{"id":2638,"date":"2012-11-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-11-26T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/blog\/cw_post\/evidence\/"},"modified":"2020-02-05T12:49:28","modified_gmt":"2020-02-05T17:49:28","slug":"evidence","status":"publish","type":"cw_post","link":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/cw_post\/evidence\/","title":{"rendered":"Evidence?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Thomas Rooney, Superintendent of Lindsay Unified School District<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I have received three requests over the past week asking for evidence of success from competency education models.\u00a0 The truth of the matter is that we are not swimming in proof points. And it is very, very important for our continued work to advance competency education that we generate them. They do have to be more than anecdotal. They don\u2019t have to be a third party random assignment evaluation.<\/p>\n

A further complicating matter is that our current approaches to accountability are not designed to easily pick up the fact that students may be getting the help they need to fill academic gaps. Thus an \u201c11th\u201d grade student working to strengthen elementary school level math skills may be \u201c not proficient\u201d in state tests even if they moved up three grade levels over the year. Perhaps a growth model will pick that up, but what we are finding is that the horrendous gaps generated by passing students along unprepared often challenge the limits of our accountability and assessment systems.<\/p>\n

I have collected the few examples of evidence of competency education adding value below. There are a few more that I\u2019m following up on. Please send me any and all that you might have\u2026That way we can keep pulling together a solid argument for competency education.<\/p>\n

Chugach<\/strong> (From Delivering on the Promise<\/a><\/em>)<\/p>\n

In 1994, the Chugach School District, serving 214 students over 20,000 square miles in impoverished communities, began a fundamental redesign of how they would educate their students. With the courage to confront the fact that 90 percent of their students could not read at grade level and only one student in 26 years had graduated from college, Chugach focused their mission on ensuring that all students learn to high standards.<\/p>\n

The district engaged the community in establishing a performance-based approach, developing standards in ten content areas, new assessments, and modified reporting mechanisms. Within five years, Chugach School district saw the following results:<\/p>\n