Embark Education

About Embark Education

System Type: Independent, Tuition Free Micro-School

Grade Levels: 6-8

Enrollment: Approximately 30

Location: Denver, CO (Urban)

Overview

Embark Education is embedded in a coffee shop, Pinwheel Coffee, that serves as a real world learning environment for learners alongside an integrated and learner-centered curriculum. Learning happens through authentic, real-world projects in which learners collaborate with the community both within the school and coffee shop, as well as in the broader Denver area. Their daily schedule is largely flexible, while educators support learners in exercising their agency to manage their time and make room for independent work, small group instruction, collaborative project time, and developing social emotional skills and relationships. Every six weeks, learners choose between two authentic learning experiences (LEs) that seek to address a question or challenge in Pinwheel or the community through the lens of competencies. During the six weeks, learners also engage in learning focused on discrete content skills related to core disciplines, such as ELA and math, that is grounded in a specific competency. Over the course of a trimester, students typically participate in 2 LEs and 2 cycles of skills development.

You can learn more about the learner experience at Embark here or read about their approach from their Head of School, Brian Hyosaka, here.

Above is an example of a student’s google calendar for 3 days of learning at Embark along with a guide they are given each Monday morning in their LMS to help them schedule their week. You can read more about scheduling at Embark here.

Technology Tools Used for Assessment and Reporting

Embark Education uses the Altitude Learning Platform for ongoing assessment and progress reporting tools.

Outcomes: What is assessed?

After developing an aspirational Learner Profile that supports their mission, Embark Educators set out to define the concrete knowledge, skills and dispositions that learners would need to develop to work towards those aspirational traits. They developed a list of 6 interdisciplinary competencies that define the skills that learning is focused on at Embark.

Each of the six competencies is made up of a set of sub skills. Each sub skill has a variety of performance indicators, which guide instruction and explain in more detail what it looks like for a learner to be proficient in each sub skill.

Above are 3 examples of sub skills within 3 different competencies spanning personal skills such as Collaboration, to more discipline-specific skills such as quantitative reasoning which focuses on math skills and critical thinking which focuses on interdisciplinary skills. You can find all of Embark’s competencies, sub skills and indicators here.

Teaching and learning happens at the level of the indicator. Educators tie Learning Experiences and assessments directly to specific indicators. Learners practice and then demonstrate that indicator. Educators provide scores in their LMS, Altitude Learning, on the sub skill tied to that indicator. Not all indicators and sub skills are taught or assessed every trimester, but Embark educators are intentional that at least one sub skill from each competency is taught and assessed each trimester.

A learning experience (LE) that Embark has iterated on for a few years, asks learners to create a new seasonal drink menu for Pinwheel. Each time learners have focused on a different competency. When focused on communication, learners pitched their drink idea to shop management developing presentation skills. For collaboration, they worked to understand what strengths they brought to the group and how to bring out the strengths of their teammates. For critical thinking, they used the scientific method to develop and improve their drink idea–collecting data from the public on their flavor combinations. Many learners have completed this LE more than once during their 3 years at Embark and had a very different experience each time as they have focused on developing and demonstrating distinct skills each time. You can read more about an Embark Learning Experience tied to competencies here.

Levels of Proficiency: How is Progress Marked?

As learners self-reflect and educators provide feedback on each sub skill, a 3-level scale is used.

The 3 levels are:

Practicing
Meeting
Extending

Below is an excerpt from a guide given to families about their assessment model that describes each level:

Embark has used both a 4-level and 2-level scale, and over time, settled into a 3-level scale as the best approach for their model because it provided more nuance than a simple binary scale, while not creating unnecessary distinction that they experienced in a 4-level scale.

Expectations of what each level means changes over time as learners progress at Embark. A learner in 6th grade could demonstrate Meeting a competency in certain contexts and then in 7th grade demonstrate Practicing that same competency because the context and expectation has changed as they have grown while at Embark.

Reporting: How is Progress Documented?

Each trimester, learners at Embark receive a progress report that includes a score from the term on each of the 6 competencies using the 3-level scale and educator written narratives on each learning experiences and the competencies focused on in that trimester.

The report includes the name and description of the competency as well as the summative assessment for the term. This snapshot and summary of a learner’s progress on the 6 competencies comes from an entire trimester of assessment and feedback given by all the educators that learner worked with. Reporting is at the competency-level and final scores are provided based on an average of scores from each subskill.

How Competencies are Assessed and How Final Scores on the Report Are Calculated

Throughout the trimester, educators provide a score of practicing, meeting, or exceeding in Altitude Learning on the individual sub skills that were in focus for each learning experience and designate whether that feedback is formative or summative. The only scores that contribute towards a final score on the progress report are summative assessment scores.

A final score of “meeting” on the competency Quantitative Reasoning on a progress report for trimester 1 is an average of all summative assessments given on the sub skills for that competency across a variety of learning experiences and from various educators. This mathematical formula means that, sometimes, learners are somewhere between Practicing and Meeting. This would be the case, for example, if a learner had 2 scores of Practicing and 3 scores of Meeting. In this case, the final score would be rounded up and the learner would have a final score of Meeting.

Embark chose a straight average calculation for final scores because all educators are contributing towards those scores and they wanted evidence from different learning experiences, disciplines, and educators to be weighted equally. Educators are very intentional about ensuring scores designated as summative are the learner’s best and final work, not practice or a first attempt at learning. This average calculation only takes into account scores given within the trimester so there is no averaging that happens across the entire year.

There is also an element of human and professional judgment on the part of educators and in conversation with learners. At the end of each trimester, educators at Embark Education come together to meet and discuss the final scores on the progress report that have been generated by the mathematical formula in Altitude Learning, the LMS. Generally they have found that final scores match the evidence of a learner’s proficiency. However, as professionals who know the learners and their learning evidence best, and in conversation with learners, they are able to manually override a score on the final report to match the learner’s evidence. This also allows them to acknowledge trends they see overtime that the straight average calculation doesn’t honor.

Sharing with Families

Families receive a Progress Report at the end of each trimester. They also have real-time visibility into their child’s feedback throughout the trimester through their parent account in Embark’s LMS, Altitude Learning. They share this guide with families to help them understand assessment at Embark and how to access and interpret their child’s progress and feedback.

Crediting, Promotion and Admission to Secondary/Post-Secondary

At Embark, there is no translation to traditional grades, and learners do not receive a traditional transcript or GPA. Embark learners matriculate in a variety of high schools in the Denver area after graduation, using the progress reports, where they thrive, even in settings where traditional grading practices are happening. Embark believes that learners who are meeting or extending on the competencies are at minimum prepared for high school.