Digital Directions - Fall 2012 - (Page 41)

“ We want [states] to wrap around [innovative schools and districts] and protect them like a cocoon.” —Gene Wilhoit_President_Council of Chief State School Officers students to carry with them ten years from now.” All students must demonstrate competencies independently and multiple times to move on, she says. They are given many opportunities to practice mastery informally before the actual assessment. Protecting Innovators One state that has taken the lead in competencybased education is New Hampshire, which in 2005 eliminated the Carnegie unit, a seat-time-oriented way of accounting for students’ academic progress. Schools in the state were given until the 2008-09 school year to move from a time-based to a mastery-based system. Those regulations extend to the statewide online public high school, the Exeter, N.H.-based Virtual Learning Academy Charter School, or VLACS, which has been competency-based since it opened in 2007. When students take and complete courses at VLACS is flexible, allowing students to move at their own pace. They can complete courses in 10 weeks or take as long as 36 weeks, says Steve Kossakoski, the chief executive officer of the school. Students must score at least a 75 or greater on all competency-based assessments, out of a possible 100, in addition to receiving a passing average score on all the assignments (not just the ones pegged as competencies) in order to pass. To help brick-and-mortar schools in the state meet the mastery-based requirements, VLACS has begun offering competency-recovery classes for students in regular schools who have fallen behind. “In a traditional school, one of the things they’ve struggled with is what do you do with a student who hasn’t met competency in a world where everything is attendance-based?” says Kossakoski. In the competency-recovery courses that VLACS offers, the courses are broken down into smaller units so students only need to go through the parts of the class that they didn’t pass the first time. Interest in the competency-recovery classes has jumped from about 200 students the first year it was offered to 1,400 students in the last school year, says Kossakoski. The Washington-based Council of Chief State School Officers has brought together nine states, including New Hampshire, in its Innovation Lab Network to build new models of education that empower learners. Members of the network challenge the status quo with six design principles for transformation, one of which is performance-based learning. “We want [states] to wrap around [innovative schools and districts] and protect them like a cocoon,” says Gene Wilhoit, the president of the CCSSO. The Common Core State Standards have helped pave the way for innovative learning models such as CBE, says Wilhoit. However, while innovation is happening in pockets around the country, large-scale statewide movements are rare, he says. To push that progress along, the Innovation Lab has identified diagnostic tools that need to be developed and more effective intervention strategies for teachers. One of the most recent states to join the CCSSO’s Innovation Lab is Iowa, which has begun to explore the idea of competency-based education. It granted districts in the state access to seat-time waivers after a forum about CBE held in December 2011. The 500-student Collins-Maxwell Community School District, about 40 miles north of Des Moines, is one that has taken advantage of the change in policy. “Competency-based education challenges some of the structures that we think may be there to support students, but may actually be limits,” says Jason Ellingson, the superintendent of the rural district, who also sits on the state’s task force on CBE. Although the district has not rolled out a proficiencybased education system, it is taking steps to encourage organic growth of the model, officials say. For instance, this school year, the district will be giving out iPads to all of its K-12 students. While elementary school students will leave the devices at school overnight, middle and high school students will be allowed to take the devices home with them. “We feel that those tools are going to be pushing the idea of personalized learning, and we think that’s going to help the discussion around competencybased education,” says Ellingson. n Fall 2012_ Digital Directions >> ILLUSTRATION: iStockphoto_ naqiewei 41 

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Digital Directions - Fall 2012

Digital Directions - Fall 2012
Contents
Editor's Note
DD Site Visit
Bits & Bytes
Shifting to Adaptive Testing
Tailoring the Tests To Special Needs?
Choosing the Right Device
Bandwidth Demand Rising
Are You Ready?
Where’s the Money?
High-Priority Virtual PD
Online PD Destinations
Virtual Ed. Dives In to the Common Core
Open Education Resources Surge
Security

Digital Directions - Fall 2012

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