Education Week - February 7, 2018 - 7

Do Student Projects Have a Role in College Admissions?
A new initiative will
road-test the idea
By Catherine Gewertz
Marina del Rey, Calif.

A group of researchers has kicked
off a new project to change college
admissions by focusing more on students' projects.
Called "Reimagining College Access," the initiative is being led by
the Learning Policy Institute and
EducationCounsel, a Washingtonbased consulting firm. Its aim is
to help colleges use more complex
gauges of student learning-performance assessments-in admission,
course placement, and advising.
The project has just gotten off the
ground, with early conversations by
experts organized into three task
forces.
One focuses on creating standards, or a process, that colleges and
universities can use to judge the
quality of the portfolios, capstone
projects, and other pieces of work
students submit.
The idea is to create a shared system that enables quick "recognition"
of project quality, the way 4s or 5s
on Advanced Placement exams convey strong performance.
Another task force will build a
network of states, districts, and
higher education institutions that

are already doing good work using
such performance assessments, so
they can serve as models to those
interested in this approach.
The third task force is working
on the digital puzzle of creating an
online space to hold students' work,
and an accessible way to present it.

Project Preview
At a meeting of college counselors
and admissions and enrollment professionals last month, leaders of the
initiative shared an early mockup
of what that online platform could
look like.
The first page showed information
that's quicker and easier to digest,
such as a student's grade-point average, standardized test scores, class
rank, and whether she played sports
or joined the debate team.
There was also space to display
the results of performance assessments given in high school, with
descriptors such as "advanced,"
"developing," or "proficient," in each
subject.
An icon on the first page would
let admissions officers click through
to see a more detailed view of those
high school performance assessments. They could watch a video,
for instance, of the student presenting a major research project to a
panel of judges, and defending his
arguments, or examine the data on
which he based his science project.

Leaders of the new initiative cast
it as a natural and valuable extension of a growing interest in performance assessment in secondary
school.
In a new report, they describe
performance-assessment projects
that have taken shape across the
country in recent years, from New
Hampshire's widely followed statewide system and New York state's
longstanding performance standards consortium to California's
Envision Schools, a group of three
charters that use a project-based
learning approach, with students
defending their research before
panels of teachers and fellow students.
"Now we're at the moment where
we have to figure out how to communicate to colleges what these students have learned," Linda DarlingHammond, the president and CEO
of the Learning Policy Institute
and a Stanford University education professor, told the conference,
which was organized by the Center
for Enrollment Research, Policy, and
Practice, part of the University of
Southern California's Rossier School
of Education.
Some colleges already include
portfolios of student work in their
admissions process, but the new initiative aims to increase those ranks.
It imagines the expansion not only
as a way to make college admission
more authentic and meaningful,

PRINT AD (HALF-PAGE)

but also to support the use of performance assessment-and the project-based learning it's based on-in
high schools.

Next Steps
A large-scale expansion faces powerful obstacles, though, and it took
only a few minutes to showcase
them at this meeting. After their
presentation, Darling-Hammond
and her two colleagues, Roneeta
Guha and Peter Ross, asked conference attendees what it would take
for them to adopt the new approach
to admissions.
"Research," said Stu Schmill, the
dean of admissions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT already permits students
to submit "maker portfolios," but
Schmill said that before MIT would
embrace the LPI's system, he'd want
a bit more validation.
"We believe [performance assessments] are important and would
predict student success, but we need
to demonstrate that," he said.
Another admissions professional
piped up from the crowd: "Resources." Amy Wittmayer, who oversees admissions in a graduate accounting program at the University
of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, said
that reviewing portfolios is labor
intensive, and with so many candidates to review, staff capacity is an
issue. "That's a very real obstacle to

this," she said.
Then from the front row came
another voice: "The absence of
leadership and guts to implement
this. That's the real problem," said
Youlanda Copeland-Morgan, the
vice provost for enrollment management at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The new initiative is one of several that have taken shape in recent
years to reshape college admissions.
In the wake of a backlash against
standardized testing, most seek to
downplay the importance of test
results and put more emphasis on
types of learning, and student attributes, that they consider more
important and meaningful.
Making Caring Common, launched
in 2016 by Harvard University's
graduate school of education, seeks
greater attention to students' character in admission, such as how they've
contributed to their families and
their communities.
The Coalition for Access, Affordability, and Success, which also
began in 2016, is a push by elite institutions to pay special attention to
admitting and supporting students
from traditionally underserved
groups. Its 130-plus members share
a common application that includes
a digital "locker" of student work.
Visit the CURRICULUM MATTERS
blog, which tracks news and trends
on this issue. www.edweek.org/blogs

Barbara Bray: Meeting ESSA Guidelines
With UDL/Personalized Learning
Join Creative Learning Strategist Barbara
Bray for an enlightening live discussion on
meeting ESSA requirements with UDL/
personalized learning approaches.

FREE WEBINAR:
WEDNESDAY, FEB. 14, 2018
2 TO 3 P.M. ET
www.edweek.org/go/webinar/ESSABray

GUEST
* BARBARA BRAY, creative learning
strategist and co-author of
Make Learning Personal and
How to Personalize Learning
MODERATOR
* HOLLY YETTICK, director,
Education Week Research Center

Content provided by

EDUCATION WEEK | February 7, 2018 | www.edweek.org | 7

http://www.edweek.org/blogs http://www.edweek.org/go/webinar/ESSABray http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - February 7, 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - February 7, 2018