{"id":1508,"date":"2016-03-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-03-03T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/blog\/education-innovation-pilot-programs-provide-catalyst-for-localities-personalizing-learning-for-k-12-students\/"},"modified":"2022-11-04T17:55:22","modified_gmt":"2022-11-04T21:55:22","slug":"education-innovation-pilot-programs-provide-catalyst-for-localities-personalizing-learning-for-k-12-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/blog\/education-innovation-pilot-programs-provide-catalyst-for-localities-personalizing-learning-for-k-12-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Education Innovation Pilot Programs Provide Catalyst for Localities Personalizing Learning for K-12 Students"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Diversity<\/a>State leaders are creating pilots for personalized learning and competency-based pathways to build capacity and support educators at the district and school level for promoting student success. As a strategy to catalyze the development of new programs, states are shifting from a culture of compliance to one of cultivating innovation in an effort to support district and school leaders creating powerful, personalized learning experiences to meet each student\u2019s needs. <\/span><\/p>\n

State leaders are increasingly expanding their thinking on how to support educators personalizing learning for students in K-12 education. These education innovators and dreamers designing personalized learning models are asking the big \u201cwhat if\u201d questions on ways <\/span>personalized learning<\/span><\/a> is different from the one-size-fits-all traditional system while contemplating necessary changes to make the shift to student-centered learning. <\/span><\/p>\n

How Pilot Programs Enable Personalized Learning<\/b><\/h3>\n

By definition, states create new learning model pilots to help launch <\/span>small-scale, short-term programs that localities use to determine how a larger program might work in practice and go to scale. While innovations in schools are taking hold across a state, state policy makers seeking to help support and foster educators also support collaboration across pilots to help bring together these practitioners and educators to share lessons learned and address the changes needed in instructional methods. Pilot programs are one way to connect and support innovators to plan, implement and ultimately scale high-quality <\/span>competency-based education practices and systems<\/span>.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Pilots are generally limited to a specified number of districts and they are created for the purpose of opening some space to launch new learning models. A state education agency may seek to launch pilots to identify which leaders and localities are ready to move forward with personalized learning innovations. Pilots often help educators work through planning stages, identify core design elements, communicate about what competency education systems look like and how they work, build educator capacity for assessing performance tasks as students create evidence of mastery, and fine-tune strategies that cohesively work together to create a true mastery-based system through exhibitions of student work.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once a pilot program is in effect, the state department of education often fosters professional development opportunities, builds a community of practice and works with localities to monitor and evaluate progress on their goals of improving student achievement. Localities may implement a variety of innovative practices during this time in the shift to personalized learning and pinpoint the needs of students, meet students where they are and provide targeted supports and interventions. <\/span>The goal of a pilot program is to examine which theoretical strategies work in practice.<\/span> A mindset of growth and continuous improvement is important. \u00a0Developing a strong culture of student-centered learning is crucial. A successful pilot program will help lead to sharing and scaling best practices in other localities. Ultimately, state efforts in piloting provides resources to be shared statewide and builds increased understanding for how student-centered learning can be transformative. <\/span><\/p>\n

Pilot programs provide an entry point for school leaders and educators to get started\u2013combined with the needed flexibility and funding\u2013to design new personalized models to ensure every student is successful through competency-based pathways.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ohio Competency-Based Education Pilot Program<\/b><\/h3>\n

Ohio\u2019s <\/span>Competency-Based Education Pilot<\/span><\/a> is designed to:<\/span><\/p>\n