Education Week - February 6, 2013 - 13

EDUCATION WEEK

FEBRUARY 6, 2013

www.edweek.org

ART AND DESIGN LAB

JUSTICE TALKS

ProviDance

Students create, collaborate, present, and study
works of art at the Rhode Island Museum of Art.

Students participate in a discussion group on civic
engagement and service with Serve Rhode Island, a
community-service organization.

Students participate in a dance-technique class
with a local dance company, Fusionworks, including
potential rehearsals with local dance companies.

CVS BIOTECHNOLOGY CERTIFICATION
PROGRAM

A Providence, R.I.,
school district
initiative offers
students the
opportunity to gain
credits and digital
badges for activities
outside school in the
following programs:

MULTIMEDIA

ROCK & REEL

Students participate in science internships in the
community to enrich the study of biotechnology,
supported by CVS Pharmacy.

PROVIDENCE
PROGRAMS

Students create articles, photos, and videos about
their community and schools, while working with
Inspiring Minds.

Students learn video production and editing skills at
the Rhode Island Film Collaborative.

ECO YOUTH-GREEN DRIVE

PHOTOGRAPHY, VISUALS,
PERFORMANCE, COMMUNICATIONS

Students learn about environmental issues,
challenges, and policies with the Environmental
Justice League of Rhode Island.

Students learn video-editing, photography, and
Google-sketch skills in an arts education program
called AS220.

ENGLISH-LANGUAGE LEARNERS

PRINCIPALS’ LEADERSHIP PROGRAM

Students improve English skills participating in
hands-on language-skill exercises with a local
organization, Inspiring Minds.

Students receive training from Young Voices, a
youth-advocacy organization, on leadership and
communication skills.

JSEC DEBATE TEAM
Students work on public speaking and debate skills
in a debate league, assisted by college mentors from
Brown University.

dence, has agreed to accept badges
on college applications as a testament to the value of learning experiences and skill acquisition.
“Digital badges are designed
to recognize learning that happens anytime, anywhere,” said Mr.
Ewens, adding that badges can
have a powerful impact on students themselves, helping them
take greater “ownership” of their
learning.
“Academic credits sit on a transcript with an abbreviated title
and a letter grade,” he said. “Whoever sees a digital badge can also
learn [through a full description]
what a student did to get that
badge; it supplies a tremendous
amount of information that adds
more value to the student.”
The district hopes eventually to
use the badges to help students
gain credit within classes for relevant work outside the classroom

that reflects mastery of academic
content.
For example, a student could
take part in a robotics club on
weekends and gain a badge that
he or she could use to show mastery of an algebra concept that
would fulfill the requirements for
a traditional assignment or test on
a unit, according to Ms. Shannon.
The Providence district’s work
on the digital-badge program
would not have been possible
without changes in state education policies, which have made it
easier for districts to recognize
out-of-school learning and link it
to classroom instruction.
Rhode Island, like some other
states, has high school students
gain credits for showing proficiency in academic courses needed
for graduation, rather than by the
amount of time they take to complete a course, known as “seat time.”

school networks whose member
schools have been replicated in local
communities—organizations that
the authors dub “super-networks.”
Of four super-networks reviewed
in the study, a pair of them, the
Knowledge Is Power Program, or
kipp, and Uncommon Schools, generally had a strong academic showings, the authors found, while the
other two, Responsive Education
Solutions and White Hat Management, did not fare as well.
For example, both kipp and Uncommon Schools had a large, significant positive effect on the academic growth of students in both
reading and math, the study found.
But Responsive Education Solutions had a significant negative
impact on student reading and
nonsignificant effects in math.
Meanwhile, White Hat had a
small but significant positive impact on reading progress, but a
significant negative effect in math.
Alan Wimberley, the chief learning officer for Responsive Education Solutions, headquartered in
Lewisville, Texas, said the study

did not present an accurate picture of the challenges the charter
operator faces across its 60-school,
10,000-student population, or its
broad academic mission.
Responsive Education “serves students across the entire spectrum of
charter school missions,” Mr. Wimberly said in an email. “We have
schools focused on children with
autism, college-preparatory schools,
residential treatment schools and
dropout recovery schools.”
White Hat Management officials,
in a statement, said they had not
reviewed the study’s methods, but
said their schools are providing “consistent value to students and their
families.”
The study also examined the academic showing of students in charters operated by education-management organizations, defined as
organizations that work at a school
under contract but do not hold the
charter. The average student in an
emo-managed school outperformed
peers in cmos, independent charters, and regular public schools, the
study found.

YOUNG SOCIAL INNOVATORS
Students work with Social Venture Partners of Rhode
Island to develop business plans and pitch ideas to
investors for seed funding.

WING IT: EVERYTHING CAN FLY ONCE
Students learn engineering skills while designing
projects related to flight, at Brown University.
SOURCE: Providence After School Alliance

PROGRAMMING FOR ANDROID PHONES
Students learn how to create Android phone
applications in a computer science program
at Brown University.

Increasing numbers of states
are moving to such “competencybased education” models, in
which schools want students to
demonstrate knowledge of subject material in new ways to
show they have mastered it to
move forward, according to Jennifer Dounay Zinth, a senior policy analyst at the Denver-based
Education Commission of the
States.
About 40 states now have policies
that allow high school students to
gain academic credit through
competency-based assessment systems that run the gamut state to
state. Some of the most progressive
credit-gaining opportunities are
found in states such as New Hampshire and New Jersey.
The motivation behind the efforts comes from the acknowledgment that today’s students learn
in many new and different ways

that aren’t connected to how much
time they spend in a classroom,
said Betsy Brand, the director of
the American Youth Policy Forum,
a Washington-based advocacy
organization that supports college and career readiness and expanded learning.
“The competency-based education model can be for anyone that
feels hampered by the time- and
seat-based system we have,” Ms.
Brand said.
“But everything you learn outside of high school is not going to
get you credit,” she said. “Schools
have to determine what is rigorous
enough and what meets the requirements they deem important.”

RELATED STORY: See the Spring/

Summer 2012 issue of Education
Week Digital Directions to read
an in-depth article about digitalbadge initiatives in education.
www.edweek.org/badges

Coverage of leadership, expanded
learning time, and arts learning
is supported in part by a grant
from The Wallace Foundation,
at www.wallacefoundation.org.

THE LIVES OF CHARTER SCHOOLS
A new, nationwide study by Stanford University examines whether charters improve over
time, and whether successful schools’ models are easily replicated. Among the findings:
à PERFORMANCE: The vast majority of charters that start out in the lowestor highest categories of performance tend to remain at those levels of
performance five years later.
à IMPROVEMENT: Student-achievement gains over time are “largely absent”
from middle and high school charters, but elementary charter schools have
a record of making academic improvements over time.
à POOR AND MINORITY STUDENT PERFORMANCE: The academic
performance of charter-management organizations—consisting of three
or more charter schools—is not better than non-CMO charters. However,
CMO-affiliated charters outperform both traditional public schools and
independent charters in showing gains among poor and minority students.
à STUDENT GAINS: New CMO-affiliated charters produce larger student
gains than new independent charters, but both types of charters lag behind
average learning gains in traditional public schools.
à CMOs: Roughly one-third of CMOs get better over time; one-quarter of
them show declines, and performance remains stable in the rest.
à LEARNING GAINS: The average student in education-management
organizations, which provide services to charters under contract but do not
hold the charters, posted larger learning gains than CMOs, independent
charters, or traditional public schools.
SOURCE: Center for Research on Education Outcomes

http://www.edweek.org http://www.edweek.org/badges http://www.wallacefoundation.org

Education Week - February 6, 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - February 6, 2013