Competency Education Supports Both Traditional and CTE Learning
Amanda is a
typical high school student who loves spending time with her friends,
participating in a variety of clubs and activities, and doing well in school. Since
a very young age, she has wanted to follow in her mother’s footsteps and become
an emergency room nurse. My school is preparing her for that demanding career
with a competency-based model that has been designed to help her master a
series of academic competencies, academic behaviors, and college and
career-ready skills. Our competency-based model engages Amanda in her learning
in ways that traditional high school models never could.
Five years
ago, the administrative team in my school district and I began suggesting that
our school make the move to a competency-based grading and reporting system. We
knew that was going to be a monumental shift for some of our elementary and
secondary teachers, but that it wouldn’t be such a bold move for others. The
career and technical education (CTE) teachers and administrators that work at
our regional CTE center, for example, applauded our efforts to move the school district
to the model that they had always used to define their work.
In the world
of CTE, the idea of holding students accountable for their learning and
assessing them on their mastery of course competencies is not a new concept.
They have been doing this long before the rest of us in public education
started calling it competency education. They had to because in most CTE
programs, performance and the product are EVERYTHING. In the real world, no one
would hire a contractor to build their house if he or she failed the understands how to integrate local building
codes into construction design competency in school. No one would eat at a
restaurant where the chef didn’t meet proficiency on the understands safe food handling procedures competency. Nobody would
send their children to a daycare facility where the childcare provider didn’t
pass the understands how to use knowledge
of child development to create appropriate lessons and activities for different
age-groups competency. In every profession, there are skills and
competencies that we as consumers expect professionals to have mastered as part
of their career training. They are non-negotiable.
Our American
educational system has begun to take a hard look at competency education in the
interest of college and career readiness
the educational buzz words of recent years that came about with the arrival of
the Common Core. In 2013, in a webinar, produced by the Alliance for Excellent
Education in Washington DC, the New Hampshire Department of Education’s Deputy
Commissioner, Paul Leather, articulated bold new parameters for thinking about
how high schools approach college and career readiness:
If
we believe all students must be college- and career-ready…
Then
our system must advance students as they demonstrate mastery of content,
skills, and dispositions…
Which
requires a comprehensive system of educator and school supports.
At this same
webinar I presented how my school, Sanborn Regional High School in Kingston,
has begun to think differently about college and career-readiness. We took our
cue from CTE and we developed three beliefs to govern our redesign. These
beliefs came to be known as our three pillars and we believe that if we can do
these three pillars well, we will exceed the expectations that the NH
Department of Education has set for all New Hampshire high schools.
The Three Pillars of Sanborn Regional High School:
1.
LEARNING COMMUNITIES: We believe that our learning communities need
to work interdependently to advance student learning and academic performance,
work for which we are collectively responsible and mutually accountable.
2.
STUDENT ENGAGEMENT: We believe that our students need to be
engaged in learning tasks and performance assessments that accurately measure
learning and mastery of competency.
3.
CLIMATE & CULTURE: We believe that our community needs to foster
a positive school culture and climate for each of our stakeholders that
promotes respect, responsibility, ambition, and pride.
Our school’s
student engagement pillar organizes our school into one that supports
competency education, but it is our learning communities’ pillar that provides
the structures to ensure that we are able to support competency education for
all students at all levels. At Sanborn, our grade 9 and 10 students are
organized into small learning community teams with educators from all content
areas who meet regularly as a Professional Learning Community (PLC). These PLC
teams work collaboratively to ensure that all students have the resources to
master each of the course-based and school-wide competencies.
In grades 11
and 12, we organize our students into small learning communities by career
interest. We believe that all students, regardless of their post-secondary
plans, can benefit from this model. The Career Pathway Learning Communities at
Sanborn are:
·
Arts, Communications, and the Humanities,
·
Business and Manufacturing,
·
Human Services,
·
Science, Technology, Engineering, and
Mathematics (STEM).
Each career
pathway can accommodate a range of students from those who plan to enter the
workforce right away to those who are pursuing elite colleges and advanced placement
study options in high school and beyond.
Imagine what
your high school experience would have been like if you were able to associate
with other students who shared the same career interests as you did throughout
your high school career. What would it have been like if you had the
opportunity to engage in enrichment activities and programming that related to
topics you might one day want to pursue? How much different would your high
school experience have been if you had pursued an in-depth experience that
related to your career interests? This experience could have been tied to an independent project, internship,
action research experiment, or similar personalized experience of your
choosing.
At my school, this vision is exactly
where we are headed. In grades 11 and 12, we connect student learning to career
interests. Whether it is courses or other credit-earning extended learning
opportunity experiences, our students are engaged in learning tasks
and performance assessments that accurately measure learning and mastery of
competency. All of our learning communities, both the student and the professional
ones, work interdependently to advance student learning and academic
performance. It is work for which we are collectively responsible and mutually
accountable. Through this work our school community fosters a positive school
culture and climate for each of our stakeholders that promotes respect,
responsibility, ambition, and pride.
Amanda is going
to be well prepared for college and a career as an emergency room nurse. Perhaps
she may decide along the way to become a doctor instead. Every child,
regardless of their post-secondary plans, deserves a rigorous learning
experience. At Sanborn, we believe that all
students can be college and career ready and we accept the Department’s
challenge to us to develop a comprehensive system of educator and school
supports for college and career readiness. Is your school ready to accept this challenge?
REFERENCES:
Alliance for
Excellent Education, Strengthening
High School Teaching and Learning
in New Hampshire’s Competency-Based System, Alliance for Excellent Education Webinar Series, Washington, D.C., retrieved January 22, 2013.
in New Hampshire’s Competency-Based System, Alliance for Excellent Education Webinar Series, Washington, D.C., retrieved January 22, 2013.
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