{"id":2709,"date":"2013-03-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-06T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/blog\/cw_post\/if-failure-is-not-an-option-neither-are-supports\/"},"modified":"2020-02-05T12:49:53","modified_gmt":"2020-02-05T17:49:53","slug":"if-failure-is-not-an-option-neither-are-supports","status":"publish","type":"cw_post","link":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/cw_post\/if-failure-is-not-an-option-neither-are-supports\/","title":{"rendered":"If Failure Is Not an Option, Neither Are Supports"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"OrsbornSusie\"<\/a>
Susie Orsborn
principal at West Albany High School<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I just had the opportunity to listen to Susie Orsborn, principal at West Albany High School<\/a> in Oregon, describe the school\u2019s journey toward proficiency-based education at the Business Education Compact\u2019s<\/a> training, Implementing Proficiency at the Secondary Level.\u00a0 Below are of my big take-aways from her story:<\/p>\n

With Voluntary<\/em> Comes Variation<\/em>:<\/strong> Like much of the efforts in Oregon, participation in proficiency-based education starts with volunteers.\u00a0 At West Albany, a handful of teachers volunteered, approximately one in each department, to use proficiency-based approaches in their classroom.\u00a0 She explained that a veteran social studies teacher said that it was \u201cthe first time he actually knew what students know, or didn\u2019t know.\u201d The voluntary, teacher-led approach to transforming the education system from the classroom also means that there is a lot of variation.\u00a0 Instructional, assessment and grading practices vary across and within departments.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

Support is a School-Wide Function:<\/strong> The big lesson learned was that organizing interventions and supports is a school-wide function, not a teacher responsibility. Orsborn explained that the first year students were coming to teachers for re-teaching and re-assessment before school, mid-day and after school. Teachers were miserable. Then the math department decided to start a math proficiency lab for students not \u201cgetting a proficiency\u201d.\u00a0 But the downside was that students were getting pulled out for math lab and missing other classes. So finally West Albany figured out that, with their AB block schedule, they could use the last part of each day for interventions, and for those students that didn\u2019t need any help, electives were offered.\u00a0 Much of what is covered in the support classes are study skills, vocabulary-building, as well as support on the specific standards with which students are struggling.<\/p>\n

Proficiency-Based Summer School:<\/strong> The next year, West Albany set up a proficiency-based summer school using their own budget to support the 133 students that still needed to complete courses.\u00a0 Many of the students were missing proficiencies (that\u2019s how many talk about competencies or standards in Oregon) in multiple courses.\u00a0 As they demonstrated that they were proficient, students moved on to other courses and eventually just stopped summer school when they met their goals. It was successful for all students except for the 26 students that didn\u2019t attend.\u00a0 Thus West Albany started their next year with a much higher proportion of students on-track.<\/p>\n

Not Yet Proficient?<\/strong> In hindsight, Orsborn referred to the four questions that Richard DuFour says that professional learning communities<\/a> use to drive reflection:<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 What do you want students to know?
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0How do you know when they know it?
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0What are you going to do when they don\u2019t know it?
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0What are you going to do when they do know it?<\/p>\n

She emphasized that it is absolutely critical to ask the third question, What is going to happen when students don\u2019t reach proficiency?, early on in planning for proficiency-education. Later, another teacher directed me to the DuFour\u2019s website that lists a number of different ways that schools are organizing intervention time<\/a> that is embedded in the regular schedule.<\/p>\n

Celebrate!:<\/strong> Orsborn emphasized that it is important to celebrate the steps your school makes along the journey to proficiency-based.\u00a0 West Albany has taken time during staff development to celebrate the contribution of each teacher as well as their own learning. Most of all, celebrate the success in student learning, big and small.<\/p>\n

Orsborn closed her story with the reminder that, \u201cFailure Is Not An Option.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","mapsvg_location":""},"legacy_category":[],"issue":[368,371],"location":[118],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nIf Failure Is Not an Option, Neither Are Supports - Aurora Institute<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/cw_post\/if-failure-is-not-an-option-neither-are-supports\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"If Failure Is Not an Option, Neither Are Supports - 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