| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

Designing Your Competency-Based School

This version was saved 10 years ago View current version     Page history
Saved by kay bird
on March 25, 2014 at 12:02:24 pm
 

general editing

Under Construction 

 

Blog Posts and Recommended Reading

 

The following is from Digital Learning Now's The Shift from Cohort to Competency:

 

Voice, Choice and Personalization

 

Structure:  

The traditional system uses age-based grades to create cohorts of students that flow through the system. School are generally organized into K-6 or -8, 9-12, and post-secondary. This division is primarily based on child and adolescent development issues. There is now greater fluidity between high school and college with AP, dual enrollment, and early college. Competency-based schools focus on optimizing learning and performance rather than age.

  • Casco Bay High School uses grade-based cohorts to enhance a learning community formed among students working together over four years.
  • Adams 50 has maintained elementary, middle, and high schools with 12 levels to indicate where students are on the learning progression.
  • Diploma Plus uses three performance levels – the Foundation Phase, the Presentation Phase, and the Plus Phase – which provide greater opportunity as students build foundational skills and demonstrate maturity.
  • San Francisco Flex is an online high school that provides onsite support. Students can decide what courses to work on and progress at their own pace.
  • As part of the statewide improvement capacity, the Education Achievement Authority of Michigan is implementing a student-centered model that organizes students by instructional level, rather than age and grade level, and lets them progress via mastery rather than seat time.
  • Cornerstone Charter School in Detroit replaced individual classrooms and instructors for core content areas. Students work in pods of 75 students, with individual cubicles that allow them to focus on personalized online content. They gather in open spaces for small groups, projects, and direct instruction as needed.
  • At the Alliance Technology and Math Science High School in Los Angeles, 48 students rotate through three stations within core subject classes: teacher-led, online, and collaborative instruction.

 

Grading:

How students will be graded is an important decision, as it defines how students understand what is needed to be successful.,The promotion policy, however, is most important. When students earn Cs and Ds, it typically indicates that they haven’t mastered the content. Districts have learned that it is very important to invest in helping parents, communities, and colleges understand new grading systems and the decisions and interventions triggered by the grades.

 

  • Spaulding High School in Rochester, New Hampshire uses Not Yet Competent, Competent, Beyond Competent, and Advanced.
  • Kennebec Intra-District Schools in Maine uses a 0-4 grading scale; all students are expected to reach at least 3 on all learning targets before they progress.
  • In Federal Way, Washington, students must pass the course or class with a grade of C or better in order to advance to the next level or grade. extra credit activities that have no relation to the standards do not impact the grade.
  • AdvancePath, a national dropout prevention network, requires students to complete units and  courses at 80% or better to move on.

 

 

Supports and Opportunities to Learn:
The traditional instructional model provides support only after students are already failing. Students can go for weeks without getting extra help. Homework and tests may come back with a grade but no helpful feedback, and often by the time it is returned, the teacher has moved on to other material. Students may be required to go to summer school or be retained for an entire year without individualized plans that help them become proficient. The good news is that we have seen schools adopt competency-based approaches, particularly with early reading programs that leverage teams of teachers, classroom aides, and literacy coaches to provide differentiated instruction with frequent diagnostic assessments that measure student skills. This same approach can be enhanced using modern technology tools to even better personalize instruction and ensure students are receiving the right supports and interventions in real time.

 

In competency education, schools organize resources to keep students on their learning edge. All students will struggle at some point, they embed time for extra help.

  • At Messalonskee Middle School in Maine, students have Learning Goal Time embedded in every school day to work on whatever topic they need help with.
  • Boston Day and Evening Academy is designed around transitions. Transfer windows allow students two weeks to complete all work if they want to progress to the next course. 
  • At Bronx Arena High School for over-aged and under-credited young people, the staff supports learners by building relationships, social skills, family support, and life skills. Students demonstrate competency through a variety of ways including projects, papers, labs, demonstrations, and tests.
  • At Da Vinci Schools, depending on their proficiency level, passion, and needs, each student’s individualized learning plan encompasses targeted interventions and supports to ensure their success.
  • At FLVS, teachers call students when they aren’t progressing and provide individual tutoring when necessary. 



Progression Upon Mastery:

Competency systems use a variety of gateways to manage progress and matriculation. Depending on the flexibility that has been built into the systems, competency education can offer progress within a course or into higher-level courses. Some schools use a myriad of small gateways, while others focus on major demonstrations of learning every two or three years. We have yet to open up the institutional structures that allow students to soar.

 

  • To advance at Cornerstone Charter School and Carpe Diem, students must be able to show mastery through a system of assessments including standardized tests, data harvested from online activities, and real-world challenges and self-assessments. At Cornerstone, virtual data dashboards provide anytime, anywhere access to student progress. Those dashboards are reviewed weekly with advisers (called “relationship managers”) to help students reflect on their work.
  • At Schools for the Future in Detroit, students move at their own pace toward graduation through four performance levels: Core 1, Core 2, Transitions, and Pathways.
  • Schools in the National Center for Education and the Economy’s Excellence for All network use credentialed exams as gateways so that students can take the exams when they are ready, and have multiple opportunities to pass them.

 

Calendars:

To create more time for students who need it, many competency systems move toward a year-round calendar. Time between sessions can be used for enrichment or extended learning time.

  • Florida Virtual School serves 400,000 part-time students with year-round rolling enrollment courses.
  • Boston Day and Evening Academy creates week-long intensive sessions to apply learning and for teachers to better assess how students are applying skills. 
  • Next Generation Schools stagger teacher vacations to have more time for student learning. 
  • Many schools use a balanced calendar that has four sessions of 45 days, with 15- to 30-day breaks in between for students to spend on extra practice or enrichment work.

 

 

Courses:

In general, schools are continuing to use the course structure to indicate a unit of learning. The organization of the courses and the degree of modularity may vary based on the school calendar and the degree of importance the school design gives to curricular themes.

 

  • Building upon the Common Core math standards, which are designed to facilitate modular approaches, schools use a block approach in which students are working individually or in small groups in various courses. 
  • Virtual Learning Academy has shifted from credit recovery to competency recovery.
  • Boston Day and Evening Academy uses flexible trimesters.
  • The Schools for the Future curriculum is designed with 30-day modules, shorter mini-courses, and a 30-day progress review cycle.

 

Degree of Choice:

Competency education enables more student voice and choice, because the competencies and rubrics are agreed upon ahead of time.
 

 

  • Schools that have organized themselves around strong themes (such as the international Studies School Network) or schools that are providing the shortest route to a high school diploma (such as Boston Day and Evening Academy) may choose to offer a well-developed curriculum but fewer course choices. 
  • Online schools provide choices well beyond what traditional schools can provide. 
  • Schools can offer students choice within courses as well. In the districts participating in the Maine Cohort for Customized Learning, such as MSAD 15 in Gray-New Gloucester, blended learning offers students the ability to select curricular tasks and options for how they want to demonstrate their learning.

 

 

Degree of Interconnectedness:

Some schools continue to use specific domains to organize their courses, while others turn to interdisciplinary courses and projects.

  • Spaulding High School is organized around the traditional academic disciplines. 
  • Denver Center for international Studies, a member of the International Studies Schools Network, uses global education as an organizing theme to shape its curriculum. 
  • ACE Leadership uses the context of architecture, construction, and engineering to design projects that are rooted in real-world industry challenges and designed to help students build up their competencies.

 

 

Opportunities To Learn:

There has been an explosion of opportunities for students to learn. The competencies and learning targets that make up learning progressions allow schools to offer a variety of ways to deliver instruction, perform curricular tasks, and demonstrate student learning.

 

  • Open education learning resources include math videos from Khan Academy, free textbooks from CK12, and Massively Open Online Courses (MOOC) from leading universities. it is possible for anyone with a broadband connection to learn almost anything, anywhere.
  • New Hampshire’s state policy empowers students to draw on real-world experiences to build skills and demonstrate learning. Teachers validate learning using the same rubrics as they would for classroom-based instruction. 
  • In dynamic job categories like web design, demonstrated skill can earn a badge from the P2PU School of Webcraft. Portfolios and recommendation systems are also emerging that market similar strategies.
  • Adaptive instructional software is becoming more sophisticated and provides rapid feedback and rich analytics. Blended models, such as Matchbook Learning and Rocketship schools, are using adaptive software to provide opportunities to under-served students to work at their own pace.
  • There are expanding opportunities to learn online or on the job and to earn college credit by taking a test. Western Governor’s University has been offering competency-based credit for 15 years. College Board offers the College Level Examination Program (CLEP), and there are several free CLEP prep options.

 

 

 

Assessment and Progress Tracking and Grading:

Time-based approaches in the current system are oriented toward traditional grading and managing a cohort environment. Competency-based schools need to make strategic decisions about assessment strategies and systems, student information systems that track individual and group progress in achieving proficiency, and reporting/visualization systems. Choices about access devices (i.e., laptops or tablets) will impact systems options.

  • Casco Bay High School in Portland, ME upgraded their assessment system for alignment with graduation outcomes to achieve full transparency between students, families, and teachers and to enhance accountability. 
  • Vergennes Unified High School is working with the Center for Collaborative Education to build teachers’ capacity to design and use performance-based assessments. 
  • Adams 50 and Lindsay Unified School districts are using the Educate system to monitor student progress, provide feedback to teachers, and enable principals to build staff capacity. 
  • Michigan’s education achievement authority is working in partnership with Agilix to develop Buzz, which monitors student progress and engagement.

 

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.