Blog
Measuring What Matters: Our Journey with Logan County Schools
Contributions from Katie Martin, Learner-Centered Collaborative At Learner-Centered Collaborative, we believe that meaningful change in education begins with a clear vision and community engagement. Our partnership with Logan County Schools exemplifies this approach, as we’ve work together to redefine success for their students and empower the entire learning community. Serving over 3,400 students across…
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12 Ways to Breathe Life into Your Portrait of a Learner
As the world evolves, the skills needed to thrive must go beyond narrow standards. Portraits of a Learner (also known as Portraits of a Graduate or Learner Profiles) are gaining popularity as they can help to expand the collective idea of success and elevate the essential competencies, along with foundational knowledge and content, for…
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Why Your Framework for the Future Needs These 4 Essential Elements
Why You Need a Framework for the Future A Framework for the Future serves as an ongoing reference for all to understand the why, how, and what of the system’s vision. It provides clarity to help navigate ambiguity, allows for creativity and flexibility with constraints, and supports coherence and distributed decision-making. As César Morales…
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3 Key Shifts from Traditional Grading to Competency-Based Learning and Assessment
This is the second blog post in a series on Competency-Based Learning from Bryanna Hanson. Read the first post on what competency-based learning is and why it’s important here. As a teacher, I quickly became frustrated by the limitations of the traditional grading system, one based on points, percentages and averages. This sparked my…
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Education is Everyone’s Business: Bridging the Gap Between School and Learning for Success in Life
Logan Country Schools Exhibition of Learning Every educator I have ever met wants their students to be successful. The challenge, however, is that we don’t all share the same definition of success. Some educators narrow it to their specific standards, their class, or their personal view of what it means to be successful. Others…
Tools
Competency-Based Reporting Playbook
Welcome to the Learner-Centered Collaborative’s Playbook on Competency-Based Assessment, Grading and Reporting. In many traditional grading systems, learners are ranked, sorted and seen as a number in a gradebook. But there’s a competency-based world in which learners can be valued for who they are and how they are growing as individuals. It’s time…
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Indiana’s Bold Step: Empowering Students with Employability Skills
Co-authored by: Brittany Griffin, Director of Strategic Partnerships, Learner-Centered Collaborative Lauren Cole, Vice President of Strategy and Operations, America Succeeds Eric Lerum, Senior Advisor, America Succeeds In the summer of 2022, the Indiana Department of Education (INDoE) embarked on an ambitious journey with the launch of its Employability Skills Innovation and Implementation (ESII) Grant.…
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Transforming High School: A Collaborative Journey with Alexandria City Public Schools
In an era where education is evolving to meet the demands of a rapidly changing world, school districts like Alexandria City Public Schools (ACPS) are reimagining the high school experience. With a commitment to innovation and equity, ACPS embarked on a transformative journey to shape the future of education for their diverse student population.…
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Great Teachers Make Innovative Solutions Possible
Guest Author: Dr. Cory Steiner, Superintendent of Northern Cass School District (ND), Learner-Centered Collaborative Advisory Council member Northern Cass is a mentor school district in the 2023-24 Learner-Centered Connections program Several years ago Northern Cass School District in North Dakota acknowledged that despite traditional markers indicating things were “good” across the district they wanted…
BlogWebinars
Webinar Recording: Cultivating Meaningful Learning Experiences in Hawaii
An insightful discussion with leaders from SEEQS in Hawaiʻi as they share their philosophies and approaches for cultivating meaningful learning experiences for students. SEEQS, the School for Examining Essential Questions of Sustainability, is an innovative public charter school in Honolulu serving grades 6-8 since 2013. This webinar explored SEEQS’s core beliefs and how they…
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Competency-Based Learning: Shifting from Grading Points to Assessing Learning
Photo by Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for EDUimages I started as a first year teacher, armed with a student teaching experience and a master’s degree, fairly confident that I was well prepared. If you are or have ever been a teacher, you are laughing right now because as you know, I figured out pretty…
Tools
Ladder and Knot Outcomes
The first step in designing learner-centered experiences, assessment systems, and structures that are competency-based is to define the desired learning outcomes—what we want students to know and be able to do. There are two types of learning outcomes and, ideally, we are tending to both. We often think of them as Ladder and Knot…
BlogWebinars
Webinar Recording: Beyond Standards: Innovations in Competency Based Assessment
Tired of standardized tests and letter grades that fall short of capturing deeper learning? Explore the possibilities of competency-based assessment with school leaders at Embark Education as they: Explain the core principles and benefits of competency-based assessment. Share real-world examples and applications of competency frameworks in action. Provide valuable insights and lessons learned from…
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Elevating Learner Voices: Deer Lakes Students Share Their Vision in Video
At Learner-Centered Collaborative, we know centering student voice is key for meaningful change in education. We recently witnessed the power of learner voice in an impressive video produced by high school students at our partner district, Deer Lakes School District. To showcase Deer Lakes’ work with Learner-Centered Collaborative to redesign learning, high school students…
BlogWebinars
Leadership Forum: Igniting Limitless Potential for All Learners with Encinitas Union School District
Our Learner-Centered Leadership Forum series is an opportunity to gain timely, first-hand insights, examples, ideas, and lessons learned from learner-centered district leaders doing the work in the field with their teams, community, and learners. In this second event in the series in December 2023, Encinitas Superintendent Andrée Grey and Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services…
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What It Means to Center Learners By Design
What does learner-centered education have to do with design? A lot, actually. At the core, both design and learner-centered education are human-centered. Contrary to what one might think, they don’t require a blank canvas or a sleek modern building, but rather a story, assets to build upon, challenges to address, and a deep understanding…
Tools
When to Leverage AI
AI is here. With its arrival also comes a renewed tension often felt around technology: striking the balance of efficiency and valuable human interaction. This tool guides education practitioners and leaders to evaluate which tasks can best harness the power of AI, which are best left to be done by humans, and everything in…
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How You Can (Almost) Have It All With AI: Optimizing the Balance of AI and Human Interaction
Written in collaboration with Brittany Griffin, Director of Strategic Partnerships There’s ample buzz around AI’s potential in K-12 education. It ranges from excitement, to concerns around ethical dilemmas, to debates about the efficacy of learning in front of a screen, to fear that technology will replace educators. Some have called for an all-in adoption…