This report describes Vermont’s convenings to support schools, districts, and other education organizations seeking to create high-quality local comprehensive systems of assessments. It can serve as a resource for schools, districts, and states that are working toward improving their own assessment systems. Readers will learn about the rationale and essential components, formative and summative performance assessments, and student-designed performance assessments.
Local comprehensive assessment systems (LCAS) are essential for ensuring equitable learning opportunities for all students. They have the potential to ensure that each and every learner meets high expectations that are set across all content areas. The Vermont Agency of Education held convenings with educational leaders to refine tools and investigate resources that can improve local systems of assessments that support personalized, proficiency-based learning.
Fewer than one in five American students follow a clear and uninterrupted path from high school through college to career. The promise of a public education is to prepare all learners to engage in, contribute to, and achieve purpose in the world, both as it is today and as it will be tomorrow. And yet, the American education system as we know it is insufficient to realize this commitment.
The idea of a compulsory high school education was developed in the early 20th century, when the Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education proclaimed the purpose of secondary education to be “health, citizenship and worthy home-membership and, only secondarily, command of fundamental processes.” Education leaders designed the American high school system to ensure that 20 percent of students would be prepared for college, 20 percent for skilled trades, and that 60 percent of young people would be prepared for “life adjustments” to become fully American.
This paradigm’s time is up. Today, complex and compounding forces compel something more than incremental change in public education. Skyrocketing racial and economic inequality perpetuates generational poverty, predominantly for Black, Latinx, Indigenous people, demanding that education do more to create social and economic mobility. The future of work means that a person entering the workforce from low-income households today will likely work for six or more decades, during which time they will change jobs every four and a half years and “upskill” every five.3 Social changes and advances in technology push more and more learning outside of formal institutions, creating opportunities for dynamic learning ecosystems to take the place of linear, time-bound institutions of schooling.
Call to Action
This book issues a call to action for states to enact a Learner Promise: a commitment that every learner will have access and support to pursue a certified pathway with system-wide opportunities that guarantee entry into a meaningful, chosen career that will build social and economic capital over the course of their lives. Operating under this promise, states would enact systems of governance, policy, and infrastructure to certify that learners who demonstrate competencies in K-12, postsecondary, workforce, and community settings along a supported pathway will have access to continuing education and a purposeful, living-wage
career. States would commit to taking the systemic action necessary to disrupt inequities in access, engagement, and attainment for Black, Latinx, Indigenous people, and people from low-income households. And, states would reimagine education not as a linear, time-bound sequence of learning that occurs within institutions of formal education, but as a learning ecosystem. This ecosystem would be an equitable, dynamic, and responsive system in which learners can customize their learning experiences as they navigate experiences across schools, workplaces, and communities.
What might this system look like?
A system of universal pathways would articulate and certify multiple career pathways from K-12 through postsecondary education, career, and continuing education. Pathways would be transparent, universal, and recognized by schools and employers across the state. Each pathway would be defined by a progression of qualifying milestones and recognized credentials, which would certify that a learner has demonstrated a set of competencies across contexts and institutions on the basis of performance assessments. Coordination across K-12, postsecondary, workforce, and community would be enabled by a strong system of shared governance and dynamic, transparent data systems.
A system of universal pathways would focus on the development of critical competencies that support learners’ personal, professional, and academic development. It would recognize and support learning when and where it happens using balanced systems of assessment to evaluate and reward deep learning. It would prioritize cultural competency and align teaching with the learning sciences.
This self-assessment tool helps leaders assess current readiness and practice and then work with their teams and technical assistance partners to choose areas for highest impact.
This resource is intended to help school and district leaders understand, reflect upon, and prioritize actions to improve student learning in remote settings. This discussion guide highlights specific school-based “Power Moves,” examples and resources, and supportive system conditions that are particularly critical to ensuring high-quality teaching and learning in distance and online environments for all students.
This session is focused on how to help leaders and educators build capacity to implement remote learning effectively through research-based, online professional learning. It includes four key steps for building personalized professional development and specific resources and considerations for designing the experience, as well as developing the content in an aligned way.
To access this presentation for your own use, use this editable copy here.
This session is focused on the basic supports needed for remote learning: strategic design and supports for effective implementation. Strategic design includes understanding and leveraging various learning modalities (asynchronous, synchronous, digital, and analog) to build a high-quality learning experience for all students. Effective implementation covers the building blocks to engage students effectively, including an overview of key remote instruction quality drivers, setting up comprehensive student development and social and emotional learning supports, and structures and routines to ensure students are successful as independent learners.
Additional resource: The following video provides additional support and framing to accompany this session that can be used to push your own learning or engage others in this work.
To access this presentation for your own use, use this editable copy here.
This session goes one step further than Session A (Introduction to Remote Learning) by getting specific about effective remote Instruction and why it is so important to build in opportunities for personalization, mastery-based learning, and data-driven instruction utilizing the various learning modalities so that all students are both engaged in the content but also the experience in an equitable manner.
Additional resource: The following video provides additional support and framing to accompany this session that can be used to push your own learning or engage others in this work.
To access this presentation for your own use, use this editable copy here.
This resource guide is based on a three-session series to support leaders in building staff capacity for implementing remote and distance learning models. It is openly licensed (free!) and includes concrete resources to begin designing and launching effective remote learning. Each session includes a set of slides that contain basic information on the topic and can also be used in team professional learning sessions. This document also includes playlists of additional resources and artifacts to accompany each session that teams can explore.
The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically shifted the landscape of American K-12 learning. This document summarizes key findings from The Learning Accelerator’s review of academic and professional research around effective virtual and remote learning and instruction design, and lays out a research-informed framework for implementing and improving remote learning for K-12 students.
As school districts deliberate over reopening schools with the COVID-19 pandemic still ongoing, we’ve developed this report with strategic guidance on how to harness our current opportunity to transform K-12 education.
Education Policy Issues for the COVID-19 Era: Policy Actions and Responses to Leverage the Moment for Future Readiness offers insights and recommendations on 10 critical issues identified through our technical assistance in the field and work with education policy decision-makers around the country. These include:
Using Blended, Competency-Based Learning as an Entry Point for Innovation
Moving Away from Seat Time Credits to Awarding Credit Based on Demonstrated Mastery
Re-Examining Grading Policies
Rethinking Assessment and Addressing the Need for Balanced Systems of Assessments to Measure Student Learning
Examining the Purpose of Accountability
Creating Flexibility and Multiple Pathways for Graduation Requirements
Ensuring All Communities Have the Necessary Technology Infrastructure and Internet Access
Supporting Students with Disabilities
Ensuring Students Have Continued Access to Meals during School Closures
Prioritizing Future Readiness for Pandemic Preparedness and Continuity of Learning
Building the capacity for educators to redesign toward a competency-based, learner-centered system is no easy task with the challenges imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Education Policy Issues for the COVID-19 Era concludes with a 10-point program with principles that lay the groundwork for the reforms our system urgently needs.
