Register today for a special workshop just for you - Advocating on the Hill with Your Stories! The first 50 registrants for this professional opportunity on February 12 will learn how to leverage change with legislators. ASCD Director/Iowa ASCD Director Dr. Pam Vogel and ASCD Legislative Committee Member/Iowa ASCD Director Dr. Susan Pecinovsky will lead this authentic learning opportunity.

Registration is $50 for members of Iowa ASCD and $90 for non-members. Upon registration you will receive access to tools for advocacy and influence, including talking points for major issues (e.g., competency-based instruction, teacher leadership, readers by third grade, kindergarten readiness, instructional time, teacher and principal evaluation, professional learning), sample letter and telephone script for contacting your legislators, and a rubric to evaluate your skills in advocacy. Iowa ASCD will also provide you with contact information about your legislators so that you may schedule visits "on the hill" as part of this opportunity.

A block of rooms has been reserved for February 11^th at the Renaissance Des Moines Savery Hotel (515.244.2151).  Be sure to ask for the Iowa ASCD block of rooms.

Agenda:

                                                                                                          

February 12, 2014, 8:00 A.M. - 12:30 P.M.          

Location: Renaissance Des Moines Savery Hotel, 401 Locust Street, Des Moines, IA

• Continental breakfast and working lunch provided
• Legislative Update - Dr. Brad Buck
• Professional Learning with Drs. Pecinovsky and Vogel 

February 12, 2014, 1:00 - 4:00 P.M.             

Visits "on the hill" (Capitol - East 12

^th and Grand)  

• Meet with Democratic Caucus of the House Education Committee
• Meet with Republican Caucus of the House Education Committee
• Meet with YOUR Legislator(s)
• Informal (and optional) meeting at the Capitol to debrief visits with legislators and share possible next steps for Iowa ASCD members around advocacy and influence 

Register NOW! - Contact Bridget Arrasmith with name(s) of registrant(s), district and mailing address, e-mail address(es), phone number as well as check or purchase order. She can be reached at the following address: 

• Iowa ASCD, Drake University, School of Education, Room 123, 3206 University Avenue, Des Moines, IA  50311  
• Phone: 515.271.1872
• FAX: 515.271.2233
• E-mail: Bridget.Arrasmith@drake.edu

 

You may register online as well with a credit card at the following URL on the Iowa ASCD website: 

https://iowaascd.org/index.php/events/event-registration/ 

 

 

Register Now! Limited Space!

 

The registrants will receive $50 coupon toward attendance at an upcoming conference in 2014-2015!

"As we build capacity in understanding competency-based education (CBE) in our district and throughout the state, I am often approached with questions about how to get started or how to scale and sustain the work. I usually respond by asking how many days or hours the person has to engage in that conversation. We laugh, but nothing is further from the truth. The atomistic behaviorism that compels Westernized thinking is a limit to understanding CBE as a transformative systems change. Russ Ackoff believed that if we optimize the performance of parts of a system we suboptimize the system as a whole. Peter Senge agrees that the leverage is in optimizing the interdependencies of a system. With CBE, the limits to growth are microcosmic and macrocosmic, which make them particularly difficult to recognize, map, and mitigate. As such, it is necessary to both take a balcony view and to roll up our sleeves for work in the trenches as Iowa embraces competency-based pathways.

What do people who are new to competency-based education need to know or do?

1. Start with the "why" - a compelling reason for change - and move out from there to the "how" and the "what." In Muscatine, we talked about the following: need to disrupt the antiquated system so that it can adapt to 21st century demands; understanding that date of manufacture should not determine a student's path through her or his education experiences; belief that our students need to be adaptable, entrepreneurial, and resilient, which demands a system that supports those demands and that growth. Spend time on the vision and create a theory of action.
2. Create a common language through an extensive literature review. This includes definitions of terminology related to CBE as well as defining what CBE is not - deconstructing how this work is not just new terms for what our system has tried before (outcomes-based education from the 70s/80s, for example). This philosophy and methodology are qualitatively different from past paradigms; this needs to be explicated.
3. Map an overview of a well-articulated design process, from knowledge-building to visioning to communication to writing competencies to unwrapping/aligning standards to developing proficiency scales to differentiating instruction and assessment to assessing fidelity of implementation. Create and deliver ongoing professional development that integrates these parts in order to support the system as a whole.
4. Build feedback loops to engage stakeholders in the design and communication processes early and often. It is important that students, parents, teachers, counselors/registrars, tech support personnel, administrators, board members, community members, and higher education officials are included in the design process and in the evaluation of implementation. Districts must also plan how to use the information gained from feedback for reflection and growth.
5. Develop a mechanism by which educators can be supported in managing effective use of time, place, method, and pace as ways to vary learning experiences for students. Educators need to know how to individualize the learning process so that CBE is driven by student agency rather than by the system's agenda. If the Common Core is the floor - the base of what every student should know and be able to do - then how do we vary time, place, method, and pace so that the glass ceiling is removed and students can follow the fastest path to goals that matter to them?
6. Improve existing RtI frameworks. Engage teachers and administrators in the solutions: how can we best remediate and enrich through the use of real-time data for just-in-time interventions that will support learning in this environment? Teachers and administrators will be concerned with the logistics of CBE and how they can successfully take learning "off the clock." Without robust RtI frameworks, much of the heavy lifting will be left to individual teachers rather than the collective strength of the system as a whole.

We are engaging in the work but are wondering where to go next. How do we help take what we are doing to scale?

1. Advocate for adaptation of student information systems and gradebooks so that limited resources do not hold this transformation back. Most products currently on the market do not support standards-based grading or competency-based education from a philosophical or a pragmatic perspective. If districts continue to hit walls during their efforts to track and report learning or to flexibly schedule students' educational experiences along with how those experiences are reflected on transcripts, they may turn away from this important work.
2. Understand CBE from a systems perspective so that the interconnectedness and interdependency of the system (local, state, and national) can be mapped and managed. This work cannot be completed in a silo and necessitates the preemptive work of identifying potential unintended consequences along the way. Read deeply and widely about CBE in other states and about using systems thinking (e.g., Ackoff, Senge, Gharajedaghi, Wheatley). Understanding systems' laws, disabilities, and archetypes will allow educators to militate against defensive routines and build learning organizations.
3. Map policy evaluation so that districts and states can remove barriers to anytime, anywhere, any method, any pace learning. A plan for educating state legislators and education officials as well as how to include local boards and other governing bodies in the conversation will assist districts with the change process.
4. Develop a framework for including community resources in CBE - how to tap into local, national, and global resources to take learning beyond the walls of the school. Districts will need support in marrying real-world learning experiences with competencies, standards, and evaluation by highly qualified teachers.
5. Leverage other educational initiatives with the design and implementation of CBE. The Teacher Leadership and Compensation System, for example, can be a systems change that supports professional development, innovation in lesson design and delivery, community outsourcing, recruitment and retention of teachers, as well as aligned curriculum, instruction, assessment, and reporting of learning.

What are the five most important "competencies" that someone working to transform their state, district or school need to have?

1. Understanding that learning is on a continuum and is not based on age or teacher-determined time frames.
2. Determination to battle the status quo, knowing that changing mindsets and deeply-ingrained mental models will be one of the most formidable challenges to successful implementation.
3. A systems thinking/doing perspective.
4. A voracious appetite for learning and for contributing to the conversation at a local, state, and national level. It is important to continue to read widely about competency-based education and the nature of change in our world so that advocacy will be effective and purposeful. It is also important for those interested in transformation to use their voices to educate others and to push our thinking by pointing out what might be around the corner. Be visionary.
5. Resilience. Grit.

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You can also read Jason Ellingson's blog on "Next Steps for Competency-Based Education" on the Iowa ASCD blog site. Ellingson is the current Past President of Iowa ASCD and one of the chairs of the CBE summer conference.  He is the superintendent of Collins-Maxwell Community School District, one of the districts selected for the CBE collaborative.   Join the conversation on CBE!  

Resources: Professional learning that increases educator effectiveness and results for all students requires prioritizing, monitoring, and coordinating resources for educator learning. 

One thing over the years Dr. Cooksley has appreciated is the support of the Superintendent and the Board of Education placing a priority on the resources required to increase the staff's professional learning. Whether it is materials, technology or the illusive resource of "time," if the funding is not a priority for staff learning, your efforts have a tough time being successful.

When you ask teachers the commodity they lack the most they will answer with "time." It seems no matter the amount of time allocated to pursuing excellence, we require more. The demands of being an educator today have something to do with that; the demands of the Iowa Core and the accountability of getting all students proficient on standardized test scores are just two of the increasing demands placed on teachers and administrators today.

Professional learning cannot be defined any longer as what we do in a workshop or a conference. Certainly that is a resource available, but the collaborative teaming requires the resource of time. Districts are forced to be creative consumers of time when they are either too small or too large to create cohesive teams in their district/building. In addition, collaborative teams are critical when schools are trying to maintain or increase student performance. The economic conditions in today's world make the work more and more challenging.

The Learning Forward Standards remind us that along with providing resources, we must also monitor the use of those resources. If you are paying stipends, registration fees, substitutes, etc., how do you know if that is money spent wisely? What we know is that high performing schools in other countries value collaboration so highly it remains the top resource utilized.

How is your district utilizing its resources? Are you providing time for collaboration? Are you paying for substitutes or paying stipends? However you are allocating your resources, including stakeholders in your decision making will help to coordinate the resources effectively. "In order to ensure your resources invested in professional learning achieve their intended results, school system leaders must regularly convene representatives of all stakeholders to examine and recommend changes to policies, regulation, and agreements related to professional learning."

• VLN ELA Kickoff:  December 11, 2013, 2:00 p.m.
• VLN ELA Session 1: January 16, 2014, 2:00 p.m.
• VLN ELA Session 2:  February 20, 2014, 2:00 p.m.
• VLN ELA Session 3:  March 24, 2014, 2:00 p.m.
• VLN ELA Session 4:  May 8, 2014, 2:00 p.m.