Craft Category: Artifacts

The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) is working to advance the understanding, adoption and implementation of open educational resources (OER) practices at state and district levels.

This research represents the second phase of a 2014 initiative designed to explore the state of development and dissemination of OER, teaching materials licensed for free use and repurposing. CCSSO conducted a survey of states in May 2014, and produced a report titled “State of the States: Open Educational Resources in K-12 Education” highlighting examples of ongoing OER work. An update to the report is available here. As a follow-up to the initial report, the focus of this project expanded to include districts and educators working closely with OER.

In collaboration with iNACOL, this second phase of research provides background and understanding of OER implementation at state and district levels, as well as a more detailed look at how OER can impact classroom practices. Participants selected for case study interviews are featured on this portal and are grouped by state, district or school. Selected participants were featured during a panel discussion at the 2015 iNACOL Symposium (#oerstories).

This portal features the following:

• State of the States: Open Educational Resources in K-12 Education: 2014 report and 2015 update,
• 10 case studies that showcase specific state, district, and educator leaders working with OER,
• Resources for policymakers and educators, and
• OER Partner organizations.

The iNACOL Federal Policy Frameworks 2015 provides specific policy recommendations to close persistent learning gaps, improve equity and dramatically increase student achievement. This policy brief provides concrete, actionable recommendations on eight key issues:

1. Redesign assessment around student-centered learning.
2. Rethink accountability for continuous improvement of next generation learning models.
3. Modernize educator and leadership development.
4. Make personalized learning a cross-cutting grant priority.
5. Protect student data privacy and security.
6. Invest in new learning models research and development.
7. Build robust technology infrastructure and improve broadband.
8. Support the development and use of open educational resources (OER).

Across the country, innovative educators and leaders are embracing a shift to student-centered learning and rejecting an outdated, one-size-fits-all K-12 education model. Because this shift holds the potential to close persistent learning gaps, improve equity, and dramatically improve student achievement, forty-two states have adopted policies to enable next generation learning models, waiving seat time requirements, providing credit flexibility, developing proficiency-based diplomas, creating innovation zones and pilots, or initiating a redesign of accountability and assessments.

This is the 12th annual Keeping Pace report. The digital learning world continues to change significantly each year, but the continued support from sponsors, educators, education agencies, state virtual schools, vendors and others has not faltered. We continue to appreciate these people and organizations and everyone who has helped along the way. The cast of Keeping Pace sponsors evolves each year, with the only common thread being that they are organizations that share an interest in digital learning and believe that the availability of information and research should be shared with practitioners and policy makers.

Course Access provides public school students with expanded course offerings across learning environments from diverse, accountable providers. It is a statewide program through which students can gain equitable access to a variety of courses in a programmatic effort to increase access, quality and equity in public education.

School counselors work with students to identify courses that are academically appropriate and logistically feasible. Course access offers students the opportunity to take courses that might not be available at their school. Other advantages include personalization, new learning pathways, flexible time and place, acceleration, credit recovery, and continuity of learning.

This Course Access handout briefly explains course access, the elements of a course access program, and how course access can address opportunity gap statistics. For more in-depth information about Course Access, download the report Course Access: Equitable Opportunities for College and Career Ready Students.

This policy brief highlights opportunities for states to close achievement gaps and enable highly personalized pathways, and provides concrete, actionable recommendations for state policymakers around five key issues:

1. Create Competency-Based Education Systems
2. Improve Student Access and Equity
3. Ensure Quality with Standards and Performance Metrics
4. Modernize Educator and Leader Development
5. Build New Learning Models Infrastructure

This report provides background information and specific policy recommendations for each of these issues. Taken as a whole, these recommendations present a framework for sustainable, systemic change. However, we present them with the understanding that each state starts from a different place, with its own unique context in its education system and its policy landscape.

Over the last decade, the American education system has seen unprecedented transformation of teaching and learning as educators have grasped the power of new learning models to close achievement gaps and extend access to high-quality learning opportunities. The availability of adaptive digital tools that use data to improve student learning has exploded as technology and innovation advance. The next few years hold great potential to continue the incredible progress we have achieved—with new learning models that allow personalization of instruction for each student and a shift towards competency education that will ensure teaching and learning are built on a foundation of true mastery. However, this shift cannot be sustained without changes in state policy.

This research paper illustrates how schools and programs are using online learning to provide credit recovery for students with a wide spectrum of academic needs. The report investigates credit recovery and its impact on today’s students, state and district approaches to providing credit recovery, as well as case studies of exemplar programs and lessons learned.

In 2008, iNACOL published a series of Promising Practices papers in K-12 blended and online learning. In the last five years, transformative policy and practice changes accelerated the shift toward personalized learning and iNACOL is updating the promising practices research for pioneering educators and policy makers working toward transformed, student-centered learning environments.

Our country has been trying to address the graduation crisis in many ways. We are seeing the impact of the efforts to improve graduation rates over the past twenty years including agreement among states to implement a common cohort-based graduation rate, research-based efforts to improve the transition to 9th grade, increased academic and social supports, individualized instruction, effective use of educational technology and building new capacity of districts to provide multiple pathways to graduation including re-engagement centers so young people that had previously disengaged from school can re-enroll in school to complete their diplomas.

Initially, when students were over-age and under-credited, school districts had to depend on alternative schools designed for students that need more support and/or flexibility, and used by students that may have disengaged from school, seeking a different learning environment or pushed out through disciplinary policies. With online and blended learning, districts are beginning to develop flexibly paced credit recovery to help students stay on track to graduation instead of finding themselves in senior year with no way to graduate. Alternative schools like other schools have been integrating online learning to create more options for students.

Today, one of the root issues is the older students who are missing a significant number of credits do not have the time to sit in class again, thus competency-based programs are a better option. Online learning is inherently modular. Allowing more time to build mastery and experience smaller successes along the way would also function to prevent huge gaps in their learning that ultimately requires them to retake full courses today.

At the heart of the issue, when students have gaps in learning, competency-based education approaches can let kids focus in more closely on where there are gaps in learning—rather than waiting until students have to catch up by re-enrolling in entire credits. Just focusing on making up credits may not help them strengthen their skills. Adaptive learning and educational software can really help students strengthen their basic foundational skills and increase fluency on the lower levels of Bloom’s taxonomy on appropriate learning goals. But, that is not enough. Students need to be able to engage in higher order thinking skills and demonstrate deeper learning to build their analytical, evaluation, synthesis and be able to apply their learning on the higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. It is important for students to get to the higher levels of depth of knowledge, and an especially critical issue for kids who are having trouble in school. It is important that our system begin to transform around the needs of students.

To ensure success, the focus should be on how we help students graduate with the skills to be successful in life.

This report explores the development of blended learning from 2008-2015, the evolution of definitions across blended learning models and effective blended instructional strategies grounded in case studies. The paper depicts how schools are implementing blended learning, increasing student engagement and academic success, and using digital content and curricula for data-driven instructional models while empowering youth. The case studies illustrate a range of blended learning implementations and provide insights for increasing program effectiveness.

In 2008, iNACOL produced a series of papers documenting promising practices identified throughout the field of K–12 online learning. Since then, we have witnessed a tremendous acceleration of transformative policy and practice driving personalized learning in the K–12 education space. State, district, school, and classroom leaders recognize that the ultimate potential for blended and online learning lies in the opportunity to transform the education system and enable higher levels of learning through competency-based approaches.

We worked with leaders throughout the field to update these resources for a new generation of pioneers working towards the creation of student-centered learning environments.

This paper describes effective district implementation strategies to convert traditional, one-size-fits-all models of education into more personalized, competency-based learning environments to meet students’ needs. This paper highlights strategies to engage, motivate, and teach all students to proficiency and mastery; depicts shifts in instruction toward deeper learning and meaningful assessments for learning; while exploring models of distributed leadership and educator empowerment.

This report is also available in four separate excerpts – each focused on one of these four implementation stages – to provide targeted information for leaders and educators in specific phases of transitioning to competency education.

1. Ramping Up for Transformation
2. Designing the Infrastructure for Learning
3. Transitioning to a Competency-Based System
4. Embracing Continuous Improvement and Innovation

This report includes information on implementing blended, competency-based education. It discusses the implications of personalized learning as a main pillar of school design, structured around ensuring equity and quality.

To assist school and district leaders in their efforts, the report emphasizes five fundamental conditions that are required to shift to personalized learning models:

1. Leadership: Updating the Human Capital Pipeline
2. Resources: Innovating Along a Continuum
3. Supportive Policy
4. Data Infrastructure and Technology Ecosystem
5. Community Engagement and Public Will

In May 2014, CompetencyWorks brought together twenty-three technical assistance providers to examine their catalytic role in implementing next generation learning models, share each other’s knowledge and expertise about blended learning and competency education, and discuss next steps to move the field forward with a focus on equity and quality. Our strategy maintains that by building the knowledge and networks of technical assistance providers, these groups can play an even more catalytic role in advancing the field. The objective of the convening was to help educate and level set the understanding of competency education and its design elements, as well as to build knowledge about using blended learning modalities within competency-based environments. This paper attempts to draw together the wide-ranging conversations from the convening to provide background knowledge for educators to understand what it will take to transform from traditional to personalized, competency-based systems that take full advantage of blended learning.

This Clearinghouse is a collaborative effort led by the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL) and the Michigan Virtual Learning Research InstituteTM (MVRLITM) to provide a repository of references to research articles and other publications from the field of K-12 online and blended learning. This project has been made possible by generous financial support from Next Generation Learning Challenges and in-kind support from iNACOL and the Michigan Virtual University.