iNACOL PLUGGED IN | 11.16.18 – New Title on Professional Learning, Reflections from #iNACOL18

November 16, 2018

iNACOL Plugged In Newsletter
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Nov. 16, 2018
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What Should Professional Learning Look Like in Competency-Based Education?
Moving Toward Mastery

As school districts transition to new, more powerful student-centered learning models, it’s critical that educators leading the transformative practice are equipped for their new roles. To support growing transformation efforts, we recently published Moving Toward Mastery: Growing, Developing and Sustaining Educators for Competency-Based Education. In it, we recommend 15 strategies that can help school districts successfully make this paradigm shift.

Building off examples of effective teaching, professional development and practice across the nation, the new report explores how communities can work together to prompt and sustain complex systems change of moving both students and teachers from a one-size-fits-all approach to education to one in which all students and all teachers can succeed.

Importantly, the new report explores the system-level change needed to create a profession that is:

  • Equity-oriented: Designed to promote success for all students, foster inclusion and cultural responsiveness for students and adults and disrupt systemic inequities;
  • Learning-centered: Designed to continuously develop educators’ knowledge, skill and personal mastery, sustain authentic collaboration and promote innovation; and
  • Lifelong: Designed to authentically engage, develop, motivate and sustain educators over the course of their careers, including preparation, certification and advancement.

Scaling competency-based education with consistent quality presents a dual challenge: increasing the number of educators who have the knowledge and skill to be competency-based practitioners and simultaneously improving the quality of teaching. Moving Toward Mastery is not a report that describes what educators must do differently to improve learning and teaching. Rather, it helps leaders and teams at all levels of the system address the question, “What can I do to support teachers and improve teaching, and where do my actions fit in the larger picture of systems change?” You can download a full copy here.

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iNACOL 2018 Symposium | Driving the Transformation of Learning | Oct. 21-24, 2018 | Nashville
Reflections and Highlights from the 2018 iNACOL Symposium

More than 3,000 people attended the iNACOL Symposium to learn and lead the way toward transforming learning in our education systems. To realize the deep, lasting and sustainable systems change we seek, iNACOL President and CEO Susan Patrick opened the Sympoisum by asking attendees to reflect on their journeys, how they came into this work and why. Over the course of four days in Nashville, we were graced with talks from esteemed thought leaders like Tony Monfiletto, Phyllis Lockett, Carlos Moreno, Russlynn Ali, David Istance, Pamela Cantor, M.D., and the more than 200 speakers, educators, authors, schools and solution-makers who led learning sessions. There is much to reflect on and still more to learn. These #iNACOL18 links offer a deep dive into the iNACOL Symposium experience:

  • iNACOL Symposium 2018 Highlights
  • Keynote Videos, Innovator Awards and Student Panel
  • Voices Hub Podcasts
  • Reflections from our friends:
    • Donell McNeal
    • Ann Hadwen
    • XQ Institute

Would you like to share thoughts from the Symposium? Get in touch. Email us at [email protected].

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Reminders
Download the iNACOL Symposium Mobile App to get the most out of your conference experence.
Recent Webinar: Meeting Students Where They Are
Antonia Rudenstine and Sydney Schaef of reDesign joined us last week with an in-depth exploration of the relational, pedagogical and structural dimensions of meeting students where they are in K-12 competency-based education systems.
WATCH
Quality Principles for Competency-Based Education
Purchase Hard Copies of Recently Published Book
Our recent CompetencyWorks title, Quality Principles for Competency-Based Education is freely available online in PDF form, and you now have the option of purchashing printed copies for a nominal fee.
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New from iNACOL's Blog: Education Domain
Charting the Course: Recommendations to Support A Long-Term Plan For K-12 Education Transformation to Competency-Based Education Systems

Creating policies that are student-centered and are fit for the purpose of an education system in which every student can succeed requires us to challenge commonly-held assumptions about what learning “should” look like. Continuously improving on the goals of the education system, including the role of teacher and students, the use of time, the purpose and nature of assessments, the allocation of resources, learning model designs and the role of schools within the broader context of the community, is necessary for lasting change. 

- Maria Worthen, Natalie Truong and Susan Patrick

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Recommendations to Support A Long-Term Plan For K-12 Education Transformation to Competency-Based Education Systems
Maria Worthen, VP of Policy, iNACOL
Three Takeaways for the Future of Personalized Learning Following the 2018 Midterm Elections
The long game of education systems transformation requires us to question our assumptions about learning and school. We, and our newly elected leaders, have an opportunity to focus these conversations on what truly matters — what it means for students to be truly prepared for success, with meaningful credentials, and what it will take to create equitable learning environments that give each student the support and opportunities to succeed.

- Maria Worthen

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Re-Envisioning Professional Learning in Competency-Based Education

Scaling competency-based education with consistent quality presents a dual challenge: increasing the number of educators who have the knowledge and skill to be competency-based practitioners and simultaneously improving the quality of teaching. Moving Toward Mastery is not a report that describes what educators must do differently to improve learning and teaching. Rather, it helps leaders and teams at all levels of the system address the question, “What can I do to support teachers and improve teaching, and where do my actions fit in the larger picture of systems change?”

- Katherine Casey

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Moving Toward Mastery
 
Creating Long-Term Strategy for State Policymakers to Support a Fully Developed, Competency-Based Education System
Many of the threshold concepts introduced in the paper Fit for Purpose: Taking the Long View on Systems Change and Policy to Support Competency Education and explored in this blog series are still nascent today in competency-based education models in the United States. While innovators are beginning to develop more competency-based systems, many early practices and models are still rooted in traditional time-based systems and constrained by our short-term approaches to incremental policy reforms and limited concepts of what is possible.
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Plugged In Headlines: News about Education Transformation

The Case for Competency-Based Education
Tom Vander Ark, Getting Smart

Student Engagement, Supports Among Key Elements of Successful School Redesign
Lucy Hood, Education Dive

Kettle Moraine Middle School Offers a ‘Customizable’ Learning Experience, Because Not All Kids Learn the Same
Alec Johnson, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Kids Aren’t Failing School–School Is Failing Kids
Eillie Anzilotti, Fast Company

Miseducation: Is There Racial Inequality at Your School?
Lena V. Groeger, Annie Waldman and David Eads, ProPublica

Philosophy Empowers Students to Decide What, How to Learn
Dave Perozek, Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette


iNACOL in the News

In a Shift, More Education Reformers Say They’re Worried about Schools’ Focus on Testing
Research has also shown that turning tests into high-stakes events can prompt negative outcomes, like cheating, teaching to the test, and worse teachers being pushed to grades where students aren’t tested...Read More.

Dispatches from iNACOL 2018
Research has also shown that turning tests into high-stakes events can prompt negative outcomes, like cheating, teaching to the test, and worse teachers being pushed to grades where students aren’t tested...Read More.

‘Hamilton,’ Cultural Relevance and the Quest to Personalize Learning
A recent study found that when teachers think about personalized learning, very few think about the idea of cultural relevance...Read More.

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Policy
The iNACOL Center for Policy Advocacy leads the multi-stage evolution of policy necessary for the growth of effective personalized learning models toward the goals of high quality, equity, access and dramatically improving student learning to close the achievement gap and ensure every student has access to high-quality, world-class learning opportunities.
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CompetencyWorks
CompetencyWorks is an online resource dedicated to competency education in K-12 education. CompetencyWorks shares original research, knowledge and a variety of perspectives through an informative blog with practitioner knowledge, policy advancements, papers on emerging issues and a wiki with resources curated from across the field. Bookmark this resource and check often for frequent updates.
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Resources
Working collaboratively with diverse experts in the field, iNACOL produces reports, books, policy briefs, blog posts, webinars and related resources on key topics and tough issues that equip and empower educators and leaders to catalyze and scale personalized, next generation learning models. Use our web-based library to freely access and share materials.
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