Principle 1: Students Move When Ready
Principle 2: Competencies Include Explicit, Measurable, Transferable Learning Objectives That Empower Students
Principle 3: Assessment Is Meaningful
Principle 4: Students Receive Differentiated Support
Principle 5: Learning Outcomes Measure Both Academic Skills and Dispositions
How the Rubric Can Help Build Your School’s Journey
Final Thoughts: Top-Five List for Successful Transition to Competency-Based Learning
Competency-Based Learning School-Design Rubric
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Brian M. Stack, MEd, is principal of Sanborn Regional High School in Kingston, New Hampshire. He is the former assistant principal and curriculum director for the school. Since 2010, Brian has been a member of the research, design, and implementation team for Sanborn Regional School District’s nationally recognized K–12 competency-based learning system. Brian, an educator since 2001, is a former high school mathematics teacher, high school administrator, and school board member for three different school districts in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Brian has also worked as a consultant and expert coach for a number of schools, school districts, and organizations engaged in personalized and competency-based learning across the United States.
Brian is a member of the New Hampshire Association of School Principals (NHASP) and recipient of the 2017 Charles A. Napoli New Hampshire Secondary School Principal of the Year award. In 2010 and again in 2013, he received the NHASP Outstanding Role Model award. Brian is a strong advocate of personalized learning, competency-based learning systems, and high school redesign for the 21st century. He has presented his education reform and redesign work in workshops and conferences all over the United States.
Brian received bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and mathematics education from Boston University and a master’s degree in education administration from the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He lives with his wife, Erica, and their five children, Brady, Cameron, Liam, Owen, and Zoey, in the New Hampshire Seacoast.
To learn more about Brian’s work, visit his blog at http://srhsprincipalsblog.blogspot.com or follow @Bstackbu on Twitter.
Jonathan G. Vander Els, MEd, is director of innovative projects for the New Hampshire Learning Initiative (https://nhlearninginitiative.org), an organization dedicated to seeding and supporting innovation and personalized learning in New Hampshire schools. Formerly, Jonathan was principal of Memorial Elementary School in Sanborn Regional School District in New Hampshire. Under his leadership, Memorial became a nationally recognized model professional learning community (PLC) on AllThingsPLC (www.allthingsplc.info) and competency-based learning elementary school.
Jonathan has consulted, coached, and presented throughout the United States on building highly effective PLCs, implementing competency-based learning, and developing rigorous performance assessments. He is involved in the New Hampshire Performance Assessment of Competency Education, a first-of-its-kind accountability and assessment waiver granted by the U.S. Department of Education. Jonathan has also led the State of New Hampshire’s efforts around integrating skills and dispositions into classroom curriculum, instruction, and assessment.
Jonathan has an education specialist degree from the University of New Hampshire in educational administration and supervision, a master’s in elementary education, and a bachelor’s in history. He is certified as a superintendent, principal, and teacher. Jonathan lives with his wife and three children in the New Hampshire Seacoast.
To learn more about Jonathan’s work, visit his blog at https://jonvanderels.wordpress.com or follow @jvanderels on Twitter.
To book Brian M. Stack or Jonathan G. Vander Els for professional development, contact [email protected].
FOREWORD
By Chris Sturgis, Cofounder, CompetencyWorks
The journey to competency-based education often starts when educators ask themselves a few powerful questions, such as, Are we doing what’s best for our students? and What is preventing us from doing better for them? Once educators begin asking these questions, it becomes easier to understand how the United States’s antiquated education system, now over 150 years old, can actually get in the way of learning. The next question they ask, of course, is What do we need to do differently? In Breaking With Tradition: The Shift to Competency-Based Learning in PLCs at Work, authors Brian M. Stack and Jonathan G. Vander Els serve up an in-depth exploration of how districts are redesigning their education systems to address those questions.
I became acquainted with Brian and Jon’s work at the Sanborn Regional School District in Kingston, New Hampshire, soon after the launch of CompetencyWorks. Brian and Jon were—and are—risk-takers. They were willing to dive headfirst into competency education at a time when there were few models and a sparse amount of literature on the topic. They also took a different kind of risk when they publicly shared their learning along their journey as contributing authors at CompetencyWorks. They shared when things seemed to be working and when things didn’t work out as well as they had hoped. In so doing, Brian and Jon embody the values of competency-based education, where learning is the ultimate goal and mistakes are simply opportunities to learn more.
Brian, Jon, and the Sanborn leadership team balanced their drive toward innovation with deep attention to execution. Before taking steps forward, they learned as much as they could. They sought to understand the activities or processes that made up the load-bearing walls of the new system and then ensured those activities and processes were fully resourced. They understood that in designing a new system, the pieces had to fit together. Designing the new system required attention to fidelity. With their commitment to innovation and execution, the authors will be the first to tell you that they never stopped learning.
Brian and Jon taught me that competency education is not just about focusing on student learning; it is equally about supporting the learning of the adults in the system. During my visit to Sanborn in 2014, Jon, then principal of its Memorial Elementary, showed me what the school called the “writing wall,” where teachers were collaboratively learning about helping students to write. Taped along the entire hallway were examples of student work for each performance level with stickers showing by grade level how many students were at each level. Teachers used the wall to build a shared understanding of what it really means to be proficient at a grade level and to exchange ideas about how to help students build their skills. What Brian and Jon showed me is that the trick to building a competency-based system is to begin with investing in strong professional learning communities (PLCs). Competency-based education requires