Tag: Personalized Pathways

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January 24, 2024 6:00 am

Navigating Career Pathways: The Unseen Value of CTE Programs

Career and technical education (CTE) programs serve as a critical bridge for high school students, offering them the flexibility to pursue higher education, dive directly into the workforce with a competitive edge, or even explore and pivot away from career paths they find less aligned with their interests — saving them time and money while offering them boundless opportunities.

The Game of Life board game really made it seem like the choice between starting with college or starting with a career was the most important decision you could make. It was black or white — start with college and have a chance at a “good job” or start with career and have much fewer opportunities. (In reality, either option could lead to the coveted $100,000 salary… but don’t tell 8-year-old me that.)

While the board game’s ties to real life were flimsy, this fictitious dilemma brings up a real-world misconception: that after high school you could either go to college or start a low-skilled job. Luckily, career and technical education (CTE) courses add so many more choices for today’s graduates. CTE’s unique blend of practical learning, hands-on experience, and direct industry relevance equips students with the skills necessary to navigate the complexities of the modern workforce.

The focused nature of CTE

The essence of CTE lies in its ability to tailor education to specific career paths, providing a clear, direct line from classroom learning to real-world application. This is a sentiment echoed by educators deeply embedded in the field. Connie Craven, a dedicated CTE teacher with Imagine School Services, highlights the focused nature of CTE courses: “I enjoy teaching CTE classes because they are more specific to a field or career rather than just a generalization. This can help students really see if that is a pathway they would want to pursue, saving them time and money in the future.”

“This can help students really see if that is a pathway they would want to pursue, saving them time and money in the future.”

Connie Craven

CTE Teacher, Imagine School Services

Craven’s observation underscores a crucial benefit of CTE — its capacity to help students make informed decisions about their futures, potentially averting unnecessary educational expenses and detours. This pragmatic approach to learning is not just about imparting knowledge; it’s about fostering a sense of direction and purpose. In fact, research shows that the average high school graduation rate of CTE concentrators (students who take more than one CTE course in the same field) is 96%, as compared to the national rate of 85%.

96%

High school graduation rate of CTE concentrators (students who take more than one CTE course in the same field)

Exploration and adaptability

CTE empowers students to explore a range of careers before making a significant commitment to a specific path. This exploration is invaluable, allowing students to discover what truly motivates them and what does not, thus saving time, money, and potential dissatisfaction in the long run. The adaptability and breadth of options available through CTE underscore its critical role in helping students carve out successful, fulfilling careers, whether that means further academic pursuits, immediate employment, or a completely new direction after gaining hands-on experience. Regardless of the path they choose, data shows that “eight years after their expected graduation date, students who focused on career and technical education (CTE) courses while in high school had higher median annual earnings than students who did not focus on CTE.”

Kathy Colquitt, CTE teacher with Imagine School Services, shares her journey through the CTE landscape, from her initial spark of interest in international relations prompted by a teaching opportunity, to the internships and coursework that solidified her career path. “The CTE pathway helped me define my career and pursue degrees in business and international business,” Colquitt reflects. Her story exemplifies the transformative power of CTE, illustrating how targeted educational experiences can shape a student’s academic and professional trajectory.

Preparing for tomorrow’s careers

CTE courses stand apart from traditional education models by offering immersive, applied learning experiences that bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application. Colquitt elaborates on the unique offerings of CTE, stating, “CTE courses provide students with the ability to apply what they have learned within traditional courses into an environment that helps them explore their interests and further develop research and critical thinking skills.” This emphasis on application, coupled with the integration of ethical considerations, prepares students for the realities of the workplace in a way that traditional education often cannot.

Through its focus on specialized skills, practical experience, and direct industry relevance, CTE not only prepares students for the jobs of today but empowers them to shape the careers of tomorrow. As we look to the future, the role of CTE in fostering innovation, driving economic growth, and enhancing workforce readiness will undoubtedly continue to grow, making it an essential element of our collective educational strategy. So, instead of choosing between “start with college” and “start with career,” graduates leave high school on the right path for them.

Help students ignite their passions and find their paths

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January 23, 2024 8:00 am

Summer Learning: Put Students in the Driver’s Seat 

Transform summer school from a chore to a launchpad for success. Discover four dynamic strategies to engage and motivate middle and high schoolers, fostering a sense of ownership and excitement on their educational journey back to school in the fall.

As summer rolls in, middle and high school students are often focused on sun, fun, and forgetting school even exists! That’s why summer school is a tough sell, even (and sometimes especially) for those students who must recover credits to graduate. So how do we get students excited about summer learning? Empower them with agency. 

We know that summer school can get students back on track, maintain their momentum for fall, or get them ahead. Getting students to feel inspired by these possibilities requires them to feel a sense of responsibility for their own education. Here are four ways to give students ownership of their learning: 

1. Help them understand the destination 

If students can understand why they’re there and how this will benefit them, it will help with their motivation. Students want to know why they are tasked with an assignment — so whether they’re there to recover credits they missed during the school year, work on challenging concepts, or just trying to get ahead, once they know the destination, they can focus on achieving their goals. 

2. Set up a roadmap 

Once students understand their overall destination in summer school (credit recovery, concept recovery, getting ahead), they should set manageable goals that will be their roadmap to success. The key to this goal setting exercise is that they are easily attainable. For example, “I will work on my math course for two hours a day.” Once students begin to meet these goals, they will continue to be motivated and feel that their overall success is achievable.  

3. Identify the checkpoints  

Once goals are set, help students develop a system for checking in on their own progress. Help them understand the importance of checking in on their progress. This helps them establish ownership of their learning and ensure they are on track for course completion. Teachers and administrators often have their own goals for their students, but it is also important that students remain invested in their progress and learning as well. 

4. Make time for celebration 

Last, but most certainly not least, make sure to celebrate success along the way. While it is easy to celebrate the big milestones like completing a unit or course, those will be fewer and farther in between. If you wait for those big moments, students could begin to lose sight of the finish line. Making sure to celebrate things like completing a lesson or even just completing the time goal they set for that day can be a great way to ensure students celebrate themselves and feel that their effort is acknowledged. 

From recovering last year’s English credits to revisiting algebra concepts in preparation for fall geometry, summer school success is going to look different for every student and classroom. But whatever the course, if students feel like they are the owners of their learning, that success will carry them through the academic year too.  

Put Your Students in the Driver’s Seat this Summer

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About the Author – Alyssa Osorio

Alyssa Osorio is the Product Marketing Manager for Courseware at Imagine Learning. Prior to joining Imagine Learning, she was a 7th and 8th grade English Language Arts teacher and Subject Area Leader. In her time as an educator, she also worked in summer school and credit recovery positions with the goal of motivating and empowering students to take pride and ownership of their learning and success. 

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May 31, 2022 8:00 am

Watch Out World, Here They Come

The top 5 electives by enrollment in Imagine Edgenuity this year reveal what students really want – life-applicable skills to prepare for their future.

With lessons like dorm cooking, changing your oil, and saving money while grocery shopping on the syllabus, “Adulting 101” teachers can rest assured that students won’t be asking the ever-frustrating question, “When will I use this in life?” Aimed at teaching life skills like budgeting and maintaining physical fitness after high school, “adulting” classes have recently taken off. Skills such as preparing taxes and learning how insurance works are largely viewed as outside of the academic sphere, but, for that precise reason, young adults are entering the “real” world needing to Google things like “W-2” and “deductible.” While these classes are often hosted at local libraries and attended by recent to not-so-recent high school graduates, a Kentucky high school has proven that there is not only a need but a desire for the class before graduation as well.

Looking at the highest enrolled Imagine Edgenuity electives for the 2021-22 school year, it is clear that practicality is in demand.

Top 5 Electives by # of enrollment

When given the option, students choose to learn how to take care of themselves – from their physical health to their finances. Depending on post-graduation plans, that calculus class may or may not be vital, but the most popular electives promise skills that everyone will be able to use.

1. Lifetime Fitness

Only 23.2% of adults aged 18 and over met physical activity guidelines in a recent study. After exploring fitness topics such as safe exercise and injury prevention, nutrition and weight management, consumer product evaluation, and stress management, Lifetime Fitness students leave the course equipped with the skills they need for a lifetime of fitness – including an exercise program designed to meet their individual goals.

2. Academic Success

More than 25% of recent high school graduates wished that their high school had prepared them with study skills for college. Students who took the Academic Success course don’t have that same wish. Offering a comprehensive analysis of different types of motivation, study habits, and learning styles, this course encourages high school and middle school students to take control of their learning by exploring varying strategies for success.

3. Personal Finance

“Nearly a third of young adults in a recent study were found to be ‘financially precarious’ because they had poor financial literacy and lacked money management skills and income stability.” Personal Finance students are well on their way to financial literacy after learning more about economics and becoming more confident in setting and researching financial goals. They learn how to open bank accounts, invest money, apply for loans and insurance, explore careers, manage business finances, make decisions about major purchases, and more.

4. Foundation of Personal Wellness

A recent study found that less than 38 percent of adult participants consumed a healthy diet. Largely, this isn’t due to a lack of desire, but a lack of resources and understanding. Upon completing Foundation of Personal Wellness where they explore a combination of health and fitness concepts as well as all aspects of wellness, students are equipped with the knowledge it takes to plan a healthy lifestyle.

5. Financial Math

86% of teens are interested in investing, but 45% say they don’t feel confident in doing so. That interest explains why students were eager to enroll in Financial Math this year. The course features relevant, project-based learning activities covering stimulating topics such as personal financial planning, budgeting and wise spending, banking, paying taxes, the importance of insurance, long-term investing, buying a house, and more.

Skipping the “flashy” or “fun” electives that we might expect them to choose reveals what students really want to learn: practical, life-applicable skills. These selections help students build a foundation of useful knowledge so that, when they get out into the real world, they won’t be registering for their local “Adulting 101” course.

About the Author – Ally Jones

Ally Jones is a California credentialed educator who specialized in teaching English language learners at the secondary level. Outside of education, she is passionate about fitness, literature, and taking care of the planet for her son’s generation.

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January 25, 2022 8:00 am

Personalize Your Summer Program

Learn how to design an effective K–12 summer program that gives each student a chance to meet their personal learning goals.

Thinking about summer school in the middle of winter — with flu + COVID season upon us and beeping phones giving weather advisories — can feel like a distant dream.

Yet, planning an effective summer learning program that works district-wide takes time. From kinder students who might need extra support with foundational skills to soon-to-be high school seniors who need credits recovered, districts have a lot to plan for. While we cannot possibly predict every student’s unique needs (we can barely keep schools open just this week with rising cases and staff shortages!), there are a few simple steps you can take to make the most of the coming summer minutes and allow each student to find a personalized pathway to academic success.

Identify Learning Goals 

Summer is sweet but short, and with a small amount of time, it’s best to set specific, tangible goals for your students ahead of time. That way, you know how to staff, what programs you’ll need in place, and teachers will know how to best prepare for a successful summer.

Are there too many students at risk of not graduating on time? Did the pandemic slow your math performance down district-wide? Look at your data, but then don’t focus on the negative. Instead, take those glaring needs and turn them into positive goals such as: cut the percentage of at-risk students in half or increase math fact fluency in grades 3-5, so students are algebra ready — the more specific the goal, the better. Involving students in goal setting is motivating, too. So, consider announcing your goals for students in a way that makes them visible, understandable, and motivating.  

Select a Program & Pathway 

Once you know your unique learning goals, it’s time to dive into the planning. It’s easy for educators at this point to spend hours and hours on the internet Googling, “How to set up a virtual summer school,” or “how to write a summer learning unit,” or worse, downloading questionably sourced worksheets.

If you catch yourself doing the same: stop. There is no need to design your own program when curriculum designers have taken the time to create research-backed curricula for you. Save yourself some time and select a reputable provider that does the heavy lift. Students get better results, and you get more time by the pool. It’s a win-win situation.  

student at school on computer

Learning Goal: Graduate on time

Pathway: establish a virtual summer school with Imagine Edgenuity that allows students to recover credits in an adaptive environment that focuses on what they need, not what they already know.

young boy entering a home

Learning Goal: establish foundational math and reading skills missed during pandemic closures

Pathway: Imagine MyPath, a personalized, adaptive all-in-one intervention program that creates an individual pathway to grade level for each student and suggests targeted reteach lessons.

a group of students in classroom learning on tablets

Learning Goal: enrich learning & prepare for the next grade level

Pathway: choose from our Imagine Learning supplemental suite to create more confident learners while also improving reading, language development, and math skills.

Plan for Progress Monitoring

Trying to “Set it and forget it!” like a Showtime Rotisserie with your summer learning programs sounds tempting, but we know how critical formative assessment is from September to June. We cannot forget that during the summer while we’re daydreaming about hitting the beach over the weekend.

Work with your summer staff and curriculum providers to check for progress midway through the summer semester. If you’re a virtual high school teacher, you can schedule one-on-one check-ins with students or virtual office hours. Be sure to explore your virtual program’s teacher data dashboard to see where students are struggling. If you’re in elementary, be sure to build in opportunities for those one-on-one and small group reteaching opportunities that can make a big difference — a blended learning station rotation model works well for this!  

Don’t Forget to Have Fun! 

Summer learning pressure to “close gaps” and recover credits can feel overwhelming — but don’t let that anxiety drive your program. Students did their best for nine months and often crave a change of rhythm just like we do.

Try creating a fun theme with incentives that coordinate with your learning goals (Blast off to Summer Math Facts Space Camp anyone?). Most of all, allow the student-teacher relationship to take priority. When students know that staff care, that they see them and believe in them, they’re more likely to work harder (especially when that summer sun is calling).

Summer School Support

From credit recovery and virtual staffing to math enrichment, we’ve got you covered.

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January 7, 2022 9:00 am

Imagine More Personalized Learning

Dare to hope for every child’s future by imagining a more personalized community, more personalized data, and more personalized instruction.

Before Louis Armstrong begins warbling at the end of Nora Ephron’s You’ve Got Mail, the two main characters come to an impasse. Tom Hanks says, “It wasn’t personal,” right after putting Meg Ryan’s adorable children’s bookstore out of business with his super-sized chain store. With a Kleenex in hand, Meg says,

“All that means is that it wasn’t personal to you. But it was personal to me. It’s personal to a lot of people. What is so wrong with being personal, anyway? Because whatever else anything is, it ought to begin by being personal.”

Cue sentimental folks like myself grabbing for their own Kleenex box and clapping after Meg’s soliloquy.

Like bookstores, education is a business, too. It involves complex government funding, state-wide curriculum adoptions, EdTech businesses, publishers, millions of teachers, and even more millions of students. It’s easy for it to feel like a factory production line. But when a family comes in for a parent-teacher conference and sits across that kidney table, face-to-face with the teacher, it is an entirely personal affair. Their child’s future is at stake.

What is personalized learning?

Personalized learning is hard to define. Even the United States Department of Education admits that each state has its own way of explaining and measuring what quantifies a personalized education. In 2017, they put together a definition:

Personalized learning refers to instruction in which the pace of learning and the instructional approach are optimized for the needs of each learner. Learning objectives, instructional approaches, and instructional content (and its sequencing) may all vary based on learner needs. In addition, learning activities are meaningful and relevant to learners, driven by their interests, and often self-initiated.

Isn’t that the dream? Of course every educator would like to give each child a personalized pathway to success, but we are only human after all. If you teach middle or high school, you have 45-minute periods and see over 100 students a day. How is it possible to let 100+ students direct their own education and oversee it all in such short bursts of time? How do you ensure they’ve mastered each grade-level standard? If you’re in an elementary school, you’ve got some fundamental, sequential phonics skills to teach, and most students will not self-select to learn the “oo” sound-spelling pattern from the moon card.

Yet, we can’t go back to the sage-on-the-stage lecture-style instruction followed by piles of homework, either. We know better now and must do better. If each student is a tiny human, unique in their strengths and preferences and background knowledge on any given subject, then a one-size-fits-all, always whole-group approach will not meet every student’s needs.

Perhaps personalized learning is hard to define because it’s equal parts pedagogy combined with hope. A hope that somehow in this big box, complex system we call public education, we can find a way to give every student the personal breakthrough moments they deserve to have. To throw in the towel means that parent, the one in tears sitting across the kidney table, is forced to fight alone for their child because it will always be personal for them.

They shouldn’t have to fight alone.

What does personalized learning look like?

If we believe that every child deserves a personalized education and that technology is here to help, not hurt, the big question left is, what is the blueprint? What does it look like in action to do the impossible? Here are three simple ways to move toward a more personalized learning experience for your students.

student looks up to teacher while working on a laptop

1. Personalize Your Community

If the pandemic taught us anything, education is a social affair. While some students enjoyed the freedom of at-home learning, many missed their peers and suffered both emotionally and academically during distance learning.

Now that they’re back in class, it’s tempting to drill down hard on skills students missed out on during the pandemic and “catch them up.” However, we cannot skip the community building essential to students’ sense of belonging and motivation. So, as we imagine a more personalized learning experience, let’s imagine a more personalized community.

One way to emphasize community is to start with social and emotional learning (SEL). A comprehensive SEL curriculum can guide teachers and counselors from identifying core emotions in kindergarten to serious behavioral intervention in secondary schools. Extensive research shows that SEL improves academic performance and student life outcomes such as increased emotional and financial stability.

Building a community is critical to virtual classrooms as well. The community of learners theory outlines best practices for developing teacher and student rapport from anywhere, at any time, to improve online learning outcomes.

2. Personalize Your Data

It’s hard to personalize learning when teachers don’t know the discrete skills and math concepts their students are missing, or how far ahead other students might be in their reading ability. This is where technology can do the heavy lift for teachers. Instead of creating tests and grading them, and grouping students on your own, a robust digital assessment can give educators the data they need to personalize instruction for every student efficiently.

An intervention program like Imagine MyPath not only allows teachers to assess students and view the results on an interactive data dashboard, but it then sends them on a personalized learning journey. When students hit a roadblock and have trouble acquiring an essential grade-level skill, the program alerts the teacher and provides a ready-to-go printable mini-lesson.

The data provided by a digital program and the speed at which it can provide actionable insights for teachers are beyond what any one human is capable of.

3. Personalize Your Instruction

With more personalized data and a healthy classroom community, educators are empowered to personalize their instruction for students. Many instructional models are great vehicles for personalizing learning.

Blended learning is one option. For example, the station rotation model allows some students to be working on a device with adaptive technology or a student-initiated project at their own pace, while the teacher provides targeted, meaningful small-group instruction where we know kids thrive.

In a virtual school, students can self-select from a variety course options. They can work at their own pace. The teacher can have one-on-one check-ins that target those discrete skills students keep missing in their online course or adaptive program.

Project-based learning is another approach that personalizes learning by providing voice and choice in how students demonstrate their learning.

There are so many ways to personalize learning for students. Hopefully, with a more connected community, more personalized data, and effective personalized instruction, we can move closer to ensuring that every student achieves the breakthrough moments they deserve.

Imagine More Personalized Learning

Give every K–12 student a pathway to grade-level success with Imagine Learning’s Supplemental Suite.

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September 26, 2019 8:00 am

Defining Personalized, Differentiated, and Individualized Instruction

Each of these terms has been in the education lexicon for a while now, but what do they mean? More importantly, why do they matter to educators?

Personalized, differentiated, and individualized learning — each of these terms has been in the education lexicon for a while now, but what do they mean? Are they three different ways of saying the same thing? If not, how do they differ? In this What’s Up With piece, we go over these three terms, and why they matter to educators and students.

3 students and a teacher engaged in a lesson in a classroom

Differentiated Learning

Perhaps, the oldest concept of the three, differentiated learning involves “address[ing] the needs of all students, who may be at varying levels, within a single classroom,” according to eSchool News. This can be done by grouping students by their level of understanding or ability, and then providing each group of students with a lesson that has been adapted to meet their skill level.

Personalized Learning

According to iNACOL, when educators personalize learning, they are “tailoring learning for each student’s strengths, needs, and interests — including enabling student voice and choice in what, how, when, and where they learn — to provide flexibility and supports to ensure mastery of the highest standards possible.”

Put simply, personalized learning takes a student’s needs, skills, and preferred learning style into consideration, and gives them more control over and say in their learning.

Individualized Learning

Individualized learning is exactly what it sounds like — instruction that is built to an individual student’s specific needs. A good example of individualized learning is extra help in the form of tutoring. Typically delivered one-to-one, tutoring is highly customized to address a student’s specific questions, some of which may result from their ability or skill level. Another common way educators and students experience individualized learning is with IEPs (individualized education programs).

How Are They Similar?

Personalized, differentiated, and individualized learning are all ways of customizing learning to better meet student needs. They all take into account that students are different and have varying levels of skill and ability, and aim to alter instruction and the learning experience to better cater to students.

How Do Personalized, Differentiated, and Individualized Learning Differ?

The biggest difference between each of these terms is the degree to which instruction is customized for the individual student.

Think of it as an upside-down pyramid. Differentiated instruction would be at the top, with the least amount of customization. Next would be personalized instruction, with more customization. Finally, at the bottom would be individualized instruction, which is highly customized to the individual student.

Another difference between these concepts is in how much involvement the student has in directing their learning. With both differentiation and individualization, the student is more of a participant in their learning than a leader, whereas in true personalization, the student works together with the instructor to design a learning system and path that works specifically for them, their interests, and their abilities.

How Can You Incorporate Personalized, Differentiated, and Individualized Learning into Your Teaching?

In a perfect world, every student would get one-to-one, highly individualized instruction from an excellent teacher. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world, so innovative and creative educators have found ways to customize instruction, both with and without the use of technology.

The first step in differentiating, personalizing, and individualizing instruction is to determine your students’ individual skill levels and abilities, as well as if they need any special accommodations to promote and support their learning. Once you’ve been able to determine that, you can then group students together by ability or skill level (differentiation), adjust your lesson plans and the way instruction is delivered to better align with student needs and learning styles (personalization), and highly customize both the content and your instruction as students need (individualize).

Being able to use technology to identify where students are thriving and struggling, group students together, monitor their progress, and formatively assess them can make personalizing, differentiating, and individualizing instruction not only possible, but easy.

SOURCES

ABEL, N. (2016, FEBRUARY 17). WHAT IS PERSONALIZED LEARNING? INACOL. RETRIEVED FROM HTTPS://WWW.INACOL.ORG/NEWS/WHAT-IS-PERSONALIZED-LEARNING/

BASYE, D. (2018, JANUARY 24). PERSONALIZED VS. DIFFERENTIATED VS. INDIVIDUALIZED LEARNING. ISTE BLOG. RETRIEVED FROM HTTPS://WWW.ISTE.ORG/EXPLORE/EDUCATION-LEADERSHIP/PERSONALIZED-VS.-DIFFERENTIATED-VS.-INDIVIDUALIZED-LEARNING

FREELAND FISHER, J. (2017, APRIL 25). WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BLENDED AND PERSONALIZED LEARNING? CHRISTENSEN INSTITUTE. RETRIEVED FROM HTTPS://WWW.CHRISTENSENINSTITUTE.ORG/BLOG/WHATS-DIFFERENCE-BLENDED-PERSONALIZED-LEARNING/

STEDKE, A. (2017, AUGUST 1). DIFFERENTIATION, INDIVIDUALIZATION AND PERSONALIZATION: WHAT THEY MEAN, AND WHERE THEY’RE HEADED. ESCHOOL NEWS. RETRIEVED FROM HTTPS://WWW.ESCHOOLNEWS.COM/2017/08/01/DIFFERENTIATION-INDIVIDUALIZATION/?ALL

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September 11, 2019 12:00 am

Implementing Personalized Learning in a Virtual School

Read how Caddo School District is reaching more students and helping them achieve success by personalizing a virtual school model.

Educator sits in front of a laptop with a pen in hand

Faced with declining graduation rates, Southwood High School in Louisiana enlisted its then Assistant Principal Tyron Lacy to create an online credit recovery program that would allow students to recover credits so they could graduate on time.

As a result, Southwood’s graduation rates went “through the roof,” says Lacy, who later facilitated the district-wide expansion of the program.

That program has now been up and running for over 10 years, and has expanded to offer initial credit and summer school options for Caddo School District students. After seeing how online courses can help students, Lacy decided to offer more options for Louisiana students, and in the summer of 2016, he opened the Caddo Virtual Academy (CVA).

By implementing personalized learning in a virtual school model, Caddo School District is reaching more students, and helping them achieve success.

Strategic Design

Now, barely three years after CVA was founded, it’s an A+ school and was recently given the Top Gains Honoree Award. But this success wasn’t by accident.

Lacy, now the principal of CVA, emphasizes the strategic, data-driven decisions he and his team made to create this powerful learning environment.

“We were purposeful in the things that we did. We didn’t just throw it in the air and hope it worked,” Lacy said.

They used strategic hiring practices to ensure students have quality instructors, and fostered relationships with local universities to provide students access to dual-enrollment courses, as well as AP® classes and SAT®/ACT® prep courses.

This level of care and attention to detail contributes to the success of the independent high school, which functions exactly like any other school in the district. And unlike other virtual schools across the country that act as alternative programs within traditional high schools, CVA has its own campus, extracurricular activities, and even PTA, which helped get some of the first parents on board with this new program.

“All students learn differently, and every environment is not good for every student. [But] with proper support, students can achieve at their own rate.”

Tyron Lacy

Personalized Learning in a Virtual School

When students first enroll in CVA, they go through a series of questions to set up an individualized graduation plan based on their specific needs.

In fact, “We make it personal!” is the school’s motto, emblazoned on their website and at the core of all they do.

“All students learn differently, and every environment is not good for every student,” says Lacy, who believes that, “with proper support, all students can achieve at their own rate.”

Furthermore:

Teachers customize their courses to match the Louisiana Department of Education’s requirements while also pushing the students to think critically and not just blow through their assignments.

With students ranging from those who are academically gifted and looking for a challenge to those needing asynchronous schedules due to demanding extracurricular activities to those who have been traditionally homeschooled, CVA’s unique hybrid format provides support, structure, and plenty of student-teacher interaction.

READ MORE: Defining Personalized, Differentiated, and Individualized Instruction

Unique Format

“Even though we’re an online school, the majority of our students come to school every day,” says Lacy. “I think it’s the personal touch.”

Unlike some online schools where students receive minimal personal interaction, CVA students get support immediately from their teachers as they complete their coursework.

This feedback is available online through messaging or video streaming, and teachers are also available for office hours.

This personalized learning in a virtual school helps students to “see the passion behind our educators,” which in turn “builds a culture of excellence that students want to be around,” says Lacy.

Additionally, students are required to attend weekly live lectures from their teachers either virtually or in person.

“It’s just like a normal class,” Lacy says. “Teachers take roll, ask interactive questions, break students into groups,” and present the topics students will cover that week.

Then, students have the rest of the week to complete their coursework in Edgenuity® at their own pace. “No student is left behind, but no student has to wait either,” says Lacy, and he points out that the coursework is rigorous enough that no one is ever significantly ahead of the teacher.

Looking Ahead

As word spreads of their unique model, support structures, and student success, enrollment at CVA has tripled. Seniors have been awarded millions in scholarships and are earning college credit, and students who had previously struggled are now graduating on time.

The district is taking notice of their success, and considering ways to provide additional space and support for the increasing number of students electing to enroll.

“I’m excited about what we’re able to do for families and students,” says Lacy, as he continues to dream of bigger and better ways to enable student success through the use of technology.

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December 13, 2017 8:00 am

What is Competency-Based Learning?

Explore the trending paradigm shift that is competency-based learning and incorporate more mastery-based techniques into your classroom, school, and district.

It seems that every day there is a new education buzzword that pushes teachers to change the way they teach, so when people began discussing competency-based learning, educators and policymakers were cautiously optimistic.

But as Illinois’ Department of Education joins New Hampshire, Michigan, and Ohio in incorporating competency-based learning into their policy, the buzz around this new learning strategy is gaining steam.

Here, we define competency-based learning and discuss how can you incorporate the techniques from this new methodology into your classroom, school, and district.

What is competency-based learning?

Seen as an alternative to more traditional educational approaches, competency-based learning (CBL) can completely redefine a school’s way of teaching and assessing students. Sometimes called mastery-based, outcome-based, performance-based, or standards-based education, instruction, or learning, CBL focuses on ensuring students are truly mastering academic content regardless of time, place, or pace of learning.

Traditional schools and classrooms utilize an efficiency-centered model, meaning students are classified by age and given a fixed amount of time to master a lesson before moving on to the next.

This can result in students skating by whole sections without fully grasping the material and the ways this material builds on the next unit.

How can a student truly be successful learning the area of triangles if he does not understand the concept of area?

What is Competency-Based Learning? graphic

The best way to define competency-based learning is by explaining what it is not.

CBL no longer advances students on an arbitrary timeline, but allows them to move onto the next concept when they have mastered the current one. This allows advanced students to move forward without having to wait for the designated time set in the curriculum, and struggling students can spend as long on a unit as they need to until they reach full understanding.

It does, however, pose some significant changes to the ways students are assessed.

Academic progress should be tracked and reported by learning standard, so educators and parents can know precisely what specific knowledge and skills students have acquired or may be struggling with.

According to the Glossary of Education reform, “instead of receiving a letter grade on an assignment or test, each of which may address a variety of standards, students are graded on specific learning standards, each of which describes the knowledge and skills students are expected to acquire.”

How can I incorporate CBL into my school?

Administrators and teachers can incorporate competency-based learning methods right into the curriculum without completely rewriting it. Educators can break down the competencies that will drive student learning for each listed standard within the curriculum.

These competencies should move beyond content and address process and dispositions, too.

For example:

If one of the standards or outcomes of a geography lesson is to recognize how characteristics of regions affect the history of the United States, the competencies could be to first recognize cultural, economic, and physical characteristics of US regions, then to analyze the relationship between geography and history.

This takes a basic geography lesson beyond memorization and into a broader understanding of how geography has impacted our country and its ties to history.

Obviously, these example competencies will not be achieved in one week, or even one lesson, so it is important to strategically emphasize core standards and their related competencies throughout the year.

Analyzing the relationship between geography and history will be a competency that the class works on in every lesson, and something that students should be reminded of consistently so they can continue to practice to achieve mastery.

After identifying the competencies within the standards, educators must then translate this into student actions and create a rubric that clearly defines how a student can show mastery in that particular competency.

This may take discussion between administrators and curriculum developers, but the idea is that a strong alignment to the competencies is identified by more than a test grade. Rubrics, checklists, and reflection prompts can be extremely helpful in connecting competencies to the assignments within each unit.

Don’t be afraid to have students retake units if they have not fully mastered the associated competency, and help them understand that a retake is not punishment, but a way to ensure that students are the center of learning by allowing them to fully understand concepts before moving on.

How can teachers incorporate CBL into their classrooms?

Teachers may feel that they have little control since these decisions are made at the district or even state level, but there are ways to incorporate CBL into your classroom with little administrative involvement.

  1. Initiate conversations with school administrators about strategies for making education more learner-centered.
  2. Base grading policies on assessments of learning outcomes instead of participation points to truly identify if students are comprehending the subject matter.
  3. Use formative assessments to pinpoint students who need instructional supports.
  4. Allow students to resubmit work so they can learn from their mistakes and try again.
  5. Acknowledge students learn at different paces and advocate for differentiated student learning.
There are many ways to incorporate CBL into the classroom

How can technology help?

Transitioning to competency-based learning can be difficult, but definitely worthwhile as it creates a classroom that is truly focused on each student as an individual. Since CBL is aimed at ensuring more students learn what they are expected to know, incorporating this method provides educators with more detailed information about student progress.

This allows teachers to identify specific concepts and skills students have not yet mastered, and intervene.

And this is where education technology truly shines.

Programs like UpSmart® can meet students where they are and identify skills, concepts, and standards that they have not yet mastered. Detailed reports provide educators with a granular level of information about each student, much more than they would receive with a simple letter or number grade on a unit test.

Educators can then take that information and intervene to bring students to where they need to be.

Benefits of Competency-Based Learning

Proponents of CBL argue that this method improves the chances that students learn the most important information, concepts, and skills they will need throughout their lives.

It can also help reduce learning gaps or opportunity gaps and provide a more equitable approach to public education. This will reduce or eliminate students advancing to the next lesson, unit, or even grade without acquiring the knowledge and skills they should have to do so.

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