Liberty Academy

About Liberty Academy

System Type: Public School

Grade Levels: 9-12

Enrollment: Approximately 110

Location: Liberty, MO (Suburban)

Overview

Liberty Academy offers an opportunity for students in the community who have fallen behind a chance to graduate on time using interest-based exploration, collaborative learning experience design, real world off-campus engagement, and a focus on long term personal growth. The daily environment is communal with a strong focus on human agency, mentor-based relationships and personalized pathways. The school calendar is organized into Bursts, a period of 6 weeks, after which students have an additional 2 weeks to reflect and document their progress towards the essential skills.

Daily schedules are flexible to adjust to student needs, take advantage of opportunities to go off campus and allow for special events. Students are offered around 30 off-site trips per week, customized to their interest and skill preference and engage on-campus in project-based learning experiences and personal projects to continue to develop their essential skills. These experiences range from volunteering at an early childhood center and senior center, to on-campus SEL and culinary workshops. Every morning, students begin with a daily goal-setting time, and then based on what off-campus and project experiences they are taking part in during the day, their schedule will also include personalized, independent work time based on their goals.

You can learn more about Liberty Academy here and here.

Technology Tools Used for Assessment and Reporting

Liberty Academy uses the Mastery Transcript from MTC to record credits earned by students on each competency and for students to upload learning evidence in the form of a portfolio. Google sheets and google forms are also used to record more formative data for students.

Outcomes: What is assessed?

Liberty Academy educators have developed a framework of 36 essential skills that span 7 competency categories that include personal skills and more discipline specific skills, such as math, ELA and history.

Credits are awarded and reported on at the individual skill level.

Levels of Proficiency: How is Progress Marked?

Each skill is assessed on a binary scale, they are either awarded because mastery has been reached or they are still practicing the skill.

In order to award credit, students are expected to practice the skill 3 times, demonstrate proficiency, and document or reflect on why they believe they have demonstrated mastery of that skill. The image below describes the criteria for each of those 3 practices, and how students could bypass the formative process of practicing the skill to simply demonstrate mastery.

Reporting: How is Progress Documented?

Liberty Academy documents progress in two ways. More summatively, the Mastery Transcript provides a formal record for students of what skill credits they have earned and is updated every 6 weeks. Formatively, they provide a report they call a Data Profile that is updated weekly and shares information such as attendance and engagement in learning activities.

Mastery Transcript

Liberty Academy is part of the Mastery Transcript Consortium and they use the Mastery Transcript as their reporting tool. It is a dynamic, digital report that includes a personal statement, a visual representation of credits earned, a list of credits, a list of courses or learning experiences, and a portfolio with student curated evidence of learning.

Above is what the Mastery Transcript looks like for a student. It includes a student’s personal statement, the credits they have earned in the circle graphic, a list of courses they have completed and their portfolio of evidence the student has uploaded.

Above is an example of a student’s Credit distribution in the Mastery Transcript. The student has earned a total of 36 credits, including 5 credits in the Communication Literacy competency category and 6 in the Exploring our World, Past, Present and Future category. In the Mastery Transcript, a school can distinguish between foundational credits and advanced credits, however all credits but one at Liberty Academy are considered foundational.

How Competency or Skill Credits Are Earned

Each day, students start the day planning out their goals and what activities they will be working on. These activities are then logged at the end of the day in a Google Form that students submit, describing the amount of time they spent on an activity, what skill it aligned to, and what adult observed them in that activity. They receive a signature from that observing adult who can verify that the student worked on the activity and practiced a specific skill on their daily planner.

Template Daily Planner

An excerpt of the activity log google form that students complete to document how much time they have spent on an activity and code it to a competency category.

Reflecting & Documenting Progress

Above is a reflection document students use to reflect at the end of a Burst on a specific Skill Category based on their activity logs.

At the end of a Burst, which lasts 6 weeks, students and educators spend 2 weeks before moving onto the next Burst reflecting and documenting progress towards skills. The expectation is that students are spending about 10 hours on a specific skill category during the Burst for a total of 5 skills per burst. As students and educators reflect on the data from the activity logs they are able to see how long students spent on different skills they coded and reflect on the student’s mastery of that skill.

Students submit evidence of that skill in a reflection document to the Mastery Transcript portfolio and conference with an educator to seek approval of the skill credit. Educators track skill credits they have awarded learners in a spreadsheet that is later input in the Mastery Transcript.

For students who enter Liberty Academy later in their high school career, their incoming courses are documented in the Mastery Transcript and assessments such as iReady are used to provide some skill credits while others can be awarded based on demonstrated mastery through other evidence uponing entering.

Data Profile

In addition to documenting credits through the Mastery Transcript, additional data is formatively tracked to support conversations with students on the journey to receiving credits. This data includes attendance, behavior and general engagement. Liberty Academy believes that these elements help contribute to whether a student is on track to earn the credits they need to in order to graduate and tracking the data allows for deeper conversations with students to support them. Much of this data comes from the daily activity logs students submit but there are additional data sources including attendance in specific activities and behavior incidents.

An example of a Data Profile that includes 3 Bursts of data. This is updated weekly.

Sharing with Families

Families receive a link to the updated Data Profile for their child weekly and have access to the Mastery Transcript to review their child’s awarded credits at any time. Liberty Academy hosts events for families to learn how to understand the data. Students also present their learning at showcase events that families are invited to attend.

Crediting, Promotion and Admission to Secondary/Post-Secondary

Liberty Academy uses the Mastery Transcript from MTC in lieu of traditional grades and transcripts. Before graduation, educators will go through the Mastery Transcript with students to copy-edit and finalize the information and determine what will be published to other institutions. The Mastery Transcript can be shared to future employers and post-secondary institutions as a digital transcript (with the portfolio of student work included) or a printed PDF. Students at Liberty Academy have shared their transcripts with potential employers in the interview process as well as community colleges for admittance.