Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Personalization with a Zee
As PbyP evidence began to arrive from over twenty schools in the Adams 50 district of Colorado, peer assessors in the UK and Australia react with excitement.
The schools in Adams 50 district have been working for the last two years to completely transform children's experience of learning in schools. Superintendent Dr Roberta Selleck and Chief Academic Officer Dr Copper Stoll have spearheaded this change and have brought together a number of consultants and advisors in partnership to develop a radical new model which, according to its chief architect, Richard DeLorenzo " will change the face of American Education".
This month Cambridge Education's PbyP joined this partnership to provide an assessment and implementation model for the personal competencies upon which the learning experience is built.
The PbyP model of learners progressing up 'ladders' at the pace best suited to them fits extremely well with the 'Standards Based System' (SBS) which was first introduced into the Chugach District in Alaska by Richard DeLorenzo and is now being rolled out across all the Adams 50 schools. The SBS model is built upon learners taking a much greater role in their own education, working in teams to help each other reach proficiency in a particular curriculum goal in order to progress to the next challenge.
Bob Marzano has been working with the District to help define the curriculum standards upon which this progression as well as helping to define how learners work together and with the teacher to reach proficiency before moving on.
The ambition of the project is considerable with over 7000 learners from ages 4 and upwards being engaged in evidence based progression using PbyP in the first year. This started in mid May when Dan Buckley provided a two day training course for two PbyP 'Champions' in each school. These Champions all started PbyP with their learners directly after the training and many have already engaged the next phase of teachers.
Each teacher will be using action research methods to innovate in their own classroom. The aim is to demonstrate actual improvements in learners personal competencies through a project they have designed and implemented and then train others in these methods.
In the last two weeks of May, schools in the UK began to tell us the impact all of this was having on their own learners. The language and cultural references that the learners from Adams 50 were using allowed learners from the UK to recognise that they were collaborating with learners in America for the first time which generated quite a bit of excitement both from the learners and schools.
With APP tests replacing SATS in the UK at a reassuringly accelerated rate, Standards Based Systems and the Ladders of Progression that underpin them look like a model with real international potential.