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There are 19 competency skills assessed in this learning experience. I use a project path way to build toward the final project. I have evidence of learners integrating multiple skills at great DOK because they work on the same skills throughout their high school career, leveling up at the advance through portfolios. Learners in this project ranged from portfolio 1 to portfolio 4 so while some were demonstrating skill at a level 7-8, others were aiming for level 10-11 based on the continua.

Additionally, NextGen Essential global competencies of Creating Quality Projects and Presentation were developed- these can be used in all content areas and in all post-secondary settings.

The project itself was learner-facing. each learner determined the category of influence most authentic to them and used that to find a research topic. Learners were also able to decide their presentation audience and presentation style. Some presented in first person, assuming the personality of their research subject, others presented digitally, and still others presented using a trifold or poster.

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Within each section of the project are smaller orange checkpoints which list the tasks within the sections and a proposed due date to help with pacing. 

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Project Path building to Final Reflection

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Project Path building to Final Reflection

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Throughout the project I collected several small and large bits of formative data. For example, I collected exit tickets about different types if historical sources and used that to see who clearly understood and who needed more time to understand the concept. I also used the pre-assessment to identify learners that had strong analysis skills and was able to tailor instruction for those that hadn't built those skills yet. I was able to use this to group students within my room during class time but also to do pull-outs during the week for learners that needed more instruction, help with revisions, and one-on-one time. I wonder how this might be a stronger instructional practice if our school schedule was more flexible and I could schedule those groups as much or as little as I'd like.

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Slate task dashboard organized to follow the project path

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Student tasks are submitted in Slate, out school's LMS. Slate was created by Building21 so that work can be submitted, assessed, and saved for learners. The project, the tasks, feedback, and ratings are all in Slate so learners, other teachers, admin, and families can see where a learner is at any given time. Slate also has a Competency dashboard for learners and families to view that shows exactly which competencies and skills a learner has demonstrated, which still need to be shown, what the ratings are, and which portfolio a learner is in.

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The skills in my unit progress from portfolio 1 to portfolio 4, building on themselves as they go. At our school a learner in any portfolio can be in any class (except math) because the projects are designed so that each learner can create work at their portfolio level.

There is not a teacher at another level, we all teach all levels and are free to rate work from any content area (although we generally stay in our content lane) All teachers have the expectation that they offer opportunities to learners to learn the global skills like Habits of Success and NextGen Essentials.

Finally, this particular learning progress is taught only by myself, with this combination of skills. At Meridian Academy all teachers design their own experiences/projects and let learners tailor them to meet their competency needs.

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The "Go Deeper" resource that I found most helpful was from Sandra Moumoutjis of Building21 https://aurora-institute.org/cw_post/using-competency-performance-levels-as-predictors-of-college-persistence-in-competency-based-schools/

She talks about how the skills within the continua build on themselves and that a level 10 indicates college and career readiness. Essentially, those skills, at that level are our Portrait of a Graduate. Learners will have content and global skill competency when they are finished with high school.

If we claim that level 10 is college and career ready then there are some shifts that we need to make bother vertically and horizontally in our school. Horizontally, all teachers need to ensure that they are using the continua to rate student work and that the projects designed are aligned to the continua. Giving learners high ratings for work that is not aligned takes away the transparency of the CBE model and is not equitable. Calibration of tasks and co-designing experiences could help here. Vertically, admin needs to make sure that teachers are doing this work and providing training so it is done well.

Within my locus of control I am going to meet with my instructional coach to double check that my learning experiences are fully aligned. Also, I would like to collaborate with other teachers in other content areas to look for areas where we can use the same theme across disciplines. Finally, I am going to take to my administrator and the leadership team about developing interdisciplinary experiences for learners that are more real world and hands on for the next school year. Then, I am going to survey students to see what they would like to explore in the real world to help guide my teaching and project design for next year.

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School boards, policymakers, parents, and community members continue to grapple with the best way to measure our schools' success. We need ways to accurately assess how our students and schools are performing over time. But none of the metrics currently in place accurately reflect an individual student's knowledge, skills, and mindsets - their ability to persevere through setbacks and failures, their ability to solve problems and think critically, their ability to manage tasks and deadlines, and their ability to set goals and seek support and resources to achieve them.

The 2014 New America Education Policy Brief, " The Case Against Exit Exams ," stated, "New evidence has reinforced the conclusion that exit exams disproportionately affect a subset of students, without producing positive outcomes for most," and that they "have tended to add little value for most students but have imposed costs on already at-risk ones." While most states have moved away from exit exams as a requirement for high school graduation, many states still use standardized testing to rank or grade school performance.

Standardized tests measure a student's ability to take tests, sometimes in a set amount of time, but they do not necessarily measure their knowledge and absolutely do not measure their ability to apply that knowledge in the real world. Other available metrics (e.g., honors classes, AP classes, GPA) also fail to reflect a deeper sense of what our young people know and are able to do.
How do we truly measure the impact of the education our schools are providing and whether or not we are successfully preparing students for life after high school?
This question is one that Building 21 is trying to answer. We have been studying the data from our Building 21 Allentown competency-based education (CBE) high school. We opened this school in the 2015-2016 school year with just 9th graders and grew a grade every year until we had our first graduating class in June of 2019. Students graduate from our school by demonstrating mastery in their competency portfolios, not by taking traditional courses. Students are assessed on 33 competencies in 9 competency areas - English Language Arts, Social Studies, Science, Math, NextGen Essentials, Habits of Success, Visual Art, Health, and PE. Students also complete a set of Wayfinding experiences and are assessed on Math concept lists. The table below lists our competency portfolio requirements for graduation:

Students work on the same competencies and continua each year, across all learning experiences, striving to make progress and growth and to reach a level 10 on our continua, which indicates college and career readiness. As we continue to expand our competency model in schools across the country, we want to analyze our competency-based approach to see if we truly are preparing our students for post-secondary success.

Our operating hypothesis when we started Building 21 was that our competency ratings, comprised of performance-based assessments requiring students to apply their knowledge in authentic ways, would be a better barometer of college and career readiness than a handful of standardized tests with the inherent limitations noted above. And now, with three cohorts of students having graduated, we finally have the data to test this hypothesis.

We evaluated the level of correlation between our students' performance levels on our competencies and their post-secondary outcomes. We used data from the National Student Clearinghouse across our first three graduating classes to determine the students who went to college and how long they stayed in college. We developed a college persistence measure determined by the number of semesters a student was enrolled in a two- or four-year college or university after they graduated from high school.

We then conducted a Pearson R correlation of various data points related to college persistence - all competency performance levels, competency performance levels by area, GPA, SAT scores, and Keystone Exams (Pennsylvania's high school state tests for Literature, Algebra 1, and Biology). Our initial findings are encouraging.

We found there is a moderate to strong positive correlation between the average performance levels on all of our competencies and college persistence. The correlation was lower when each individual competency area was correlated with college persistence separately (e.g., see ELA in the table below). The correlation to college persistence was also lower for SAT scores and the Keystone exam. The table below shows the results of our analysis:
Our findings show that our average competency performance levels predict college persistence about twice as well as SAT scores and Keystone exams do.
Our initial correlation data has not been validated by an external research partner yet - we are working on this now. However, the moderate to strong positive correlation between average performance levels on all of our competencies and college persistence, and its superiority to the correlation values for SAT and state exams, leads us to believe that a strong performance (Level 10 or higher on our continua) on all of our competencies, both academic and nonacademic, is a better predictor of post-secondary success for our schools than other traditional measures.

CBE schools are under pressure to prove their models work. Even though we know that the traditional model of school is not working for many students and that we need to do something different, actually changing your model and trying something different invites a higher level of scrutiny. We are excited to continue our research and analysis of our competency model and the relationship between our competency performance levels and post-secondary success and hope to publish future findings.

In my next blog post, we will take a deeper dive into understanding the why behind our continua, or competency-based learning progressions, and the power they hold for seamless K-12 instruction and assessment in CBE schools.

For those of you who read one of my previous blog posts, Building 21's Studio Model: Designing Learning Experiences for Engagement and Impact , and are interested in studio design, Building 21's Learning Innovation Network is running a virtual Studio Design Institute this summer from August 1st-4th. Here is a link to our website for more information and to register as a participant.

Sandra Moumoutjis is the Executive Director of Building 21's Learning Innovation Network which is designed to grow and support a community of schools and districts as they transition to competency-based education. Through professional development and coaching, Sandra supports schools and districts in all aspects of the change management process. Sandra is the co-designer of Building 21's Competency Framework and instructional model. Prior to working for Building 21, Sandra was a teacher, K-12 reading specialist, literacy coach, and educational consultant in districts across the country.

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Using Competency Performance Levels as Predictors of College Persistence in Competency-Based Schools - Aurora Institute

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School boards, policymakers, parents, and community members continue to grapple with the best way to measure our schools' success. We need ways to accurately assess how our students and schools are performing over time.