{"id":11296,"date":"2020-01-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-02T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/blog\/cw_post\/reinventing-crediting-and-transcripts-part-2-considerations-for-making-change\/"},"modified":"2020-02-25T18:38:18","modified_gmt":"2020-02-25T23:38:18","slug":"reinventing-crediting-and-transcripts-part-2-considerations-for-making-change","status":"publish","type":"cw_post","link":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/cw_post\/reinventing-crediting-and-transcripts-part-2-considerations-for-making-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Reinventing Crediting and Transcripts (Part 2): Considerations for Making Change"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"As described in my previous post<\/a>, there are tremendous advantages that can come with a new form of scholastic crediting and a new model of school transcripts. Instead of itemizing courses completed and recording what is, in effect, seat-time accrued, we can document what students actually know\u2014and what they can do with what they know. Students, their parents, and their future schools and employers can gain much greater understanding of the student\u2019s genuine abilities and have greater confidence in their prospects. Students can be credited for the myriad ways they develop competencies, whether in a conventional course, an online learning environment, an internship, a co-curricular experience, an individualized passion pursuit, or an elaborate interdisciplinary project. They are no longer restricted to being credited only for a traditional sequence of classes.<\/p>\n

The advantages of such a transformation of school crediting are clear. Indeed, as I discuss in my book, Reinventing Crediting for Competency-Based Education<\/em><\/a>, they\u2019ve been clear for decades. A US Bureau of Education (before there was a Department of Education) report published in 1954 is remarkably prescient and entirely current in the many critiques it makes of the Carnegie credit system used widely in high schools both then and now. These complaints include that it \u201cencourages a rigid schedule of classes and subjects,\u201d \u201cgives undue emphasis to time served,\u201d and doesn\u2019t recognize \u201cwork experience or civic competence.\u201d<\/p>\n

But how? How do schools pursue such a large change, upending generations of expectations of what a high school transcript should look like, and shifting such a powerful paradigm? Reinventing Crediting<\/em> provides case studies documenting how schools and systems have managed or are undertaking this transcript transition, either to completion, as in the case of New Zealand schools (though completion may be the wrong word, as the work is never truly done), or in the early phases, as in the case of Mastery Transcript Consortium schools such as the Nueva School (CA) or the Putney School (VT). Reinventing Crediting<\/em> also provides a road map for schools and districts to transform their transcripts that draws upon the lessons learned from the case studies.<\/p>\n

Some main points from my two chapters on the change process that are important for schools and districts seeking to transform their transcripts are:<\/p>\n