Brian M. Stack's School Leadership Blog

My school district implemented a K-12 competency-based grading and reporting system four years ago. The implementation included the adoption of a set of common competency-based grading practices that all teachers use in their classrooms and competency-based report cards that measure student progress towards mastery of course-based competencies. As the building principal, one of the most common questions that I am asked by students, parents, and even administrators from other schools who are considering this model for their school is how our transcript has changed. They are surprised to learn, in fact, that little has changed about our transcript. The purpose of our high school transcript, just like any other high school transcript, is to provide a final record of a student’s performance at our school. Our transcript lists each course a student took, their final course grade, and how many credits the student earned. Other information, such as:   Class Rank; Grade Point Av...

Introduction Imagine what your high school experience would have been like if you were connected to other students and adults who shared the exact same career interests as you. Imagine having time during your school day to explore these interests in more detail and, in some cases, receive credit for your work. Starting in the fall of 2014 at Sanborn, every junior and senior will be associated with one of four career pathway learning communities. Each will be designed around a broad set of related career clusters. All students will be exposed to a variety of enrichment activities related to their pathway with guidance from a faculty advisor. Students wanting an advanced       experience will have the opportunity to earn a distinction on their diploma by completing a more rigorous course of study, an internship, and/or a personalized senior capstone project in their career pathway field. The    result will be more students who have the knowled...

Tonight, I will be speaking to you about scholarship, one of the four pillars of the National Honor Society. Scholarship is one of those words that we all can identify with, but it isn’t that easy to define. Dictionaries often define it to mean “academic achievement, learning; or the qualities of a scholar.” The qualities of a scholar --- well my ninth grade English teacher Mr. Tomallo never would have allowed me to use the word I was trying to define in the definition, so I have to dig deeper. What is a scholar? Again I turn to the dictionary, and I find the following: “A scholar is a learned person, someone who attends school or studies with a teacher.” I’m still not satisfied with this result. It seems the online dictionaries that Google has offered me are not helping me summarize what should be an easy-definable concept, scholarship. Perhaps I will need to research some examples of scholarship to help us better understand the concept.   In preparation for this speech...

“Lawyers who finally pass the bar exam on their second or third attempt are not limited to practicing law only on Tuesdays” – Wormeli, 2011 We allow people to retake their driver’s license exam as many times as they need to in order to demonstrate competency. The same is true of other professionals such as teachers, lawyers, doctors, and electricians who are required to pass a certification/licensure exam. Reassessment is a part of our real world . I find it ironic, then, that as educators we cringe at the thought of allowing reassessments in the classroom in an effort to “prepare kids for the real world!” I held this belief until a few years ago when O’Connor and Stiggins (2009) and Wormeli (2011) helped set me straight. Reflecting back, I now cringe at the harsh reality that from 2001 to 2006 I sent hundreds and hundreds of students into the real world without the opportunity to reassess to solidify their learning. At my school, Sanborn Regional High School in Kingsto...