Aligning Proficiencies to Graduate Expectations

Of great confusion to most educators when approaching personalized and proficiency based education is the question of standards. I have encountered over 12 different terms for standards. But whether you call them graduation expectations, proficiency standards, performance indicators or learning targets, it's important to recognize that there is a hierarchy of standards. One of the best graphics I have seen that helps to unpack the confusion comes from the Great Schools Partnership out of Portland, Maine. Click on the graphic to see it more closely.

At the top of the pyramid are the cross-curricular standards often called graduation expectations or transferable skills. These skills are generalized and can be achieved through work in a wide range of disciplines. "Students will be able to communicate effectively" is a common example of a transferable skill which can be documented through humanities, sciences and most all other disciplines. Developing school-wide rubrics to support the documentation of these standards allows the Personalized Learning Plan/Portfolio to provide multiple points of evidence for each standard.

Content area standards, while still somewhat generalized, are specific to a particular discipline for example "Students will understand the dynamic forces that lead to revolution." There may be several summative assessments that document proficiency in the content area standards. A student might write a comparative essay on the conditions that led to the Mexican Revolution versus the Russian Revolution. They might have a video tape of their participation in a debate about wealth inequality, or a presentation about policies of French government that led to the French Revolution. While typical written exams can also provide evidence of proficiency, the composite verification should represent a range of summative assessments. The content area standards should align with some, if not all, of the cross-curricular standards.

Performance indicators are the actual individual summative assessments in each course that help inform the teacher and student about their progress on meeting the proficiency. If the world language content area standard is "Students can use number effectively in a wide range of situations", then one performance indicator may be that students can recognize written and spoken numbers and produce them when writing and speaking. This may be accomplished through a series of assessments or one larger assessment. Since these are cross-curricular this indicator in Spanish might align with an indicator in math. Performance indicators should align with some, if not all, of the content area standards.

Learning objectives are the objectives that are found in a teacher's unit or lesson plan. They are specific and support the performance indicators. The learning objective "Students can convert fahrenheit to celsius", supports a larger performance indicator such as students can use metric measurements effectively.