Engage NY (www.engageny.org) is sponsored by the New York State Education Department and offers a free online library of Common Core–aligned curricula funded through a $700 million federal Race to the Top grant in 2010. As of 2019, it has about five thousand lessons, modules, units, primary resources, and texts.
GoOpen Campaign (tech.ed.gov/open) is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology, and provides information about the twenty states and roughly one hundred school districts that it supports to offer OERs.
Khan Academy (www.khanacademy.org) provides a wide range of tutorials that include explanatory videos and practice to mastery. It also provides an automatic record-keeping system for keeping track of student progress and mastery.
OER Commons (www.oercommons.org) is a nonprofit organization sponsored by the Institute for Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME) and offers free OERs and fee-based services.
Open Up Resources (openupresources.org) began as the K–12 OER Collaborative, a thirteen-state initiative to provide free, high-quality, standards-aligned educational resources. They also provide support to districts and schools for implementing these resources by offering such services as professional development and printing.
Summit Learning (www.summitlearning.org/guest/courses) offers a complete, standards-aligned curriculum for grades 4–12 in core subjects. It comes with projects, teaching and learning resources, and tests.
Principle B: Competency-Based Student Assessment
Your team should decide about moving from norm-referenced assessment (comparing student learning to that of other students) to criterion-referenced assessment (comparing student learning to a standard to determine mastery). You also need to develop those assessments. Marzano and colleagues (2017) offer detailed guidance and tools in A Handbook for Personalized Competency-Based Education for unpacking standards into essential topics with their associated learning targets and proficiency scales. Eric Hudson (2018) proposes that you consider the following questions as you develop competency-based assessments.
What competencies should we assess?
Competencies are typically expressed as learning targets. As such, we will discuss that aspect of assessment under the detailed guidance for principle C: competency-based learning targets (page 23).
What criteria and evidence should we use to assess mastery of each competency?
We suggest you form a task force of teachers for each level of learning (as described in step 2.3 in chapter 10, page 200) to determine what criteria are appropriate for each competency. With the criteria in mind, the teachers can decide what evidence would best demonstrate that the criteria have been met. Then the teachers should create a rubric for each competency to help them and the students to assess mastery. It is unwise to begin your implementation of PCBE until you have decided on criteria and evidence for each competency.
What tools should we use to keep track of competencies mastered?
In addition to decisions about competencies and the criteria and evidence for mastering them, you will need a way to keep track of the competencies that students have mastered. Digital badges are an excellent choice for doing this. They are an effective and flexible tool to guide, recognize, assess, and spur learning (Muilenberg & Berge, 2016). Digital badges can also recognize the soft skills not captured by standardized tests, such as critical or innovative thinking, teamwork, effective communication, and social-emotional learning. They are an indicator of accomplishment, along with evidence of that accomplishment, and are housed and managed online. Research shows that they enhance student motivation and self-direction skills (Dyjur & Lindstrom, 2017; Grant & Shawgo, 2013). David Niguidula (2019) offers field-tested guidance for using digital badges to demonstrate student mastery. Many badges have already been created that teachers can use, and many public schools use badges.
Badges in Public Schools
The 40,000-student Aurora Public School District in Colorado initiated a digital badging program in 2014 within its college- and career-success department based on discussions with local employers about important skills for their graduates to have (aurorak12.org/category/digital-badges). There are now different sets of badges in grades preK–2, 3–5, 6–8, and 9–12. Each badge represents one of the 21st century skills in Colorado’s state standards, and a set of four or five “journey” badges amounts to one “summit” badge. Evidence accompanies each badge, so others can judge whether the student has met the criteria for mastery. More than twenty badges have been externally validated by community partners. The school district has a badge ambassador to build relationships with community partners.
The San Diego Unified School District started using digital badges in 2016 in their elementary, middle, and high schools (www.sandiegounified.org/badges).
Boston Beyond is piloting skill badges for middle school and high school students. Their website (bostonbeyond.org/initiatives/digital-badges) has some useful information.
These are just three of many public schools using badges.
Digital Badges
Open Badges (openbadges.org) is a technical standard for issuing, collecting, and displaying digital badges that includes such contextual information as what the badge represents, how and when it was earned, who issued it, and the criteria for awarding it.
Credly (credly.com) is an online web service where teachers can design, manage, and share digital badges.
Accredible (www.accredible.com/digital-badges) offers a free comprehensive guide and tools for designing and awarding digital badges.
HASTAC (www.hastac.org/initiatives/digital-badges) offers a collection of digital badges and webinars.
Principle C: Competency-Based Learning Targets
Competency-based assessment requires clear specification of competencies to be assessed. So, you should consider this question.
How can we break down topics and standards to the level of detail required for assessing mastery of each individual competency?
This can take a great deal of time, but it is likely that others who have transformed to PCBE have already done this work. Your challenge, then, is to find it and adapt it to your setting. See Resources for Learning Targets for some resources that may help. If you can’t find a detailed list of learning targets (preferably with criteria for mastery), your teacher task forces will need to take the time themselves to develop these essential tools. If you can’t afford the time, you should hold off transforming to PCBE until you can. Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe (2011)