What’s New in K-12 Competency Education?

News

• The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recently awarded a $2.5 Million grant to Lindsay Unified School District and Summit Public Schools, called the California Consortium for Development and Dissemination of Personalized Learning (C2D2). By June 2019, they will develop an open source tool to clearly define personalized learning competencies for various personnel in the learning community. The tool will also identify systemic barriers that stand in the way of mastering these competencies and provide resources that support continuous improvement and development for the adults in learner-centered education.
• Harvard’s Project Zero is studying how to teach for understanding and have found that when students have structures for thinking, better learning emerges.

Micro-Credentials for Teacher PD

• Micro-credentials are showing promise for revitalizing teacher professional development.
• Michael Horn joined EdNext Editor-in-chief Marty West to discuss micro-credentials for teachers, and how professional development is changing in this EdNext podcast.
• The Hattiesburg School District in Mississippi and Kettle Moraine School District in Wisconsin are incorporating competency-based approaches for teacher PD, where teachers learn best practices while earning new credentials for progress.

Equity

• At SXSWedu, presenters offered competency education (also known as “mastery-based”) as a means to promote equity and lift engagement and motivation.
• New York City’s Mastery Collaborative shared an Equity Snapshot: The Intersection of Mastery & Culturally Responsive Education (CRE), as preliminary ideas “crowd sourced” across their communities. You can add your ideas, thoughts, questions and resources.

School Designs

• Red Bank Elementary, profiled by Education Reimagined here, is a leader in education transformation, designed around personalized, relevant, and contextualized pathways for each learner.
• This USA Today article highlights how one Brooklyn school, Brooklyn Lab, is changing how students and teachers are taught. Brooklyn Lab is one of 10 to receive $10 million from the XQ: The Super School Project.
• Washington’s Federal Way school board approved the use of a competency-based model for two alternative schools.

Student Agency & Voice

• Iowa BIG student Hannah Betram shares her story of how competency education and student voice have kick started her new journey in life.
• JoEllen Lynch, Executive Director of Springpoint, explores student agency and positive youth development in school design.
• Education researcher Russell Quaglia shares lessons for developing student voice.

State Policy Updates

• West Virginia introduced House Bill 3061 which promotes mastery-based instructional design and delivery strategies.
• Kentucky’s Competency-Based Assessment Pilot Work Group met on March 28 to develop recommendations for the assessment pilot project.
• The New Mexico Senate Joint Memorial 1 for Alternative Student Assessments passed with overwhelming bi-partisan support.
• Michigan released its 21^st Century Education Commission Report, which includes a recommendation to implement competency education.
• A statewide effort to personalize learning in Vermont is transforming teaching and learning.
• Indianapolis is exploring ways to kids to learn at their own pace, and Indiana lawmakers are looking to propose a pilot program in House Bill 1386.

Progress in Schools

• Lewistown Schools (Maine) are making progress in proficiency-based learning implementation. Leaders and teachers share their insights on these changes here.
• Maine’s Scarborough High School is putting new diploma requirements in place, with proficiency-based requirements beginning with the class of 2021.
• Durango’s District 9-R has been working towards a competency-based system for five years. Here is a news article written by Superintendent Dan Snowberger.

New Hampshire

• New Hampshire’s Performance Assessment of Competency Education (PACE) program, designed to support competency education, has helped New Hampshire become the 2^nd best state for K-12 education, according to U.S. News & World Report.
• The Laconia School District school board in New Hampshire discussed the PACE program, including competency-based approaches to instruction and learning.

Communication & Community Engagement

• How are schools artfully engaging parents in education transformation? Marie Watson, Principal of Red Bank Elementary, shares her insights and strategies.
• Education Elements and The Learning Accelerator released a new communications guide that streamlines the planning process of communications, shares real-world examples, and offers resources and artifacts.

Call for Submissions: Social-Emotional Learning Competence Assessments

The Work Group for Establishing Practical Social-Emotional Competence Assessments of Preschool to High School Students is sponsoring a design challenge to identify new measures of social and emotional learning. They are seeking proposals for direct assessments in which SEL competencies are measured. Download the call for submissions here.

Resources

• The Denver Public Schools Imagination Lab, Imaginarium, released a new report: Personalized Learning: A Journey Through Year One—offering case studies of the Denver School of Innovation and Sustainable Design, Roots Elementary and Sabin World School.
• The New England Secondary School Consortium released the next briefing in its “Leadership In Action” series: How Do Colleges View Proficiency-Based Transcripts?” View and download all briefings here.
• The University of Southern Maine’s Center for Education Policy, Research, and Evaluation released a new report: Proficiency-Based High School Diploma Systems in Maine: Implications for Special Education and Career and Technical Education Programming and Student Populations, by Erika Stump, Amy Johnson and Cathy Jacobs.
• The New York City Department of Education released Building Towards Mastery: Tools and Practices for Supporting Overage and Under-Credited Adolescents in a Mastery-Based Learning Environment, based on the work at Bronx Arena High School.

Great Schools Partnership is now providing resources in Spanish:

• Aprendizaje basado en la adquisición de competencias: un modelo simplificado (Proficiency-Based Learning Simplified: How It Works)
• Aprendizaje basado en la adquisición de competencias: un modelo simplificado (Proficiency-Based Learning Simplified: How It Works)
• Diez principios del aprendizaje basado en la adquisición de competencias (Ten Principles of Proficiency-Based Learning)
• Vías de evaluación: un esquema simplificado (Assessment Pathways Simplified)

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