The Latest Milestones and Lessons from Lindsay Unified

Lindsay Unified School District (LUSD) continues to be a leader in the competency-based education (CBE) field with a full-district performance-based education system. Located in California’s rural central valley, LUSD serves approximately 4200 learners. About 96% of LUSD learners are Latino, while 100% receive free lunch. Approximately  35% of Lindsay families qualify as part of the Migrant Program, often working in the extreme conditions that the agriculture industry requires. Lindsay Unified is its own Migrant Region, something that is not typically seen.

Implementing personalized, competency-based education to its fullest potential is deep, transformative work that shifts the culture of a learning community and the day-to-day practices and structures. In Lindsay, for example, teachers are “Learning Facilitators,” students are “Learners,” and schools are called “Learning Communities.” The steadfast journey of LUSD over nearly two decades illustrates how systems change is possible and sustainable, even if it doesn’t happen overnight and is an ongoing process. 

I had the chance to join a day-long visit to LUSD in the fall of 2023. The visit was organized by Lindsay Leads, an initiative to support further development of the LUSD system and steward efforts to share lessons learned with others looking to pursue a competency-based learning system. This post shares observations from my day, along with additional insights from conversations, webinars, and Aurora Institute Symposium sessions featuring Lindsay’s transformation story. 

Focused Leadership that Listens and Lives the Vision

Recently retired long-time Superintendent Tom Rooney speaks passionately about the Lindsay “why” that started the district on their journey. Approximately two decades ago when beginning the work, LUSD had a 67% graduation rate, 14% of students involved in gang culture, one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the county, only 21% of students attending 4-year higher education institutions after graduation, and only 12% completing a degree.

In his opening on our visit day, the Superintendent described the mindset shift at the foundation of LUSD’s transformation. It is a shift from a culture of adult convenience to an uncompromisingly learner centered culture. A mindset shift with intentional learning, development, and belief as non-negotiables helped adults to believe that we can give each learner what they need and meet them where they are while producing results. He asked, “What are our adults thinking and believing about our children? In Lindsay, you have to believe in every learner’s potential and create the conditions for them to succeed.”

Retired Board Chair, Robert Hurtado echoes the sentiment that while people were working hard they were not getting results. He reflected that, “Lindsay learners weren’t getting where we wanted them to be and we used to say ‘we can’t do it because we’re Lindsay.’ Now we say, ‘we can do it because we are Lindsay.’ Our mindset shifted. Now that people are proud of the school district and their kids, there are no limits.”

The Lindsay Strategic Design created in 2007 became the guiding vision for the district after a two-year community process grounded in five questions. 

• Why do we exist as an organization?

  

• What are the values that will govern how we act toward one another?
• What are the principles by which we will make decisions?
• What is our vision for the future with regard to learning, instruction, curriculum, assessment, technology, leadership, personnel, and stakeholders?
• What is the description of our graduate?

The Strategic Design articulates LUSD’s Mission, Core Values, Guiding Principles, Vision for the Future, and Life Long Learning Standards. 

Having a shared vision and shared core values makes it easier to work through tough issues. In the Systems Design panel at #Aurora23, both Superintendent Rooney and Board Chair Hurtado spoke about the essential need to keep the Strategic Design at the center of collaboration and decision-making. In a preparation conversation, Rooney described the Strategic Vision as a document that “lives in our hearts and minds, not on the shelf. We believe it, live it, defend it. It makes life fulfilling.”

Together, the district leadership team and the board work through the 54 specific elements of the Strategic Design approximately every two years to assess progress and set goals. They use a 1-4 evaluation system and, as of last year, estimate they still have about one-third of the elements to implement system-wide to a level 3. 

Further, Hurtado described the Board’s process of allocating resources with a “learner-centered decision-making” lens that considers the specific needs of learners and goals for long-term sustainability. He explained that they don’t want to invest or start something they can’t continue, because it doesn’t serve learners overall to have an inconsistent system. 

The efforts of LUSD produced results over time. Pre-pandemic, LUSD achieved seven years of gains including having a 98% graduation rate, with 75% going to college and 57% completing in four years. Additionally, student involvement in gang culture dropped to 3%.

Student Agency from the Start

Cultivating self-directed learners who have the skills and space to exercise their agency forms a foundation of a fully-developed competency-based system. Roles for Lindsay Learners as partners in their learning featured throughout my day in LUSD. The visit day began with two students sharing their experiences in Lindsay and describing the Lindsay Performance-Based System. After the opening learning sessions, Lindsay Learners led our tours at both Kennedy Elementary School (K-8) and Lindsay High School.

Each group of learners – whether a first grade class or a high school class – decides on their learning community vision and code of cooperation to guide their actions. The process creates a culture of belonging, ownership, and transfers into students engaging actively with their learning. 

In the past few years, K-2 LUSD staff focused their inquiry on cultivating student agency with Lindsay’s youngest learners. They use an agentic learning cycle of setting meaningful goals, making plans, taking action, and then reflecting and revising as individual learners as well as a community of learners. Chris McJunkin, a site leader (principal) at the time and now Director of Special Projects, described the structure of a supportive change process with the Learning Facilitators beginning with learning more, then trying and iterating, and finally exploring successes and problems of practice during Wednesday professional learning time. She emphasized that they needed to start by grounding in what agency is, “because, there’s the thought of what [agency] is, and then there is the reality of ‘Can I do this? Can I give up that control in my learning environment as a teacher?’ And when working with little ones, ‘Is there the possibility that they can actually do this?” 

By high school, learners also choose a pathway based on a passion or career interest. Over a dozen pathway offerings include Agricultural Mechanics, Guitar Professional Music, Engineering Technology, Health Science-Biotechnology, MultiMedia Production, and Education. 

Relevance and Application with Project-Based Learning 

Access to a guaranteed curriculum with a transparent progression of learning anchors the LUSD Performance-Based System. Lindsay leaders consistently describe how the system sets the same clear bar for every learner. Rather than passing students on if they haven’t met that bar, they focus on ensuring the scaffolds are in place for learners to attain the expectations. Building from the Strategic Design, in 2013, Lindsay reached full implementation of its Performance-Based System with no learners in the system that experienced the previous traditional system. In recent years, Lindsay has implemented project-based learning (PBL) to deepen student agency by engaging students in real-world, hands-on projects where they are encouraged to take ownership of their learning journey. 

While some systems use PBL as their entry point into CBE, Lindsay started with its Performance-Based System. Lindsay’s competencies resemble the state standards but these learning goals are used with competency-based practices and systems. 

• Learning Facilitators help learners know where they are in their learning and how learners can show evidence of their learning. 
• A Learning Management System (LMS) (LUSD uses Empower) supports transparency and access to learning materials.  
• Grading policies measure the learner’s ultimate performance rather than averaging performances (or grades) over time, which can penalize the learning for taking time to learn rather than recognizing that learning occurred. 
• The system separates work habits from academic mastery and a set of Life Long Learning Standards build across K-12 (similar to a graduate profile or habits of success).

Having a fully operational Performance-Based System provided a foundation for incorporating PBL. When LUSD started their work, the academic needs were high, which prompted the decision to focus on effective standards-based instruction over PBL. Using the language of RTI (response to intervention), Cinnamon Schefele, LUSD’s Director of Curriculum and Instruction, reflected that our “RTI pyramid was a rectangle with around 85% in tier 3.” 

Their “dimmer switch” approach built gradually starting with exploration, moving to training for early-adopters with prototyping and piloting, and finally to system-wide implementation. As of 2023, having worked with Defined Learning as a support partner, each year, every student participates in at least two extended PBL experiences, which often culminate with a real world experience such as a field trip or a visit to a business. A few examples across the grade levels include: 

• Grade 1: Farmer’s market  for education around nutrition (my plate)
• Grade 4: Animal habitats (farm animals); aircraft and life in the aviation field; food trucks as a business
• Grade 7: Statistics Fair where learners create different games with probability and invite other grades to participate in the fair
• High School: ELA projects about careers in health, including the offer of certification as a CNA if the learner chooses that path, and a science project to explore careers connected to biology.

Recruiting the Next Generation of Teachers 

As Lindsay’s system has matured, the teaching and learning culture and expected practice has transformed. To sustain and expand the educator cadre needed, Lindsay invests in educator capacity building and collaboration – both for existing and future educators. Their innovation on building a teacher pipeline through a high quality residency model provides options for Lindsay graduates and paraprofessionals (classified staff) to attain their teaching credentials.

The first iteration of the program helped classified staff to attend postsecondary institutions with a forgivable loan for returning to teach in LUSD or other Title I districts in California for four years. As of 2022, over 120 people completed that pipeline. In 2021-22, the district built the Lindsay Teacher Residency program which pairs college graduates to work side by side with a master Lindsay educator for a year while they receive their master’s degree. 

These grow-your-own programs let LUSD hire its own learners to teach future Lindsay Learners. A significant majority of recent hires are now Lindsay graduates – at one point recently, the number was 38 of the last 45 Learning Facilitator hires. In addition to providing solid career pathways, the residency curriculum embeds CBE practices into the training process.  

Learn and Find Your Path

While implementing personalized, competency-based education is not one-size-fits-all and must ultimately be implemented with integrity to one’s own students and community – we can learn from LUSD, others working to make the shift, and the research. By harnessing the insights and lessons from places like Lindsay, we can better understand how to transform and how to set attainable goals and timelines. 

Learn More

• Strong Evidence of Competency-Based Education’s Effectiveness from Lindsay Unified School District (2020)
• Personalizing Professional Learning to Increase Student Growth: Lessons from Lindsay Unified School District (2021)
• Case Study: Lindsay High School Transforms Learning for English Language Learners with Personalized, Competency-Based Education in California (2018)
• A Decade On: Lindsay Unified’s Personalized Learning Journey (2018) Lindsay Unified – Design Elements (2013)

Laurie Gagnon is the CompetencyWorks Program Director at the Aurora Institute. She leads the work of sharing promising practices shaping the future of K-12 personalized, competency-based education (CBE). After the Aurora Institute Symposium in October 2023, she had the opportunity to visit New Village Girls Academy for the day while out in California.