Partnership For Change

"Yet the reaction from most "reformers," especially those with the most money, is to pretty much stay the course, to treat education as something that schools define, deliver, assess and confirm. Technology allows us to do that "better" than we have in the past, in some conversations "better" than teachers can. It allows us to "achieve" at higher levels, to compete more effectively with the world, and to stoke the push to make every child "college ready." This is not "beginner's mind"-type thinking." The Storified link is particularly worth checking out.

Student involvement in school improvement, even strategic planning, is not a high school only proposition. Younger kids can participate as well.

Grit: Passion and perseverance over the long term

Form followed function at school in Minneapolis based on students doing real work, feeling welcome in learning environments.

Monument Mountain HS students run their own learning program.

Teachers crossing the country to identify successful practices and start their own school.

Monument Mountain school Independent Project alternative to classrooms, student directed learning

"As school boards address the overall challenge of social media use within schools, they should focus on the reality that the impact no longer lies only on the individual and local schools. Social networks include students and teachers all over the world and, therefore, teaching and coaching on digital literacy for teachers and students is where the focus should rest. Knowing how to build successful communities of learning and how to integrate social connectivity within a learning environment is a much more needed outcome than finding a way to control and monitor specific users and content."

"We are moving away from the model in which learning is organized around stable, usually hierarchical institutions (schools, colleges, universities) that, for better and worse, have served as the main gateways to education and social mobility. Replacing that model is a new system in which learning is best conceived of as a flow, where learning resources are not scarce but widely available, opportunities for learning are abundant, and learners increasingly have the ability to autonomously dip into and out of continuous learning flows." Hat tip to Jason Finley:  ttps://groups.diigo.com/group/vermont-education/content/user/jdfinley 

Student friendly learning spaces for the way kids really learn.  Comfort helps learning.  Discomfort hurts learning.

"Re-Engineering Information Technology: Design Considerations for Competency Education by Liz Glowa, February 2013 Re-Engineering Information Technology: Design Considerations for Competency Education analyzes and examines components and elements of effective competency-based information systems. Based on interviews and research, the ideas in Re-Engineering Information Technology build upon the lessons learned in analyzing information systems developed by competency education innovators, best practices of systemic approaches to information management, and emerging opportunities. The paper is designed for readers to find those issues that are of most interest to them in their role and be used to catalyze strategies, support new competency-based instructional models, and inform decision making for continuous improvement. You can find more resources on the Competency-Based Pathways Wiki."

Making Mastery Work: A Close-Up View of Competency Education highlights the work of ten schools participating in the Proficiency-Based Pathways Project (PBP). 

"The authors highlight the dynamics in which "Teacher leadership provided considerable momentum in the institutionalization of competency education practices.""

The School Construction News profile on the Noble High School project.

The Long Beach, Calif., school district has adopted a training system in which classroom teachers work collaboratively to improve teaching and learning, a shift from outsourcing professional development. 

An effective introduction to the concepts underlying our approach to teacher-directed teacher learning.