Education Week - November 8, 2017 - 24

Aspen Valley Prep Academy | Fresno, Calif.

W H E N S T U D E N T S A R E
B E L O W G R A D E L E V E L

o give some of its students a
slice of independence, Fresno's Aspen Valley Prep Academy wanted to provide 6th
through 8th grades some flexibility to
work on material of their own choosing. So the preK-8 school, where more
than 80 percent of students qualify for
a free or reduced-price lunch, began
using Summit Learning's personalized-learning software during the
2016-17 school year.
The platform, developed by California's Summit Public Schools
charter network, in partnership with
engineers from social-networking
giant Facebook, is one of the highest-profile personalized-learning
technologies in the field.
But Aspen Valley Prep found that
implementing the software wasn't
easy; with more than half of students who transfer into the school
testing below grade level, there were
roadblocks.
"The traditional system keeps
pushing these kids through because
of their age, yet they are never held
accountable for learning what they
haven't learned," said Hilary Witts,
the director of Summit Learning at
the Aspen Valley where she taught
math and science to middle grades.
"With so many gaps, they can't access grade-level curriculum."
Because the software platform is
flexible, Witts inserted additional
gap-filling learning resources so that
students could go back several grade
levels if necessary.
That had its challenges as well.
English teacher Melani Harley recalled an 8th-grade student, frustrated and almost in tears, who
loved to read but couldn't pass a
grade-level punctuation content assessment because he couldn't distinguish between a noun and a verb.
She gave him 6th- and 7th-grade

Education Week * November 8, 2017

content, but that wasn't enough.
She had to go back to a 4th-grade
level-the grade, she eventually
discovered, that he had failed despite being moved ahead with his
class-to help him catch up.
THROUGHOUT THE PERSONALIZED-LEARNING
movement, there are signs that such
pressures are getting in the way of
giving students the types of choices
Aspen Valley Prep aspires to. Recent studies by the RAND Corporation for example, have consistently
found that students in personalized-learning schools report being
given limited choice over the material they learn and the instructional
approaches they receive.

One of Aspen Valley Prep's approaches is to assign a mentor to
each student. They meet one-onone, at least once a week, to talk
about assignments, goal setting and
life skills.
"These meetings tend to become
really personal," said Harley.
As a result, staff said, the school
has seen a cultural shift in the classroom in recent months.
"The students know where they're
at, they're not embarrassed to know
where they're at, and they're not
embarrassed for other people to
know where they're at," Witts said.
"This program has totally revolutionalized their thought process."
The hope is that will consistently
lead to more students becoming
more accountable for their own
learning-while also getting more
choice over what and how they
learn. n

The Urban Assembly Maker Academy | New York City
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 23

acceptable pace. The report found the
grading systems used were difficult to explain to parents and community members.
Bauer recalled experiencing those issues initially, which he said was "a little
morale-killing for a new school."
Andrew Calkins, the director of the
learning challenges program, said students may struggle with pacing because
for the first time they're being asked to
manage their own learning. "These are
exactly the skills that students need to be
developing today," he said.
THESE DAYS, MORE THAN 70 PERCENT OF STUdents at The Urban Assembly Maker turn
in their work on time. The turnaround is
due mainly to a strong advisory program.
Weekly check-ins called "self-awareness
days" pose multiple questions to students, such as "Have you come across
any challenges in your projects?" and
"What resources could you use to figure
out those challenges?"
Students also are given a checklist with
key benchmarks and dates-for planning

purposes only-to meet project deadlines.
Because an inconsistent number of
standards required for mastery in different subjects led to confusion when students transferred to other schools, the
school ultimately simplified its grading
process and converted an overall rubric
score to a traditional 0-100 scale.
As for difficulty explaining competency-based grading systems to parents,
Josh Lapidus, a 9th-grade social studies
teacher, said the barrier has been language that leans too academic.
The school is using a new program in
2017-18 called JumpRope, an interactive,
standards-based platform school leaders
believe more clearly articulates aggregate
data that sum up student performance.
Lapidus advises other schools interested in adopting a self-paced approach
to accept the iterative nature of steady-
and sustainable-change.
"It's not going to be a perfectly smooth
transition," he said. "Time spent developing good standards and good rubrics is
time well spent." n

Education Week - November 8, 2017

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