How can we arrange to replace the traditional report card with a new student record that keeps track of each individual learning target that each student has mastered, including those for social-emotional learning and creativity?
If your school district will not allow replacing norm-referenced report cards, you will need to consider having both kinds of student records and decide how you will generate the grades on the norm-referenced report based on the targets mastered on the competency-based record. Marzano and colleagues (2017) offer advice on several ways to do this based on proficiency scales for each measurement topic. A common way is to give grades based on the number of learning targets mastered within the grading period, so that higher grades are given to students who have mastered more targets.
How will we maintain the record of learning targets mastered?
A digital learning management system (LMS) will greatly reduce the amount of time teachers need to spend on this task. We earlier explained that assessment should ideally be integrated with the instruction, so every student continues to work on a target (or set of targets) until it is mastered. Record keeping should also ideally be integrated with assessment so that the LMS automatically enters the learning target into the student’s record when it is mastered. Such a system can also keep other valuable data about student progress, performance, and interests. There are many learning management systems available, both for free and for a fee. A few are listed in Learning Management Systems, but we encourage you to explore other options, too.
Learning Management Systems
Edio facilitates project-based learning for teacher-designed, co-designed, and student-designed projects. It supports self-directed learning as students plan, manage, and revise their project work via movable taskboards and visual checklists. Every student’s progress is tracked through customizable reports, dashboards, and transcripts.
Empower delivers curriculum, instruction, and assessments and tracks, reports, and monitors progress for every student. It also has the Learner GPS, a tool for students to set goals and track their progress.
Moodle is a free, open source, modular LMS with a plug-in-based design. It has instruction, assessment, and reporting modules. It can be customized or modified through modular, interoperable plug-ins, and commercial and noncommercial projects can be shared without any licensing fees.
Canvas is a cloud-based learning management system that allows teachers to build lessons, set learning objectives, give feedback, and communicate with students. It contains a variety of resources and integrates with many other digital tools to simplify the logistics of teaching and learning.
Blackboard Classroom promises to personalize learning, increase student engagement, and boost teacher productivity with its Personalized Learning Designer and ability to use mobile devices. It also offers seamless integration with such productivity tools as Google, OneDrive, Dropbox, and Box.
D2L Brightspace helps teachers personalize learning by supporting self-pacing and pacing based on mastery, creating lessons aligned to standards using an intuitive course-building tool, tracking student progress through the school year with simple dashboards and reports, and integrating seamlessly with your existing tools, among other features.
Khan Academy provides a wide range of free tutorials that include explanatory videos and practice to mastery for student assessment. It also provides an automatic record-keeping system for keeping track of student progress and mastery.
Project Foundry, while not a complete LMS, scaffolds project-based learning with tools to help students plan, manage, collaborate, assess, and report their own learning.
Schoology is a K–12 learning management system that includes instructional tools and assessment management, allowing teachers to personalize learning for students.
More information about using competency-based education on the classroom level can be found in A Handbook for Personalized Competency-Based Education (Marzano et al., 2017), Making Mastery Work: A Close-Up View of Competency Education (Priest, Rudenstine, Weisstein, & Gerwin, 2012), Breaking With Tradition: The Shift to Competency-Based Learning in PLCs at Work (Stack & Vander Els, 2017), and When Success Is the Only Option: Designing Competency-Based Pathways for Next Generation Learning (Sturgis & Patrick, 2010).
School-Level and District-Level Considerations
As an individual school within a district or even an individual classroom within a school, you can implement competency-based learning targets and assessments. However, competency-based student progress and student records require some fundamental changes on the school and district levels. In PCBE, students should be able to move on to learn content at the next-higher grade level as soon as they are ready, and teachers should avoid reteaching content that a student has already mastered (though periodically reviewing or refreshing competencies is beneficial). For example, students who complete fifth-grade math halfway through the school year should be allowed to move on to sixth-grade math right away and not have to repeat it the next year. This requires that PCBE be implemented across classrooms in a school and even across schools in a district. Similarly, changing to competency-based student records must be done schoolwide, if not districtwide. Your change team should address that scope of change (see chapter 8, page 147 for guidance on that).
How will we allow students to move on to learn content at the next-higher grade level as soon as they are ready, and how will we avoid reteaching content that a student has already mastered?
Your classrooms will need the resources to help students learn content one or two grade levels higher than their current grade. Multi-age classrooms help in this regard, but teachers should perhaps also collaborate with teachers at the next-higher level. They can offer some of their resources to the next lower level and forward information about what the students have already mastered when they move to the next level. For students in their last year at your school, a teacher would need to collaborate with teachers at their next school or post-secondary institution.
How will we change the student record-keeping system for our school and district, so as not to overburden teachers with two systems?
Your team should work with stakeholders in your school, other schools in your district, and your district’s central office and school board to develop a districtwide (or at least schoolwide) competency-based record-keeping system to replace the norm-referenced report card. We recommend that this new system have two major parts: (1) a list of learning targets mastered and (2) evidence of such mastery (for example, portfolios, videos of performances, observer ratings, test scores), along with such information as date of mastery, who certified mastery, and so forth. In addition, you should consider bundling mastered learning targets into badges, certificates, certifications, licenses, or other kinds of credentials that are more useful than a huge list of individual learning targets.
What if we are unable to bring about change of that scope?
You can move toward that ideal in a single classroom or school by having teachers keep their own records of competencies mastered by each of their students, and then convert those records to the school or district format at the end of each grading period. However, the work of keeping two systems will overburden teachers, and, therefore, failure to implement competency-based student records districtwide will endanger the sustainability of your PCBE transformation.
