The Move on When Ready Subcommittee of the Education Reform Commission met on Monday, August 10th. The subcommittee began drafting proposals that will eventually be presented to the full Education Reform Commission. Matt Arthur, the chairman of the subcommittee, reviewed the five "proposed action steps" that can be seen HERE and began to develop more concrete proposals for several of these items.
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Competency-Based Learning and Flexible Testing
The bulk of the subcommittee's discussion revolved around creating flexibility for students who show proficiency in certain subject areas to move on to higher levels of instruction in those subject areas. During this discussion, Will Schofield, superintendent of Hall County, joined the meeting by conference call and provided a lot of input specifically about creating "schools without walls or artificial barriers." According to Schofield, this can be accomplished by creating unlimited testing windows in which teachers assess students when they believe they are ready rather than on a calendar-based testing model. He also described a model that would allow 10 percent of schools to apply to pilot innovative programs and earn a 5 percent FTE incentive. As an example, he described a program implemented by Anthony Townsend, principal of Locust Grove Middle School and member of the subcommittee. CLICK HERE to view an example of a plan for students in a sixth grade math course at Locust Grove Middle School.
In the Locust Grove plan, students take a pretest, and if they show competency of a standard in the pretest, they are allowed to move on to other standards. Classrooms at Locust Grove Middle School are not set up as traditional classrooms. Rather, they are organized in groups based on competency level. This allows teachers to provide more individualized instruction to the students who need it the most. These programs rely not only on Common Core standards, but also on graduation competencies that can be seen in the example above that allow students to move ahead in a flexible manner.
Subcommittee members also discussed eliminating seat time requirements. Schofield warned against this as it may be perceived as saying "being at school is not important." He stated it is more important to find out the situations where seat time hinders a student's ability to move on when they are ready.
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Extended Post-Secondary Options
The subcommittee also discussed how to extend post-secondary options to all students. Most of the discussion centered on students that, for one reason or another, will never earn all of the 23 Carnegie units needed to graduate. In an example, Schofield mentioned a student that has had some type of hardship at home that has caused the student to only earn 6 units. In order to help this student progress, he suggested schools be able to pilot School-To-Work sites in which this student would be allowed to earn a high school diploma upon completion of college algebra, freshman English, a soft-skill certification program such as Georgia BEST, and an industry-recognized certification. House Education Committee Chairman Brooks Coleman asked the practitioners in the room and on conference call what legislators could do to assist with getting this implemented, and Schofield's response was to "free up people like Anthony [Townsend] and let schools create their own innovative programs."
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Next Meeting
The next meeting will be August 25th at noon in Room 416 at the State Capitol. At this meeting, Arthur stated that the committee will discuss the "Reading for All" and "Graduation Rule Change" proposed action steps.
CLICK HERE to read Superintedent Will Schofield's recommendations.
CLICK HERE to read Audrey King, the South Region External Affairs Manager for Georgia Power and Subcommittee member's recommendations. Ms. King was unable to attend the meeting.
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