Telling Stories Out of School: Reframing the Education Conversation Through a Core Story Approach
This toolkit is designed to help leading voices in the education sector to build support and cultivate demand for an excellent public school system by building public understanding of issues such as assessment, instruction, and systemic supports and reforms. This set of materials is intended to support communicators in explaining many of the central issues… Read More ›
Let’s Get Real: Deeper Learning and the Power of the Workplace
In this report, Nancy Hoffman argues that in a period when very few teens have access to jobs, high school experience must incorporate gradual exposure to the workplace. Educators today assert that “college and career readiness” should be the goal for every high school student, but “career readiness” is too often an empty tagline. What… Read More ›
Determining Proficiency Levels and Establishing Scoring Criteria
Once educators in districts have completed the important task of identifying graduation standards and performance indicators, the next step in our Proficiency-Based Simplified model is to establish scoring criteria. Informing and supporting the clear articulation of what student work looks like at each of the four distinct performance levels on each performance indicator is a… Read More ›
Research-Supported Principles for Proficiency-Based Learning
Rather than being a stand-alone specific school intervention, we believe Proficiency-Based Learning (PBL) is actually the sum of a series of well-known and research-supported practices. When combined and implemented in a thoughtful manner, PBL practices like assessing and reporting learning by standards, providing just-in-time interventions and supports, and disaggregating Habits of Work from content-specific knowledge… Read More ›
SXSWedu
The SXSWedu® Conference & Festival fosters innovation in learning by hosting a diverse and energetic community of stakeholders from a variety of backgrounds in education. The four-day event affords registrants open access to engaging sessions, interactive workshops, hands on learning experiences, cinematic portrayals, early stage startups and a host of networking opportunities. By providing a… Read More ›
The Deeper Learning Planning Guide
This tool offers practical guidance on the conditions that have to be established for schools to truly change their practices to ensure students leave school with the sophisticated content knowledge and skills needed to be critical thinkers, problem-solvers, collaborators, and communicators. The Planning Guide is designed to be a resource and tool that can be… Read More ›
Clipboards: A Tool for Informal Assessment
In this short video, an experienced teacher and math coach shares an informal strategy for formative assessment and lesson planning: classroom clipboard. She explains the many ways she uses the informal notes she takes as she observes and interacts with student groups for formative assessment. To facilitate sharing and self reflection, The Teaching Channel provides… Read More ›
STEM Connection: From Classroom to Workplace
This case study, part of the Schools that Work series on Edutopia, showcases MC2 STEM High School in Cleveland, Ohio. A short overview is accompanied by many supporting resources that describe how the school gets its results. Also of note are the articles on project-based learning and mastery-based assessment. Each article describes the process used… Read More ›
Competency Education: Frequently Asked Parent Questions
In this short article, the principal of a school that has been using competency-based education and assessment for five years shares their answers to several questions parents often ask. It includes a basic overview of the ways in which competency-based assessment differs from a more traditional educational approach. It also clarifies the use of reassessment… Read More ›
Proficiency Based Learning at Burlington High School
Proficiency Based Learning at BHS In this 11 minute video, a Physics teacher documents her introduction of a proficiency-based learning approach in the last unit of her course. She clearly describes the steps she took to plan, implement, and assess the impact of this new teaching and learning approach, from writing the proficiencies to pre-… Read More ›
Proficiency-Based Learning and the Growth Mindset: A Classroom Example
This article describes the approach taken by a physics teacher at Prospect Hill Academy in Boston to support all students by both explicitly teaching the growth mindset and introducing a proficiency-based approach to learning. The article outlines five clear steps with pictures of classroom aids and links to additional resources, and describes the positive impact… Read More ›
Sanford Strong Coalition
The Sanford Strong Coalition-a network of residents, organizations, businesses and others invested in the future of Sanford-provides for the exchange of information and the leveraging of resources in an effort to identify community needs and create solutions that strengthen the health, well being, and success of Sanford’s children, youth and their families. Resources include: Strategies… Read More ›