The Learning Edge: Supporting Student Success in a Competency-Based Learning Environment

State by state, our country is revamping our education system to ensure that each and every one of our young people is college and career ready. Over two-thirds of our states have adopted policies that enable credits to be awarded based on proficiency in a subject, rather than the one-size-fits-all seat-time in a classroom. Now states such as Maine and New Hampshire are taking the next step in establishing competency based diplomas in which students are expected to demonstrate that they can apply their skills and knowledge. To ensure high-quality competency education, in 2011 one hundred innovators created a working definition to guide the field. This paper delves into the fourth element of the definition: Students receive timely, differentiated support based on their individual learning needs. Through a series of interviews and site visits, an understanding of how support in a competency-based school differs from traditional approaches emerged. Learning in a competency-based environment means pushing students and adults to the edge of their comfort zone and competence -- the learning edge. Common themes that were drawn from the wide variety of ways schools support students became the basis for the design principles introduced here. It is essential to pause and understand the importance of timely, differentiated support. Our commitment to prepare all of our young people for college and careers demands that we be intentional in designing schools to effectively meet the needs of students of all races, classes, and cultures. It also demands our vigilance in challenging inequity. There is a risk in competency education -- a risk that learning at one's own pace could become the new achievement gap and that learning anywhere/anytime could become the new opportunity gap. Therefore, our goal in writing this paper is to provide ideas and guidance so that innovators in competency education can put into place powerful systems of supports for students in order to eradicate, not replicate, the inequities and variability in quality and outcomes that exist in our current system. Please consider this paper as an initial exploration into what it means to provide support for the individual learning needs of students. It is designed to generate reflection, analysis, and feedback

Judging the impact of leadership-development activities on school practice

The nature and effectiveness of professional-development activities should be judged in a way that takes account of both the achievement of intended outcomes and the unintended consequences that may result. Our research project set out to create a robust approach that school staff members could use to assess the impact of professional-development programs on leadership and management practice without being constrained in this judgment by the stated aims of the program. In the process, we identified a number of factors and requirements relevant to a wider audience than that concerned with the development of leadership and management in England. Such an assessment has to rest upon a clear understanding of educational leadership,a clearly articulated model of practice, and a clear model of potential forms of impact. Such foundations, suitably adapted to the subject being addressed, are appropriate for assessing all teacher professional development

City versus Countryside: Environmental Equity in Context

This Article takes an approach to the problem of environmental equity that is different from the remedies advocated by the leaders of the environmental equity movement. The plea that the benefits of environmental protection be extended to all groups in society is, of course, a legitimate one, but the movement is too narrowly focused and its aims are too modest. I dissent from the two central premises held by environmental equity advocates. First, the movement assumes that judicially recognized and enforced rights will lead to improved public health. Second, the movement asserts that disadvantaged communities should adopt a “Not in My Backyard” (NIMBY) strategy. In contrast, I argue that the current focus of the environmental equity movement, important as it is, is too narrow because the legal strategy of the civil rights movement is largely inapplicable to environmental issues. Environmental protection is not a rights-based movement. Thus, the judiciary’s role in promoting environmental quality is limited compared to its role in promoting racial justice through the recognition and enforcement of constitutionally-based civil rights. In addition, I argue that the NIMBY strategy is equally shortsighted. Environmental equity takes current environmental protection strategies as a given at a time when the science and ethics of environmental protection are undergoing a profound re-evaluation

City versus Countryside: Environmental Equity in Context

This Article takes an approach to the problem of environmental equity that is different from the remedies advocated by the leaders of the environmental equity movement. The plea that the benefits of environmental protection be extended to all groups in society is, of course, a legitimate one, but the movement is too narrowly focused and its aims are too modest. I dissent from the two central premises held by environmental equity advocates. First, the movement assumes that judicially recognized and enforced rights will lead to improved public health. Second, the movement asserts that disadvantaged communities should adopt a “Not in My Backyard” (NIMBY) strategy. In contrast, I argue that the current focus of the environmental equity movement, important as it is, is too narrow because the legal strategy of the civil rights movement is largely inapplicable to environmental issues. Environmental protection is not a rights-based movement. Thus, the judiciary’s role in promoting environmental quality is limited compared to its role in promoting racial justice through the recognition and enforcement of constitutionally-based civil rights. In addition, I argue that the NIMBY strategy is equally shortsighted. Environmental equity takes current environmental protection strategies as a given at a time when the science and ethics of environmental protection are undergoing a profound re-evaluation

Skills and Knowledge for Data-Intensive Environmental Research.

The scale and magnitude of complex and pressing environmental issues lend urgency to the need for integrative and reproducible analysis and synthesis, facilitated by data-intensive research approaches. However, the recent pace of technological change has been such that appropriate skills to accomplish data-intensive research are lacking among environmental scientists, who more than ever need greater access to training and mentorship in computational skills. Here, we provide a roadmap for raising data competencies of current and next-generation environmental researchers by describing the concepts and skills needed for effectively engaging with the heterogeneous, distributed, and rapidly growing volumes of available data. We articulate five key skills: (1) data management and processing, (2) analysis, (3) software skills for science, (4) visualization, and (5) communication methods for collaboration and dissemination. We provide an overview of the current suite of training initiatives available to environmental scientists and models for closing the skill-transfer gap

Evaluation of nonmetallic thermal protection materials for the manned space shuttle. Volume 1, task 1: Assessment of technical risks associated with utilization of nonmetallic thermal protection system

Technical problems of design and flight qualification of the proposed classes of surface insulation materials and leading edge materials were reviewed. A screening test plan, a preliminary design data test plan and a design data test plan were outlined. This program defined the apparent critical differences between the surface insulators and the leading edge materials, structuring specialized screening test plans for each of these two classes of materials. Unique testing techniques were shown to be important in evaluating the structural interaction aspects of the surface insulators and a separate task was defined to validate the test plan. In addition, a compilation was made of available information on proposed material (including metallic TPS), previous shuttle programs, pertinent test procedures, and other national programs of merit. This material was collected and summarized in an informally structured workbook

ACCESS: An Inception Report

Imagine a world in which all groups of citizens coming together to realize some public benefit measure and communicate the character and consequences of their work. Imagine further that all those groups have adopted a common reporting system that enables their individual reports to be compared, thus creating powerful descriptions of the relative and collective performance of citizen association for public benefit. Imagine, too, that this common measuring and reporting carries across to all forms of public-private partnership and corporate social responsibility. This is the world envisioned by ACCESS.For the past 18 months a growing number of concerned actors have been meeting, studying, and testing opinion around one of the great structural weaknesses in the world's institutional infrastructure -- inefficient and weak social investment markets. This inception report sets out the results of this enquiry in the form of a proposal to establish a reporting standard for nonprofit organizations seeking to produce social, environmental and, increasingly, financial returns. The ACCESS Reporting standard is one important contribution to redressing a major global system weakness, but it is certainly not the only one. Nor is it one that can operate in isolation from other initiatives. Accordingly, the ACCESS proposed plan of work involves convening a global dialogue on NGO transparency, accountability and performance with the objective of promoting ACCESS and other practical solutions to the challenges of social investment and civil society accountability.This report sets out the background and rationale for these proposals. You will meet the ACCESS sponsors and pilot project partners. Parts of the report are descriptive and analytical but other parts are necessarily theoretical and technical in nature. We make no apology for this. Part of the reason that in 2003 the world does not yet have a reporting standard for social actors is that the theory and technique have not been mastered. For those with a strong orientation toward strategy and action, however, these aspects are presented as well

Good Principals Are the Key to Successful Schools: Six Strategies to Prepare More Good Principals

Defines strategies that state and local leaders can use to secure enough highly qualified principals. Draws from research and direct experiences in helping schools, universities, and state agencies rethink and redesign educational leadership programs