Designing for Equity
Research on Equity and Personalized, Competency-based Education
a-promise-for-equitable-futures-enabling-systems-change-to-scale-educational-and-economic-mobility-pathways.pdfCasey, K., & Patrick, S. (2020). A Promise for equitable futures: Enabling systems change to scale educational and economic mobility pathways. Vienna, VA: Aurora Institute.
CompetencyWorks-QualityAndEquityByDesign.pdfLopez, N., Patrick, S. and Sturgis, C., Quality and Equity by Design: Charting the Course for the Next Phase of Competency-Based Education, 2017. Content in this report is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
Contributing authors from Iowa: Mandi Bozarth, Susan Pecinovsky, Andrea Stewart, Circe Stumbo
ABOUT THE AURORA INSTITUTE The mission of the Aurora Institute is to drive the transformation of education systems and accelerate the advancement of breakthrough policies and practices to ensure high-quality learning for all.
ABOUT THE CENTER FOR ASSESSMENT The Center for Assessment strives to increase student learning through more meaningful educational assessment and accountability practices. We engage in deep partnerships with state and district education leaders to design, implement, and evaluate assessment and accountability policies and programs, and to design technically sound policy solutions to support important educational goals.
This paper is adapted from a white paper developed for the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. This revised version is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC by 4.0) that allows the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and all subsequent users:
✓ To copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format ✓ To remix, transform, and build upon the materials for any purposes, even commercially
Marion, S., Worthen, M., & Evans, C. (2020). How systems of assessments aligned with competency-based education can support equity. Vienna, VA and Dover, NH: Aurora Institute and Center for Assessment.
How Systems of Assessment Aligned with Competency-based Education can Support Equity Jan 2020.pdfCompetencyWorks-DesigningForEquity.pdf"In 2017, the National Summit for K-12 Competency-Based Education brought together 100 leaders in competency-based education to provide insight on emerging issues in the field of competency education. As a result of the Summit, CompetencyWorks released Quality and Equity by Design: Charting the Course for the Next Phase in Competency-Based Education that summarizes strategies to advance K-12 competency education along four key issues: quality, equity, meeting students where they are, and policy. Each of these four key issues are described in more detail in a series of individual papers that build upon the discussion from the Summit....This paper is a revision of In Pursuit of Equality: A Framework for Equity Strategies in Personalized, Competency-Based Education that incorporates the discussions with Summit participants."
Contributing authors from Iowa: Mandi Bozarth, T.J. Jumper, Circe Stumbo
CompetencyWorks is a collaborative initiative dedicated to advancing personalized, competency-based education in K-12 and higher education. iNACOL is the lead organization with project management facilitated by MetisNet.
The mission of iNACOL is to drive the transformation of education systems and accelerate the advancement of breakthrough policies and practices to ensure high-quality learning for all.
Sturgis, C. and Casey, K., Designing for Equity: Leveraging Competency-Based Education to Ensure All Students Succeed, 2018. Content in this report is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
According to the Students at the Center Hub website, "American Institutes for Research (AIR) conducted this study as part of the Student-Centered Learning Research Collaborative’s initial cycle of research. The team at AIR worked alongside fellow scholars, educators, and policymakers to investigate the impact of specific student-centered practices and then translate their findings for cross-sector audiences."
Also according to the Students at the Center Hub website,"The research questions investigated in this study are:
What are the relationships among opportunities for collaboration, classroom experiences, and outcomes, particularly for students who identify as Black?
To what extent do students have opportunities to participate in high-quality collaborative learning experiences?
What contextual, school-level factors do teachers identify as helping or hindering their ability to provide opportunities for high-quality collaboration in diverse, student-centered classrooms?
This report and accompanying resources represent their work over the past two years as they examined the impact of collaboration on learners in student-centered classrooms and how that impact varied by race and ethnicity."
The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) is a nonpartisan, nationwide nonprofit organization of public officials who head departments of elementary and secondary education in the states, the District of Columbia, the Department of Defense Education Activity, and five U.S. extra-state jurisdictions. CCSSO provides leadership, advocacy, and technical assistance on major educational issues. The Council seeks member consensus on major educational issues and expresses their views to civic and professional organizations, federal agencies, Congress, and the public.
Cover Photo credit: Courtesy of Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for American Education: Images of Teachers and Students in Action.
© 2017 by CCSSO. Equity and Personalized Learning: A Research Review is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution
The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) is a nonpartisan, nationwide nonprofit organization of public officials who head departments of elementary and secondary education in the states, the District of Columbia, the Department of Defense Education Activity, and five U.S. extra-state jurisdictions. CCSSO provides leadership, advocacy, and technical assistance on major educational issues. The Council seeks member consensus on major educational issues and expresses their views to civic and professional organizations, federal agencies, Congress, and the public.
What We're Listening To
Jennifer Gonzalez is the creator of Cult of Pedagogy, a website with a blog, podcasts, videos, and more. She has multiple podcasts that tie to equity and learner agency on the site. Cult of Pedagogy is an excellent resource for you as you explore shifts toward learner-centered, personalized, competency-based education. Please consider exploring the site in more detail.
Click to listen to the podcast "Using Playlists to Differentiate Instruction" as Jennifer Gonzalez interviews Katie Novak and Mirko Chardin: "UDL is a framework for designing learning experiences so students have options for how they learn, what materials they use, and how they demonstrate their learning. When implemented with a lens of equity, the framework has the potential to eliminate opportunity gaps that exclude many learners, especially those who have been historically marginalized. If we want all students to have equal opportunities to learn, we have to be incredibly purposeful, proactive, and flexible. UDL creates a learning environment that is the least restrictive and most culturally responsive, trauma-informed environment for all students."
What We're Reading
ASCD Articles
Beware of Equity Traps and Tropes "How shortcuts and default practices can get in the way of meaningful school equity efforts."
Who Participates? "Smart classroom-data analysis can help educators detect inequities in student participation and reduce implicit bias."
Serving English Learners (ELs) in a Competecy-based System
Copy of Building Solid Evidence: It's Working at Lindsay Unified (2).pdfFrom the CompetencyWorks blog:
"Lindsay Unified School District in California has implemented competency-based education deeply for several years. A recent study, Building Solid Evidence – It’s Working at Lindsay Unified, provides strong positive evidence of the district’s effectiveness in improving student outcomes and school climate. Presenting compelling findings in just two pages, the report also provides a valuable model of how competency-based schools and districts can evaluate and share their outcomes.
The study is of great value to the field, given Lindsay’s status as an early adopter with more years of implementation than most competency-based education districts. They have many students from traditionally underserved groups, which also makes the district a key exemplar for the fundamental equity mission of competency-based education. Specifically, the student body is 95% Hispanic, 91% from low-income families, 41% English learners, and 24% migrant learners."
March 2, 2020
Author: Eliot Levine
Issues: Issues in Practice, Evaluate Quality
Developing an Equity Framework
According to the Next Generation Learning Challenges website, "these frameworks provide an intentionally comprehensive vision of quality learning experiences defined in part by a commitment to equity. How that commitment is expressed differs slightly and is outlined below. Both frameworks distill pertinent research, enable self-assessment, and offer user-friendly action strategies."
The resources include a description of the purpose, use, and additional considerations educators might consider as they work toward leveraging learner-centered education as a vehicle for equitable achievement and engagement.
Equity-in-Competency-Education-103014.pdf"This paper examines equity concerns in competency education through the lens of family income.3 There is no shortage of evidence of present and past disparities in educational achievement—ranging from standardized test scores to high school graduation rates—between students from lower-income and higher-income backgrounds. Specifically, we highlight three areas in which students from lower-income families may experience disadvantages compared to higher-income families that competency education could exacerbate, potentially leading to inequitable learning opportunities as well as outcomes."
Lewis, Matthew W., Rick Eden, Chandra Garber, Mollie Rudnick, Lucrecia Santibañez, & Tiffany Tsai. 2014. Equity in Competency Education: Realizing the Potential, Overcoming the Obstacles. Students at the Center: Competency Education Research Series. Boston, MA: Jobs for the Future.