{"id":6172,"date":"2014-03-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-03-26T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/blog\/cw_post\/competency-education-supports-both-traditional-and-cte-learning\/"},"modified":"2020-02-27T14:45:10","modified_gmt":"2020-02-27T19:45:10","slug":"competency-education-supports-both-traditional-and-cte-learning","status":"publish","type":"cw_post","link":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/cw_post\/competency-education-supports-both-traditional-and-cte-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"Competency Education Supports Both Traditional and CTE Learning"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Sanborn
Sanborn Regional High Principal Brian Stack<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Amanda is a typical high school student who loves spending time with her friends, participating in a variety of clubs and activities, and doing well in school. Since a very young age, she has wanted to follow in her mother\u2019s footsteps and become an emergency room nurse. My school is preparing her for that demanding career with a competency-based model that has been designed to help her master a series of academic competencies, academic behaviors, and college and career-ready skills. Our competency-based model engages Amanda in her learning in ways that traditional high school models never could.<\/p>\n

Five years ago, the administrative team in my school district and I began suggesting that our school make the move to a competency-based grading and reporting system. We knew that was going to be a monumental shift for some of our elementary and secondary teachers, but that it wouldn\u2019t be such a bold move for others. The career and technical education (CTE) teachers and administrators who work at our regional CTE center, for example, applauded our efforts to move the school district to the model that they had always used to define their work.In the world of CTE, the idea of holding students accountable for their learning and assessing them on their mastery of course competencies is not a new concept. They have been doing this long before the rest of us in public education started calling it competency education. They had to because in most CTE programs, performance and the product are EVERYTHING. In the real world, no one would hire a contractor to build their house if he or she failed the Understands how to integrate local building codes into construction design<\/i> competency in school. No one would eat at a restaurant where the chef didn\u2019t meet proficiency on the Understands safe food handling procedures<\/i> competency. Nobody would send their children to a daycare facility where the childcare provider didn\u2019t pass the Understands how to use knowledge of child development to create appropriate lessons and activities for different age groups<\/i> competency. In every profession, there are skills and competencies that we as consumers expect professionals to have mastered as part of their career training. They are non-negotiable.<\/p>\n

Our American educational system has begun to take a hard look at competency education in the interest of college and career readiness,<\/i> the educational buzz phrase of recent years that came about with the arrival of the Common Core. In 2013, in a webinar produced by the Alliance for Excellent Education<\/a>, the New Hampshire Department of Education\u2019s Deputy Commissioner, Paul Leather, articulated bold new parameters for thinking about how high schools approach college and career readiness:<\/p>\n

\u00a0If we believe all students must be college- and career-ready\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

Then our system must advance students as they demonstrate mastery of content, skills, and dispositions\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Which requires a comprehensive system of educator and school supports.<\/i><\/p>\n

In this same webinar, I presented how my school, Sanborn Regional High School<\/a>\u00a0in Kingston, has begun to think differently about college and career-readiness. We took our cue from CTE and we developed three beliefs to govern our redesign. These beliefs came to be known as our three pillars, and we believe that if we continue to focus on them, we will exceed the expectations that the NH Department of Education has set for all New Hampshire high schools.<\/p>\n

The Three Pillars of Sanborn Regional High School:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. LEARNING COMMUNITIES: \u00a0We believe that our learning communities need to work interdependently to advance student learning and academic performance, work for which we are collectively responsible and mutually accountable.<\/li>\n
  2. STUDENT ENGAGEMENT: \u00a0We believe that our students need to be engaged in learning tasks and performance assessments that accurately measure learning and mastery of competency.<\/li>\n
  3. CLIMATE & CULTURE: \u00a0We believe that our community needs to foster a positive school culture and climate for each of our stakeholders that promote respect, responsibility, ambition, and pride.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Our school\u2019s student engagement pillar organizes our school into one that supports competency education, but it is our learning communities\u2019 pillar that provides the structures to ensure that we are able to support competency education for all students at all levels. At Sanborn, our grade 9 and 10 students are organized into small learning community teams, with educators from all content areas meeting regularly as a Professional Learning Community (PLC). These PLC teams work collaboratively to ensure that all students have the resources to master each of the course-based and school-wide competencies.<\/p>\n

    In grades 11 and 12, we organize our students into small learning communities by career interest. We believe that all students, regardless of their post-secondary plans, can benefit from this model. The Career Pathway Learning Communities at Sanborn are:<\/p>\n