CompetencyWorks | January 2020

January 3, 2020

Happy New Year! This newsletter shares the latest CompetencyWorks blog posts and Aurora Institute publications—providing thought leadership and lessons learned from the field to support transformation toward personalized, competency-based K-12 schools and systems.

From the CompetencyWorks Blog

Two CompetencyWorks blog posts shared strategies based on Building 21’s approach.

The Competency Train Pulls Into Kankakee: Common Start-up Challenges and Strategies

This post discusses common start-up challenges and solutions from Kankakee High School’s first two years of transitioning to a competency-based approach.

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Building 21’s Open Competencies, Rubrics, and Professional Development Activities

Guest blogger Thomas Gaffey offers illuminating and practical activities to advance competency-based assessment. He also shares Building 21’s Learning What Matters Competency Framework—a valuable online resource of competencies and rubrics.

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Building 21’s Open Competencies, Rubrics, and Professional Development Activities

CompetencyWorks also shared three outstanding articles from the Mastery Collaborative, Next Generation Learning Challenges, and the Center for Collaborative Education.

But What About The Test?

Christy Kingham describes strategies that the Young Women’s Leadership School of Astoria uses to pursue mastery-based, culturally responsive education while also helping students succeed on high-stakes state assessments.

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Deep Community Partnerships Lead to Authentic Project-Based Learning at Oakland USD

Young Whan Choi of Oakland USD worked with schools and local businesses to develop a community engagement partner day that brought in more than 40 organizations and led to student projects ranging from coffee roasting to landscape design to HIV prevention

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The Challenges of a Large, Diverse School District and the Promises of Performance Assessment Micro-credentials

Justin Elliott explains how Jefferson, Kentucky used micro-credentials to support personalized, teacher-driven professional development focused on creating opportunities for students to produce robust evidence of their learning.

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Finally, What’s New in K-12 Competency-Based Education? provides brief reviews of new resources, professional learning opportunities, and Aurora Institute news and publications.

Resources From the Field

The Aurora Institute Releases a Call to Action for Higher Education to Modernize the Educator Workforce

Higher education has immense power to support the transformation of K-12 teaching and learning because it incubates future educators and supplies opportunities for professional development. University presidents and deans of colleges of education can also use their influence to support systemic change through a variety of tools and strategies that are at their unique disposal. This issue brief challenges institutions of higher learning to:

Diversify the educator workforce;
Modernize teacher preparation; and
Promote continuous professional learning and development.

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About CompetencyWorks

CompetencyWorks is an initiative that provides information and knowledge about competency-based education in the K-12 education system. Drawing on lessons learned by innovators and early adopters, CompetencyWorks is an online resource for sharing knowledge, original research and policy advances, and a variety of field perspectives. CompetencyWorks provides an informative blog with practitioner knowledge on key topics and papers on emerging issues, with resources curated from across the field of K-12 competency-based education.

Contact: Eliot Levine
[email protected]

CompetencyWorks | Aurora Institute