{"id":2826,"date":"2013-09-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-09-03T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/blog\/cw_post\/five-areas-we-need-to-get-right\/"},"modified":"2020-02-05T12:50:51","modified_gmt":"2020-02-05T17:50:51","slug":"five-areas-we-need-to-get-right","status":"publish","type":"cw_post","link":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/cw_post\/five-areas-we-need-to-get-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Areas We Need to Get Right"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"csbouldersmall\"<\/a>Other than the schools that have been doing competency education for a decade, such as Diploma Plus and Boston Day and Evening Academy, the best I can tell is that we are in about the second or third year of implementation of this wave of reform. This means we\u2019ve moved beyond great design and we now have to face up to some areas we haven\u2019t quite gotten right yet.<\/p>\n

Here is my short list of five things we need to pay attention to if competency education is going to produce results. \u00a0You\u2019ll see that there are two themes snaking through this list: 1) What does proficiency really mean?\u00a0 and 2) Are we using the best tools and resources to help kids get there?<\/p>\n

1)<\/strong>\u00a0Depth of Knowledge of Learning Targets<\/b>:\u00a0 Our country is making a huge shift from a focus on lower levels of knowledge– \u00a0such as recall and basic skills– \u00a0to the deeper learning embedded in the Common Core, such as analysis and knowledge utilization. (Sometimes our language is confusing — \u00a0deeper learning is the same as higher levels on the knowledge taxonomies.) This is true for competency-based schools as well. So we need to be careful that we aren\u2019t setting our learning targets too low.\u00a0 However, to set them at the higher levels of analysis and utilization also brings in a new set of issues, including performance assessment of higher order skills such as creativity and evaluation.<\/strong><\/p>\n

2)<\/strong>\u00a0Standards-Referenced Grading Is Not Enough<\/b>:\u00a0 I\u2019ve visited a number of schools that claimed they were doing competency education only to find that they were primarily doing standards-referenced grading.\u00a0 The transparency and use of rubrics seemed to make a difference in the classroom but kids are being passed on with Ds and Cs. Implementing competency education as a classroom practice rather than a school-wide approach results in kids being passed\u00a0 on without reaching proficiency and teachers bearing the burden of providing all the support to the students in their classrooms.<\/p>\n

3)\u00a0<\/strong>Taking Advantage of Blended Learning<\/b>:\u00a0 Are we using all the tools available to us to support the students that have gaps or are several grade levels behind?\u00a0 I\u2019ve been shocked at how limited the use of adaptive software is in the competency-based schools I\u2019ve visited. There seem to be lots of reasons: There are few high quality products for older grades, the products aren\u2019t transparent about the standards students are learning so it\u2019s difficult for a teacher to manage in a competency-based environment, and there is just not enough bandwidth to try to integrate blended learning when so much time is needed to get competency education right. However, to not use these tools when so many kids need so much help to catch-up just doesn\u2019t make sense to me.\u00a0 Furthermore, software programs and placing curriculum online are also great ways to create the capacity for kids to advance beyond their grade level.<\/p>\n

4)\u00a0<\/strong>Using Time<\/b>: Too often in discussing competency education we emphasize time as a variable, suggesting that some students are going to need more time to learn something. The problem with this is it leads to the concept of self-pacing and the fear that some students will be left lagging behind. It also presumes that students are at the same place and are learning the same thing, which isn’t the case at all. If you are a student with gaps, you are doing twice the learning, addressing gaps and tackling new concepts simultaneously. It’s not really taking you longer, you are doing more.<\/p>\n

Rather than emphasizing the rate of learning, time as a variable is about how schools use or deploy time.\u00a0 One mistake that schools converting to competency education make is failing to allocate time in the school day for students to get extra help.\u00a0 Providing a day or two at the end of a course also gives students a bit more time to work on areas of weaknesses. In fact, time can be allocated to help prep students that are a grade level behind before they fail. Many schools take a break from the daily schedule, creating intensives or labs throughout the school year for students to apply what they have been learning.<\/p>\n

Getting smart about time is also getting smart about costs. If we begin to look at cost-effectiveness we will certainly see that some ways of using time are going to pay off.<\/p>\n

5)\u00a0<\/strong>Proficiency, Not Completion<\/b>:\u00a0 Lots of folks jump from \u201cadvance upon mastery\u201d to performance-based funding.\u00a0 However, it ends up that most performance-based funding is about completion, not proficiency.\u00a0 We need to make sure we aren\u2019t dragged into wasting our time talking about completion-based funding that doesn\u2019t have clear understanding of the levels of proficiency required for completion.\u00a0 Increasingly, I\u2019m hearing about a \u201cD\u201d being dropped as an indication of passing, but a \u201cC\u201d is still acceptable.\u00a0 I\u2019m not convinced \u2013 do we really think a C means that someone is proficient enough to move on to the next level?<\/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":[396,368],"location":[],"class_list":["post-2826","cw_post","type-cw_post","status-publish","hentry","issue-how-to-get-started","issue-issues-in-practice"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFive Areas We Need to Get Right - 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