Recommended Reading: Preliminary Implementation of Maine’s Proficiency-Based Diploma

Interested in finding out more about Maine’s implementation of a proficiency-based diploma?  Take a look at the report Preliminary Implementation of Maine’s Proficiency-based Diploma by the Maine Education Policy Research Institute.

It’s a good read that provides lots of insights into the stage of development of their personalized, proficiency-based system.  The characteristics that are outlined in the report should be helpful to districts and states that are involved in planning or early implementation.

My only frustration in reading the report is that it would have been great to get a sense of the results of the most developed schools (which was beyond the scope of the study) or at least to find out if they were seeing results.

Hopefully someone will start to look at the early indicators to understand if those districts and schools that are farther down the road in implementation are seeing improvements in academic achievement or other important indicators for their most vulnerable students. As national attention on competency education grows, we need to demonstrate that competency education works for low-income students or special populations soon.