{"id":3000,"date":"2014-04-14T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-14T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/blog\/cw_post\/transformation-in-danville-district\/"},"modified":"2020-02-05T12:52:03","modified_gmt":"2020-02-05T17:52:03","slug":"transformation-in-danville-district","status":"publish","type":"cw_post","link":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/cw_post\/transformation-in-danville-district\/","title":{"rendered":"District Transformation in Danville"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"danville\"<\/a>I\u2019m itching to go to Danville, Kentucky after listening to Superintendent Carmen Coleman on the webinar How Competency-Based Education is Transforming Assessment and Accountability Systems in School<\/a>. She walked us through the process that Danville took towards a personalized, competency-based system (fyi — Kentucky uses the term performance-based).<\/p>\n

School Board Leadership<\/b>: The school board read The Global Achievement Gap<\/a>, followed by school board and educator site visits to High Tech High and NYC\u2019s iZone.\u00a0 Their experience was \u201cdisturbing\u201d as they saw that their own students weren\u2019t being given the opportunity to do the same level of work \u2013 \u201ceven what we would have considered gap students were outperforming our AP students.\u201d In addition to visiting schools, Danville had teacher exchanges where they brought teachers from other schools to Kentucky.<\/p>\n

Building Shared Vision around the <\/b>Danville Diploma<\/b><\/a>:<\/b> Any district moving towards personalization takes the time to build a shared vision. Danville redesigned their diploma to define what they want for their students and open the discussion on what type of schooling was needed.\u00a0 The diploma emphasizes application of content and skills.\u00a0 Coleman emphasized that the diploma requires Danville to be \u201cjust as intentional about skills as the academic content.\u201d<\/p>\n

Want to learn more about Danville?\u00a0\u00a0Here is a great case study of their journey<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A version of competency education is placed squarely into the Danville Diploma, with the requirement that at specific transition points (grades 5, 8, and 11), students demonstrate growth and development as a learner and productive, contributing member of the school and larger community before moving to the next level. (FYI \u2013 Competency-based districts vary in where they place the emphasis for \u201cmove on when ready,\u201d with some focusing on units, others courses, and Danville identifying three waypoints on the K-12 learning progression.)<\/p>\n

Projects, Performance and Design<\/b>:\u00a0 Danville has led with a focus on project-based learning (also referred to as inquiry-based and challenge-based), performance-based assessments and design thinking. It was the only way that they could emphasize application as well as develop skills such as collaboration and perseverance. Partners were the Buck Institute<\/a> and the New York Performance Standards Consortium<\/a> (described as \u201cinvaluable\u201d by Coleman).<\/p>\n

They are now implementing a digital portfolio to give students a \u201cbookshelf\u201d of the evidence of their skills.\u00a0 \u201cWe had to move away from multiple choice assessments,\u201d Coleman said. \u201cThey can\u2019t provide a full picture of a student and their learning.\u201d Students also demonstrate their learning through \u201cdefenses\u201d and \u201croundtables,\u201d where they present what they have learned and get feedback. Here is a video on Danville\u2019s project-based approach<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Performance-based Assessment (PBA) the Key to Competency Education<\/b>: Coleman took time in the webinar to describe why performance-based assessment is so important to their transformation:<\/p>\n