In search of on-ramps to competency-based learning

In search of on-ramps to competency-based learning

by Julia Freeland Fisher

As more and more school systems across the country explore “going competency-based,” we need to be attentive to the processes that will actually allow such innovations to thrive. Current time- and age-based accountability measures have a stronghold on schools, even those trying to break away from the factory model of education. As a result, we would predict that time-based metrics and incentives could cannibalize many efforts to reinvent learning in a competency-based manner. School systems need to heed this warning and take pains to protect innovative competency-based approaches from the tug of status-quo pressures and performance measures.

Systems will likely get into trouble if they attempt to make just a few aspects of their models competency-based, while retaining an otherwise traditional structure. Indeed, a school district may spend scarce resources building out a list of desired “competencies” that it wants students to master, but lack the resources or capacity to rethink scheduling and assessment. As a result, these competencies will end up as an iteration or improvement on standards, rather than as a new approach to teaching and learning. Other systems might invest in competency-based grading reform but retain cohort-based course and semester schedules that keep students tied to lock-step progressions. As a result, report cards may more accurately reflect what students actually know, but classroom models will be no better suited to filling in gaps reflected in those grades. In other words, efforts to transform to a competency-based system risk ending up as tweaks on the traditional factory-based approach to teaching and learning, rather than as whole-school redesign.

These challenges are highly predictable if you consider the trajectory that many innovations take. Oftentimes school systems that think they are investing in a wholly new education model are actually investing in sustaining innovations—that is, innovations that improve against existing performance metrics. There is nothing wrong with sustaining innovations—oftentimes these innovations delight customers with better features or functionalities. But sustaining innovations reinforce existing performance metrics rather than reinventing them.

By and large, school systems today remain beholden to traditional accountability and teacher evaluation performance metrics that are benchmarked against a time-based, singular, summative exam. As a result, even with the best of intentions to re-orient around competency-based metrics, like individual student mastery or rate over learning (calculated by individual mastery over individual pace), schools will tend to measure their reform efforts according to traditional time-based metrics of success.

How, then, can schools disrupt the traditional mold if they must remain accountable to that mold? According to our research, systems need to nurture disruptive efforts with new performance metrics by granting these efforts autonomy beyond the reach of traditional metrics and accountability. Otherwise, schools will find themselves innovating on top of their existing model—perhaps making that existing instructional model more efficient or differentiated, but not wholly competency-based.

Carving out autonomy for competency-based models to thrive can take various forms. Here are four trends worth watching that have the potential to allow new models to take root:

Afterschool programs.  A recent American Youth Policy Forum (AYPF) publication looked at the overlap of afterschool programs and competency-based learning models. The authors posit that afterschool programs are increasingly providing academically enriching experiences that could—in a well-run competency-based model—count for credit in school. Some of the most promising efforts cited in the report, such as Chicago’s After School Matters program, allow for out-of-school learning experiences that both deliver real-world training and show measurable impact on non-cognitive skills. Although the authors call for better linking of in-school and out-of-school competency-based experiences, the more intriguing take away from the report may be that afterschool programs can offer fertile ground for honing competency-based approaches beyond the traditional system.

Supplemental online courses.  A la carte online courses can allow students to move at a flexible or individual pace. In a number of states, online course providers can now obtain seat-time waivers to avoid keeping students “on the clock.” As such, online courses offer a built-in flexibility around pacing that is trickier to pull off in traditional face-to-face cohort models. It’s worth noting that some online courses are more competency-based than others. For example, New Hampshire’s Virtual Learning Academy Charter School (VLACS) not only bundles its content by competencies (rather than courses), but also receives funding based on mastery rather than time. But districts themselves are also increasingly creating their own district-run online courses. This approach can in turn allow current teachers and administrators to design competency-based modules and courses that take advantage of flexibilities and customization that online learning offers.

Curriculum redesign.  Perhaps the most common approach I’m hearing from districts is to take a year or two to fully redesign their school model and curriculum with competency-based approaches in mind. To do this well, systems will need to take a “sandbox” approach to rethinking curriculum—that is, allow an autonomous team from the district to rethink a new curriculum from scratch that is not beholden to existing models, scope and sequence, or publisher content. For example, Fraser Public Schools in Michigan hired six of its teachers to embark on a yearlong design process. Importantly, the teachers leading the curriculum redesign are freed from the traditional constraints of age-, grade-, and accountability-based limitations. The success of such efforts, of course, will depend on the systems’ ability to implement that new curriculum with fidelity, perhaps first in untested subject areas, so that the model can thrive.

Alternative high schools. As I’ve noted before, alternative high schools, or dropout-recovery programs, are well suited to forging competency-based approaches; by design, such programs take on students with varying credit and mastery levels. Alternative high schools must meet students where they’re at and graduate them on a flexible basis. This charge inherently puts them in a more promising position to optimize for competency-based performance metrics, unlike traditional schools that by design standardize learning experiences by age- and grade-level, rather than by mastery.

All four of these examples illustrate how school systems might carve out autonomy as a critical first step to building competency-based models. (It bears noting that charter schools are not on this list—indeed, charter schools remain locked into existing accountability pressures and arguably these pressures are even more acute in some states where poor performance can lead authorizers to not renew a charter.) Without sufficient autonomy to develop, reforms we call competency-based risk falling into step with our well-established time-based designs.

- See more at: http://www.christenseninstitute.org/in-search-of-on-ramps-to-competency-based-learning/#sthash.9tqHtaOa.dpuf

Learning Mindsets & Skills

Learning Mindsets & Skills 

MOOC Week 2 - Camille Farrington (Oct 1, 2015)

We once again hear from Dr. Camille Farrington as she discusses how to specifically assess and measure learning mindsets.

Read more at http://hightechhigh.libsyn.com/#DapKccLHbgrlhPg1.99

The idea of self efficacy and growth mindset ...has a lot to do with grading and instructional practices. If what we do as a teacher is say to kids, “What we're trying to learn is a really hard thing to do. It's going to take a lot of work and practice to get there and I know you're not there now, so we're going to bring in models of what a good example of this done well would look like.  You're going to practice and practice and I'm going to give you feedback on what you're doing. I'm not going to grade until you can do it well, once you've gotten to the point where you've demonstrated you can really do this -- whether it’s writing an essay, a particular kind of math problem or whether it's creating some final presentation. You're just going to keep working on it until it is a high quality product. Then give kids time to work, be wrong, then try again -- really working on some kind of meaningful product is how you build self efficacy, which is how you build growth mindset.

I'll contrast that with, I'm going to teach you unit 1, page 1 through 10 today: we're going to read through it, you're going to do the questions at the end.  Then may or may not review it, but we’re going to move on to the next thing and then 10 days from now we're going to test on all of it. Then we have to move on to something else because we have this content coverage stuff that we have to move through. So kids don't feel like ‘I can succeed at this’ because if they don't get it right away, there really isn’t another opportunity to get it. Also it sends the message to kids that either it’s [the content] not that important that you get it, because I know you failed at this or you got a C on the test, but that doesn’t matter b/c what’s more important is that we move on to the next thing. So that sends the message that 1) we know that it’s not that important that you learn this or 2) we don't really mind if you can learn it any better than that anyway. It really undermines that notion that kids “I can succeed. My hard work is going to pay off.”

High standards benefits low income students

Low-income students in states looking to ditch the Common Core were more likely to score lower on the National Assessment of Educational Progress than their low-income peers in states that stuck to strong academic standards, the Center for American Progress finds in a new report.
The report combines both empirical and anecdotal evidence. Oklahoma and South Carolina recently left the Common Core. Both states generally have low levels of achievement, the report says. Just 13 percent of Oklahoma's low-income middle school students are performing at grade-level in math. In South Carolina, it's 14 percent. The numbers for low-income students are higher than the national average, but still very low, the report says.
Low-income students in D.C., Florida, Massachusetts and Tennessee have posted some of the largest gains on NAEP, however. These states stuck to the implementation of rigorous academic standards, the report notes.

"While there is an important debate over the definition of standards-based reform - and this analysis is undoubtedly anecdotal and impressionistic - it appears clear that states that have not embraced the approach have shown less success, while more reform-oriented states have shown higher gains over the long term," the report says.

Flood of Open Education Resources Challenges Educators

FYI

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2016/01/13/flood-of-open-education-resources-challenges-educators.html?tkn=VMLFF%2FagMXSxcBGIZaetd%2B4QfAndS2k1fuDs&print=1

Flood of Open Education Resources Challenges Educators

By Michele Molnar

With millions of pieces of open education resources flooding the Internet, educators face a "needle in the haystack" problem of epic proportions.

Sure, they can find hundreds, if not thousands, of free pieces of content to accomplish their mission with students, but how to find the right one, aligned to the right standard, for the right student, at the right time? That challenge lies at the heart of personalized learning, whether conveyed through teachers, technology, or some combination of the two.

The Houston schools confronted that issue in the rollout of PowerUp, the district's 1-to-1 digital learning initiative for its 215,000 students.

Planning to move away from traditional textbooks, the district needed to start "curating, creating, and—where we couldn't create or curate—procuring" content, said Annie Wolfe, the officer of secondary curriculum and development. Without providing curated content, "we knew teachers would just go out and Google for resources," she said.

That prospect didn't work with the district's commitment to online security and safety, nor did it reflect the best practices of digital citizenship, she said. If the district intended to abandon textbooks, officials would have to be sure content was aligned with state standards, said Michael Dorsey, the director of secondary curriculum.

Houston turned to Knovation, a Cincinnati-based company providing its netTrekker application for vetted content already used by Houston's school library system. The district wanted this curated content to surface in "itslearning," the name of the learning management system that it uses, and contracted with Knovation to align 360,000 curated digital resources to the district's curriculum map.

Each free resource in the collection was selected, evaluated, tagged, and aligned to Texas standards to make accessing the appropriate items easier.

Pathways to Curating Digital Resources

Organizations that provide curated open-ed content follow certain steps on a common pathway. While this is a shared journey, each adds its own twists and turns to bring vetted material to the end user. Here are the general steps along the way:

·         Discovery by machine, by educators in classrooms, by employees—often former educators—paid to do the curation work

·         Content could be games, videos, text, simulations, interactive activities, and more

·         Using rubrics/systems established by each organization

·         Decision point: Is this resource worthy of inclusion?

·         Resources may be trashed here

·         Type of content (text, video, game, etc.)

·         Subject

·         Grade

·         Instructional standards (common core, others)

·         Technical requirements

·         Keyword

·         Vetted resources are published on the ed-tech platform

·         Educators look for content; sometimes students and parents do, too

·         Curated content is identified

·         Teachers add selected items to their lesson plans/playlists to sequence learning

·         Based on educator feedback, usage statistics, and/or effectiveness criteria, providers remove old/ineffective content from their platforms

Source: Education Week

Using a 120-point checklist, Knovation certifies each piece of content, said Randy Wilhelm, Knovation's co-founder and CEO. "These are gates the content is running through; we're assigning it meta-tags or context against the standards, or aligning within the taxonomy of what's taught in schools," he said.

After Knovation tags the content, educators in Houston verify its accuracy, Dorsey explained.

Houston is moving from a "store and retrieve" setup for digital content to full integration with the district's learning management system so that resources will flow to users as needed, Wilhelm said.

Eventually, Houston plans to "have personalized learning like never before," Wolfe said, taking data from formative and standardized assessments and linking the findings to curated content to best enhance a student's learning.

Houston's challenge is being felt across the country. Last year, the U.S. Department of Education appointed Andrew Marcinek its first open education adviser to help schools embrace the use of openly licensed resources to free funding for digital learning.

The department also launched a high-profile campaign to #GoOpen with digital instruction—encouraging districts to use open-ed resources. It recruited 10 districts to replace at least one textbook with free resources and identified "ambassador" districts that had already done so. It has also established the Learning Registry as a repository for open-ed resources that can be tapped by educators.

The Education Department's push "will make even more great OER content" available, said Elisabeth Stock, the CEO and co-founder of PowerMyLearning, a New York City-based nonprofit that operates PowerMyLearning Connect, a free platform identifying digital resources for personalized instruction. "It's not a question of needing more content," Stock said, "but how do you find it, and how do you use it well?"

Gwinnett County, Ga., is one school system facing that question. "Our greatest challenge is finding curated content in the format we need it in," said Tricia Kennedy, the executive director of eCLASS transformation for the 176,000-student district. (eCLASS is an acronym for its "content, learning and assessment support system.") Gwinnett wants content delivered according to interoperability standards, allowing flexibility "so teachers can select bite-sized learning activities for their students' individual needs," she said.

Stock said such "granular content" is in demand as her organization conducts teacher professional development sessions on blended learning that highlight curated digital learning activities like interactive games and videos. "We spent the energy to curate what we think is the best of the best," she said.

Content can be curated in a variety of ways—from the "high touch" use of educator evaluation to the "high tech" approach that uses algorithms, and a range of "tech/touch" combinations in between. The curators may be educators or former educators paid by an organization, or they may be in the classroom, uploading curated content into playlists or lesson plans to be shared.

OpenEd, for example, relies on "machine learning" to determine what standard a video or educational game is likely to be aligned with, said Adam Blum, the co-founder and CEO of the Los Gatos, Calif.-based company. Subject-matter experts are used to confirm the computer's findings and are usually in agreement with algorithms, Blum said.

Besides online resources, OpenEd includes homework assignments and assessments.

Each resource gets an "effectiveness rating" so a search for a learning objective will produce items that data shows will work best.

Another approach comes from Gooru, a Redwood City, Calif.-based nonprofit that relies on educators as "crowdsourcers." The Gooru platform is geared toward teachers building collections of open-ed multimedia resources and students directing their own learning.

With the crowdsourced approach, teachers can interpret the suitability of resources differently. Gooru recently developed a guide to help standardize evaluation of resources, said Wendy J.S. Noble, Gooru's vice president of learning and instruction.

Coverage of the implementation of college- and career-ready standards and the use of personalized learning is supported in part by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Education Week retains sole editorial control over the content of this coverage.

Duval, FL and OER

Doing away with textbooks hasn't been easy, some Duval school district leaders say

By Denise Smith Amos Tue, Jan 12, 2016 @ 8:03 pm | updated Tue, Jan 12, 2016 @ 9:37 pm

Bob.Mack@jacksonville.com

Fifth grade math and science teacher Mallory Browning goes over a conversion problem on her electronic whiteboard. Robert Curran is the math coach at Kings Trail Elementary in Jacksonville, FL. On Wednesday Oct. 14, 2015. Curran talked about the new DUVAL Math program, which is built from EngageNY/ Eureka Math program and worked with students in a 5th grade Math class.

When Duval schools ditched elementary school textbooks in favor of a new, mostly online curriculum for math and English language arts this school year, parent and teacher complaints piled up. Even some School Board members questioned the decision.

Tuesday, Superintendent Nikolai Vitti tried convincing skeptical board members to buy another set of learning materials — this time for middle school students — with links to the same New York company that helped make its controversial elementary math and reading materials.

Several board members questioned his recommendation, some saying they are less inclined to trust the district’s process for selecting instructional materials after their experience with the elementary materials from EngageNY.

EngageNY’s curriculum has been controversial from the start.

It is largely based on free, online lessons and texts, rather than textbooks and workbooks. Duval adjusted the curricula for local needs, but its students now use paper printouts in binders, rather than books.

Some parents and teachers said youngsters need books, which they can hold, to be engaged more in reading. Board member Becki Couch said she is unhappy that there are no color pictures or workbooks for youngsters, instead they use black and white sheets of paper.

Earlier this year some parents also complained that they can’t help their children with math homework, because the new curricula calls for students to learn a variety of ways to approach and solve math problems rather than use the straightforward formulas their parents had learned. Other parents questioned how age appropriate some of the first-grade and second-grade reading lessons were because they delve into world religions.

“I’m not supportive of it, but it’s the curriculum we have,” said Jason Fischer, a board member. “Is there a plan to make any changes? I think this is something we should discuss.”

Fischer said he knows of several parents who left district schools over curriculum issues.

Vitti said that although there will be some adjustments, including adding grade-level readers and some books to supplement the first- and second-grade materials, the curriculum overall has been successful. He said it is pushing students farther than they would have gone using traditional textbooks.

He added that most Duval elementary teachers polled — 83 percent — believe the new curriculum closely meets the state’s academic standards.

Nevertheless, School Board members said Tuesday the district will conduct a “curriculum audit” of the elementary classroom materials. An as yet unchosen third party will examine the materials to ensure they adhere to state academic standards and are age-appropriate.

Meanwhile, Vitti recommended Tuesday that the School Board buy a new middle school English Language Arts curriculum called Paths to College and Career for use next school year. It would cost the district $1.9 million, he said. Paths comes from Expeditionary Learning, a New York nonprofit which contributed to EngageNY’s curricula.

A group of 26 Duval teachers, parents, administrators and community members overwhelmingly picked it over several other curricula, Vitti said.

Couch said Expeditionary Learning will provide workbooks for students, but she’d prefer another textbook publisher, Houghton Mifflin, which would provide textbooks, online lessons, and other extra materials to help parents and students keep up with lessons.

“It’s the extra things that go along with it that make it a better product,” she said.

Board member Constance Hall asked Vitti if Paths, like the new elementary class work, is “scripted,” meaning teachers must adhere closely to a script for daily class lessons.

Vitti said it is scripted, prompting Hall to add that many elementary teachers are struggling; why subject middle school teachers to similar struggles?

“If they’re struggling, then our kids are not getting the most out of it,” she said, adding that the district should train its teachers more.

Vitti urged the board to give all the new curricula time for students and teachers to get used to them.

“To abandon the direction we’re going in ... would be more hazardous than where we are now,” he said.

The School Board is likely to decide on a curriculum audit in February and a new middle school English curriculum in March or April.

Leonie Haimson's Anti-inBloom Campaign Tweets

John King 2012 inBloom emails incl Tisch dinner party

leonie haimson ‏@leoniehaimson  23h23 hours agoManhattan, NY

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2016/01/part-iii-highlights-from-nyseds-foiled.html … @parents4privacy @tfarley1969 @nysape

 Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Our inBloom email saga Part I: Waiting for John King to respond to the FOIL

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2016-01-01T17:28:00-05:00&max-results=500&start=2&by-date=false

 

Sunday, January 3, 2016

Part III & II: Highlights from 2012 NYSED emails regarding their plan to share student data with inBloom

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2016/01/part-iii-highlights-from-nyseds-foiled.html

Monday, January 4, 2016

Part IV of the inBloom saga through FOILed emails: inBloom is born, faces increasing controversy, and dies

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/

Fewer Students Dropping Out of High School

From 2008-2012, when President Barack Obama first took office:

• The % of students that failed to graduate dropped 27% from 1M to 750k
• The HS graduation rate rose from 74.7 % to 80.9 %,
• the #of HS with >50% dropout dropped from 1,800 to 1,000

By Lauren Camera Nov. 10, 2015, at 7:08 p.m. + More
Some good news for Secretary of Education Arne Duncan as he begins packing ahead of his departure next month: The number of high school dropouts plummeted over the last four years.

In 2008, when President Barack Obama first took office, more than 1 million students didn't finish high school. In 2012, just under 750,000 failed to graduate, representing a 27 percent reduction.

The findings are included in a report coauthored by the Alliance for Excellent Education, America's Promise Alliance, Civic Enterprises, and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University – education advocacy organizations that focus on underserved communities. The groups emphasized that the drop in the number of high school dropouts is not an accident. It is largely a result, they argued, of a set of regulations enacted in 2008 by former President George W. Bush that required all states to use the same formula for calculating dropout rates and required school districts to intervene in schools with consistently low graduations rates that mainly served low-income and minority students.

The Obama administration doubled down on that policy, they noted, requiring in 2011 that all districts identify their poorest-performing 5 percent of schools and adopt an aggressive intervention model to turn them around.

"These common-sense policy changes had a near immediate effect," the groups wrote.

What's more, from 2008 to 2012, the latest year for which comparable data is available, the national high school graduation rate rose from 74.7 percent to 80.9 percent, and there's new data to suggest that trend will occur again this year.

"This is a remarkable achievement, particularly considering the lack of progress made in the years prior to the implementation of the federal graduation rate regulations," they wrote.

The report also documented a drop in the number of so-called dropout factories, chronically failing schools from which large percentages of students don't graduate.

According to the report, from 2008 to 2014, the number of these high schools plunged from more than 1,800 to roughly 1,000.

"The report sheds light on the progress we've made as a nation to ensuring all students, not just some, have access to world class education" Duncan said on a press call Tuesday.

He noted that since 2008, high school dropout rates for Hispanic students have been cut in half and that overall, a million more students of color are enrolled in college.

"That's tremendous progress, and this report underscores that progress," said the outgoing secretary, who announced his resignation last month.

But Duncan also said the report is an important example of why a reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act, which is currently being negotiated by Congress, must include stronger accountability measures and safeguards for historically disadvantaged students.

For example, the students attending low-graduation-rate high schools, the report also noted, are disproportionately students of color and students from low-income families. African-American students make up less than 16 percent of the K-12 student population, but in these high schools, they make up 40 percent, according to the report. And overall, students of color make up 90 percent or more of the student population in half of the dropout factories.

"We can't just have transparency and reporting," Duncan said of the current proposals in the House and Senate that would require states to report on achievement scores of all students, but allow states to craft their own accountability systems.

"We can't go backward," he said.

Duncan, along with a slew of civil rights advocates, has been pushing for a bill that would require states to intervene to correct big achievement gaps between minority and low-income students and their white and more affluent peers, and also mandate that states fix schools with especially low graduation rates and work to turn around schools that are in the bottom 5 percent in their states.

"The stakes today have never been higher to get the dropout rate down to zero," he said. "We as adults, educators and leaders have passively observed education failure with complacency. Turning around schools that have struggled for decades is the most important work in education."