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Activity - Click Here, Select School from Drop Down

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Activity - Click Here, Select School from Drop Down

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https://mciea-dashboard.herokuapp.com/welcome

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The School Quality Measures Framework aims to describe the full measure of what makes a good school. The three outer categories are essential inputs to school quality that influence the center two key outcomes.

School Quality Measures Framework

Through a strand of work led by professor Jack Schneider at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and a team of researchers, MCIEA is reimagining how we measure the quality of our schools and the learning experiences of our students.

To achieve this goal, MCIEA sought input from stakeholders in each consortium district to build a school quality framework that reflects what the public wants to know about their schools.

The framework has been built around multiple measures, which include academic, social-emotional, and school culture indicators, in order to piece together a fairer and more comprehensive picture of school performance. It consists of five major categories.

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The School Quality Measures Framework aims to describe the full measure of what makes a good school. The three outer categories are essential inputs to school quality that influence the center two key outcomes.

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A Landscape Analysis of Competency-Based Education - XQ ...

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At XQ, we believe strongly that we need high school models that require students to demonstrate true mastery of knowledge, skills, and competencies, rather than ...

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In recent years there has been a growing interest in proficiency-based or competency-based education in both K-12 and postsecondary education-a shift that has been driven, in part, by advances in digital learning technologies. Although no standard format exists for competency-based education, the approach typically involves:

Instruction. Students receive customized supports to match their individual learning needs in each subject, helping them learn increasingly more challenging material in a developmentally appropriate and motivating matter.

Pacing. Students progress at different rates in different areas rather than on a teacher-driven, class-wide schedule.

Mastery. Students advance to the next level, course, or grade based on demonstrating their skills and content knowledge as defined by clear, measurable learning objectives.

Building the Evidence: Key Research

Despite considerable momentum in the field, competency-based systems have not been extensively researched. Recent studies have described the experiences of educators undertaking competency-based reforms or have highlighted promising models, but these studies have not systematically examined the effects of these models on student outcomes.

RAND has been working to grow the evidence base around competency-based education by evaluating pilot programs in the K-12 sector to better understand student outcomes following exposure to this type of instruction. In addition, this research has comprised exploration into some of the equity challenges that competency-based education may introduce or exacerbate.

Competency-based education meets students where they are academically, provides opportunities for choice, and awards students credit for evidence of learning, not time spent studying a subject. Researchers identify lessons for policy, partnerships, and practice regarding this approach.

Competency-based education approaches are designed to foster equity by preventing students from falling behind or staying behind. In practice, though, poorly implemented competency-based programs could create inequity in opportunities and in outcomes.

Interpersonal and intrapersonal competencies such as communication and resilience are important predictors of success and civic engagement after high school. They're also difficult to measure. Practical, high-quality measures could help educators and policymakers improve outcomes for students.

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In recent years there has been a growing interest in proficiency-based or competency-based education in both K-12 and postsecondary education-a shift that has been driven, in part, by advances in digital learning technologies. Although no standard format exists for competency-based education, the approach typically involves: Instruction.

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“Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” John R. Wooden

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“Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” John R. Wooden

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What does it mean?
How can you relate to it?

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3 words to describe your experience.
2 sentences to summarize your learning.
1 feeling your are leaving with.

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https://cce.org/work/quality-performance-assessment/tools-resources

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https://cce.org/work/quality-performance-assessment/framework

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(CCE) Center for Collaborative Education

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Quality Performance Assessment: A Guide for Schools and Districts, published by CCE in 2012, looks at the process of making performance assessments that are rigorous, valid, and reliable and, at the same time, relevant and engaging for students. The guide leads readers through the process by using tools, protocols, and case studies that showcase various entry points and experiences.

Chapter 1 demonstrates how performance assessment at the school, district, and state levels can be a driver of professional development and student achievement. Chapters 2 through 5 provide a road map to the QPA Framework. Chapter 5 concludes with an examination of the power of networks of educators using performance assessments collaboratively.

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Resources for Performance... | (CCE) Center for Collaborative Education

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Quality Performance Assessment: A Guide for Schools and Districts, published by CCE in 2012, looks at the process of making performance assessments that are rigorous, valid, and reliable and, at the same time, relevant and engaging for students. The guide leads readers through the process by using tools, protocols, and case studies that showcase various entry points and experiences.

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(CCE) Center for Collaborative Education

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CCE is a host partner for the Deeper Learning Conference!
Deeper Learning begins with reimagining traditional learning through immersive experiences-especially in the outdoors and with the arts. Our conference theme, A Nexus of Opportunity: Radical Imagination for Learning, recognizes the unique moment we are living in to create transformative learning experiences. Whether you are inspired by the outdoors, the arts, a new piece of technology, or an innovative curriculum-finding ways to think beyond our typical limits can lead to radically new outcomes for youth and families.

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CCE is a host partner for the Deeper Learning Conference! Deeper Learning begins with reimagining traditional learning through immersive experiences-especially in the outdoors and with the arts. Our conference theme, A Nexus of Opportunity: Radical Imagination for Learning, recognizes the unique moment we are living in to create transformative learning experiences.

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The Making of a Homegrown Assessment System

BY SUSAN J. DUGLE/School Administrator, May 2021

Susan Dugle, chief academic officer of Kentucky's Shelby County Schools, oversees a system in which all students have personalized learning plans that monitor progress and celebrate accomplishments.
PHOTO COURTESY OF SHELBY COUNTY, KY., PUBLIC SCHOOLS

The parking lot was full with vehicles parked along both sides of the main street and in every grassy area available. It was a typical Thursday night at Painted Stone Elementary School in Shelbyville, Ky., before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. There was neither a basketball game going on in the gym nor a school play being performed on the stage.

This was Exhibition Night at Painted Stone, serving 464 kindergarten through 5th-grade pupils. This night was the opportunity for the 2nd graders to show the community how they were growing in their abilities to become effective communicators and responsible collaborators. They were pcortraying these competencies through exhibitions of learning. The content was centered around animal habitats, but the enduring skills of communication and collaboration were on display for parents, grandparents and community leaders.

Each 2nd grader wore a name tag that said, "Hello, my name is ____. Ask me how I am an effective communicator."

When 2nd-grade teacher Rosalie Rogers reflects on those first exhibitions, she can remember the mess of cardboard, hot glue, construction paper and toilet paper rolls, but what stands out is the confidence these tiny experts displayed throughout the preparation and presentation of the exhibition.

Another Painted Stone teacher, Brittany Akin, admits when teachers give up control and let students co-plan a project, amazing things happen in the world of performance assessment.

Just down the road at Shelby County West Middle School, 6th and 7th graders were displaying their growth in the competency of global citizenship. The students had been learning research skills through projects on subjects they were passionate about.

In their preparation for exhibition night, the middle schoolers had been given feedback by peers and teachers around the specific indicators for effective communication and global citizenship. The response to the feedback was evident as they kept eye contact, used effective gestures and spoke clearly about their contributions to the community.

When first introduced in the district's 14 schools, exhibitions provided an avenue for reluctant learners to share their learning in multiple ways, Stephanie Walker, an exceptional learning teacher in The Rock Academy at West Middle School, says. Students who hesitated to speak up in groups found confidence in preparation for the exhibition due to a feeling of expertise about a subject of personal interest.

One student who often was anxious about classroom discussions and traditional assessments presented a flawless exhibition on "The History of Nintendo." Community audience members did not detect any anxiety during the exhibition due to the student agency provided by the opportunity to demonstrate learning through performance assessment.

These are examples of planned exhibition nights that were common among Shelby County's school campuses during the 2018-19 school year when we embarked on a journey in performance assessment. As educators, we know parents and grandparents flood into schools when the students are performing, whether for a choral concert or a sports event. We were seeing the same turnout for performance assessment through exhibitions of learning.

Early on, teachers were apprehensive about their students being ready for an audience. Principal Artavia Acklin, at Painted Stone Elementary School, decided to just set a date for all teachers and students to exhibit learning. This leadership action forced teachers to relinquish some control and see what kids could do when given the opportunity.

Acklin admits she was pleasantly surprised with the results. Her colleague, Adam Hicks, principal of Simpsonville Elementary School, had a similar experience. His teacher leadership team also set a schedule for exhibitions at the school and at the local outlet mall. While it raised unintended anxiety in some, it was just the push teachers needed to see the benefits of student ownership and agency in the performance assessment process.

Shelby County Public Schools has begun to implement a second four-year Strategic Leadership Plan that focuses on personalized, student-centered learning. The foundation of the current plan is a community-created Profile of a Graduate, or PoG, which describes the expectations our community holds for successful students who graduate from Shelby County Public Schools.

The PoG was created in 2017 through a design-thinking process involving school and community stakeholders. The key to the success of our Profile of a Graduate was the initial and ongoing involvement of business, industry, parents, civic organizations, educators and students in the decisions about "what a Shelby County graduate needs to know and be able to do."

During the 2018-19 school year, the first step in our performance assessment system was to develop tools to measure the competencies of the PoG: communication, collaboration, global citizenship, innovation, life-long learning and critical thinking. Through consultation with Envision Learning Partners, Rebecca Martin, the district's director of curriculum personnel, led teacher leaders in the creation of performance outcomes for each of the competencies with appropriate grade-band expectations for each.

As teachers began using these tools, they soon realized that these competencies could not be taught or measured in traditional, standardized ways. In order for students to provide evidence of mastery, teachers had to design learning experiences and assessment tasks that allowed for acquisition and demonstration of the competencies.

Teachers responded creatively. Erika Darin, a 3rd-grade teacher at Simpsonville Elementary School, began teaching the competencies while leading a literary unit on character traits. The students compared their "roles in the world" to a character in a book. They explored how to build the habits of such competencies through constant reflection. They even developed simplified rubrics to display on anchor charts so they could easily assess their growth in the competencies.

At the high school level, teachers increased the use of innovative learning structures through the use of project-based learning. PBL not only integrates content, it also provides opportunities for integration of content with the PoG competencies.

A pair of Shelby County High School social studies teachers, Katie Johnson and Jeff Bracken, collaborated on several project-based learning units that allowed students to explore foundational beliefs in the formation of our country. One such unit culminated in group displays at the annual Light Up Shelbyville community event. Student work in the form of wooden flags depicting group learning was on display for the whole community to view.

Teacher efficacy and agency around performance assessment began to grow through the first two years of the Strategic Leadership Plan, which is designed to lead toward a competency-based education system.

The 2019-20 school year was set to be our first year for defenses of learning for students transitioning to the next level. The defenses are designed to allow students to show growth in specific Profile of a Graduate competencies, mastery of enduring content standards and a preparedness for the next phase of life.

All Shelby County students have personalized learning plans that are used during a structured daily advisory time in which they set goals, monitor progress and celebrate accomplishments.

In March 2020, students were deep into the process of selecting artifacts and receiving feedback for defenses when in-person learning was shut down due to the pandemic. Shelby County East Middle School decided to forge ahead and attempt these defenses of learning in a virtual platform. Instructional coach Robyn Marcum and Dean Abbi Long led the charge along with a group of dedicated 8th-grade teachers.

Because of the intentional planning and personal supports used in the advisory period, students were able to continue with the process in the virtual world. Each 8th grader defended her or his readiness for high school with academic and Profile of a Graduate evidence. A panel of peers, teachers and administrators provided feedback through a teleconferencing platform.

The success of the virtual defenses led to an even more intentional, structured plan to support students in their preparation with advisers for this spring's defenses.

As the pandemic lingered on, principals and teachers saw the need to continue the intentional instruction of the Profile of a Graduate competencies in a virtual and blended world. Teachers shifted the focus of instruction to provide opportunities for students to learn and practice these competencies through video conferencing platforms, digital learning tools, learning management systems and intermittent in-person learning.

Once again, the resiliency of teachers and students led to amazing exhibitions of learning in a new and different venue. Clear Creek Elementary teachers began to see the value of one-on-one conferring in breakout rooms to allow students to justify and de-fend their thinking to provide evidence of learning.

Fox DeMoisey, an instructional coach, took on the extra duty of teaching two English IV classes to further support teachers during the pandemic. His focus has been around increasing the authenticity of learning. Along with other teachers in the district, he has prioritized the Profile of a Graduate competencies for all students while providing authentic learning and assessment opportunities.

During the development of the Strategic Leadership Plan, we knew we were preparing our students, teachers and community for an ever-changing world. We had no idea that our preparation would be tested as early as 2020. Even though schooling has been challenging during this pandemic, our stakeholders have shown strong evidence of growth in the competencies of our Profile of a Graduate. As we forge ahead, we will explore new ways to prepare our students to be leaders in our community and world.

SUSAN DUGLE is chief academic officer of Shelby County Public Schools in Shelbyville, Ky. Twitter: @DugleSusan

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AASA, The School Superintendents Association

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The Making of a Homegrown Assessment System BY SUSAN J. DUGLE/ School Administrator, May 2021 Susan Dugle, chief academic officer of Kentucky's Shelby County Schools, oversees a system in which all students have personalized learning plans that monitor progress and celebrate accomplishments.

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Playing the Long Game: A Conversation with Shelby County School District’s Susan Dugle - Education Reimagined

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10 years ago, Susan Dugle and the Shelby County School District decided prioritizing learning, not compliance, would best prepare young people to succeed.

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The SCPS Strategic Leadership Plan includes a theme entitled "Personalized Learning." The objectives over the next two years will be for students to demonstrate and defend the competencies of the Profile of a Graduate as well as core academic competencies.

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WSCB Performance Alignment Base - Group 3

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WSCB Performance Alignment Base - Group 2

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https://webnew.ped.state.nm.us/bureaus/assessment/

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Assessment

Our mission is to positively impact student learning by ensuring the development and administration of valid and reliable assessments that:

Measure the effectiveness of curriculum and instruction

Include data systems and structures that provide students, teachers, administrators and stakeholders with the information needed to make informed decisions

Produce a measure indicating progress towards readiness for college and career

Uphold the belief that all students can learn and achieve at high levels

Hold schools and the PED accountable to create equitable opportunities for students

New Mexico's required assessments meet state and federal requirements for Title I, Title II, and Title III. These assessments are used for a variety of accountability measures.

What Can We Help You Find?

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Our mission is to positively impact student learning by ensuring the development and administration of valid and reliable assessments that: Measure the effectiveness of curriculum and instruction Include data systems and structures that provide students, teachers, administrators and stakeholders with the information needed to make informed decisions Produce a measure indicating progress towards readiness for

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https://www.oecd.org/education/school/49681441.pdf

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The Aurora Institute's policy map shows widespread investment in competency-based education across the country. To highlight this progress, links to more than 200 Competency Works blog posts from our site visits and interviews in 28 states are provided below, organized by state. Schools, districts, and support organizations have used these inspiring accounts of local reforms to inform deeper competency-based learning and systems change in their own settings.

Alaska

Chugach School District (2019)

Part 1 - Rethinking Grade Levels and Age Groupings at the Whittier Community School

Part 2 - Bringing Parents Into Competency-Based Schools

Part 3 - Pathways, Pacing, and Agency Are Intertwined

Part 4 - Sustaining and Sharing Cultural Heritage at the Tatitlek Community School

Chugach School District (2015)

Report - Chugach School District: A Personalized, Performance-Based System

Part 1 - Explorations in Competency Education

Part 2 - Driven by Student Empowerment: Chugach School District

Part 3 - Chugach School District's Performance-Based Infrastructure

Part 4 - Chugach Teachers Talk about Teaching

Part 5 - Ownership, Not Buy-In: An Interview with Bob Crumley, Superintendent Chugach School District

Part 6 - Chugach School District: Performance-Based Education in a One-Room School House

Part 7 - Teaching through the Culture: Native Education in a Performance-Based System

Part 8 - Performance-Based Home Schooling

Highland Tech Charter School (2014)

Part 1 - Highland Tech Charter School - Putting it All Together

Part 2 - Advice From Highland Tech Students

Arkansas

Springdale School District (2017)

Part 1 - Springdale, Arkansas: A Tradition of Innovation and Future of Opportunity

Part 2 - Building Learning Momentum at Springdale's School of Innovation

Part 3 - Finding Time and Providing Support for Student-Driven Learning

Part 4 - Encouraging Learning Risks and Growth

Springdale School District (2015)
Innovation Springing Up in Springdale
California

Da Vinci Schools (2020)

Part 1 - A Hybrid On-Campus and Homeschool Support Program at Da Vinci ConnectX

Part 2 - Earning Diplomas and Degrees Together - A Competency-Based Dual Enrollment School

Del Lago Academy (2020)

Part 1 - Interdisciplinary Projects and Assessment Practices at Del Lago Academy

Part 2 - Science Competencies and Micro-credentials at Del Lago Academy

Part 3 - Personalization and Positive School Culture at Del Lago Academy

Part 4 - A High School With No Students - Only "Scholars"

Learn4Life Schools (2020)

Part 1 - Ensuring Responsiveness to Student Needs at Learn4Life Schools

Part 2 - Educating the Whole Child (and Young Adult) at Alta Vista Innovation High School

Da Vinci Schools (2018)

Part 1 - Innovation in the Air at Da Vinci Schools

Part 2 - Conversations about Learning at Da Vinci

Part 3 - RISE (Revolutionary Individualized Student Experience)

Lindsay Unified High School (2015)

Part 1 - Six Trends at Lindsay Unified School District

Part 2 - Preparing Students for Life....Not Just College and Careers

Part 3 - An Interview with Principal Jaime Robles, Lindsay High School

Part 4 - An Interview with Brett Grimm: How Lindsay Unified Serves ELL Students

Part 5 - It Starts with Pedagogy: How Lindsay Unified is Integrating Blended Learning

Barack Obama Charter School (2013)
Ingenium Schools: A Big City Competency-Based School
Colorado

Denver (2018)
Denver School of Innovation and Sustainable Design (DSISD): Competency-Based by Design
Thompson (2018)
Thompson School District: Student-Driven Learning at Work!
District 51 (2017)

Part 1 - Designing Performance-Based Learning at D51

Part 2 - Building Consensus for Change at D51

Part 3 - The Vision of Performance-Based Education at D51

Part 4 - Holacracy: Organizing for Change at D51

Part 5 - Growing into the Framework: D51's Implementation Strategy

Part 6 - Laying the Foundation with Culture and Climate

Part 7 - Supporting Teachers at D51: A Conversation with the Professional Learning Facilitators

Part 8 - Creating a Transparent Performance-Based System at D51

Part 9 - New Emerson: Learning the Effective Practices of the Learner-Centered Classroom

Part 10 - Transparency and Trust

Part 11 - Lincoln Orchard Mesa: What Did You Notice?

Part 12 - Performance-Based Learning in a Dual Immersion School

Part 13 - R5 High School: Abuzz with Learning

Part 14 - The Teacher Association Perspective on Performance-Based Learning

Part 15 - A Journey of Discovery at Broadway Elementary

Westminster (2017)
Lessons from a Vanguard: A Look at Metz Elementary
Connecticut

Overview (2016)
Superintendents Leading the Way in Connecticut
Naugatuck Public Schools (2016)
Naugatuck Public Schools: Making Meaning for Teachers with Mastery-Based Learning
New Haven (2016)

Creating Meaningful Instruction through Mastery-Based Learning in New Haven, CT New Haven Academy: Pedagogy Comes First
Windsor Locks Public Schools (2016)
Windsor Locks: Starting with Pedagogy
Florida

Lake County Schools (2016)

Part 1 - Lake County Schools: Designing a Strategy to Bring Personalized Learning to Scale

Part 2 - Lake County Schools: Moving at the Speed of Trust at South Lake High School

Part 3 - Lake County Schools: Lost Lake Elementary is Putting the Fun Back into Teaching

Part 4 - Lake County Schools: Sawgrass Bay Elementary Increases Engagement with Personalized Learning

Part 5 - Lake County Schools: Windy Hill Middle School

Georgia

Henry County, Georgia (2016)

Part 1 - Henry County Schools: Four Big Takeaways

Part 2 - Henry County Schools: Ensuring Success for Each Student

Part 3 - Henry County Schools: Scaling Strategies for Mid-Size Districts

Part 4 - Henry County Schools: What All of This Means for Schools

Part 5 - Henry County Schools: Impact Academy

Fulton County Schools (2014)
Fulton County Schools: A Big District Approach to Competency Education
Idaho

Mastery-Based Learning in Idaho (2018)

Part 1 - Mastery-Based Learning in Idaho

Part 2 - Finding Synergy at Kuna Middle School

Part 3 - Moving Forward toward Mastery at Kuna School District

Part 4 - Increasing Credits Earned at Initial Point High School

Part 5 - Finding and Fixing the Missing Skills at Greenhurst Elementary School

Part 6 - Columbia High School: How a Comprehensive High School Becomes Mastery-Based

Part 7 - Gathering Insights on Mastery-Based Learning from Columbia High School

Part 8 - Slaying the Dragon: A Conversation with Cory Woolstenhulme on Mastery-Based Learning

Part 9 - Central Academy, West Ada School District

Part 10 - The Sharp Ones: A Few Takeaways from Idaho

Illinois

Chicago (2017)

Part 1 - CBE in Chicago

Part 2 - Leap Innovations - Learning Exponentially for Advancing Potential

Part 3 - Loving Learning at Lovett Elementary

Part 4 - Personalizing Learning at West Belden

Part 5 - Getting Results at Lindblom

Part 6 - Servant to Two Masters: Balancing Skills and Content at Lindblom

Part 7 - Juarez Community Academy: When Big Schools Become Competency-Based

Kentucky

Eminence School District (2015)
A Conversation with Buddy Berry in Eminence Kentucky
Maine

Biddeford School District (2015)

Part 1 - Biddeford School District: Never Unpack Alone

Casco Bay High School (2015)

Part 2 - Casco Bay High School: Tips and Takeaways

Part 3 - Casco Bay High School: Learning as Exploration

Part 4 - Casco Bay High School: The What and HOW of Learning

Part 5 - Casco Bay High School: We Will Shape our School by our Learning

Noble High School (2015)

Part 6 - Noble High School: Creating Timely, Differentiated Supports

Deer Isle-Stonington High School (2015)

Part 7 - Deer Isle-Stonington High School: Turning Around the Culture

Part 8 - Deer Island-Stonington High School: Breathing Life into the Standards

Part 9 - Deer Isle-Stonington High School: Takeaways and Burning Questions

RSU2 (2016)

Part 10 - RSU2: Entering a New Stage in Building a High Quality Proficiency-Based District

Part 11 - RSU2: Continuous Improvement at Richmond Middle and High School

Part 12 - RSU2: Moving Beyond Grade-Driven Learning

Part 13 - RSU2: Moving Beyond the Test Score with Hope

Wells High School (2016)

Part 14 - Wells High School: The Timeline to Transformation

University of Maine at Presque Isle (2016)

Part 15 - University of Maine at Presque Isle: Moving at the Speed of Light

Part 16 - UMPI: Faculty Perspective

Part 17 - University of Maine at Presque Isle: Eliminating Remediation

Northern Maine Education Collaborative (2016)

Part 18 - Northern Maine Education Collaborative: High Aspirations

RSU2 (2014)

Part 1 - Quick Update from RSU2 in Maine

Part 2 - Virgel Hammonds' Six Insights Into Leadership

Massachusetts

Opportunity Academy (2022)

Part 1 - The Primary Person Model and Transformative Learning Experiences at Opportunity Academy

Part 2 - Strategies for Responsive Pacing at the Success Center

Four Rivers Charter Public School (2019)

Part 1 - Building a Powerful School Culture at Four Rivers

Part 2 - Empowering Teachers as School Leaders at Four Rivers

Part 3 - Active Learning through Expeditions and Internships at Four Rivers

Melrose Public Schools (2016)
Can Melrose Go Deeper with Competency-Based Education?
Boston Day and Evening Academy (2012)

Part 1 - Reading the Pulse of Students at Boston Day and Evening Academy

Part 2 - Boston Day and Evening Academy: Where Competency Education is Good Teaching Practice

Part 3 - Boston Day and Evening Academy: A Learning Organization

Michigan

Schools for the Future (2012)
No One Graduates Before They Are Ready
Minnesota

Eastern Carver County Schools (2019)

Part 1 - District-wide Transformation to Personalized Learning in Eastern Carver County

Part 2 - Personalizing Learning in an Alternative Arts High School

Part 3 - It Takes a Village to Personalize Learning to Every Student

Part 4 - Flexible Scheduling, Supports, and Monitoring at Pioneer Ridge Middle School

Part 5 - Strategies for Building Student Ownership of Their Learning

Part 6 - Eastern Carver's Framework for Lifelong Learning Skills

Farmington Area School District (2019)

Part 1 - "Radical Trust" and Teacher Agency Drive Deeper Change in Farmington

Part 2 - Shifting the English Department to Competency-Based Learning

Part 3 - Shifting the English Department to Competency-Based Assessment

Part 4 - Interstellar Time at Boeckman Middle School

Part 5 - Innovative Scheduling: Digital e-Learning Days and Academic Support Periods

Eastern Carver County Schools (2016)

Part 1 - Moving from Islands of Innovation to a District of Distinction in Personalized Learning

Part 2 - Moving from Islands of Innovation to a District of Distinction in Personalized Learning

Mississippi

McComb School District (2018)

Part 1 - Personalizing the Learning in McComb, Mississippi

Part 2 - McComb's Six Pillars of Student-Centered Learning

Part 3 - McComb's Strategic Planning Begins with the Community

Part 4 - Piloting Change in McComb

Part 5 - Empowering Scholars at McComb's Summit Elementary

Part 6 - Starting with the Kindergarteners in McComb

Part 7 - Starting the Journey to CBE at Otken Elementary School

Part 8 - Supporting Practitioners in McComb

New Hampshire

Parker-Varney Elementary (2016)
Parker-Varney Elementary: Keepers of the Bar
Making Community Connections Charter School (2014)

Part 1 - Igniting Learning at the Making Community Connections Charter School

Part 2 - Gateways, Not Grades

Pittsfield School District (2014)

Part 1 - Redesign at Pittsfield School District

Part 2 - Hand in Hand: Pittsfield Integrates Personalized Learning and Competency Education

Part 3 - Pittsfield Rethinks Adult Roles

Part 4 - Implementation Insights from Pittsfield School District

Sanborn Regional School District (2014)

Part 1 - Sanborn Regional School District Flips District Reform

Part 2 - Addressing Root Causes at Memorial Elementary School

Part 3 - Raising the Bar at Sanborn Regional High School

New Jersey

Merit Prep (2015)

Part 1 - Merit Prep: Where Students Feel Safe to Learn

Part 2 - Non-Linear Progressions and Culture of Safety at Merit Prep

New York, New York City

South Bronx Community Charter High School (2020)

Part 1 - Competency Frameworks and Content Selection at South Bronx Community Charter

Part 2 - Transitioning and Sustaining Competency-Based Education During School Closures

School Visits (2019)

Part 1 - The Mastery Collaborative: Dozens of NYC Schools Support Each Other's Reforms

Part 2 - Diversifying the Student Body and Personalizing Student Schedules at NYC iSchool

Part 3 - Mastery-Based Making: The Urban Assembly Maker Academy

Part 4 - Project Example: Mobile App Design at Urban Assembly Maker Academy

Overview and Insights (2016)

Part 1 - NYC Big Takeaways

Part 2 - Catalyzing Mastery-Based Learning: NYC's Mastery Collaborative

Part 8 - Anchoring the Learning: A Discussion with Joel Rose at New Classrooms

Part 9 - Talking Equity with John Duval

The Young Women's Leadership School of Astoria (2016)

Part 3 - The Young Women's Leadership School of Astoria

Flushing International (2016)

Part 4 - Flushing International's Three Learning Outcomes: Habits, Language, and Academic Skills

KAPPA International (2016)

Part 5 - KAPPA International: The Story of Angelica

North Queens Community High School (2016)

Part 6 - North Queens Community High School: Blooming the Outcomes

EPIC North (2016)

Part 7 - High Expectations at EPIC North

Overview and Insights (2014)

Part 1 - Magical Mastery Tour

Part 2 - The Big Three Takeaways of the Magical Mastery Tour

Part 10 - All Together Now....the Magical Mastery Tour

Bronx International High School (2014)

Part 3 - First Stop of the Magical Mastery Tour: Bronx International High School

Carrol Gardens School for Innovation (2014)

Part 4 - Carroll Gardens School for Innovation (MS 442): Intentional School Design

EPIC Schools (2014)

Part 5 - EPIC Schools: Putting Young Men of Color in the Center of the Design (Part 1)

Part 6 - A Deeper Dive into the EPIC North Design (Part 2)

Bronx Arena (2014)

Part 7 - Bronx Arena: Organizing Spaghetti (Part 1)

Part 8 - Bronx Arena: Innovating Until 100% of Students Graduate (Part 2)

Urban Assembly Maker Academy (2014)

Part 9 - Asking the Right Questions: Urban Assembly Maker Academy

North Dakota

Bismarck Public Schools (2020)

Part 1 - Flex-Mod Scheduling to Enable Competency-Based Learning

Part 2 - Lessons from Tracking Student Flex Time in a Competency-Based High School

Northern Cass School District (2019)

Part 1 - The Evolution of Competency-Based Transformation in Northern Cass

Part 2 - Framing Habits of Work and Capstone Skills in Northern Cass

Part 3 - Transitioning to Standards-Based Grading

Ohio

Cleveland Metropolitan Schools (2017)

Part 1 - Cleveland: Where Pedagogy Comes First

Part 2 - Starting with Design Principles in Cleveland

Part 3 - Getting to Know Students' Business: A Conversation at Lincoln-West's Schools of Global Studies and Science & Health

Part 4 - E3agle and PACT: Insights from Two New Competency-Based Schools

Part 5 - A Conversation with Teachers in Cleveland

Oregon

West Albany High School (2013)
If Failure is Not an Option, Neither are Supports
Pennsylvania

Building 21 (2016)

Part 1 - Breaking out of the Boxes at Building 21

Part 2 - Building 21's Competency Dashboard

Rhode Island
Laying the Groundwork for Proficiency-Based Learning in Rhode Island
South Carolina

Competency-Based Education Takes Root in South Carolina

Red Bank Elementary (2016)

Part 1 - Red Bank Elementary: Five Big Takeaways

Part 2 - Red Bank Elementary School: Teaching Students, Not Standards

Part 3 - Red Bank Elementary School: Starting with the Pedagogy

Part 4 - Red Bank Elementary: What Students Have to Say about Personalized Learning

Part 5 - Red Bank Elementary: The Parent Perspective

Part 6 - Reflections on Learning

Part 7 - When Red Bank Went to Lindsay

Charleston County School District (2016)

Part 8 - Charleston County School District: Breaking Ground for Personalized Learning in Big Districts

Part 9 - Charleston: Progression of Implementation for Personalized Learning

Part 10 - Charleston: Personalized Learning at Pepperhill Elementary

Part 11 - Charleston: A Conversation with Teachers at Stall High School

Part 12 - Charleston: A Conversation with Teachers at Goodwin Elementary School

Part 13 - Charleston: Pinehurst Elementary School

South Dakota

Harrisburg School District (2019)

Part 1 - District-wide Transformation in Harrisburg, South Dakota

Part 2 - Littles, Middles, Molders, and Olders - Multi-age Learning at Journey Elementary

Part 3 - Habits of Mind and Learning New Ways of Learning at Journey Elementary

Vermont

Montpelier Public Schools (2016)

A Conversation with the Two Mikes from Montpelier
Washington

Vancouver iTech (2021)
Structuring Standards-Based Instruction and Assessment at Vancouver iTech
Wisconsin

Kettle-Moraine (2017)

Part 1 - Kettle Moraine: Where the Future of Education is Being Created Student by Student

Part 2 - Kettle Moraine: How They Got Here and Where They are Going

Part 3 - The Five Pillars of Teaching and Learning at KM Explore

Part 4 - The Sound of Learning at Create House at Kettle Moraine Middle School

Part 5 - KM Global: Pedagogy, Curriculum, and Learning Design

Part 6 - Chasing Competencies at KM Perform

Part 7 - Reaching Out into the Community at High School of Health Sciences

Part 8 - Practicing What They Preach: Micro-Credentialing at Kettle Moraine

Part 9 - Distributed Leadership at Kettle Moraine

Part 10 - A Quick Look at Kettle Moraine's My Learning Collaborative

Waukesha (2017)

Part 1 - Blair Elementary

Part 2 - FLIGHT Academy

STEM Academy

Part 3 - Creating a Learner-Driven System in Waukesha (Part 1)

Part 4 - Personalizing Instruction and Learning Experiences (Part 2)

Part 5 - Waukesha STEM Academy: Rethinking Space, Time, and Reporting (Part 3)

Part 6 - Waukesha STEM Academy's Journey from ABC to the Learner Continuum (Part 4)

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Competency-Based Education Across America - Aurora Institute

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The Aurora Institute's policy map shows widespread investment in competency-based education across the country. To highlight this progress, links to more than 200 Competency Works blog posts from our site visits and interviews in 28 states are provided below, organized by state.

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https://education.vermont.gov/student-learning/assessments/state-and-local-assessments#performance-assessments

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Vermont Comprehensive Assessment System

The Agency of Education coordinates the implementation and administration of all components of the Vermont Comprehensive Assessment System (CAS), including the development of alternate assessments. The Agency also identifies, analyzes, and reports on outcomes and data measured by the CAS.

Established by the State Board of Education in 1996, the Vermont Comprehensive Assessments System (CAS) evaluates student performance in the state's schools based on Common Core State Standards (CCSS), Next Generation Science Standards, CCSS Essential Elements and English Language Development Standards with the goal of improving teaching and learning.

Local Comprehensive Assessment Systems
Vermont Agency of Education Resources Additional Local Comprehensive Assessment Resources Performance Assessments
Vermont Agency of Education Resources

This document, Strengthening and Streamlining Vermont Local Comprehensive Assessment Systems: Defining Essential Components, was created from a larger piece of work, Strengthening and Streamlining Local Comprehensive Assessment Systems, in order to develop a shared understanding of assessment terminology that is commonly used.

The ARP-ESSER State Set-Aside Benchmark Assessment Grant Application invites supervisory unions/districts (SUs/SDs) to apply for State Set-Aside funding, totaling $500,000, for the purpose of improving their benchmark assessments, one component of a high-quality Local Comprehensive Assessment System (LCAS). Through this grant opportunity, SU/SDs can enhance their benchmark assessments in one or more of the following ways:

1. Purchase a new benchmark assessment system(s) that includes Lexile and Quantile measures;

2. Extend the grade levels assessed in the current benchmark assessment system that provides Lexile and Quantile measures throughout K - 8 with the possibility of including high school; and/or

3. Fund participation in the Educator Academy for Lexile and/or Quantile Frameworks.

The Strengthening and Streamlining Local Comprehensive Assessment Systems: Guidelines and Support for Leadership Teams provides guidelines and resources to help educators in supervisory unions and districts develop a streamlined balanced local comprehensive assessment system (LCAS) for all students. This document was produced following a thorough review of literature and current practices in the field of student assessment by Agency of Education staff as well as educators in the field. It provides a synthesis of research and current policy, including the MTSS field guide and Education Quality Standards.

Essential Components for Ensuring Local Comprehensive Assessment Systems are Culturally Relevant and Equitable: This document serves to support supervisory unions and/or school districts (SUs/SDs) as they refine their local comprehensive assessment systems (LCAS) to ensure that assessments are equitable and culturally relevant.

Learner Agency and Authentic Assessments: Empowering Learners through Authentic Performance Assessments
This is a video for a flipped session facilitated by the Agency of Education's English Language Arts, Science, and Arts Specialists at the 2021 Assessment for Learning Conference. Participants viewed this video and then engaged in a panel discussion with the facilitators. Between the video and the panel, participants were guided through considerations for designing authentic performance assessments that support social emotional learning and culturally sustaining pedagogy.

Local Comprehensive Assessment Systems in School District Systems: Act 173 Technical Guidance: This document provides additional technical assistance and guidance around local comprehensive assessment systems (LCAS). It is one of a series of four supporting guidance documents the Agency of Education (AOE) has developed to provide supplemental information to the Education Quality Standards (EQS) rules and practices as they pertain to the change in practices necessary to implement Act 173 of 2018.

Local Comprehensive Assessment Systems (LCAS) are a vital part of a broader educational system aimed at improving outcomes for students and enabling every student to meet critical proficiencies. The Local Comprehensive Assessment System Quality Criteria Single Point Rubric, was developed as a tool for reflecting on a system's strengths as well as areas in need of improvement. It can therefore be used to determine next steps towards strengthening balanced assessment systems that enhance the effectiveness, availability and equity of services provided to all students.

Strengthening Local Assessment Systems for Personalized,
Proficiency-Based Education: Strategies and Tools for Professional Learning describes Vermont's convenings to support schools, districts, and other education organizations seeking to create high-quality local comprehensive systems of assessments. It can serve as a resource for schools, districts, and states that are working toward improving their own assessment systems. Readers will learn about the rationale and essential components, formative and summative performance assessments, and student-designed performance assessments.

A webinar related to the report, Strengthening Local Assessment Systems for Personalized, Proficiency-Based Education: Strategies and Tools for Professional Learning, was recorded by Aurora Institute on January 14, 2021. Additionally, here is a link to the related slide deck.

Additional Local Comprehensive Assessment System Resources

Articles

Assessment Design for Broader, Deeper Competencies: Report 12 of the MyWays Student Success Series presents the evolution towards greater authenticity and multiple measures, and recommends the use of Five Assessment Strategies: formative assessment, performance assessment, multiple measures, badges and micro-credentials, and Quality reviews.

How Systems of Assessments Aligned with Competency-Based Education Can Support Equity describes what school, district, and state leaders can do to develop balanced assessment systems that are coherent with target competencies and learning progressions, comprehensively provide a range of evidence for each student, serve multiple stakeholders, and continuously monitor students' progress over time.

Not as Easy as It Sounds: Designing a Balanced Assessment System identifies and describes three essential criteria for a balanced assessment system: coherence, a theory of action, and efficiency.

Student Assessment Inventory for School Districts supports a process by which districts evaluate the assessments students are taking, determine the minimum testing necessary to serve essential diagnostic, instructional and accountability purposes, and work to ensure that every district-mandated test is of high quality and used to improve outcomes for students.

The Future of Assessment Practices: Comprehensive and Balanced Assessment Systems describes the components of an ideal comprehensive, balanced assessment system that includes formative assessment (within and between lessons), medium-cycle formative assessment (within and between instructional units), classroom summative assessment (grading), long-cycle formative assessment (several times during the school year), and district and state-level accountability assessment.

Performance Assessments

Jay McTighe Visits Performance Assessment PLC

Educational author and consultant Jay McTighe joined the AOE's performance assessment PLC on Jan. 26, 2023. The evening was full of rich dialogue as participants posed questions about designing and implementing performance assessments and listened to McTighe's thoughtful responses. See below for additional information about the PLC and watch the recording to learn more.

Facilitating a Peer Learning Community

Members of the Agency of Education's (AOE) Proficiency-Based Learning Team facilitated a Peer Learning Community (PLC) centered around a book study of Designing Authentic Performance Tasks and Projects, the goal of which was to develop a shared understanding of the uses and benefits of performance assessments as they relate to equity, student engagement, and authenticity. Participants gained a deeper understanding of the power of performance assessments and came away with practical tools and strategies for implementing performance assessments in their practice. For more information about this PLC, see the Performance Assessment Peer Learning Community: An Introduction. For information about how to facilitate a similar professional learning opportunity, including sample slide decks, suggested activities, and links to supporting resources, start by reading the following:

Want to learn more? Email Emily Leute for information about upcoming professional learning related to the topic of performance assessments.

Beyond Standardized Tests: Using Performance Assessment in College Admissions

Webinar Summary
This webinar addressed the use of performance assessment for equitable admissions and college success. During the webinar, speakers discuss research, policy, and practice addressing performance assessment and looked specifically at:

The use of performance assessment in k-12 education and research-based ways in which higher education institutions can successfully use these assessments for admissions and placement decisions;

Findings from the new LPI report, including data on the retention and success of CUNY students whose performance assessments were considered as part of their admissions application; and

Implications for postsecondary opportunity, access, and success when performance assessment is used in k-12 preparation and higher education admissions.

Performance assessments play a vital role in a proficiency-based system. Performance assessment templates for content areas as well as an interdisciplinary template are available below.

Performance Assessments Templates

Tools

Inclusive Practice Tool: The Accessibility Review from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education can be used to analyze common assessments to determine if assessments and assessment items effectively address what is important for students to know, understand, and be able to do. This tool will help educators identify elements at the item-specific level that interfere with students' ability to demonstrate their knowledge.

Screening Tool: The National Center on Intensive Intervention at American Institutes for Research has created an Academic Screening Tools Chart that can be used to identify students at risk for poor academic outcomes, including students who require intensive intervention.

Amanda Gorham, Director of Assessment, Amanda.Gorham@vermont.gov

Pat Fitzsimmons, Local Comprehensive Assessment Systems, Pat.Fitzsimmons@vermont.gov or (802) 828-5896

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The Agency of Education coordinates the implementation and administration of all components of the Vermont Comprehensive Assessment System (CAS), including the development of alternate assessments. The Agency also identifies, analyzes, and reports on outcomes and data measured by the CAS.

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https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/education-training/k-12/teach/resources-for-teachers/curriculum/bc-performance-standards

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What is PACE?

New Hampshire's PACE (Performance Assessment of Competency Education) is an innovative assessment and accountability system grounded in a competency-based educational approach designed to ensure that students have meaningful opportunities to achieve critical knowledge and skills. The PACE system is designed to support deeper learning for students and powerful organization change for schools and districts using a combination of local, common and state level assessments.

The core of the PACE innovative assessment system is locally-developed, locally-administered performance assessments tied to grade and course competencies determined by local school districts that are aligned with the State's challenging academic content standards.

In each grade and subject, one common complex performance task, the PACE Common Task, is collaboratively developed and administered by all participating schools and districts. The PACE common tasks are designed to serve as calibration tools, providing evidence about the comparability of judgments related to student achievement across New Hampshire PACE schools and districts. Comparability means that if a student is deemed proficient in one district, that same student would also be deemed proficient in another school district.

Determinations of student proficiency, required under federal law, are produced using: (1) educator judgments at the end of the school year based on which achievement level best describes each of their students; and, (2) end of year competency scores for each student. PACE is designed so that the resulting levels are comparable in rigor and substance to the statewide assessment by using achievement level descriptors that are aligned across the two systems.

The statewide assessments are administered in the grades and subjects when student performance will be most useful for informing programs and auditing the innovative assessment system-grade 3 English language Arts (ELA), grade 4 mathematics; grade 8 ELA and mathematics; and, grade 11 ELA, mathematics and high school science.

Why PACE?

PACE is a learning system designed to structure learning and assessment opportunities allowing students to gain and demonstrate their knowledge and skills at a depth of understanding that will transfer beyond K-12 education to success in careers and college.

The primary objective of the PACE innovative assessment and accountability system is to improve student outcomes by transforming instruction and assessment in classrooms across the State. The following key components will help achieve better results for all students:

Explicit involvement of local educational leaders in designing and implementing the assessment system;

Intense and reciprocal support on behalf of the New Hampshire Department of Education for local districts involved in this initiative that will include technical, policy, and practical guidance;

Utilize competency-based education approaches to instruction, learning and assessment as a purposeful approach to ensure all students, from the most advanced to the most challenged, move on only when they have mastered critical knowledge and skills; and,

Utilize instructionally-relevant, high-quality performance-based assessments, alongside periodic administration of the New Hampshire Statewide Assessment System (NH SAS) and SAT School Day of state standards in ELA, mathematics and science for the purpose of tracking and reporting the progress of students, schools, districts, and educators.

If you have any questions or are interested in applying for inclusion in PACE for your school/district accountability, please feel free to contact:

Melissa White
Administrator for Academics & Assessment
(603) 271-3855
Melissa.White@doe.nh.gov

Technical Documents and Manuals

Published Writing on PACE

Marion, S., & Leather, P. (2015). Assessment and Accountability to Support Meaningful Learning. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 23(9). Retrieved from: https://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/1984

Evans, C. M., & Lyons, S. (2017). Comparability in Balanced Assessment Systems for State Accountability. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 36(3), 24-34. Retrieved from: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/emip.12152

Evans, C. M. (2019). Effects of New Hampshire's Innovative Assessment and Accountability System on Student Achievement Outcomes After Three Years. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 27(10), 1-37. Retrieved from: https://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/1984

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Performance Assessment of Competency Education

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New Hampshire's PACE (Performance Assessment of Competency Education) is an innovative assessment and accountability system grounded in a competency-based educational approach designed to ensure that students have meaningful opportunities to achieve critical knowledge and skills. The PACE system is designed to support deeper learning for students and powerful organization change for schools and districts using a combination of local, common and state level assessments.

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What is the MCIEA Task Bank?
​The MCIEA Task Bank is a public online resource that features performance-based tasks created by educators in MCIEA districts.
Within the public task bank, each task is represented as a card that contains various details about the tasks as well as resources used for administering the tasks. These tasks can be searched using filters found to the left of the Tasks.

Each filter type will display a list of all possible search values when selected. These options can be browsed and selected or begin typing the value in the search box to get to a specific filter type more quickly.

Additionally, the entire collection can be browsed by scrolling down in your browser and clicking on the "load more" button to add more task cards to your page.

MCIEA Task Bank Instructions

We have created an in-depth instruction packet to help guide you through the online task bank.
​
It not only provides step-by-step explanations and details on accessing and utilizing the tasks currently available in the public task bank, but also provides information on how to prepare and submit performance assessment tasks that you have created.

Submit your Performance-Based Assessment Task to the MCIEA Task Bank and share with the entire Consortium.
Share your Performance-Based tasks with teachers in other districts so that they can learn from your work and experience. Each author earns ten PDPs upon final submission of their performance task.
Steps for final task submission:

Prepare the following three pieces of the task as well as any other resources

MCIEA Task Template: Walks you through the task design process step-by-step.

MCIEA Rubric: Provides a starting point for building out a rubric to complement your performance task.

Student Instructions

Fill out the task submission form

Task will be reviewed by two MCIEA teachers
Once task is reviewed (2-3 weeks), reviewers will send author(s) their comments and recommendations

Revise task based on comments and recommendations, and resubmit in this form as a revised task

After task is final, you will receive a PDP certificate for your work on the task equal to 10 hours; PDPs will only be provided if you are able to submit a revised task based on comments and recommendations from reviewers

Finalized tasks will be uploaded to the public task bank

We want your input!

We are in the process of developing more features for the MCIEA Task Bank, and we want to learn from your experiences using task bank.

Please share your thoughts in our online feedback form

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What is the MCIEA Task Bank? ​The MCIEA Task Bank is a public online resource that features performance-based tasks created by educators in MCIEA districts. Within the public task bank, each task is represented as a card that contains various details about the tasks as well as resources used for administering the tasks.

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The Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment (MCIEA) is a partnership of eight MA public school districts and their local teacher unions, joined together to create a fair and effective accountability system that offers a more dynamic picture of student learning and school quality than a single standardized test. MCIEA seeks to increase achievement for all students, close prevailing opportunity gaps among subgroups, and prepare a diversity of students for college, career, and life.

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The Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment (MCIEA) is a partnership of eight MA public school districts and their local teacher unions, joined together to create a fair and effective accountability system that offers a more dynamic picture of student learning and school quality than a single standardized test.

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New York Performance Standards Consortium

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Performance Based Assessment Rubrics

Overview of Performance-based Assessment Policies

Frequently asked questions and answers about PBATs.

Guidance on accommodations to support a child with an IEP to complete the required performance-based assessment tasks. Accommodations must be included in the IEP.

Accommodations for oral presentation and ELL transfers.

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Rubrics & Protocols - New York Performance Standards Consortium

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Performance Based Assessment Rubrics Overview of Performance-based Assessment Policies Frequently asked questions and answers about PBATs. Guidance on accommodations to support a child with an IEP to complete the required performance-based assessment tasks. Accommodations must be included in the IEP. Accommodations for oral presentation and ELL transfers.

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The Performance Assessment Resource Bank is an online collection of high-quality performance tasks and resources that support the use of performance assessment for meaningful learning. Resources include performance tasks, professional development tools, and examples of how schools, districts, and states have integrated performance assessment into their systems of assessment.

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New York Performance Standards Consortium

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The New York Performance Standards Consortium was founded over two decades ago on the belief that there was a better way to assess student learning than dependence upon standardized testing.

Instead of basing a student's future on a one-day (or two- or three-day) test, an assessment system should reflect a fuller picture of what students know and can do.

The Consortium's system is based on in-depth literacy, mathematical problem-solving, application of the scientific method, social studies research, a span of mediums for exhibiting learning, and a chance for students to have a voice and proud ownership of their work.

Our Schools

Our 38 public high schools serve over 12,000 students who reflect the diversity of the NY public school system. Consortium member schools have a waiver that allows them to graduate students using our performance assessment system in place of most Regents exams. This allows Consortium schools to implement innovative curriculum and assessments across disciplines.

Upcoming & Recent Events

2023-2024 Math Exchange - Ongoing

The Math Exchange focus for 2023-2024 will be on supporting Students with Disabilities in inquiry-based math classes. We are recruiting ICT math teaching partners to be part of the Math Exchange beginning this fall. If you and co-teacher(s) are interested in thinking together with teachers of ICT mathematics classes from other schools through ongoing meetings & intervisitations, email Jonathan Katz at jonathan@performanceassessment.org to express interest. More specific details will follow.

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Meeting for Faculty New to the Consortium

Thursday, October 5 3:30 - 5PM
Julia Richman Educational Complex, Manhattan
RSVP to ajrn@performanceassessment.org This is an opportunity for both new and experienced teachers who are new to Consortium schools to understand our unique assessment system, the types of teaching and learning it is designed to enable, and the larger political context of our work. It's also an opportunity to ask questions, engage in discussion, and meet new colleagues.

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New York Performance Standards Consortium

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The New York Performance Standards Consortium was founded over two decades ago on the belief that there was a better way to assess student learning than dependence upon standardized testing. Instead of basing a student's future on a one-day (or two- or three-day) test, an assessment system should reflect a fuller picture of what students know and can do.

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The Accountability Mindset: A blueprint for a worthwhile educational accountability

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The Accountability Mindset: A blueprint for a worthwhile educational accountability [Tanner, John] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Accountability Mindset: A blueprint for a worthwhile educational accountability

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By Jonathan G. Vander Els, Director of Innovative Projects for the New Hampshire Learning Initiative, and Debra Holloway, an independent educational research consultant for New Hampshire's NG2 Project

New Hampshire's Assessment for Learning Project (ALP) has been a quest to deepen and personalize competency-based learning for all students. During the 2016-2017 school year, we attempted to confront two significant barriers hindering the advancement of competency-based learning, namely age-based grade level configurations in schools and traditional assessment and grading practices that restrict students from "moving on when ready," a key tenant of competency-based learning.

Our five pilot elementary schools intentionally implemented innovative practices that blurred the lines between grade levels by moving to multi-grade bands. Teachers developed learning progressions that guided learning for individual students within these bands and helped to foster assessment practices as integral components of the learning process, rather than as strictly summative measures of learning.

This " No Grades, No Grades" (NG2) initiative included DJ Bakie School ( Sanborn Regional School District), Maple Street Magnet School ( Rochester School District), Memorial School (Sanborn Regional School District) Parker Varney Elementary School ( Manchester School District), and Pittsfield Elementary School ( Pittsfield School District).

All five schools also participated in New Hampshire's Performance Assessment of Competency Education (PACE), a first-of-its-kind assessment and accountability system that puts teachers at the center of instructional and performance assessment design, development, and implementation. PACE tasks are given to a single grade level of students at the same time, and each task is administered, monitored, and guided by teachers. As we reflected on these practices, we identified the need to explore ways to deepen our efforts to meet the needs of ALL learners by personalizing our competency-based learning and assessment system and putting students at the center of the learning and assessment process. NG2 took a giant step in this direction.

Last summer, our five NG2 pilot schools came together with facilitators from the New Hampshire Learning Initiative and 2Revolutions to share their learning from the past year. Each of these five schools, in very different ways, piloted an aspect of innovation to increase student agency in learning.

We captured our stories and insights from our NG2 pilot year in this podcast from 2Revolutions:

As the teams across schools collaborated and shared successes and challenges, two levers stood out as having significant impact on student learning: grade bands and Work Study Practices.
Grade Bands
Two of our schools--Parker Varney and Pittsfield--implemented a multi-age grade band model for the entire year. These bands varied by school and within schools. The outcomes, however, were common. When provided opportunities for learning within their developmental sweet spot (where they were challenged but not in over their head), students made tremendous progress. This was reinforced from the perspectives of both students and parents.

For example, teachers in Pittsfield focused specifically on developing learning progressions for each multi-grade band to meet students where they were in various content areas. Pittsfield educators sought feedback from parents of students within these bands and received comments such as: "I was skeptical at the beginning of the year that this room was going to work for Z... He still struggles, but I feel that he has made great improvements both academically and socially this year. I think his confidence is boosted when he is paired with kids that are at his level, and the curriculum is meeting him at his level. I really like the concept of this classroom."

Another parent reported: "It really allows for students to be met where they are."

Multiple data points from both schools indicated a clear increase in student learning within and across various demographics, reinforcing that students who are provided opportunities to work at their level with appropriate support and to engage as agents of their own learning will learn at higher levels.
Work Study Practices

New Hampshire refers to the 21st Century Skills as Work Study Practices (WSP). With an increased focus on integrating WSP into curriculum, instruction, and assessment, students began developing their communication, creative problem solving, collaboration, and self-directed learning skills. This focus had a profound impact on the teachers as well as the students. It led many of our teachers to identify Work Study Practices as the critical lever moving forward in providing students with the tools to develop greater agency in their learning.

Jennifer Manning, a kindergarten teacher from Memorial School, reflected that "Students' choice can lead to increased engagement and more ownership for individual learning. We had a loose plan for students and their work in the project. I have seen students be engaged by taking the lead on where their learning will progress. I had to overcome how uncomfortable this felt but letting students take the lead has been powerful for all of our learning."

Many of us considered how the increased focus on these critical competencies could lead to increasing equity in our schools, our focus for our ALP project's second year. Clearly, integrating Work Study Practices and highlighting adult learning as critical competencies were powerful forces for change in our classrooms.
Moving Forward: Student Agency and Equity
Our ALP effort has evolved significantly based on our first year's work. The New Hampshire Learning Initiative, partnering with the New Hampshire Department of Education, the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment, and Envision Learning Partners, has expanded our efforts for the next two years with a two-pronged approach to personalizing competency-based learning, one focused at the primary level and the other at secondary. The essential question that guides our work is: How can students and teachers collaborate to co-design learning and assessment?

For the primary grades our focus is on developing greater student agency and equity through students and teachers co-designing curricular units, including formative and performance assessments that integrate Work Study Practices and are based on learning progressions. Our goal is to develop competent and confident students. Additional schools have joined the five pilot schools from last year as part of this "NG2: Next Generation Collaborative Learning Design" project.

Simultaneously, an additional cohort of mostly secondary schools new to the project is focused on further developing student exhibition opportunities. Our collaborative learning design model guides this work to engage students and teachers in collaboratively designing student demonstrations of learning that increase student agency and equity. Eventually, the resulting co-designed assessments and student exhibitions from both cohorts will be incorporated into PACE.

In New Hampshire, we believe in learning by doing. Our teachers recognize that change is not going to happen overnight and have taken the lead in affecting change within their classrooms, grade levels, and schools. NG2 is reflective of this learning culture. Participating teachers are learning from and with each other about what has a positive effect and what has been a struggle. They also are learning to provide opportunities for ALL students to experience success in meaningful ways and to develop the knowledge, skills, and agency necessary for success in today's world.
Photos from Parker Varney Elementary School in Manchester School District.

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Our Quest to Personalize Competency-Based Learning in New Hampshire (Opinion)

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By Jonathan G. Vander Els, Director of Innovative Projects for the New Hampshire Learning Initiative, and Debra Holloway, an independent educational research consultant for New Hampshire's NG2 Project New Hampshire's Assessment for Learning Project (ALP) has been a quest to deepen and personalize competency-based learning for all students.

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Kenton County KY - Community Based Accountability

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Kenton County KY - Community Based Accountability

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Overview

The Kenton County School District is committed to the success of every one of our 14,000+ amazing students. Decisions made in our school system are based on our district motto, "It's About ALL Kids." The operational decisions are guided by our district mission, beliefs, goals and our expectation that every child is transition ready and prepared for the 21 st Century Economy.

Our district is very fortunate to have incredible support that we value and embrace the belief that our district is accountable to our community, ensuring we provide a world-class education. It is with this important concept in mind, that we are implementing the Community Based Accountability Model to ensure that our community is educated on all aspects of our work and the goals, success, and areas of need that truly define our school system. This model ensures that members of TEAM KENTON and our extended family participates in the development and analysis of the True Accountability Model.

The CBAS model will not replace the state KSA model and the KCSD will continue to value those results for growth opportunities, however, we submit that no school system or school can be measured by an annual standardized assessment given to students during one time period. Rather, true accountability is a systemic, holistic review of the work of the district that is grounded in forward facing progress versus annual summative reviews with regards to educating the whole child.

The KCSD CBAS model is adapted from the work of John Tanner (BravEd) and districts he is working with across the nation. The KCSD is proud to lead this work in the Commonwealth with all stakeholders to ensure that Kenton County has world-class opportunities for our students.

The components of our CBAS model are housed on our website for your information, review and feedback. We trust you agree that we have an excellent school system and that we are on the right path with this model embracing all aspects of education and engaging TEAM KENTON in the work. Should you have questions or want additional information, please contact our Central Office at 859-344-8888.

Accountability Engine

The accountability engine utilizes a process that identifies key areas for measurement/accountability to drive meaningful progress in the district and ensure that the district is where we want to be with respect to becoming world class for our students, staff and our community. The Pillar Action Teams made up of stakeholders will review evidence quarterly and make judgements "signaling" on the current success of key questions based on evidence.

The Components for True Accountability Include:

An Accountability Engine

Pillars and Key Questions

Signaling

An Annual Summary

The 7 Pillars of the Kenton County School District:

Safety/Well-Being

Ensure students are educated in an optimal environment that is safe, secure, and conducive to learning. This includes both physical safety as well as the social emotional needs of each student.

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Community Based Accountability System - Kenton County School District

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The Kenton County School District is committed to the success of every one of our 14,000+ amazing students. Decisions made in our school system are based on our district motto, "It's About ALL Kids." The operational decisions are guided by our district mission, beliefs, goals and our expectation that every child is transition ready and prepared for the 21 st Century Economy.

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https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Test-Scores-Measure-Quality/dp/0674976398

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Kentucky Transcript Presentation (by Justin) 

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Kentucky Transcript Presentation (by Justin) 

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Mastery Transcript Consortium® (MTC) | Join the effort to create a high school transcript to transform high school.

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Welcome to Mastery Transcript Consortium® (MTC)

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MTC is is a growing network of public and private schools committed to re-inventing how all students prepare for college, career, and life.

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https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/15q-iG54yM9WoDzhahWWIXe0n9S2-65sW6oC-9gf657g/edit#slide=id.g1f46ada1e96_4_47

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Tweets by kids_inspire

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Reimagining the student experience: What School Can Be

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The digital platform behind it (Backpack for Google Drive) 

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The digital platform behind it (Backpack for Google Drive) 

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rglZWrjKRdA

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Discussion Link for Notes (use column for breakout room) 

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Discussion Link for Notes (use column for breakout room) 

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Ron Berger - The Quality of Student Work

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https://eleducation.org/resources/passage-presentations-in-secondary-schools

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https://sites.google.com/jefferson.kyschools.us/jcpsdl/home

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8c73sT3p18&t=3s

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How Students Can Upload Their Own Artifacts!

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How JCPS implemented Backpack for their digital student portfolios

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Promotion by Portfolio

Student work is assessed at Parker via portfolios, using school-wide standards and rubrics. To advance through its six-year program of studies, students are required to meet the school's standards for Divisions I, II, and III; each may do so at the rate appropriate for his or her individual development. Students demonstrate mastery of curricular standards in each Division through "Gateway Exhibitions" in which they present and defend their academic portfolios. The final Gateway is graduation, for which students present special Graduation Portfolios in several areas.

Each year all Parker students assemble a Year-End Portfolio in each Domain, which serves as the basis of their Year-End Assessment report. They carefully examine past assignments and consider their performance on past assessments, review teacher comments, and rate themselves as to whether they meet the expectations for their division. They select a number of pieces that show progress over the year to put in their portfolio, which serves as the permanent record of their learning.

In Year-End Assessments, teachers evaluate student progress in narrative form, and assess their work (as "Just Beginning," Approaches," or "Meets") relative to the curricular standards for their Division. When the Portfolio shows the student is consistently meeting expectations in all of the skill areas assessed by a particular domain, as well as making academic progress, students are ready to advance to the next Division. Typically this happens at two-year intervals.

When students are ready to gateway to the next division, they develop the Gateway Portfolio. In a Cover Letter to the Portfolio, gateway students describe and reflect on their progress over a two-year cycle, as evidenced in the work in the Portfolio, and their readiness for the next Division's challenges. Then they present their Gateway Portfolio in a Public Exhibition, before a small audience made up of their advisor, teachers, their parents, other students, and members of the community. The students answer questions about their work and talk about what matters most in their learning, their progress, their struggles, and their goals in the next division. Students' ability to reflect on their work and respond to audience questions is an important element of their demonstrating readiness for promotion.

The Gateway Portfolio Exhibition marks a student's successful progress through the multi-year Division curricular cycle, and his or her readiness to work toward the next Division's standards and goals. Students who continue in a division are not "repeating" curriculum but rather entering another year of that cycle. Students who advance to the next division move into the beginning of that division's multi-year curriculum cycle. Students may proceed at different times into the next Division in each Domain; for example, many students are in Division II MST and Division I Arts and Humanities, or vice versa. Gateway Portfolio Exhibitions take place at several appropriate points in the school year. Teachers and advisers consult with families to decide the best time for each individual student to advance into a new Division.

The Gateway Exhibition is a moment of celebration at the Parker School. Parents often bring food or flowers to make the occasion personal and special. Upon the successful completion of this exhibition, students gateway into the next division.

At every stage, at every age, students are challenged to Meet the Criteria for Excellence. Students are active participants in their own educational progress, and teachers are there to help and support them in pursuit of their goals.

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Promotion by Portfolio: Student work is assessed at Parker via portfolios, using school-wide standards and rubrics.

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Habits of Learning: These are the habits that the Parker community expects its students to develop and exhibit in their academic work and in daily life.

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Assessments at Parker

At Parker, all major projects (known as "assessments" or "portfolio pieces" in the Parker lingo) are graded, or assessed, on a continuum. Unlike the traditional grades that you probably grew up with (A, B, C, D and F), at Parker, student work receives marks along a continuum that reflect their progress towards the goal of MEETING standards.

It is easiest to think of this continuum as a hike up a mountain. At the beginning of their journey in a Division, students are at the base of the mountain and their task is to work their way up to the top of the mountain through continued practice. Students gradually improve their skills through class work, daily homework and projects and through internalizing and applying the teacher feedback they receive.

With each opportunity to practice, the goal is for students to "climb" a little higher up the mountain. We use the language of "Beginning" (abbreviated as Be), "Approaches" (Ap), and "Meets" (Me) to communicate how close a student is to the "summit" of the mountain. Our belief is that all students can and will get to the top of this mountain (that is, they will MEET standards) through continued effort, practice, and utilization of teacher feedback. It takes most students about two years to consistently meet standards in any domain. When they are consistently meeting standards in each skill area, they are ready to gateway to the next division.

Therefore, when we assess student work, the "grade" or assessment is an opportunity to convey to students where they are on their journey towards Meets. Through written feedback (rubrics, progress reports, etc.), student work earns an assessment on this Be-Ap-Me continuum. Since the mountain visual above is a bit cumbersome, we flatten it, as the visuals below show, into a one line statement about where students are on their climb towards meeting.

While students might talk about "approaching" or "meeting" on a project, each of these areas is itself a range, as you can see in the visuals below. Teachers use the visual to give students a sense of where they are on the continuum, but this visual can be tricky to translate into words. There are many spots within any one range on the continuum; when we try to represent a student's current standing on the continuum in a situation where the visual is not available to us (in conversation, on a progress report), the words we use to translate this visual are as follows. We will use the Approaches range as an example:

Over time, a student's goal is to consistently MEET the standards for each skill area in each domain in order to be prepared to gateway (see the Program Summary for an explanation of skill areas and gatewaying). So, if MEETS is the goal for students, why is that a range as well? When students MEET the standards in a class, this means that they have accomplished the central task of the assignment and demonstrated proficiency in the skill area. However, all MEETS work looks different. The intention of the range is to both allow students to feel success and clarity about having met the essence of the standard and to give them feedback for continued growth. We sometimes hear students say, "I've already met in that skill area," as if that meant that they no longer had room for growth. Our goal is to have students both feel pride in having met the standard AND to be clear that there are ways that they can continue to deepen their learning and competence in each skill area.

Ultimately, the purpose of the continuum is to give students a clear picture of where they are relative to the goal of meeting standards. But, even more important than this visual and the continuum itself are the comments that the teacher gives to the student. In these comments, teachers are highlighting for students what they have done well and where they continue to have room to grow. We encourage parents/guardians to help students focus on the comments rather than the assessment ("grade") itself. Helping students to understand clearly what they are doing well (and should continue to do!) and what they can do to improve the next time around is the most important feedback that we want them to take away from an assessment.

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Assessments at Parker At Parker, all major projects (known as "assessments" or "portfolio pieces" in the Parker lingo) are graded, or assessed, on a continuum. Unlike the traditional grades that you probably grew up with (A, B, C, D and F), at Parker, student work receives marks along a continuum that reflect their progress towards the goal of MEETING standards.

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Criteria(s) for Excellence (detailed descriptions of skills) 

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Criteria(s) for Excellence (detailed descriptions of skills) 

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Horace - Journal (25 years worth of Progressive Ed. History) lots of good old readings) 

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Horace - Journal (25 years worth of Progressive Ed. History) lots of good old readings) 

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http://essentialschools.org/horace-issues/

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We envision an educational system that equips all students with the intellectual, emotional, and social habits and skills to become powerful and informed citizens...

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The Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School opened in the fall of 1995, housed in an almost windowless building where the U.S. Army intelligence experts and cryptographers based at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, once were trained. The closing of the base provided the school with much of its furniture and equipment and one telling artifact: a massive map of East Germany that covered the wall of a basement classroom.

Parker's motivating idea is its common, carefully focused and interconnected academic curriculum, which is shaped by "essential" questions in two major areas: Mathematics/Science/Technology, including Health, and Arts and Humanities, including Spanish. Each of our 340 students, ages 12 to whatever it takes to meet the graduation standard, has a Personal Learning Plan, effectively a contract among student, school, and family. Students are promoted through three Divisions, irrespective of their ages, by public presentation of portfolios and, for older students, Exhibitions. Our limited budget (per-pupil expenditure is up to 15 percent less than nearby district high schools) allows for a spare but spirited jazz band and interscholastic athletic, debate, chess, and mock trial teams. The best measure of Parker's success? A long waiting list for the 2000-01 academic year.

The school was born of three parents' desire to have an alternative to their town's school. They, in turn, were inspired by the ideas put forth in a book, Horace's Compromise, written by one of their neighbors, Ted Sizer. "Horace" is Horace Smith, a fictional representation of a typical high school teacher who is caught in a job he cannot do at the standard he knows his students deserve. He serves too many of them to know each one well, to analyze their strengths and weaknesses, to meet with them in conferences, to be trusted enough to offer the constructive criticism that is necessary for their growth. Horace's school, its routines mechanical, its purpose undefined, is an unconnected smorgasbord of programs, courses, activities, and more. In the end, it is the students who are expected to make sense of it all. And so Horace compromises to get along. Without substantial changes in the way his school is organized-indeed, in the way its best values are expressed-he will be stuck doing second-class work in a genial, well-intentioned, but basically directionless place.

Horace's Compromise also inspired the creation of the Coalition of Essential Schools in 1984, first based at Brown University and now an independent non-profit organization situated in Oakland, California. The Coalition's mission is to help create and support the growth of schools that salve Horace's frustrations, by providing an education that is more integrated and focused than the usual. The experience of Essential schools in New York City, especially the celebrated Central Park East Secondary School, created by Deborah Meier and her colleagues, persuaded us that it was possible to create a high school that dared to develop the most essential intellectual habits in young people-in a way that was demonstrably practical and public (meaning open to all students) and had long-term positive effects on students.

The charter school provision of the Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993 gave these parents, the two of us, and several other colleagues our opportunity. With the Coalition's principles of school practice in mind, we hastily began developing our school plan. Some decisions were easy: to provide a program from 7th grade through graduation; to move students through the program on an individual basis; to ask our teachers to be well educated, but to act more as generalists than specialists; to keep teachers' student loads down, and to offer advisories instead of more formal and distant "guidance counseling"; to offer only one foreign language, but to expect all to learn it; to put our money into more adults, some of them young adults, rather than into high rents or new furniture.

Other decisions were harder. How theoretical did we want our curriculum to be? How practical? In a promotion system based on demonstrated competence, what would be our benchmarks? How would they be made clear to teachers and to students and their parents without becoming rigid and meaningless? How would we help our teachers to adapt to classrooms in which projects would often replace the usual chalk-and-talk? How could we be good neighbors to the schools in our area from which we might enroll students? How could we fashion a diverse student body, yet still draw students from towns that provide a higher per-pupil allocation?

What follows is the story of the ups and downs of going from the germ of an idea to a secondary school that serves students ages 12 and up-in short, the ways in which we avoided Horace's compromises or coped with those compromises we couldn't avoid.
Sweat Equity
The ideas behind our school and the motives for starting it were the relatively easy part.The start-up of any organization plunges its leaders into a welter of unanticipated or underestimated problems. From its very beginning, Parker confronted a number of challenges-everything from financial difficulties to engaging our teachers in a unique and demanding curriculum.

Like almost every charter school, the Parker School has had its share of financial concerns, especially during the start-up phase. For the most part, charter schools, once open, receive funds for ongoing operations, but the months before opening day are funded largely by the founders' sweat. The development of an institution's ideas takes time; not just anyone's time, but the time of experienced and busy people. And so it was that parents and students were repairing, carrying, and washing furniture late at night, while teachers were doing every kind of job, from planning classes to washing windows to driving to the store to buy erasers. In each of our first meetings, whether we were hashing out our guiding principles or writing the charter application or recruiting our first potential students or deciding when-and how-to hire our first employees, we must have worked for love because we certainly were not working for money. When we trustees stopped by, we were likely to be put to work. Save for some federal money (which came late), the detailed planning of the Parker School and the training of its staff had to be done pro bono.

Massachusetts' charter schools-places that were to break the mold and chart new directions, no less-apparently were to be designed in persuasive detail by spontaneous combustion, with hardly any support from the state. That some of us designing Parker had substantial experience made our task easier-though never easy-but we were the exception. Only the big for-profit companies have the financial horsepower to create fresh material. Schools that have sprung from the grassroots public interest of a community have had to make do with very little to nothing. It is, therefore, no surprise that too many charter schools are either weak or, in their unthinking copying of existing practice, still hampered by the compromises that bedeviled Horace. Powerful new, complex institutions require up-front research and development. That means money. Charters are getting little of it, and rarely at a scale that could make a substantial difference. Serious start-up schools need ready physical facilities, adequate R&D funds for the initial planning, and at least half of the faculty hired and involved in planning and training for at least nine months before the school opens.
Left Hand, Right Hand
Like most applicants for a charter, we were attracted by the idea that we could shape our own mission, present it to the state's chartering authorities, and then be held to our own, but externally validated, standards. Thus Parker wrote an application for a charter that detailed our educational goals, our strategy for meeting those goals, and a means of carefully assessing, internally and externally, whether we had reached those goals. Parker chose to keep doggedly to the "essentials"-designing a curriculum that covered a small number of topics in extreme depth, rather than lightly touching on a broad range of material.

Parker's planners worked "backwards." We visualized the kinds of graduates we would be proud to send into the world.We started with the habits, skills, and content we wanted our students to learn, and then we planned the curriculum and teaching styles to reach those aims. We found that being reasonably clear about what a student should know and be able to do as a matter of habit led to an ever narrower and deeper program.

For example, if the school expected every graduate to display clear and even marginally graceful expository prose, then there had to a great deal of writing, not just in Humanities but in the other domains as well. That writing had to be assessed-which meant teacher time, often preceded by teacher training. We had to ask ourselves, What will be our standard for Division III expository writing? How will we determine whether students have met it, and what will it take to get most, if not every last one, of our kids to that level? And what standard should apply to children who are identified as having "special needs"?

Such "backwards planning"is commonsensical yet rare in public education. Instead there are lists of topics to cover and skills to achieve, and these are rolled out in central headquarters with little regard to pedagogical and scholarly realities. The giant textbooks so familiar in American high schools are testament enough to that; in most, there is something included for every political pressure group. The result is "scholarship" by hop, skip, and jump, one of Horace's most painful compromises.

At times, these conflicting approaches made life at Parker rather difficult. For instance, the state Board of Education approved all the aspects of our charter proposal. But in a different policy context it asserted that the state's charter schools had to follow the unusually comprehensive state curriculum frameworks (thus, in our view at least, guaranteeing a curriculum that will be geared toward superficial mastery by most students). Our students also had to pass standardized tests derived from those frameworks. In many ways, these conflicting signals reflected little more than the left policy hand not knowing what the right policy hand was doing, but it placed and still places Parker in a compromised position. Nevertheless, and counterintuitively, our students score competitively on state tests.

The strains of the state's dual agenda are especially evident during testing season. Since we group our students (on the basis of their exhibited performance) into three Divisions, each with an approximately two-year curriculum designed by our teachers, the state's pattern of testing 8th and 10th graders (a designation we don't make, on philosophical grounds) is especially hard on our students. Our emphasis in Arts and Humanities shifts from world topics one year to American topics the next, which means that those who take the tests may well have studied the material only in the previous year. Furthermore, when "10th graders" are pulled out of class to take extensive tests, new curricula must be devised for the "9th graders" who are left behind. Too much energy must go toward mitigating the disruption, even more than in other schools. Everyone is stretched, with little actual learning to show for it.

In the spring of 2000, we had yet another dilemma. For several weeks, the entire curriculum in Division II Arts and Humanities was devoted to preparing for a trip to Washington, D.C., during which every student participated in a visit to the office of a member of Congress to advocate for a bill that was before Congress. The students learned about the substantive reasons for and the politics behind the legislation they were researching, the ways in which bills become laws, the opportunities citizens have to take part in the process, and the most persuasive ways of presenting their cases. It was a superb civics lesson, and the vast majority of the students showed, in a variety of observable ways, that they had learned powerfully from it. However, while their enthusiasm about their experiences augurs well for the fate of the republic, what they learned is not likely to be an item on this year's test. Effective charter school policy requires consistency from the state, both in protecting what the approved charter asserted and in assessing a charter school's success in ways that are consistent with its charter.
Building a Staff
The challenge of any "new" school, charter or otherwise, and especially a school that wishes to adopt new ways of teaching, is to build a competent, experienced staff with the expertise and energy to work in a start-up. Teacher education has largely been a matter of the "great old dogs" teaching eager new dogs the best of their tricks. The problem is that some of the old tricks are not very effective in schools that rest their programs, as does Parker, on one or another branch of serious contemporary research. Teaching toward intellectual academic habits such as, in Howard Gardner's phrase, "thinking like a scientist" is more than mere "coverage" of "material" to be displayed only at the immediate completion of a "course." Truly demanding intellectual training is not cookbook, easily routinized stuff. It is challenging work, particularly if high school students are used to getting by within the old, familiar system. The clash of minds, the give-and-take that leads a young person to a responsible and usable grasp of a consequential idea is sophisticated business.

In such a school, teachers must have time away from children each day to focus on their teaching, on their students' work, and on learning from their colleagues. Every teacher at Parker has one to two hours daily away from class. Within a tight budget, this is accomplished by offering only a narrow core program. Parker's designers regarded this as a worthy trade-off.

Another personnel trade-off we tried to make didn't work as well. In order to achieve low teaching loads, we tried to conserve money by keeping overhead low. Parker started with a "leadership team" consisting of only two "lead" teachers, a business manager, and a part-time "coordinator." This helped to achieve low student loads-65 or fewer per teacher, including advisories of 12 students per teacher-but, by January of our first year, the trustees and the faculty knew this leadership arrangement would not work. The workload was more than an overworked quartet could handle.

And so, still believing that less is more when it comes to "administration" (which we too easily confused with "leadership"), we hired a proven teacher/principal. He carried both tasks for 18 months and then everyone, including him, cried Uncle. The work was too demanding. So much of the school was new, and creating (and then recreating) fresh practices took time, intense concentration, coordination, and a level of imagination that rarely emerges for overworked people at 2 A.M. Young teachers needed support. Parents and prospective parents needed endless explanations of our school's design. The state expected the principal to serve not only as a typical Massachusetts school leader, but also as superintendent. Money, being in short supply from state sources, had to be raised. The list was endless.

At this point Parker's trustees turned to two retired school veterans on the board (the authors of this essay) to act together, pro bono, as the principal. This bought Parker a year to think through its leadership requirements, to restructure the budget to allow for the appointment of experienced administrators, and to complete a search for a senior leader. But the general problem remains: There is a severe shortage of adequately prepared people rising to leadership, especially educational leadership of new ventures.
Culture Matters
We tried to create a distinct culture in our school, one that taught lessons in its own right. From the beginning, we were determined to include our students as full-fledged fellow pioneers. We valued them and admired their bravery and told them so often, especially as they progressed through our performance-based program. We tried to keep external motivators like grades and punishments at a minimum, in the hope that our students would develop internal motivators. Yet we knew that most of our students and many of their parents were coming to school with a different sort of expectation.

Parker, like most schools, has rules. It also aspires, however, to have a "culture" that will make these rules necessary only at extreme moments. No issue has been more difficult to master, especially since the school believes in giving students substantial say in shaping the community's mores and life. On the surface, it is easier to "run" a "tight" school. However, any secondary school where the "rules" are merely delivered from on high without intense discussion by all parties of their meaning and application is a poor place for students to learn how to be members of a thoughtful community. Parker has made becoming such a community one of its goals, not only to make life in our building pleasant, but, equally important, to "teach" the restraints that make a community respectful and yet also free. This is easy to articulate, but exceedingly difficult to do, as it must be done one person at a time.

Creating a healthy school culture almost demands small scale. A community where people do not know one another is a place that must be policed rather than gathered. Developing the habits of getting along in constructive, principled ways is not simply a matter of building small schools, though. It must be worked at just as deliberately as a student works at his calculus. There are no short cuts to a lasting "moral education."
Commencement
As we write this, we have just returned from attending Parker's first commencement. If ever a charter school sought validation, this was it. Offered the chance to speak, a third of our graduates chose to do so. Most moving for those of us who have worked to bring this school into life and sturdy health was the message and the tone in their speeches. Their school was different, they said; different in ways that benefited them. The students have been part of an institution that, as they described it, was challenging and yet was always clearly on their side, was in fact designed around their growth. Student after student thanked the adults who had made it happen.

To have the chance to attack Horace's compromises head-on is a worthy undertaking. In Massachusetts, to be able to run a public school that is open on a lottery basis to any child wherever that child may live-rich suburb or poor city-finally gives an honest definition to the word "public." Though it will still take time, effort, and money to make this access across residential communities a practical reality, the state is headed in the right direction.

We still worry that too many policymakers and citizens will assume that "standards" by definition require "standardization"; that "reform" can be achieved by a combination of jawboning, regulation, and low-cost testing; that humiliation is a necessary part of competition; and that the universities will not wake up to their obligation to support reform vigorously. As pioneers, we all have summoned the extra energy required to climb mountains, but if long-term improvements are to be made, we need to have policies that will make life sustainable on the other side.

-Nancy Faust Sizer and Theodore R. Sizer are trustees of the Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School and served together as its acting coprincipals in 1998-99. The Sizers' jointly written The Students Are Watching: Schools and the Moral Contract was published in 1999.

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The Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School opened in the fall of 1995, housed in an almost windowless building where the U.S. Army intelligence experts and cryptographers based at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, once were trained.

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Horace's Compromise: The Dilemma of the American High School

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Horace's Compromise: The Dilemma of the American High School [Sizer, Theodore R.] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Horace's Compromise: The Dilemma of the American High School

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http://72.47.233.142/~essentialschools/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/CES_Poster-11-x-17.pdf

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Coalition of Essential Schools | Coalition of Essential Schools

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Farewell from the Coalition of Essential Schools On March 10, 2017, the following letter was emailed to the Coalition of Essential Schools network. De ...

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Celebrating the impact and influence of CES-with the people who knew it best.

Courtesy of the Coalition of Essential Schools

The final Coalition of Essential Schools Fall Forum took place in December 2016, marking the end of a 33-year run for an organization that inspired thousands of teachers and hundreds of schools.
Courtesy of the Coalition of Essential Schools
CES was founded in 1984 by Brown University professor Ted Sizer-who died in 2009-as an extension of the work he had done in writing his influential book Horace's Compromise. The book set many a reader on the road to teaching: "I devoured it in a night, and with the righteous indignation of a 17-year-old, decided that this was it. This was my life path," says Laura Thomas, director of the Center for School Renewal at Antioch University New England.

Sizer had traveled the country visiting hundreds of schools, observing classrooms, and talking to teachers in an attempt to understand what was and wasn't working in education. "At the end of it," says Nancy Sizer, Ted's widow and longtime collaborator, "one of his research funders said, 'Now I think it's time for you to get to work on trying to figure out ways to answer some of your own questions.'"

Ted's first inclination was to start a school that would apply the best practices he had identified. While founding CES as a network to help drive continued innovation, he and Nancy also started the Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School in Devens, Massachusetts, in 1995. Sizer based the school on his list of Common Principles-nine values starting with "Learning to use one's mind well" (a 10th was added later). The principles were attributes that Ted believed distilled the essence of the nation's most successful school environments, including the ideas that, as The New York Times put it, "a school is an egalitarian community and that the student is a valued worker in that community, with the teacher in the role of mentor or coach."

"Ted didn't make them up," said George Wood, chairman of the CES board and superintendent of Federal Hocking Local Schools in Stewart, Ohio. "Ted just translated what teachers cared about into these 10 Common Principles. That is why they resonate."
Courtesy of the Coalition of Essential Schools
The Impact of CES

The work of the Coalition is deeply embedded in the work of progressive educators and schools across the U.S. and around the world. When I asked Nancy Sizer to name one thing most people don't know about CES, she responded immediately, "What they don't know about is how many of CES's ideas are in the heads of people who've never even heard of Ted Sizer."

"For me, the most important thing that the Coalition did was change the language," says Dennis Littky, co-director of the Met School in Providence, Rhode Island. The language of the Common Principles is now embedded in teacher training programs, says Judy Guild, head of school at Brimmer and May in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. "I could see a generation of new teachers coming forward that knew these principles, and were taught about them." Laura Thomas agrees: CES is "in the DNA of what teachers are doing if they call themselves progressives."

To the people who knew CES best, its impact has been profound: "I think everything I know about teaching and learning in school has come from working with people out of the CES tradition, including the teaching staff we have here [at Federal Hocking]," said Wood.

CES schools wove the Common Principles into their culture. The Coalition's greatest insight, Guild says, "is that each school is different, and that each one of these principles has to be applied to your own school setting. They were never intended to be a blueprint. They were intended to be a guiding mechanism for each school so they can stay unique and do what they need to do."

Wood likens this aspect of CES to the stamps on PCs that read Intel Inside. "And you don't even know what the hell Intel is, right? But trust me, there's so much going on in this country that should say, 'CES Inside.'"

The End

The closing of CES was not wholly unexpected. As Jill Davidson, the managing director of CES, explains, the organization "was never built to last. That was never the point." Wood agrees: "It wasn't that you had to do 10 things beforehand and buy a program. That was the beauty. And probably the demise, too"-because there was never a clear revenue stream.

The end of an organization that sparked so much progressive thinking lands hard for many. "The real loss is that CES is a national organization," says Davidson. "I know for sure that a lot of our schools will really feel the loss of that."

Yet Davidson adds that those schools aren't going to change their work. The ideas that led Ted Sizer to start CES existed before he collected them, and they will continue to guide educators in the years to come.

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A Farewell to the Coalition of Essential Schools

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Celebrating the impact and influence of CES-with the people who knew it best. Courtesy of the Coalition of Essential Schools The final Coalition of Essential Schools Fall Forum took place in December 2016, marking the end of a 33-year run for an organization that inspired thousands of teachers and hundreds of schools.

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Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School

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Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School

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Developing Agency With Student-Led Conferences

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This presentation is meant to educate teachers on how to implement student-led IEPs. Includes resources to get you started.

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Forms to Use (Upper Elementary Snapshots)

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Forms to Use (Upper Elementary Snapshots)

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Part of our jobs as teacher is to sit down with parents once or twice a year to discuss their children's progress and to set goals for future success. I always thought it was funny how parents and teachers get together to have these conversations, and to make decisions about a student's learning. For me, the missing link was always the student. As a teacher who has spent (almost) her entire career working with upper grade students, I started to realize that these students really needed to be involved in their own conferences. Why not let students lead the conversation about their progress and goals??

The Benefits of Student-Led Conferences
The first year after implementing student-led conferences with my class, the benefits were immediately obvious to me, my students, and their parents....

First, students take ownership and responsibility for their behavior, work habits, and grades. Instead of the teacher "defending" grades or marks for behavior, students must explain to their parents (and teacher) why they earned those marks.

Another benefit is that everyone is on the same page!! So much is lost in translation from school to home and home to school. With all parties involved, students, teachers, and parents can come together to discuss a student's needs without blame or excuses.

Also, students have more buy-in when setting and working toward goals. When students are able to identify and discuss their own strengths and weaknesses, they have a much easier time setting goals, and doing the work to meet those goals.

Most importantly, students feel a sense of pride and maturity when taking part in making decisions about their own education.

Conference Checklist
I always give my students a checklist to work through when they are leading their conferences. It starts with them welcoming their parents, showing them where to sit, and introducing them to me. Then they continue through the checklist, sharing about what they have learned, how they are doing in class, and eventually their goals. It ends with them thanking their parents for coming, and prompting them to ask any questions. Here is a sample of the checklist that I use:

What We're Learning This Year
I like for students to start their conferences by sharing what they are learning in class. Often times, this is the first chance that parents get to learn about what goes on in our classroom each day. It also gives students a chance to highlight some of their favorite activities that happen at school. Students usually spend about a minute or two sharing what they are learning.

Student Evaluation
In the weeks leading up to their conferences, students complete a couple self evaluations. The first asks them to evaluate their behavior and work habits. Then they complete a page about their strengths and weaknesses. This is good jumping off point for setting goals. During the conference, students will briefly share these evaluations.

Goal Setting
This is the final stage of our student-led conferences. You could have students write goals prior to their conference, or have them write them with their parents present. For the sake of time, I usually have students write their goals before their conference, and then modify them as needed during the conference. I also ask students to share with me and their parents what we can do to help them reach their goals. After all, we're a team and students should realize that they are not alone in achieving their goals!

After students have shared their evaluations and goals, and after parents have asked their questions, that is usually when I will step in to share the student's grades and any final thoughts. By the time we reach this point, so many great conversations have already taken place and students are able move forward toward achieving their goals.

The conference forms shared in this post are available as a FREE download in my Teacher Shop!! Click on the pic below to access this resource.

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Part of our jobs as teacher is to sit down with parents once or twice a year to discuss their children's progress and to set goals for future success. I always thought it was funny how parents and teachers get together to have these conversations, and to make decisions about a student's learning.

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https://www.jefferson.kyschools.us/sites/default/files/Backpack%20of%20Success%20Skills%20Digital%20Booklet.pdf

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https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Abit2F4ivWGHaMyzNlj9ywVWSZ4sc6Cr/view

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http://shareyourlearning.org/slc/

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http://shareyourlearning.org/pol/

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Student Ownership, Responsibility & Engagement.

POLs can serve as a powerful rite of passage at the end of a semester or academic year. By reflecting on their growth over time, grounded in evidence from their work, students are encouraged to take ownership of their learning in relation to academic and character goals. Just as an artist wants their portfolio to represent their best work, POLs encourage students to care deeply about the work they will share.

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Have students present their learning, grounded in artifacts/evidence from their own work, to a panel of peers and adults who can offer feedback and support for next steps. Download Presentations of Learning (POL) Toolkit

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https://www.jefferson.kyschools.us/departments/communications/monday-memo/backpack-success-skills

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In May, students from Bloom Elementary School took a trip in a 15-passenger white limousine. It wasn't to a field trip or even a dance but to a whole new journey to help them prepare for the future. One by one, they filed out of the stretch limo, confident and prepared for what was about to happen next. As they walked into the doors at Bellarmine University, they learned a life skill that will help them in middle school and beyond.

"Although I have grown a lot in both innovation and confidence, I still have room to grow in citizenship," said fifth-grade student Gracie. She is one of dozens of fifth graders from Bloom who presented what's known as their "defense" to a panel at Bellarmine. The purpose of the students' defense was to demonstrate all they have learned and that they are ready to move on to sixth grade. This is not unique to Bloom; soon every fifth, eighth, and twelfth grader in JCPS will be doing the same thing at the end of the school year. It is a part of the district's new plan to take learning to the next level and redefine success for students. It's called the Backpack of Success Skills, and it will help reshape the way your kids learn.

Students will have access to a virtual backpack through Google, where they can place their projects and videos to support what they have learned throughout their Success Skill development. There are 5 Success Skills in the Graduate Profile-being a prepared and resilient learner, globally and culturally competent citizen, emerging innovator, effective communicator, and productive collaborator-as evidence of their accomplishments. This is an ambitious and unique plan that other districts are watching and could look to model in the future.

"Even if they have straight A's, are they really ready? And so those power skills we are looking at-confidence, innovation-can they eloquently tell they have worked on them?" said Bloom Elementary Principal Jack Jacobs. "Some of the students are doing cartwheels that tie into their introduction. Some are playing musical instruments, and some are using quotes or poems that they have written." Jacobs says those power skills are something the community is looking for, and those skills will be reinforced at all grade levels starting this school year.

Chief Academic Officer Carmen Coleman has been working to help spearhead this plan. Coleman says test scores are one piece of the puzzle to determine student success, but she says so much more goes into making kids truly prepared for the next level. "Rather than just be successful academically, we are making a much broader definition of success," said Coleman. Superintendent Marty Pollio says this will be a dramatic change for this district. "Our students, teachers, and families will see a transformation in our classrooms with our new Backpack of Success Skills. For the first time, students' districtwide will fill their virtual backpacks with examples of their work and defend that work during the school year."

For all those who have said testing isn't everything, the district is listening and working to help your kids achieve in additional ways. Bloom fifth grader Amira was able to show collaboration, communication, and citizenship in a way that spoke to her. "We did a bunch of skits where you had two people who would act like they had a conflict and try to resolve it," said Amira. Engaging every student, every day, in meaningful learning is the goal. This is a chance for students to fill their virtual backpack and go on a whole new adventure through the classroom.

What is it?

A digital platform for students to enter pictures, video and a written reflection of what they have learned in five key areas-emerging innovator, productive collaborator, effective communicator, globally and culturally competent citizen, and prepared and resilient learner.

Where is the digital backpack?

It's located on Google Drive. Every student in the district will have access to it through their JCPS Google account at school. Parents should communicate with their child's teacher to find out how the school will customize the curriculum to meet the needs of the students.

How will this impact my child?

Students will collect evidence each year for each of the five Success Skills. Then, in fifth, eighth, and twelfth grade, each will have to defend their growth and readiness in each of the five Success Skills before a panel using those pictures, videos or written reflection he or she has collected.

Will my child still have traditional classes like language arts, math, science, and social studies?

Yes, these core subjects will still be at the center of your child's education. However, our goal is for students to learn through meaningful experiences that require them not only to learn essential content, but also to apply it in ways that are interesting. Students will still take part in statewide testing at the end of the school year.

What happens if a child doesn't display readiness before the panel?

School staff will monitor the student's backpack to find areas that need to be addressed and will come up with a plan to ensure the student's progress. Ideally, a student will not defend until we know he or she is prepared to do this successfully. However, schools are responsible for making sure students have additional opportunities to defend as needed. Our goal is for every student to be well equipped for success as he/she transitions to the next level.

Why now?

This is a chance to give all students engaging learning experiences at every school that will enhance reading and math skills while also preparing them to be good communicators, problem solvers, collaborators and much more!

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @JCPSBackpack

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In May, students from Bloom Elementary School took a trip in a 15-passenger white limousine. It wasn't to a field trip or even a dance but to a whole new journey to help them prepare for the future. One by one, they filed out of the stretch limo, confident and prepared for what was about to happen next.

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DL: Details 4: Performance Assessment & Gateways with Colleen Meaney of the Parker School.

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https://www.theparkerschool.org/

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A six-year public secondary school of choice located in Devens, MA, the Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School is open by lottery admissions to all residents of Massachusetts in grades seven through twelve.