{"id":6414,"date":"2014-11-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-11-13T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/blog\/cw_post\/how-alaskas-chugach-district-changed-education-through-performance-based-learning\/"},"modified":"2020-02-27T14:47:42","modified_gmt":"2020-02-27T19:47:42","slug":"how-alaskas-chugach-district-changed-education-through-performance-based-learning","status":"publish","type":"cw_post","link":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/cw_post\/how-alaskas-chugach-district-changed-education-through-performance-based-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"How Alaska’s Chugach District Changed Education Through Performance-Based Learning"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Chugach\"<\/p>\n

This post originally published on EdSurge<\/a> on November 10, 2014<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Chugach, Alaska isn\u2019t just known for the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill and 1964\u2019s tragic 9.2 magnitude earthquake anymore. The\u00a0Chugach School District<\/a>\u00a0has become recognized as an innovator in grassroots school reform, especially when it comes to performance-based learning.<\/p>\n

And for good reason. Within the first five years of starting to rebuild its education system, Chugach leapt from the bottom quartile to an average 72nd percentile on Alaska\u2019s required state assessments. The Chugach School District performance-based education system was honored by President Bush as the first education organization to earn the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, and again by Alaska\u2019s own quality award program by being the first recipient of the APEX award.<\/p>\n

In small remote village schools spread out across 22,000 square miles of the roadless pristine wilderness of Prince William Sound, Alaska, communities and educators collectively tossed out the traditional education system to build an entirely new system from scratch. We knew that traditional education was built for another era. Community input, common sense and research led to a school system where there was no second grade, or third grade, or any grade. Students no longer received report cards with letter grades of A through F. No longer was the system built for adults to manage students. It was now built to meet the individual needs of each student.<\/p>\n

How We Did It: Chugach\u2019s \u201cVoyage to Excellence\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Chugach School District\u2019s \u201cVoyage To Excellence\u201d began in 1994 when we spent two years gathering community and business input about what we wanted our graduates to know and be able to do. Leadership, staff, students and community members participated in ongoing training to gather authentic input and strategically use that input to rebuild. We looked to our students and community to affect change: rather than \u201cBuy In,\u201d where people point at the district when a problem surfaces and ask you to fix your problem, we developed \u201cOwnership,\u201d where everyone pitches in to solve any problems that surface.<\/p>\n

This heavy investment in early, frequent and ongoing community engagement was essential to the rebuilding efforts and overcoming resistance to change. We built our new plane as we were flying it, so the solid foundation of community support coupled with a bold leadership commitment to stick with it for at least five years were essential catalysts.<\/p>\n