-based education as a way to improve struggling performance. Others found ways to design their competencies to fit in with what they were already doing. Those schools still look very traditional.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What we saw really lacking was the core concept that students would be advancing upon mastery,” Freeland said. “If they truly were moving by mastery they would have flexible pacing.” Schools that stay on the semester system, divided by subject area and age, and assigning grades on a 100-point scale aren’t embracing the spirit of the state’s move to a competency-based system. “There are schools calling what they’re doing competency-based but aren’t really allowing for flexible pacing,” Freeland said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>STATE’S ROLE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New Hampshire education officials originally laid out the competencies they expected schools to cover along with how they should be assessed through state law. But those directives were taken out of the legislation when school administrators balked at losing some of the local control central to New Hampshire’s identity. That change took away the state’s ability to enforce its competency-based system uniformly. Instead, the state education department has tried to create resources and support for districts as they implement the law.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\u003cstrong>\"What we saw really lacking was the core concept that students would be advancing upon mastery. If they truly were moving by mastery they would have flexible pacing.\"\u003c/strong>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“The state is taking a really proactive role as technical support for those districts that do want to move more in the direction of a fully competency-based approach,” Freeland said. Education department officials drafted recommended competencies that districts could adopt or revise. They have been bringing teachers and leaders together -- possible for a small state like New Hampshire -- to talk about the challenges and opportunities different districts are facing and to share best practices. The state has tried to play a think tank-like role, doing the research and development work that can take so much time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re being hands-on in terms of providing resources and being hands off in terms of telling people what to do,” Freeland said. One of those resources is flexible online professional development, meant to allow teachers to learn about what the policy shift means for their classrooms whenever they have time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The mistake we made early on is we probably didn’t do enough professional development as we should have,” said Paul Leather, deputy commissioner of education. Leather is in charge of implementing the department’s programs, and he knows educator buy-in is crucial to making this dramatic shift in teaching practices, and that his department does not have that buy-in everywhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One of the things we forget is that the current batch system has been in place for 100 years and all the infrastructure was created over time to support it,” Leather said. “It doesn’t work that well but it’s easy to implement.” Supporting a move away from the familiar has been a challenge without any power to enforce the law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s got to be meaningful to [teachers],” Leather said. “They have to choose that this is something that will make education better for their kids.” He’s trying to make his department the most effective resource it can be so teachers see the value in moving along the path to a more pure form of competency-based teaching.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>DEVELOPING PERFORMANCE-BASED ASSESSMENTS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One key change is how teachers assess student work. At schools where very little change has taken place, teachers are grading in the same way they always have, although they may be looking for the competencies the school had defined as they do so. The focus is still on end-of-course tests or essays and on the state exams-- soon to be the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium tests. Leather is trying to encourage the state’s educators to use performance-based assessments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Schools will be determining proficiency of students over time using a bank of validated performance assessments and we will have a calibration and moderation process that is multi-district and within schools and districts,” Leather said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New Hampshire’s department of education has been working with Stanford researcher Linda Darling-Hammond and the\u003ca href=\"https://edpolicy.stanford.edu/projects/1188\" target=\"_blank\"> Innovation Lab Network\u003c/a> to build up a bank of worthy performance assessments that districts can use. “We want to be able to validate and demonstrate reliability around demonstrations of proficiency in one school and classroom versus another school and classroom,” Leather said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Leather hopes that once this bank of assessments is complete, schools will use them as the primary means of assessing competency. If the assessments are validated by outside researchers and used statewide, he hopes educators will feel more confident that they measure learning as well or better than the tests that some teachers still rely on now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you are going to go to scale with this work then you really have to create the environment and the infrastructure to support the work,” Leather said. He doesn’t think teachers should have to reinvent the wheel every time they try to assess student learning. He’d even like to eventually have a bank of benchmark performance-based tasks that teachers could use mid-year when students are ready to demonstrate mastery on a particular competency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Leather said he’s been careful not to tie any of the innovation work on competency-based learning to teacher evaluation. “You can’t design it in a way where [teachers] are held accountable to a summative-based assessment,” Leather said. If teachers were evaluated based on student scores on end-of-year tests, their evaluation system would be out of sync with the goal of allowing students to show their learning in a variety of ways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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