Keeping Track of Success

When considering the proficiency-based personalized learning program, people often begin with how to keep track of success. I would highly recommend that the "how we keep track of success" planning follows the articulation of the hierarchy of standards, the community-wide education about proficiency-based assessment and reporting, and the development of a true proficiency-based learning curriculum. It is tempting to choose a program such as Naviance or Canvas and mistake the management system for genuine personalized learning based on proficiency-based assessment strategies.

Once the groundwork has been laid for this kind of learning, the next question is which recording system to use for the record of achievement. Naviance, Power School, Skyward, Canvas, MAPS, and Google Sites are all management systems I have seen used. There is no one management system that does it all (at least that I have found) but that is the billion dollar nut to crack. However, it is essential that the team decide on what will be included in the record of achievement (grades, record of proficiencies met, transcripts from colleges, recommendations from teachers and internship advisors, and /or scores from standardized tests such as SBAC, SAT, ACT or AP) and then choose a management system that will support that.

What the record of student achievement look like should be determined by the team developing your school's PLP. One critical decision the team will need to address is whether the record resembles a traditional transcript that measures proficiencies by translating "meets" or "exceeds the standard" to a traditional grade, or if it will look more like a portfolio page that links to documents showing progress on both the transferable skills and the content area standards. For example each class may house a regularly updated document such as this example document. You'll note that the record keeper logs the level of mastery, but it is NOT the actual evidence. The evidence of learning is housed in a student portfolio. The decision departments and schools will need to make is whether for each course students will maintain a learning portfolio or whether there will be one central portfolio that represents their work in a more global way. (Portfolio assessment is discussed in greater length on the page for Artifacts of Student Work). Either way the document needs to be easily accessible to the student, parent and advisor so that regular updates can occur and goals can be set based on the progress of the record of achievement.