Envision Learning Partners supports schools, districts, and state departments of education nationwide to improve student outcomes. Grounded in the success of Envision Schools, we bring over 20 years of experience preparing diverse learners—many first-generation college students—for success in college, career, and life.
Envision Learning Partners supports schools, districts, and state departments of education nationwide to improve student outcomes. Grounded in the success of Envision Schools, we bring over 20 years of experience preparing diverse learners—many first-generation college students—for success in college, career, and life.
By redefining assessment through authentic, performance‑based measures, we unlock deeper learning and drive more equitable outcomes.
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Insights, partner highlights, guest perspectives, and resources to support your work
A newly published case study from the Center for Innovation in Education (C!E), featuring Envision Learning Partners in Appendix C, highlights Allen County, Kentucky’s multi-year effort to redesign assessment and accountability through Inclusive Design. The report, Better Together, shows how the district co-created their graduation competencies called “Profile of A Patriot” and embedded project-based learning and performance assessments to place students’ passions and real-world skills at the center of learning.
Envision Learning Partners has been proud to support Allen County in this work, and we’re excited to share C!E’s new case study. We’ve partnered closely with C!E through the Assessment for Learning Project, working together to advance learner-centered assessment practices nationally.
A reflection on how the Linked Learning Conference renewed momentum for Envision’s college and career pathways, inspiring stronger partnerships and the return of Envision Academy’s job fair.
By Michael Viera, Envision Education’s College and Career Pathways Manager
Several years ago the city of Oakland came together to support college and career programming for high schoolers, by advancing and deepening career pathways in alignment with the Linked Learning Alliance standards and methodology. The Linked Learning Alliance hosts an annual conference where educators share best practices and takeaways from school sites around the state. Oakland schools always show out in big numbers at the conference, but this year it took place in downtown Oakland, so the presence was even greater.
I had been to the conference previously, but this time was different. Being my 3rd year at Envision in this role, I felt like I finally understood what it was all about. I had colleagues from Envision Learning Partners in attendance and collaborating with me. I got to connect with colleagues from other Oakland schools. I knew what to look for and who to listen to in order to improve our programming at Envision Academy and across the Envision network.
The conference was motivating, to say the least. It is a breath of fresh air being in rooms of educators who are excited and realistic about their work in schools, and who understand the skills students need to have success in their futures.
I came back from the conference and immediately organized Envision Academy’s first job fair since COVID. We had twelve community partners visit our campus to share information with students on internship opportunities, after school and summer programs, and community resources. Students seemed excited about these experiences that they can be a part of outside of their regular curriculum.
At the end of the event, two students stayed back and pulled me aside. I thought something bad had happened. Instead, one of them simply said, “Mr. Viera, we just wanted to thank you for putting together this event. It’s really inspiring to see all these opportunities we didn’t know about until now.”
After a couple of weeks of back and forth emails and phone calls with partners, planning meetings with administration, and quite literally running around setting up tables and chairs on the day of the event, those students made it all worth it. When students are able to take their learning outside of school walls and make connections with their community, they feel seen and they thrive.
Hear from Michael and ELP Assessment Design Partner, Josette Neal-De-Stanton on their takeaways from the Linked Learning Conference.
A reflection on how the Linked Learning Conference reinvigorated Envision’s college and career pathways work, leading to strengthened community partnerships and meaningful opportunities for students. Michael Viera shares how renewed insights and collaboration resulted in Envision Academy’s first post-COVID job fair—and the student impact that made it all worth it.
Envision Education is excited to share the culmination of its two-year research project, Pursuing Equity for Black & Latine Students with Learning Differences, which
documents and illustrates the systems, practices, cultures, and supports that are associated with the well being and success of Black and Latine students with learning differences – students with disabilities and multilingual students with disabilities.
In 2023, Envision Learning Partners (ELP) and Social Policy Research Associates (SPR) embarked on a research study to identify and learn from schools that demonstrated positive outcomes for Black and Latine students with learning differences (including students with disabilities and multilingual learners). After a review of data from secondary schools across the country, the study team identified two schools for a more in-depth study, which was conducted during the 2023–2024 school year.
The results of the research are shared through case studies of the two schools that were the focus of the research: 1) Crosstown High: Building a Culture of Inclusion; 2) Capital City: An Inclusive School Community Committed to Whole-Child Learning and Well Being; and 3) An Executive Summary/Synthesis of Findings.
In addition, we have authored four practice briefs based on the findings of the research that provide practical steps that schools can take to create more inclusive environments that support the success of Black and Latine students with learning differences.
This research was made possible through the generous support of New Profit, a venture philanthropic organization, and the Oak Foundation.
Envision Education is excited to share the culmination of its two-year research project, Pursuing Equity for Black & Latine Students with Learning Differences, which documents and illustrates the systems, practices, cultures, and supports that are associated with the well being and success of Black and Latine students with learning differences – students with disabilities and multilingual students with disabilities.
I began working at ELP in January 2018 as the Director of Research and Innovation. Since then, I’ve been working on the nationwide team providing direct service and technical consulting to client partners and creating assessment products, as well as directing ELP’s research projects.
I’m excited to share that in July 2025, I stepped into a new role: Senior Director of Assessment for Envision Education. This role encompasses responsibilities for the whole organization – Envision Schools and Envision Learning Partners. Envision Schools runs four charter schools in the Bay Area (in San Francisco, Oakland, and Hayward). My new responsibilities include overseeing the design and implementation of a comprehensive assessment system for the schools, ensuring the use of rigorous, standards-aligned assessment practices that demonstrate student achievement of core academic skills. At the same time, our system aims to provide regular opportunities for students to demonstrate ambitious learning outcomes aligned to Envision’s graduate profile competencies in real-world-relevant, meaningful, and culturally sustaining contexts. We seek to more systematically integrate authentic and high-quality project-based learning and student-led conferences at all grades 6-12, and portfolios + defenses at grades 8, 10, and 12. We want to develop our schools as models of a balanced and comprehensive assessment system that supports student achievement of both foundational academic skills and ambitious, authentic demonstrations of learning. This new assessment system is described more fully in our new Envision Way documents.
In my new role, I also continue to work with my ELP colleagues, supporting the learning and effectiveness of our national team of Assessment Design Partners, and developing new services aligned to the Envision Way as we seek to meet the evolving needs of both external district partners and our own schools. Our long-term strategy is to strengthen our own schools so they are clear models of the quality assessment systems that we are also seeking to strengthen in partnership with districts. We call this the “flywheel” because of the reciprocal nature of our learning and development work as we pilot new practices, collect data, and evaluate their effectiveness in our schools and in partnership with external districts.
I continue to also be involved in exploring ways for Envision Education to gather evidence of its effectiveness through systematic collection of evidence in our own schools (in partnership with John Ericson, our Director of Data & Assessments), and by initiating research projects to collect evidence of the impact of ELP’s work with districts. I am also continuing to coordinate the research project “Pursuing Equity for Black & Latine Students with Learning Differences”. We wrapped up two years of school case study work in July, and are preparing to launch a two-year professional-development pilot and evaluation phase of the project with a large school district. More news to come!
What do you enjoy most about working for Envision?
It’s definitely always been the people. I truly enjoy working alongside colleagues with a similar commitment to our most marginalized students and who are striving so hard to create supportive, inclusive learning environments that lead to equitable learning outcomes. I am learning so much from my ADP colleagues as well as my Academic Programs Team colleagues. They are all so incisive and brilliant and I have so much to learn from them. I truly feel blessed and lucky to have them as colleagues!
I’m also proud to be working in an organization with a commitment to its pro-Black, anti-racist stance, engaging us all in developing a self-awareness of our individual and collective contributions to our cultural norms, and providing the space to engage in productive struggle to begin changing those norms.
Last, I love that Envision honors hard work while also honoring our need for joy, self-care, and rest! The yoga and art breaks, retreats, sound baths, line dancing, karaoke nights, breaking bread together, and other opportunities to take mind breaks are all helpful reminders that we are whole people who also need laughter, rest, and nourishment to thrive. My family always gets a kick out of hearing about the latest fun things I get to do with my work friends!
I began working at ELP in January 2018 as the Director of Research and Innovation. Since then, I’ve been working on the nationwide team providing direct service and technical consulting to client partners and creating assessment products, as well as directing ELP’s research projects.
Impact Academy alum, Kina Evans, shares how her time at Impact shaped her path from student to educator and now CEO. Walking the halls of Impact Academy, Kina learned not just academics, but how to find her voice, lead with confidence, and envision a future bigger than herself. After earning her master’s degree and teaching for six years, she founded Bully Talk Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to empowering youth and transforming school culture. In her ELP Guest Blog, Kina reflects on how Impact Academy’s lessons continue to guide her work as a leader, advocate, and change maker.
Walking through the halls of Impact Academy in Hayward, CA was where my journey truly began. As a student, I didn’t just learn academics—I learned how to find my voice, lead with confidence, and envision a future bigger than myself. Those experiences planted the seeds for everything that would come after graduation.
After Impact, I pursued higher education and proudly earned my master’s degree. One of my proudest moments came when I was invited to appear on The Jennifer Hudson Show, where I was able to share my story and the mission behind my work. It was a reminder that the impact of our voices can carry far beyond the classroom.
For six years, I poured my heart into teaching, working directly with students and families every day. Teaching was more than a job—it was a calling, and it gave me the foundation to see where my true purpose was leading me. Eventually, I made the decision to transition into substitute teaching so I could dedicate more of my time and energy to building Bully Talk Inc., the nonprofit I founded to empower
youth, transform school culture, and create safe spaces for students everywhere.
Looking back, I can see just how much Impact Academy changed my life. From the lessons I learned as a teenager to the resilience and drive I carry today, Impact has been a thread running through every step of my journey. It helped shape not just who I was then, but who I am now—a leader, an advocate, and someone committed to making a difference in the lives of others.
Walking through the halls of Impact Academy in Hayward, CA was where my journey truly began. As a student, I didn’t just learn academics—I learned how to find my voice, lead with confidence, and envision a future bigger than myself. Those experiences planted the seeds for everything that would come after graduation.
Earlier this spring, Assessment Design Partners Roilyn Graves and Soraya Ramos spent time in Roanoke County Public Schools in Virginia, collaborating with district and school leaders to refine and pilot a culminating performance assessment system aligned to the district’s Opportunity-Ready Skills.
During their visit, they had the opportunity to tour Glenvar High School—and were inspired by an incredible student-led initiative: the G-Bees. This club involves students in every aspect of beekeeping, from hive maintenance to harvesting honey, and even crafting a range of products like lip balm, soap, candles, hot honey, and more.
Through this hands-on work, students are not only gaining valuable entrepreneurial experience, but also raising funds for outdoor education and scholarships. It’s a powerful example of student-centered, purpose-driven learning at its best.
The G-Bees program is truly performance assessment in action—students applying their knowledge and skills in meaningful, real-world ways. While online sales aren’t available, we’re excited to share their story as a model of what authentic, engaged learning can look like.
Learn more about the program through this link.
Earlier this spring, Assessment Design Partners Roilyn Graves and Soraya Ramos spent time in Roanoke County Public Schools in Virginia, collaborating with district and school leaders to refine and pilot a culminating performance assessment system aligned to the district’s Opportunity-Ready Skills.
Challenge Success-Stanford Survey of School Experiences, our student experience survey with dozens of school teams each year. While the survey covers many topics within student well-being, engagement, and belonging, one of the key metrics we discuss with schools is stress. Across hundreds of thousands of responses and 10 years, assessments, tests, and grades are consistently some of the top sources of stress for middle and high school students.
Experiencing stress is not negative in and of itself. In fact, learning how to adapt to productive stressors such as a difficult subject or strenuous exercise is how we grow and develop. However, the stress students feel from assessments is too often an unhealthy form of stress. Traditional summative assessments, typically tests and quizzes, are clearly linked in students’ minds to grades, transcripts, and the post-secondary stakes associated with them. In this context, assessment can become a source of fear, anxiety, and dread. Some students respond to this stress by plowing hours of time studying and preparing at the expense of their sleep and other activities, while others might shut down, procrastinate, or resort to last-minute cramming. These strategies might help them score well, but don’t do much for long term learning.
Schools are in a challenging position because they are responsible for promoting student engagement, well-being, and belonging while also preparing them for post-secondary admissions and learning in the higher education system.
How can schools help students engage in rigorous, transferable learning in ways that help navigate this tension?
One promising path is to take a clear eyed look at assessment practices. When schools make time to consider why and how they assess, who their assessments are for, and ultimately what they want their assessments to look like, they often express a desire to make assessment to feel authentic and personally meaningful. They want assessments that inspire effort and growth, that demonstrate high levels of learning and a depth of understanding, and most of all that feel meaningful and important to their students.
In other words, they want more performance assessment.
Performance assessments are tasks where students apply their knowledge and skills to solve real problems, create authentic products, or demonstrate mastery in contexts that mirror professional or real-world situations. Think science experiments designed to solve local environmental problems, history projects creating museum exhibits, or math challenges proposing a redesign of a public park.
While talk of performance assessment often centers around all the ways it is a superior measure of complex, transferable skills, what I want to lift up here is how performance assessment done well is also a major lever for students’ overall well-being, engagement, and belonging.
One of the biggest stressors for students is the uncertainty surrounding traditional assessments. They worry about what will be on the test, whether they studied the right material, and how their performance will impact their grades. This anxiety is not just about the difficulty of the work—it’s about the unpredictability of the assessment itself.
Performance assessments help eliminate this unnecessary stress by making expectations clear. During high quality performance assessments, students receive rubrics, exemplars, checklists, and guides that outline exactly what success looks like. With excellence made clear, instead of wondering “Will this be on the test?” students can instead start asking “How can I make my work stronger?” There’s still pressure to perform, but it’s a productive pressure, the kind that pushes students to pursue their best rather than paralyzing them with fear.
Additionally, traditional assessments often take a “stop and measure” approach, where the assessment feels like a separate event from the learning. This disconnection positions assessment as an, often high-stakes, judgment rather than part of the learning process. With performance assessments, students have the opportunity to learn through the assessment itself. They reflect on their work, receive feedback, and have opportunities to improve as they work towards a final product. The standards for quality remain high, but the process of pursuing those standards nurtures effort through emphasis on quality, revision, and growth rather than relying on high stakes for high, stressful effort.
A common complaint from students is that schoolwork feels meaningless. They don’t see how what they’re doing in class connects to the world outside school or their future goals. In our Challenge Success Survey data, our most consistent finding is that students are mostly “doing school” when it comes to their engagement. They are working hard, paying attention, and turning in assignments, but they don’t have a strong sense of purpose, let alone interest in their work. Traditional assessments reinforce this disconnect, as they often emphasize memorization and rote recall rather than deep understanding and application.
Performance assessments change this dynamic by making learning more relevant. Instead of filling out study sheets to prepare for taking multiple-choice tests, students can be asked to tackle complex projects, solve real-world problems, and create authentic artifacts that mimic the kind of work professionals do. When students see that their work has real-world applications, they are more likely to find it meaningful and stay engaged.
Another key component of performance assessments is choice. Students have more agency in how they demonstrate their learning, whether that means choosing different materials, exploring unique lines of inquiry, or deciding how to present their findings. This autonomy increases motivation and makes learning more enjoyable. Plus, when students are able to tap into their strengths in their particular approach to the task, the assessment becomes more personally meaningful and enjoyable.
Belonging is a crucial element of a healthy school experience, and performance assessments can play a major role in building a strong classroom community and individual excellence.
Belonging starts with connection, and performance assessments create space for meaningful teacher-student interactions. Because these assessments often involve complex work and ongoing feedback, teachers have more opportunities to connect with students one-on-one. These conversations help build trust and rapport, reinforcing the idea that teachers are there to support learning, not just evaluate performance.
Additionally, performance assessments encourage peer collaboration. Unlike traditional tests, which often promote competition and isolation, performance-based tasks allow students to collaborate, give each other feedback, and share ideas. This fosters a sense of shared purpose and community, shifting the classroom culture from “every person for themselves” to “we’re in this together.” The result? A stronger sense of belonging and a more positive learning environment.
Belonging is also related to our sense of identity. As we seek to inspire all learners to high levels of personal excellence, performance assessments provide opportunities to embrace a broader vision of excellence. Traditional high-stakes tests tend to privilege certain test-taking skills and a narrow range of talent, while performance assessments allow multiple ways to demonstrate understanding, empowering students from different backgrounds or with different strengths to succeed. Additionally, when students are able to make individually meaningful choices in their work, they are able to bring more of their full selves to their learning and to the classroom community.. This not only enriches their personal experience, it creates greater opportunity for connection and relationship building with teachers and peers.
It’s also important for students to see examples of successful work from people with diverse backgrounds, especially in fields where certain groups have been historically underrepresented. For example, young women of color in science classes can and should see examples of women of color thriving in those fields through exemplars, stories, and real-world models. Seeing themselves reflected in the work they’re being asked to do can build both belonging and ambition.
Shifting toward more performance-based assessment is no small task. It requires thoughtful planning, sustained effort, and, often the guidance of experienced experts like the team at ELP. But the rewards make it worth the investment. Students’ well-being, engagement, and sense of belonging are deeply interconnected, shaping their entire experience of school. High-quality performance assessments are one of the most effective tools we have as educators to nurture these dimensions of student thriving. By integrating them into our practice, we can create learning environments that challenge students intellectually while supporting them emotionally, socially, and developmentally.
In my work as a researcher at Challenge Success, I have the opportunity to analyze and discuss data from the Challenge Success-Stanford Survey of School Experiences, our student experience survey with dozens of school teams each year. While the survey covers many topics within student well-being, engagement, and belonging, one of the key metrics we discuss with schools is stress. Across hundreds of thousands of responses and 10 years, assessments, tests, and grades are consistently some of the top sources of stress for middle and high school students.
Roanoke County Public Schools has been partnering with Envision Learning Partners for the past four years to develop and implement a comprehensive performance assessment system aligned with their Opportunity Ready Graduate Profile. This collaboration has fundamentally transformed how students demonstrate essential skills needed for future success in an increasingly complex world.
The journey began a decade ago when Roanoke County developed their C-Change Framework, which meticulously detailed the conditions needed for deeper learning to thrive within school communities. This framework addressed multiple dimensions, including school and classroom climate, professional growth, support services, and learning culture. It also emphasized finding balance between preparing students for standardized testing and developing the critical skills needed to navigate a rapidly changing world.
Working with diverse stakeholders, they articulated the Opportunity Ready Graduate Profile, which defines the skills and attributes necessary for students to successfully navigate evolving life and career pathways and seize opportunities that come their way. Despite this solid foundation, the district initially struggled to quantify these skills in ways that were both meaningful and conducive to growth.
This challenge led Roanoke County to form a strategic partnership with Envision Learning Partners. Over the past four years, they’ve evolved from conceptualizing what their assessment system could be to implementing a robust program across all 26 schools in the district. This systematic approach to performance assessment now forms a cornerstone of their educational philosophy.
At the heart of this work is the Opportunity Ready Portfolio Presentation, where students demonstrate mastery of three critical skills: Communication, Collaboration, and Critical Thinking. Using a structured process guided by clear rubrics and expectations, students select artifacts from their in-school and out-of-school learning experiences as evidence of their skill development.
Each student presentation is guided by the driving question: “How have I demonstrated and grown in my Opportunity Ready Skills as a Communicator, Collaborator, and Critical Thinker this school year, and how will I apply these Opportunity Ready skills to what’s next for me, including my future career?”
Trained panel members, including at least one member from the school’s design team, evaluate these presentations using standardized rubrics that assess specific performance outcomes for each skill area. The panels follow a structured protocol for scoring student work, ensuring consistency and fairness while providing constructive feedback.
“We learned that you don’t know what your students are capable of until you ask and give them a chance to respond,” shares one district leader. “We have been blown away by what our students are able to demonstrate through our performance assessment system.”
The impact of this work extends throughout the educational community:
For students, the process has revealed the power of reflection. Many students express surprise at how much they’ve grown until they take time to reflect on their learning journey. This metacognitive awareness strengthens their sense of personal growth and achievement.
Teachers, while initially cautious about the workload involved in preparing for conferences and defenses, become enthusiastic advocates after witnessing students’ presentations. As one administrator noted, “To a person, they are invigorated and excited to begin planning for the next year once they see it in action.”
For administrators and district leaders, the presentations have rekindled passion for educational transformation. “The impact the presentations have on the panel, parents, and staff has reignited our drive for this work,” reports a district representative.
The most compelling evidence comes from individual student experiences. One particularly moving example involved a student who had struggled significantly during middle school. During their senior defense, the student articulated their growth journey with such clarity and reflection that “there was not a dry eye in the room.” This transformative moment exemplifies how the process helps students recognize and celebrate their own development while preparing them for future challenges.
Through this ongoing partnership with Envision Learning Partners, Roanoke County Public Schools continues to refine and expand their performance assessment system. The district’s commitment to developing the whole student—not just academic knowledge but essential life skills—positions their graduates to thrive in whatever paths they choose after high school, whether in higher education, careers, or military service.
By creating authentic opportunities for students to demonstrate mastery of critical skills, reflect on their growth, and connect their learning to future aspirations, Roanoke County Public Schools is preparing students not just for tests, but for life beyond graduation in a rapidly changing world.
Roanoke County Public Schools has been partnering with Envision Learning Partners for the past four years to develop and implement a comprehensive performance assessment system aligned with their Opportunity Ready Graduate Profile. This collaboration has fundamentally transformed how students demonstrate essential skills needed for future success in an increasingly complex world.
Every year, 11th grade students at Envision Academy, our Oakland 6-12 grade school, complete a week-long internship as part of their Work-Based Learning experience, known as World of Work (“WoW“). The purpose is for students to gain work experience and develop career interests and ambitions through internships in professional settings. The internships are intended to expose students to the rigor and requirements of full-time jobs, while allowing them to explore passions outside of the regular school structure.
The Envision Learning Partners team used this as an opportunity to collaborate on a project that showcased the power of student voice with a group of three EA interns. What began as an initiative to capture the amazing work through Student Led Conferences and Portfolio Defenses quickly evolved into a dynamic social media campaign, all thanks to the creativity and expertise of our interns. This experience served as a powerful reminder of the impact student-driven initiatives have on everyone involved.
Quotes from the interns about their experience:
Resources used by the ELP team throughout the week:
Envision Academy’s World of Work Internship Exhibition:
Every year, 11th grade students at Envision Academy, our Oakland 6-12 grade school, complete a week-long internship as part of their Work-Based Learning experience, known as World of Work (“WoW“).
Envision Learning Partners has had the honor of working with Antelope Valley Union High School District since 2017 and we’re excited to share an update on how they are Integrating Portfolio Defenses into the Curriculum: All-in for Success in this Guest Blog written by Duane Robertson.
It is more critical than ever to equip students with a range of skills that will prepare them for college, careers, and life. One strategy that has been implemented in the Antelope Valley High School Districts (AVUHSD) Career Technical Education (CTE) pathways is the Portfolio Defenses. The portfolio defenses not only enhances communication but also fosters students confidence, critical thinking, and collaboration. Recognizing this importance, AVUHSD set a plan to integrate the portfolio defenses into the curriculum, making them an essential component of pathway students’ learning experiences. The implementation plan, the challenges faced, and the successes achieved by AVUHSD is outlined below.
Identifying the Need
After discussions with CTE administration and feedback from teachers, it became apparent that many students lacked opportunities to practice public speaking in structured, meaningful ways – especially after COVID 19. While presentations occasionally appeared in class, they were sporadic and often lacked uniform standards, rubrics or assessments. To address this gap, portfolio defenses were implemented to incorporate presentations as a formalized, skill-building component of CTE pathways.
Setting the Objectives
The primary goals for integrating defenses into the curriculum included:
Developing the Plan
The implementation plan was multi-faceted and involved the following steps:
Overcoming Challenges
While the initiative was ultimately successful, it came with its share of challenges:
Measuring Success
The impact of this initiative was evaluated through teacher and student reflections, and academic outcomes. Key findings included:
Expanding the Vision
Encouraged by the success of the program, plans are underway to further enhance the initiative by extending portfolio beyond CTE classes:
Conclusion
Integrating portfolio defenses into the curriculum has transformed the learning environment, empowering students with communication skills that extend far beyond the classroom. This initiative exemplifies how thoughtful planning, collaboration, and a commitment to students can create meaningful change in education. As students continue to excel in their portfolio defenses and critical thinking abilities, the benefits of this learning strategy reaffirm the importance of such initiatives in preparing our students for the future.
Duane Robertson is the Coordinator of CTE for the Antelope Valley Union High School District.
Mr. Robertson left his position as a multimedia and computer science instructor and Academy Coordinator of the Lancaster High School Engineering and Multimedia Academy, the first Linked Learning Silver-Certified academy. He previously taught business classes as an Adjunct Instructor, after a 15 year career as a project manager. He received his B.S. in Business with an emphasis in Management from Cal State Dominguez Hills, and his first Masters Degree in Education from Chapman University and a 2nd Masters in Administrative Leadership from Cal State Bakersfield.
Duane’s desire to reach students led him to his current role as CTE Coordinator for the Antelope Valley Union High School district. Under his leadership, the CTE classes and academies continue to align with the district’s vision of “every student who graduates will be prepared to pursue college and any career to which he or she aspires”.
Duane is also an alumni of ELP’s Deeper Learning Leadership Forum, Cohort 4.
Envision Learning Partners has had the honor of working with Antelope Valley Union High School District since 2017 and we’re excited to share an update on how they are Integrating Portfolio Defenses into the Curriculum: All-in for Success in this Guest Blog written by Duane Robertson.
ELP hopes to see you at the Deep Learning Conference in sunny San Diego this April 2025! Learn more about our Den Talk, Deep Dive, and Workshop opportunities!
When Envision CEO Jillian Juman and Chief Program Officer Justin Wells get on a plane together, they tend to have a deep and lively conversation about assessment. What makes for a comprehensive assessment system, one that truly prepares students to be global citizens that can drive systemic change, and what sustains such a system? Envision Education—known for portfolio-defense and other forms of high-quality performance assessment—has been innovating on assessment solutions for over 20 years. Lately, our talks circle the reflection that our current system is incomplete and not meeting the challenges of the time. Listen in—and join in—as Jillian and Justin bring their ongoing conversation out of the jet stream and into the Deeper Learning Den (to the welcome of Deeper Leaners and to the relief of plane passengers).
This deep dive addresses the problematic relationship students and teachers often have with STEM education, rooted in unaddressed trauma. It focuses on how white supremacy culture shapes science and impacts individuals’ sense of belonging in STEM. Participants will explore ELP’s HQPA principles 3: Open to different learner approaches and 5: A learning experience in itself to design STEM assessments that promote healing. Through dialogue, journaling, and personal timelines, participants will examine STEM trauma and develop strategies to disrupt it in their lives and work. By the end, participants will have tools to address and prevent STEM trauma transference in their classrooms and assessments. The workshop is split into two sections: naming and releasing trauma, and designing with critical hope.
In today’s world, where misinformation spreads rapidly, it’s crucial to equip educators with the tools to create effective, reliable performance assessments.
This interactive session will explore the “what” and “why” of high-quality performance assessments, emphasizing the importance of authentic assessments that foster critical thinking. Participants will engage in a newsroom activity to examine the impact of misinformation on society by sharing current headlines circulating in our ecosystem and practice critical thinking to evaluate the legitimacy of information sources.
Participants will leave with actionable strategies to enhance their assessments, ensuring they not only measure student understanding but also prepare learners to navigate a complex information landscape effectively.
ELP hopes to see you at the Deeper Learning Conference in sunny San Diego this April 2025! Learn more about our Den Talk, Deep Dive, and Workshop opportunities!
In this special Guest Blog Video Interview, Assessment Design Partner, Josette Neal-De-Stanton, interviews her very own brother, Rene Neal-De-Stanton.
Rene is currently a science teacher byway of nursing school with a background in entertainment and dance.
They discuss the importance of project-based learning in science and dive into the importance of representation and equity in the classroom.
In this special Guest Blog Video Interview, Assessment Design Partner, Josette Neal-De-Stanton, interviews her very own brother, Rene Neal-De-Stanton.
Six years into the Graduate Profile Journey, DJUSD is finally starting to make some systematic moves towards implementation. After exploration of different approaches to implementation, DJUSD has landed on a strategy that fits its context as a traditionally decentralized and high achieving district. The approach is to anchor each of the six graduate profile outcomes at strategic grade levels so that when students leave DJUSD they will have had robust experiences with all six during their career. The opportunity for providing these robust experiences is the power and potential of performance assessments.
There are two important actions taking place in the 2024-25 school year to advance this strategy. First, in partnership with Scaling Student Success and Envision Learning Partners, we are working with a teacher leadership team of sixth grade teachers to design a performance assessment focused on the Adaptability and Resilience Outcome of our Graduate Profile. This group is underway and is energized about the opportunities to develop adaptability and resilience in their students who are at a key transitional stage in their personal and academic lives. The second action item in progress comes from our Grade 9 Ethnic Studies Leadership Team. The DJUSD Ethnic Studies Course, which is in its second year of
implementation, culminates with a Youth Participatory Action Research Project (YPAR). The Ethnic Studies Leadership Team seized on the opportunity to create alignment with the Civic and Cultural Awareness Graduate Profile Outcome and their YPAR project. The group is in the final stages of developing a Civic and Cultural Awareness Rubric which will solidify the Civic and Cultural skills, knowledge, and dispositions to be taught and assessed through the YPAR project. This will help move the YPAR project from a traditional project to a high quality performance assessment.
Six years into the Graduate Profile Journey, DJUSD is finally starting to make some systematic moves towards implementation.
Earlier this year, Learning Policy Institute (LPI) released this resource that outlines 10 features from effectively redesigned high schools and highlights examples of schools that are putting the features into practice to create powerful learning opportunities for youth.
ELP was honored to be listed under the Additional Resources. If you are interested in a redesign or have any questions, contact the ELP team to schedule your free consultation.
Click here to download this resource.
Earlier this year, Learning Policy Institute (LPI) released this resource that outlines 10 features from effectively redesigned high schools and highlights examples of schools that are putting the features into practice to create powerful learning opportunities for youth.
In this special Guest Blog Video Interview, hear from Alcine Mumby and Laureen Adams, interviewed by Niloy Gangopadhyay and Courtney Katen.
This interview was sparked by Alcine’s recent travel to the Ghana ASCD Educators’ Summit 2024 earlier this year.
Learn about Alcine and Laureen’s history- all starting in Oakland at Envision Academy, what Laureen took away and still carries with her as leader of the Tutu Institute in Ghana, why she believes so deeply in performance assessment, and what’s up next for her work continuing to support educators and systems.
In this special Guest Blog Video Interview, hear from Alcine Mumby and Laureen Adams, interviewed by Niloy Gangopadhyay and Courtney Katen.
Bullitt County Public Schools is a public school district in Shepherdsville, KY that serves students from pre-K through 12th grade. The district is committed to providing a world-class education that prepares students for success beyond high school.
Envision Learning Partners has worked with Bullitt County Public Schools since 2018, partnering on their Graduate Profile development and performance assessment system. Bullitt County’s Superintendent, Dr. Jesse Bacon, and Assistant Superintendent, Dr. Adrienne Usher, are also both alumni of ELP’s Deeper Learning Leadership Forum.
In this Partner Profile, we hear from Assistant Superintendent, Adrienne Usher.
How are you advancing your Performance Assessment System? Is there one story you can share that illustrates how this work is benefitting your school, students or teachers?
Advancing the Performance Assessment System in Bullitt County Public Schools involves the creation of Graduate Profile Performance outcomes for students in Grades K-2, 3-5, and 9-12. A notable story comes from a graduate of the district who, after completing postsecondary education, entered the workforce. This individual reflected on a high school assessment experience involving a presentation to a city council to solve a community problem, which proved invaluable when preparing for an engineering position interview. College courses, according to this graduate, did not fully address aspects of the interview process, including content, dispositions, and competencies. This example highlights the effectiveness of the performance assessment system in preparing students not only for specific occupations but also for broader workforce preparation.
What have you learnt during this process?
The process of transforming assessment has revealed the need to rethink its purpose and identify who truly owns it—students. While teachers play a critical role in this process, it is students who take ownership of their learning. Empowering students to demonstrate their learning fosters motivation and a deeper understanding of its larger purpose.
What is the impact you are seeing on students and their work?
The implementation of performance assessments and student ownership of learning is having a significant positive impact on students and their work. Students are more motivated as they recognize the relevance of their learning beyond the classroom. This approach is also fostering necessary dispositions and competencies, aligned to our Graduate Profile, preparing students for future challenges in higher education, the workforce, and beyond. By developing the skills to articulate their knowledge and connect it to meaningful purposes, students are not only achieving academic success but also growing into lifelong learners equipped for a dynamic and evolving world.
What is the impact you are seeing on teachers and their practice?
The gradual shift embedding performance assessments is creating meaningful changes in teachers and their practice. Teachers are rethinking the purpose of assessment on a continuum of traditional, transitional, and transformational methods that emphasize student ownership of learning combining academics and our Graduate Profile competencies. Teachers are becoming facilitators of learning, guiding students to take responsibility for their growth and encouraging reflection and self-assessment. This approach is also enhancing teachers’ instructional practices, as they integrate more student-centered strategies and focus on developing dispositions and competencies alongside content knowledge. The process is reinvigorating teachers’ sense of purpose and enthusiasm for a new school experience.
What is the impact of this work ON YOU as a practitioner?
The impact of this work I have experienced, as a practitioner, is related to understanding a larger purpose for school and its connection to the community and society. School can be viewed as a place to gain knowledge and get a high school diploma and it ends there. However, connecting school and assessment that impacts students in more comprehensive ways is about life preparation. In reality, the school experience, which includes teaching, learning, and assessment, is a reflection of what the greater community (students, parents, community members, industry partners, etc.) values. If communities want graduates to be more prepared and successful in the workforce and as citizens, collaboration that provides opportunities for learning and assessment which connects academics to real world problem solving is a future-focused necessity.
Learn more about the great work being done in Bullitt County in this EdWeek article.
Bullitt County Public Schools is a public school district in Shepherdsville, KY that serves students from pre-K through 12th grade. The district is committed to providing a world-class education that prepares students for success beyond high school.
“My parents wanted to give me the values of education that they were unable to have when they were in school. They wanted us to be proud of who we are because we deserve to be the types of people that our kūpuna were. It is not our fault that our practices were interrupted but it is our kuleana to make sure that it does not happen again.” –Grade 12 HFCS student
“Less learning is shared on tests than Hōʻike which incorporates interviews, online research, and book research. If SAT was the only way to demonstrate my learning that would’ve been a big struggle and I would’ve just studied for the test and afterwards forgot.” –Grade 12 HFCS student
“We use our Hō`ike Capstone Projects to give back to our community….It is important to share the knowledge ʻĀnakala Bo gave to us because like he said, it is useless if no one uses it.” –Grade 8 HFCS student
Hawaiian-focused Charter Schools (HFCS) are a consortium of public charter schools that have been designing and implementing culturally sustaining curriculum, instruction, and assessment since the early 2000s. Currently, there are 17 HFCSs, serving over 4,000 students, more than 80 percent of whom are part Native Hawaiian. What distinguishes these schools from regular public schools is that they center ʻĀina-based Education. ʻĀina-based learning experiences allow learners to create authentic, reciprocal relationships with the land, people, and resources of a specific community which fosters the development of ʻOiwi (indigenous) Leadership skills. This becomes an integral part of the learner’s
identity and a catalyst for a personal commitment to the health and well-being of that community. It is situated in learning that honors the past, present and future in order to ensure the sustainability and productivity of all forms of life. More specifically, ʻāina-based education embodies the wisdom of the ʻōlelo noʻeau: ‘O ka hā o ka ʻāina, ke ola o ka poʻe (The health of the land is the health of the people).” (Hakipuʻu Academy, Ke Kula ʻo Samuel M. Kamakau, Mālama Honua, 2020)
The HFCS have also been engaged in developing and implementing school-specific Culturally Relevant Assessment systems that are grounded in the HFCS Cultural Competency Framework inclusive of cultural artifacts, academic work, and hōʻike (Hawaiian cultural performance assessments).
Assessments are also aligned to the commonly adopted HFCS Vision of the Graduate, represented below:
The HFCS have been supported financially by Kamehameha Schools Kaiāulu, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, and other philanthropic organizations focused on culturally sustaining education, and partners with Hawaiian culture and assessment experts, such as Chelsea Keehne from Kamehameha Schools, a private educational institution. Dr. Keehne and other school leaders such as Dr. Denise Espania, Dr. Meahilahila Kelling, Paul Kepka, Dr. Kanoe Ahuna, and Buffy Cushman-Patz have led and facilitated efforts across the schools to develop their own local authentic assessment systems that align with the HFCS Vision of the Graduate while also honoring and centering each school’s unique graduate learning outcomes. This work began in 2012 through the Culturally Relevant Assessment Project. Its website documents their collective work and includes a number of school examples.
Among the common tools that have been adopted to support CRA in each school are the HFCS Process Rubric; the Kupukupu Framework and Unit/Lesson Plan templates; the HFCS Assessment Profile; the Hōʻike Capstone Project Continuum; the Kupukupu External Review; and an HFCS Assessment Profile Instructional Guide. These resources can be found at the project website.
The quotes below from students illustrate the impacts that implementing the Hō`ike Capstone Projects have had on students and their families.
“The Hō`ike Capstone Project was an achievement not only for my school, but because it had to do with my Hawaiian culture. I learned so much about my culture that I didn’t know before. –Grade 8 HFCS student
“I feel proud… Me nā makakilo a me ku’u na’au pēlā nā kūpuna e ola ai (Singing: With observing eyes and my na’au, that is how kūpuna lived.)” – Kindergarten HFCS student
One performance assessment may not make a profound impact on students, but an accumulation of such assessments across the grades certainly should. This impact should be evident in the senior capstone hōʻike. As a network school educator stated, “Our seniors should be able to think about everything that happened, from kindergarten up to graduation, and be able to use all of their cultural experiences to build their hōʻike.”
To learn more about the HFCS and culturally relevant learning and assessment examples, below are a few video examples:
Beginning in 2022-23, Envision Learning Partners was privileged to learn from and collaborate with five Hawaiʻi public charter schools as they documented their school-specific capstone projects. The schools include four HFCS: Kamaile Academy, Ke Kula ʻo Samuel M. Kamakau Hawaiian Language Immersion School, Kanuikapono School, and Mālama Honua School; and one additional public charter school – SEEQS (School for Examining Essential Questions of Sustainability). ELP’s coaching team had previously supported Kamaile Academy, Mālama Honua School, and SEEQS in the mid 2010s by sharing Envision’s portfolio defense model. In this round of collaboration, Justin Wells, ELP’s former Executive Director (now Envision’s Chief Program Officer) provided support and feedback to school leaders as they shared their locally developed capstone assessments in order to more clearly communicate the components of their systems in a form that could be readily understood by an external audience. These final materials were submitted for review for entry into the Performance Assessment Resource Bank (PARB), received feedback from performance assessment experts, and after 1-2 rounds of revision, all were accepted as “Project-Certified” performance assessments to be shared broadly to an international audience. These are the first intentionally designed culturally relevant assessments that the PARB has included and as a result of this collaboration, ELP was able to modify and improve its High Quality Performance Assessment/PARB review instrument to recognize and honor the culturally relevant aspects of performance assessments that are designed to serve and meet the needs of diverse students.
Hawaiian-focused Charter Schools (HFCS) are a consortium of public charter schools that have been designing and implementing culturally sustaining curriculum, instruction, and assessment since the early 2000s.
When I was a kid, I was thrilled by timed multiplication tests. You know the ones. Fresh paper flipped with the blank side up, while you recite to yourself…
Then go! You flip your paper and, hardly registering the numbers, answer 60 multiplication problems in 60 seconds (or less) with the speed of Usain Bolt. And when the time is up, you pass the paper to a classmate, hopefully a friend, to grade your paper in purple gel pen and find out whether you are a math genius or…well…hopefully you have other talents.
I loved it. To me, math was speed and accuracy. As I went from carrying the one to the Pythagorean Theory, I learned procedures to solve problems with speed and accuracy, hardly registering the numbers. Until I couldn’t anymore.
Eventually, the concepts became too abstract and the procedures couldn’t carry me to any solution – let alone with accuracy and speed. Eventually, I figured that I reached my limit and stopped. As my identity as a ‘math person’ ended, so did aspirations to work in the sciences and anything STEM related. With one course, my plans for my life changed.
Later in life, math and I were reintroduced, this time as a teacher. And I saw that my journey directly conflicted with what we ask of our students: be lifelong learners, persevere, you can do anything you put your mind to. It was then that a thought occurred to me: we’ve been thinking about math all wrong.
So here’s a reframe. The purpose of math class is not to learn numbers and theorems. That’s a byproduct. Instead, the purpose is to learn how to think, problem solve, and investigate our world. Everyday phenomena – natural or socially constructed – are linked to mathematics. It adds data, color, insights, and questions. How we approach a new or difficult math problem informs how we approach challenges that we encounter in our lives. Sure, learning new strategies is an important part of what educators teach in math. But perhaps more powerful is the idea that you can find and use new strategies in creative ways. That we all think differently. That we can build on each others’ ideas. We can aim to support students as they build up their toolboxes and practice being problem-solvers, innovators, and world builders in a variety of circumstances.
We see this shift with the eight standards for mathematical practice, which describe the “processes and proficiencies” that learners will need to be effective in their math education. Simply applied to finding solutions to problems, our learners likely won’t internalize the power of these practices. However, applied as an approach to problem solving, students become empowered in their learning and move toward liberation. When students ask, “Why do we need to learn this math?” We can respond, “So you can change the world.”
This reframe requires safe learning spaces where our students can make mistakes, try new strategies, and explore their world. It requires projects, games, and exploration. Going into next school year, how can we move away from a focus on speed, accuracy, and learning math as a checkbox for the next level of math? How can we move toward liberation?
If we are truly pursuing justice – now and in the future – then we have to change the way we think about math class.
This Guest Blog was written by Envision Education’s Director of STEM, Kala Stepter. Connect with her on LinkedIn.
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When I was a kid, I was thrilled by timed multiplication tests. You know the ones. Fresh paper flipped with the blank side up, while you recite to yourself…
By Tara Curry-Jahn, Partner, Leadership+Design
A family vacation can be about prioritizing presence and connection, relaxing, doing activities and creating fun memories, while also enjoying good food and conversation. However, in some worlds it can also feel like “forced family time,” because being under the same roof or on a joint itinerary can feel like testing the limits of patience and politeness. While both of those options can be true at the same time and were for me earlier this month, it also reminded me that vacations are experiences ripe to practice experience design. Although, when I found myself on “the balcony” watching myself and my family on “the “dance floor” (a metaphor we use at Leadership+Design (L+D) to help leaders reflect on their role or behavior both while doing
something and observing yourself do that thing), it felt like we unintentionally missed a design opportunity, which as an attendee of many professional gatherings feels more common than not.
Think about the gatherings you attend each year. If you were to use the mental model that everything is designed, how many of those gatherings were designed well? How do you decide if it was designed well, what metrics would you use? If you had to guess, what and whom were they designed for? What were the outcomes the planners tried to achieve?
This year at gatherings, I felt deep connection and relationship, disconnection and minor loneliness, high expectations and missed opportunities and both joy and awe. As a human-centered designer (who has a disposition for wanting to connect with other people), it’s difficult for me to participate in things and not use the lens described above and have those questions rattling around in my head. Having both been on the planning and attending side of events, I often wonder if we spend enough time mapping out our intentions and “why” the gathering exists, as Priya Parker asked us to do in The Art of Gathering.
There seem to be three main design categories related to the level of human connection in programs or gatherings:
First, there is being together in person, in community, in authenticity, etc. If this is the goal, likely there has been attention paid to helping people be in proximity to one another and build relationships. It’s not always easy or cost effective, but it is a design tool you can use to achieve your outcomes. I will say though that you can have proximity, but not create a feeling of being together.
Second, there is designing to keep people separate, which is actually not a gathering, but could be a decision when you scope your desired outcomes. This may be a more efficient or cost effective strategy on the surface, but it depends on the type of experience you want to create and are honest about the costs of asking for engagement virtually or for people to work independently.
The third option is the combination of being together physically (or virtually in some instances) but feeling or functionally remaining separate (in practice or mindset).
This year, I have attended well designed experiences that create human connection, a design principle I was looking for. This contributed to my growing awareness of how we conceive and design experiences for humans to gather and whether the true outcome is bringing people together and creating connection, keeping them separate, or bringing them together and still missing the opportunity to help attendees feel belonging, inclusion and connection.
It comes back to the foundational reality in decision making, design matters. I believe that in “our day and age” human connection also matters. If you want human connection, you need to design gatherings with this in mind, including the invitation, the space, the roles, and the schedule so people can find the time to connect. This is true for vacations, conference, book clubs or neighborhood block parties. We need to know who we are designing for, build trust in our communities to ask if we are effective, and realize that while it’s not efficient, sometimes being together and connected will help us as humans and leaders.
What can we do differently?
Below are some ideas on how to build additional human connections through gathering and being together. In addition to my experience at convenings this spring, I have also found some great resources to push my thinking and help my personal “aha” feel more rooted and connected to a larger community of people having a similar “aha” about what will help us as educators, community members, parents, and leaders.
The other day, I discovered an interview by the New York Times with Robert Putnam, author of numerous books including a favorite of mine, Bowling Alone and most recently The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again. In the interview he shared how the structures or lack thereof that our culture employs deepen the feelings of loneliness and disconnection. The outcome of this disconnection impacts the level of separation we feel with “the other side” and he asserts that by involvement in community and civic groups we will learn about one another and build trust and connection. Even if we are opposites in our beliefs, if we are together and not separate, our future is more optimistic.
I recently dug into last year’s report by Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation 2023: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community which lays out the true implications on personal and societal health when we are more separate than together.
Putnam also references the level of politically-induced division and how it’s creating a lot of feelings on all sides. Decisions are made about who people are by what we think we know about them. In an effort to personally challenge my own mental models, leveraging tools and processes help.
Organizations like Starts With Us, which describes itself as “a movement to empower millions of Americans just like you — tired of our culture of contempt and energized to foster critical thinking and constructive communication across our lines of difference” can be great resources to locate and practice tools that help us build empathy, and as Putnam suggests, have conversations that build trust and human connection.
Leadership+Design, has taken on a similar cause by developing a human-centered curricular resource, Design For Election Season, to help school communities (both students and adults) practice the skills of being curious and developing empathy and understanding for someone who has a different lived experience or set of beliefs. The “container” for learning is political in nature (not partisan), but it’s rooted in the belief that as humans we need to spend time learning from and listening to one another. The resource shares tools and protocols to help structure that learning.
On recent drives with my 8 year old son, we listen to the book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt. The book focuses on the mental and physical health implications of technology use, specifically on young people. As I reflect on my own feelings about togetherness and separateness, and my time on the patio with my family, it relates to what we are willing to do about the changes we want.
A colleague at Leadership+Design reminded me that while I can only control myself (related to technology use), I can initiate a conversation about how I feel at that moment, share my reaction to being together, but separate. I could share my goals for our time together and enter into a conversion about what brought us all to the gathering. This is something in my control.
All of this to say, let’s do better. Assessment for Learning convening was a relatively small group of education leaders who prioritized designing for connection, but that was a choice we made. In contrast, it felt like my family vacation took a “wait and see” approach. We can also make choices starting with the patio conversations, the armrest airplane engagement and the commitment to looking across “the aisle” to build
relationships and trust. We can continue to be told by the media, the Surgeon General, and Putman how bad things are when we don’t have a strong social fabric to care about and not fear one another. However, they and many others continue to remind us, it’s up to us whether we plan our lives, relationships, gatherings and organizations to simply happen or whether we design them to be catalysts for change and improved connection.
A family vacation can be about prioritizing presence and connection, relaxing, doing activities and creating fun memories, while also enjoying good food and conversation.
ELP is excited to announce that we have published five new performance task resources in the Performance Assessment Resource Bank (PARB), an online resource that ELP has stewarded since 2018.
The five new resources are capstone portfolios, projects, and/or portfolio defenses from a consortium of schools in Hawai’i – the Hawaiian Focused Charter Schools (HCFS), which has been developing and implementing culturally sustaining curriculum, instruction, and assessment strategies to cultivate and preserve the language and culture of native Hawaiians. As part of its Culturally Relevant Assessment project, four HFCS schools and an additional charter school submitted capstone projects, ranging from Kindergarten through 12th grade capstones, for review and feedback from ELP during the 2022-23 academic year. Included among these five capstone projects is a Hawaiian-language kindergarten capstone project, the first non-English project to be included in the PARB. The revised projects were then submitted for a formal review process by performance assessment experts for inclusion in the Performance Assessment Resource Bank (PARB), using a hybrid review instrument, “ELP High Quality Performance Assessment Criteria + PARB/ILN Quality Criteria for Performance Assessments,” that combines ELP’s HQPA criteria and the PARB/ILN Quality Criteria developed by SCALE to vet submissions for the PARB.The instrument was adapted to include ʻāina (land)-based learning outcomes. All five of the submitted projects from the HFCS schools met project certification criteria after one or two cycles of review and feedback. ELP benefited from the experience of reviewing these submissions to deepen our understanding of culturally sustaining performance
assessment and broadening our practice to be more inclusive of the diverse learners that our nation’s schools serve. This project was completed with the funding and support of the Kamehameha Schools, a private educational institution in Hawaiʻi that aims to improve the capability and well-being of Native Hawaiians through education.
We encourage you to peruse these resources and reach out to learn more!
ELP is excited to announce that we have published five new performance task resources in the Performance Assessment Resource Bank (PARB), an online resource that ELP has stewarded since 2018.
This is an interactive hands-on workshop where participants will prototype a high quality performance assessment (HQPA) aligned to deeper learning competencies. Through learning stations, participants will explore the what and why of performance assessments and use quality criteria tools to analyze for rigor, learner agency, and authenticity. Participants will then prototype their ideal HQPA and brainstorm the potential implications on their school structures and pedagogies. The design experience will culminate with participants sharing their performance assessment tasks, identifying next first steps, and reflecting on their own learning and leadership.
Join us to…
This is an interactive hands-on workshop where participants will prototype a high quality performance assessment (HQPA) aligned to deeper learning competencies.
This workshop will dive deeply into the characteristics of High-Quality Performance Assessment. We know that one area where schools can improve students’ experiences is engaging them in rigorous, authentic assessments that provide students opportunities to lead their own learning experiences. Through performance assessments, students learn how to reflect, revise, and communicate in ways that strengthen teachers’ learning outcomes. Performance assessments also re-engage teachers in the craft of teaching, activating their own creativity and love of learning.
Participants will learn the characteristics of High-Quality Performance Assessments (HQPA). They will observe students engaged in a defense of learning and reflect on how the practice demonstrates the qualities of HQPA. We will also discuss examples of performance assessments and consider what teachers and leaders can do on Monday morning to move towards implementing performance assessments across schools and systems. Participants will leave the session understanding what is required to create outstanding performance assessments and excited to either start building new assessments or revising current assessments.
Learn more about the event here
This workshop will dive deeply into the characteristics of High-Quality Performance Assessment.
“Inclusive and Personalized School Environments Where Black and Latinx Students with Learning Differences Thrive”
Students with disabilities and multilingual learners are often subjected to exclusion from robust learning experiences and social disconnection. Participants will dive into the Effective Learning Environments for Learning Differences framework, which summarizes systems and supports implemented by four secondary schools that have a track record of success in supporting the thriving of Black and Latinx students with learning differences. The framework highlights inclusive, personalized, and competency-based practices that promote student belonging, engagement, and growth. Drawing on the framework school leaders and students from two schools will share practices, systems, and supports that support thriving among students with learning differences. Participants will use the framework to reflect on their own school learning environments for students with learning differences, challenges, and implications for their own work in schools serving students with learning differences.
The Effective Learning Environments for Learning Differences framework was developed with a central focus on learning and well-being outcomes for Black and LatinX students with learning differences (students with disabilities and multilingual learners), who represent some of the most marginalized and underserved groups in U.S. public schools. We seek to equip school leaders with greater understanding of the conditions under which these students can be successful and thrive.
The Panel will include two school leaders, two students/graduates of inclusive, competency-based schools, and three researchers responsible for documenting the characteristics of the schools’ inclusive learning environments in case studies completed in June 2024.
Learn more about the full event and register by clicking here.
Students with disabilities and multilingual learners are often subjected to exclusion from robust learning experiences and social disconnection.
As you now know, May 2024 is my final newsletter as Executive Director of Envision Learning Partners. My year with this tremendous team ends on June 30th, and OH what a wonderful year it has been! I take with me many lifelong memories and profound lessons. When I was interviewing for this role, I shared with the panel that one of my overarching motivations for joining the team at Envision was to reignite my optimism for public education. Too many experiences up to that point left me wondering whether systems were capable of making changes that truly met the needs of all students. And then I joined ELP! In the last year, I saw systems leaders engage in exemplary conversations about how to operationalize equity. I spoke to innovative educators working together to change assessment systems across an entire state. I heard students reflect on their learning while charting a course towards a successful future that was previously too intangible to embrace. Most important to me, I worked with a team here at ELP bursting with genius, creativity, and optimism. I am grateful to the ELP team for all they have done to shift schools in the direction of justice. And I am equally grateful to you, the ELP community, for embracing the optimism of change. I look forward to our paths crossing again.
Until next time,
Royce
As you now know, May 2024 is my final newsletter as Executive Director of Envision Learning Partners.
An exasperated mother once entered my Principal’s Office unannounced and asked for some time to discuss concerns about her daughter. After listening to a barrage of incidents about battles to get to the morning bus, hurled insults at the dinner table, and intense homework rebellion, I asked a question I love to ask every parent: “What are your hopes and dreams for your child?”.
Her answer stuck with me. Without hesitating, the parent shared, “I never want my daughter to experience failure.” No wonder she was exasperated. She might as well hope her daughter never experiences gravity.
Failure is a universal human experience. Failure helps us understand where our boundaries and limits are and defines a path for expanding them. Failure reminds us of our imperfections and inspires us to find colleagues with complementary skills and talents to our own. Failure helps us savor success without slipping into arrogance.
While an important experience, failure should not be defined as an antonym of success. A recent article in The Hechinger Report discusses how important it is that we embrace failure as an invaluable teaching opportunity. The authors share that developing deeper learning competencies requires serious, guided reflection by students about why they failed. Students can then develop a growth mindset that sees failure as opportunities to shine a light on personal development and, over time, celebrate growth. Failure, therefore, can be seen as the dawn of success, not the absence of it.
As a community that cherishes how deeper learning addresses students’ holistic needs, let us encourage our schools to develop safe opportunities for students to learn from their failures and, as a result, accelerate their personal development.
Take care,
Royce Conner, Executive Director
An exasperated mother once entered my Principal’s Office unannounced and asked for some time to discuss concerns about her daughter.
On May 15 and 16th, 2024 educators from across the country came together in Oakland, CA for a two-day Assessment for Learning (AFL) Deep Dive and focused on student demonstrations of learning.
Together, we continued to pursue AFL’s essential question: What can we learn together about how assessment for learning relates to learner belonging, equity and liberation? Specifically, we explored “How do we build aligned and coherent performance assessment systems that promote learner belonging, equity and liberation?”
The event included background knowledge of Oakland education with ELP Assessment Design Partner, Josette Neal-De-Stanton, and longtime Oakland education leader, Gary Yee, school site visits hosted by Envision Academy and ARISE High School where folks experienced student presentations of learning, new tools were presented, and community connections were strengthened.
The AFL Blog will soon have posts from Storytellers about their experience at the event; learn more as those come out and see previous blogs from other AFL events by clicking here.
On May 15 and 16th, 2024 educators from across the country came together in Oakland, CA for a two-day Assessment for Learning (AFL) Deep Dive and focused on student demonstrations of learning.
Dear ELP Community:
I am writing with news about a transition for Envision Learning Partners. This past year has been eventful for us (as I am sure it has been for you). We onboarded a new Executive Director and a new Assessment Design Partner. We completed strategic plan processes for both Envision Learning Partners and Envision Education org-wide. We are about to finish a 3-month study of our impact and ways to expand it. Now, as we wrap up the school year, we consider the future and make decisions about how to navigate education’s changing times and shifting landscapes.
Royce Conner, ELP’s Executive Director, will be transitioning from his role on June 30th. We are grateful to Royce for the important contributions he has made and projects he has led during his tenure, and we deeply support him as he moves into the next chapter of his distinguished career as an educator. Feel free to connect with Royce on LinkedIn.
Royce’s responsibilities will be distributed across Envision Education as part of a comprehensive org-wide strategy to deepen the integration between our schools (our local impact) and our consulting service (our nationwide impact). Out in the field, our remarkable team of coaches and operations professionals will continue to help school districts build high-quality performance assessment systems. In my role as Chief Program Officer, I am excited for the opportunity and the commitment to make the sum of “One Envision” to be greater than its already powerful parts.
As we head into the summer, when educators often feel a welcome shift in pace, I invite you to reach out to me with questions or wonders. ELP remains your steadfast partner in our movement to bring high-quality performance assessment to all students.
In community,
Justin Wells, Chief Program Officer
Transitions and Opportunities for Envision Learning Partners
Realizing the full potential of student-centered learning requires transformation of traditional approaches to assessment and accountability. To truly move to student-centered learning at scale, education systems must be redesigned.
Envision Learning Partners is honored to have co-authored a new paper alongside the Aurora Institute, the Center for Assessment, the Center for Innovation in Education, the Great Schools Partnership, and KnowledgeWorks.
Realizing the full potential of student-centered learning requires transformation of traditional approaches to assessment and accountability. To truly move to student-centered learning at scale, education systems must be redesigned.
SEEQS: the School for Examining Essential Questions of Sustainability is a public charter school in Honolulu, HI serving students in grades 6-8 that opened in 2013. SEEQS exists to foster the next generation of systems thinkers, environmental advocates, and community leaders in Hawaiʻi and beyond. SEEQS’s methodology is embedded in the structure and schedule of the school day itself; students begin every day with community building and play in their advisories or physical activity groups, followed by content courses, and ending with a two-hour project-based learning block called EQS, or Essential Questions of Sustainability. EQS is the cornerstone of the SEEQS model, as it allows students to engage in real-world learning that emphasizes the practical applications of the content courses as they relate to modern issues of sustainability that directly impact their communities. With all of this in mind, SEEQS’s Portrait of a Graduate is a student who continuously reflects on and utilizes the five SEEQS Sustainability Skills: Managing Effectively, Communicating Powerfully, Collaborating Productively, Reasoning Analytically, and Thinking Systemically. Using these Sustainability Skills, SEEQS Students, or SEEQers, can move on to become stewards of Planet Earth and healthy, effective citizens of the world.
This framework of interconnected skills that comprise a sustainability-focused mindset is what students are defending as they finish 8th grade. SEEQS worked with Envision Learning Partners early in its developing stages to build out a Portfolio Defense process that felt authentic to the school’s community-centered values and vision for a sustainable future. Students select five different projects from across their three years at SEEQS that exemplify their growth and understanding of the five Sustainability Skills in the Portfolio. After successfully completing the Portfolio, students choose two of the five skills to focus on for the Defense presentation to a panel of faculty, community guests, and a 7th grade peer.
Over time, SEEQS has refined its Portfolio Defense system to pull out the Portfolio as its own important piece of work that stands on its own before the Defense process. We learned from Envision the analogy of “the Portfolio as a resume and the Defense as an interview,” and we worked with students to really think about a resume that stands on its own.
Another crucial series of iterations in SEEQS’s Portfolio Defense system has been its multi-stage onboarding and calibration process. Faculty panelists begin preparing months in advance with a series of orientation sessions, delving into the rubric, collectively evaluating and discussing previous years’ portfolios, and coming to a consensus about the attributes of high-quality work that are most impactful in a successful Portfolio Defense. The school has also spent years building a database of willing and able external panelists (community partners, sustainability experts, educators from other schools, etc.) and by doing so, providing a form of professional development to others.
SEEQS’s next goal is to “indigenize” the Portfolio Defense process to be more expansive and inclusive of cultural values in Hawaiʻi. They plan to do this by working with a number of Hawaiian-focused charter schools that also implement culminating performance assessments.
Every year, 8th graders have meaningful and profound things to say about their learning experiences when given the opportunity to reflect on it. They read and hear amazing quotes from students during their defenses every year that they document and hold onto; this record includes statements like the one below from Ansel B., class of 2023:
“Before I came to SEEQS, I didn’t care as much, but over my time at SEEQS I’ve started to see that the world isn’t just this nebulous idea; it’s the people and places around us, and a major step to being a steward of planet Earth is to care about the world around you.”
The impact that Portfolio Defense has had on SEEQS students is immense. Many alumni and parents reflect both during and after the process about the value of the reflections and skills that the process aids in growing. One parent of an alumni, Lisa W., shared this testimony after seeing her son successfully present his portfolio:
“The middle school years are especially filled with doubt as they try to fit in with their peers and start to question who they are. Creating the space and requiring them to reflect on and recognize this growth in themselves at such a young age is such a huge building block in knowing, loving and appreciating who they are. The satisfaction of completing such a rigorous assignment, watching the doubts and nervousness transform into relief and celebration was so uplifting. Then seeing the subtle shift in their energy, a little less self doubt, that little more confidence – was priceless.”
Even with so many developments and changes to their process over the last ten years, SEEQS has bigger plans ahead. As they build out a high school, they plan to follow a student’s development over a longer period of time by repeating the Portfolio Defense process in grades 10 and 12. Beyond reflecting on just their growth in the Sustainability Skills in 8th grade, high school SEEQers will have to demonstrate proficiency in two of the five skills in 10th grade, then all five by the end of their SEEQS career. Through internships, community action projects, and other opportunities to become deeply involved in real-world issues, SEEQS students will have assembled an impressive collection of advocacy and research that will prepare them for whatever comes next.
Hear more about SEEQS, including a more about our prior work together, on this episode of the Learner-Centered Collaborative Podcast: Keeping Humanity at the Center of Assessment with Buffy Cushman-Patz, SEEQS Executive Director.
SEEQS worked with Envision Learning Partners early in its developing stages to build out a Portfolio Defense process that felt authentic to the school’s community-centered values and vision for a sustainable future.
Hi I’m Michael, an 11th grade student from Envision Academy, born and raised here in the Bay Area. Interests that I have are the inner workings of cars and what goes into building/modifying them. I’m very interested in the Mechanical Engineering world and would love to pursue a career in it. I look forward to spending the week with the ELP team and learning from them in order to grow as both a person and finding out what makes things work.
I chose to go to Envision Academy in Oakland because I heard great things about the school from my older brother who also attended for the full 4 years. So far I’ve had a great experience at Envision Academy with the school being very inclusive, I never feel out of place.
Here are a few things that I am doing at school: A bridge project in my Physics class where me and a group of students work together to design a bridge that can hold up at least one brick. A satirical piece of writing in my English class where I am pointing out a problem of my choice in today’s world/society while incorporating ideas like irony into the text.
Right now I am looking at colleges which can help the dream of me wanting to become a Mechanical Engineer with a friend of mine contributing to it as well. We have a full list of colleges with each being color coded to indicate how likely we are to be accepted, with green being we are sure to get in and red being a longshot. I am currently looking at Georgia Tech and Stanford University as my top two choices for Mechanical Engineering classes.
What I want to take from this experience of working with the ELP team is how organized and calculated I can get with all my work, but also researching so I can continue to investigate more opportunities that I and others can benefit from.
My week here has been amazing. Being able to meet all these amazing people that helped me settle in and feel welcome was exciting. I got to learn what goes on behind the scenes here and also have my share in the conversations not being left out of meetings and being asked for my inputs on a variety of subjects. A skill I improved at was my communication and planning skills. By being able to participate in the meetings I got better at talking with people that are older but also come from different backgrounds than me. Having control over my schedule also gave me a better understanding on how to handle my time in order to get the work I need done but also make time for other things, whether that be meetings or interviews by my fellow peers. I would recommend that other schools also start to implement an internship week of sorts because the opportunities and just overall knowledge that gain from a work environment is different to that of a school one. The amount of connections you can gain would be very helpful for students so that they get a sense of what their future can hold for them and it would also help them narrow what it is they actually want to do.
Cristian: “I chose this because David, my mentor, the senior directive of student services, made me interested in learning more about the school policies and how they work. I want to gain a different perspective of life, although there are many other opportunities, I want one that hears about students and how they feel when it comes to certain activities. I want to improve my communication skills, not just with students but with adults too. I want to become a structural engineer/architect. What interests me about Envision is its cultural theme and how inclusive they are with African American, hispanic, etc, and how they treat them and their months for example black history month, especially with how inclusive they can be. I’m a sports guy. I play a different variety of sports like baseball, soccer, football, etc. I played for the school soccer team this year. I was thinking of going to a college in Boston or Riverside, San Jose State university.”
Jesus: “I chose this internship because it was close to my home and the work seemed interesting to do throughout the week. I want to learn what are the steps that ELP does to work with the school and how the hiring process works here. I want to improve my communication skills. What interested me about Envision was how it was really close to my house and my siblings had already gone to Envision before. I want to pursue a career in real estate. I like to play soccer, baseball, and I’m interested in the process of making music. I also like to play different instruments like the guitar, accordion, and the drums. I was thinking of trying out Sonoma State, UC Santa Cruz, Cal State, and UC Davis.”
Melanie: “I wanted to go into a medical field assisting but things didn’t work out, but Mr.Viera introduced me to Ms.Kat and the idea interested me because she works with HR and the higher ups, staff, and teachers so I wanted to look more into what goes on behind the scenes at Envision to make things work at the school. I want to learn more about the environment and Ms.Kat’s routine, and what goes on behind the scenes because I didn’t think that all this went on to make the school work. I thought it was just the Principal and the staff at the school. I want to improve my communication skills and hands on work with computers like google docs and sheets. What interests me about Envision is that it’s a small community so you’re able to know almost everybody and with how it is an art and technology school I had an interest in going here when I was coming out of middle school. I’m very interested in the medical field, more specifically the dental industry. I like to explore, hang with my friends, and create memories while also having fun. Some colleges I have on my mind are UC Santa Cruz, UC Santa Barbara, and Cal Poly.”
Cristian: “I learned a lot of communication skills, being able to interview teachers, students, and other staff, all of these being people I do and don’t know broadened my interviewing skills. I got to create more and better bonds with all these people. Other Jobs I did were to attend a lot of meetings. The fun part about that was being able to go out, visiting the office, and getting a lot of new views/perspectives on different topics. My experience here was good. I got to meet new people and learn more about them, their job titles, and all the work they do to make everything happen. I think it’s a good idea to add an internship week for other schools because it’s a valuable learning experience, getting them slowly out of their comfort zone white also giving them knowledge on career paths that they themselves might want to pursue after the week is done.”
Jesus: “My week here went well and I definitely learned about the process of how teachers are hired and what they look for in teachers. A skill I improved on was being able to stay focused on a piece of work since I’m very easy in getting distracted so this internship bettered my focus. I would recommend this internship to other Envision students because it’s an easy job but you gain so much knowledge and you learn a lot from being here. I would recommend other schools to also start doing an internship style week because of the amount of opportunities you gain. For example, I was able to get a letter of recommendation from my mentor here. You also get to actually experience what the working world is like and it’ll give an early opportunity for students to learn about it.”
Melanie: “My week was very flexible and very calm, the first day I got an understanding of what the rest of my week was going to look like. After that I spent my time doing my work and overlooking my mentor to get a better understanding of what she does. I’ve learned that the process of having new people is not just accepting the job on the spot there is so much behind it. It can take weeks looking at them and accepting new staff and what they actually look at for potential staff. I improved my understanding and listening better with one on one talks with my mentor, asking her questions, and also just paying attention better. Just comprehension skills overall. I do recommend for other schools to start an internship like week because of the new environment you can get into and the vast majority of opportunities you can get by just meeting new people. A lot of students might not get the most out of just going to school so it would be very great to also learn about other experiences at other workplaces, while also giving students new jobs to look at that they might be interested in pursuing in their future.”
What I want to take from this experience of working with the ELP team is how organized and calculated I can get with all my work, but also researching so I can continue to investigate more opportunities that I and others can benefit from.
Vermont has been on an ambitious journey to implement student-centered, proficiency-based learning for over twenty years. That journey continues to evolve today, and this blog shares some of the key points along the way.
A publication by the Vermont Department of Education in 2003, “High Schools on the Move,” addressed “the critical issues facing Vermont high schools” and identified principles that remain at the heart of Vermont’s work today. These include:
(A Report to the Vermont Legislature on Career and Technical Education)
The task force recommended a focus on personalized learning environments that would enable students to take risks in a supportive setting and prepare them for life after graduation. The What and Why of Act 77 outlines additional milestones along Vermont’s path towards the Flexible Pathways Initiative, created by Act 77 of 2013 and found in statute under 16 V.S.A. § 941. This Act was “established to encourage and support the creativity of school districts as they develop and expand high-quality educational experiences that are an integral part of secondary education in the evolving 21st Century classroom; to promote opportunities for Vermont students to achieve postsecondary readiness through high-quality educational experiences that acknowledge individual goals, learning styles, and abilities; and to increase the rates of secondary school completion and postsecondary continuation in Vermont.”
The Flexible Pathways Initiative paved the way for the inclusion of proficiency-based learning in Vermont’s State Board of Education Rules, Series 2000, The Education Quality Standards, that went into effect in April 2014. These rules state:
In an effort to develop a shared vision for both proficiency-based learning and college and career readiness, in 2017 the VT Agency of Education began collaborating with the field to develop a statewide Portrait of a Graduate (PoG). Approximately sixty educators from across the state gathered to react to the initial draft. That version was influenced by a blog post, The Graduate Profile: A Focus on Outcomes, from Edutopia by Ken Kay that stated:
Over the next two years, more than three hundred students, parents, educators, and community members contributed to the final version of the Vermont PoG. The PoG provided guidance in the development of proficiency-based graduation requirements and articulates the vision for learners who are prepared for success in college, career, and life. Personalized Learning Plans, a requirement in Act 77 for students in grades seven through twelve, serve as a vehicle for documenting a learner’s progress towards the attributes of the PoG.
Fast forward to 2020. . . Vermont educators had been working hard to implement the expectations within the Education Quality Standards for local graduation requirements, however, a survey that year revealed a wide variation in requirements across the state. Depending upon the supervisory union or district a student attended, there was a range from six to one hundred thirty-five Proficiency-Based Graduation Requirements. This indicated that expectations for graduation, which are determined locally and approved by school boards, were being interpreted in a variety of ways. Educators moved forward with the development of PBGRs with good intentions, however, a collective understanding for these expectations had not been developed. Unintentionally, this range in PBGRS created inequitable expectations for learners across the state.
Concern about this lack of coherence and the impact on students, especially those who move frequently or attend Career Technical Education Centers from several different sending schools, gave “birth” to the Proficiency-Based Graduation Hierarchies. Content Specialists started by determining what it means to be literate in their content area and distilled the essential information into an overarching Proficiency-Based Graduation Requirement. Critical Proficiencies represent the enduring knowledge and skills within a content area and promote high expectations for all students. Priority Performance Indicators represent the skills and knowledge that will be taught and assessed. Finally, Proficiency Scales indicate the progression of learning over time. Once this information was drafted, the Hierarchies went through an internal review process using quality criteria documents as lenses for providing feedback. After an additional two rounds of feedback from the field, the Hierarchies were revised, finalized, and posted on the VT AOE website.
Since Vermont is a local control state, supervisory unions and districts are not required to adopt the PBGR Hierarchies. However, in the spirit of continuous improvement, educators are encouraged to adopt the PBGR Hierarchies, adapt them to fit their context, or use each Hierarchy to refine locally defined PBGRs.
As part of VT AOE’s continuous improvement process, members of the Student Pathways Division are working with educators in SU/SDs to support the processes of adapting, adopting, or refining local PBGRs through Participatory Action Research (PAR).
Numerous resources have been developed over time to support Vermont’s efforts to implement proficiency-based learning. The Vermont Framework for Proficiency: Resources to Support Implementation is composed of stackable documents that enable educators to access the information that is most relevant to the needs of their particular school system. It is organized from a backward-designed perspective so that the initial documents lay the foundation for subsequent work and inform decisions regarding next steps. The resources also demonstrate how different parts of the Framework for Proficiency connect and build upon one another. The hope is that by sharing these resources and Vermont’s journey, others can benefit and join us on the road to proficiency.
Guest Blog written by Pat Fitzsimmons
Vermont has been on an ambitious journey to implement student-centered, proficiency-based learning for over twenty years. That journey continues to evolve today, and this blog shares some of the key points along the way.
Resource Corner: Scaling Student Success Briefs & Policy White Paper
For educators and educational leaders seeking to bring your Graduate Profile to life, Scaling Student Success has released a series of Practice and Policy Briefs to support this journey! The Briefs tell the story of five different districts across California that are successfully integrating their Graduate Profiles (or Learner Portraits) into their curriculum, culture, and classrooms, and seeing a positive impact on student success. They’re a valuable learning resource for any school interested in redefining student success! Learn more and access the briefs here.
Scaling Student Success also recently authored a white paper focused on statewide policy recommendations that support many of the transformation systems we want to see in schools (graduate profiles, authentic assessments, etc.). ELP has offered to be listed as one of the organizations to officially “sign on” to the paper. Click here to read: A Student-Centered Approach to Education.
For educators and educational leaders seeking to bring your Graduate Profile to life, Scaling Student Success has released a series of Practice and Policy Briefs to support this journey! The Briefs tell the story of five different districts across California that are successfully integrating their Graduate Profiles (or Learner Portraits) into their curriculum, culture, and classrooms, and seeing a positive impact on student success. They’re a valuable learning resource for any school interested in redefining student success! Learn more and access the briefs here.
One of our long-time partners, SEEQS (the School for Examining Essential Questions of Sustainability) Public Charter School in Honolulu, HI has been implementing their Portfolio Defense system for over ten years now, and they have gone through many iterations refining the process for their school community and sustainability-focused values. Now in their 11th year, they have created The SEEQS Sharing Hub, their in-house professional development service, and have announced a three-part series that offers an in-depth look at all of the structures and steps that lead to a rigorous and meaningful culminating experience for their students. Join them for one, two, or all three of them:
Get an overview of the SEEQS Portfolio Defense process from start to finish. We’ll discuss school structures that make it possible, as well as what it looks like for students. This session would be great for anyone interested in what the SEEQS Portfolio Defense processes look like, whether you’re curious about exploring them for your school or classroom, or whether you’re already implementing them and want to hear details about how another school does it.
Learn about the nuts and bolts of what makes student portfolios and reflections, and how we assess them. Look at student work and practice giving feedback to students who are involved in the process. This session would be great for those who have already started a portfolio defense process at their school and want to learn about the SEEQS portfolio writing, revision, and assessment process (which we do as a separate part of the portfolio defense process).
Experience what our Portfolio Defenses look and feel like in real time. On the first day of this workshop, participants will learn about the entire process and watch an exemplary (live) Portfolio Defense presentation by a current 8th grader. On the second day, participants will observe multiple portfolio defense presentations, the scoring process, and have the opportunity to debrief and reflect with experienced practitioners. Participants will leave with a toolkit of usable materials and structures that SEEQS uses to implement its Portfolio Defense System.
Hear more about SEEQS, including a little bit about our prior work together, on this episode of the Learner-Centered Collaborative Podcast: Keeping Humanity at the Center of Assessment with Buffy Cushman-Patz.
One of our long-time partners, SEEQS (the School for Examining Essential Questions of Sustainability) Public Charter School in Honolulu, HI has been implementing their Portfolio Defense system for over ten years now, and they have gone through many iterations refining the process for their school community and sustainability-focused values. Now in their 11th year, they have created The SEEQS Sharing Hub, their in-house professional development service, and have announced a three-part series that offers an in-depth look at all of the structures and steps that lead to a rigorous and meaningful culminating experience for their students. Join them for one, two, or all three of them:
Happy New Year! As we dip our toes into the sea of 2024 and all that will come with it, we should take advantage of embracing the opportunities that come from the question “What will we do next?”.
As soon as I dipped my toes into this year, I came across an article in Ed Week titled “What 2024 Will Bring for K-12 Policy: 5 Issues to Watch.” To stretch the metaphor one final time, I feared the article would make me want to tear my feet from the water before sharks arrived. (Huge “Jaws” fan here)
Then I came to Issue #5, and the seas calmed.
Sitting at the end of an expansive policy list spanning everything from private school vouchers to AI came five words that sparked immense optimism in me: “Rethinking measures of student success.” The work that we have dedicated ourselves to is one of the country’s top policy priorities this year! Many of us have been advocating for more equitable approaches to assessing students and transforming schools for decades. For the first time in a long time, our national moment may have arrived.
With our work being recognized on a national level, I suggest it is time for us to consider what we will do next at the local level. For example, California districts should consider writing Graduate Profiles and performance assessments into your LCAP plans. If you need support or thought partnership around how to plan and implement this work, Envision Learning Partners stands ready to support you at whatever point you are in your journey.
Welcome to 2024, and we wish you a joyful year of celebrating the achievements of our schools and students!
Happy New Year! As we dip our toes into the sea of 2024 and all that will come with it, we should take advantage of embracing the opportunities that come from the question “What will we do next?”.
Over the last three decades, standards-based reforms have attempted to close opportunity gaps – mostly by tapping large scale assessment and accountability systems. But these assessment systems were not designed to provide real-time feedback to support teaching and learning at the classroom level. We also know that systemic racism is deeply ingrained in the history of assessment in our nation. But we can build and envision different ways of measuring learning, especially by centering students in these systems.
In this keynote, Alcine Mumby of Envision Learning Partners discussed how performance assessment can be a key equity strategy – giving students the opportunity to declare what they know, how they’ve learned it, and how they plan on using that knowledge to change the world.
In this keynote, Alcine Mumby of Envision Learning Partners discussed how performance assessment can be a key equity strategy – giving students the opportunity to declare what they know, how they’ve learned it, and how they plan on using that knowledge to change the world.
ELP was honored to partner with so many other incredible organizations to develop this resource.
Beyond the Horizon: Blazing a Trail Toward Learner-Centered School Quality Systems includes recommendations for education leaders at every level of the system, mapping the course for the future of assessment and accountability.
Created in collaboration with leaders in K-12 student-centered learning from across the country, these recommendations support a learner-centered accountability system that would:
ELP was honored to partner with so many other incredible organizations to develop this resource.
What’s your new role?
I am serving as the Chief Program Officer (CPO) of Envision, a new role for the organization. My job is to steward the overall academic model of Envision Education, which is enacted through our four charter schools in the San Francisco Bay Area and through our nationwide consulting arm, Envision Learning Partners (ELP).
What does Envision Education hope to achieve with this shift?
Before the CPO role was created, the bridge between ELP and our schools ran through the CEO, at the very top of the organization. The intent of my role is to lower the altitude of that bridge and add lanes. I am working to increase the bandwidth of learning between our schools and our nationwide coaching.
How does it support Envision E ducation’s mission and vision?
Since its founding, Envision has been dedicated to the idea that students deserve an education that attends not just to what they know, but also to what they can do and how deeply they can reflect. (See our principles of High-Quality Performance Assessment, or HQPA.) And we’ve always been committed to serving not only students in our own schools but also students everywhere, by sharing our ideas with public schools and advocating for shifts in policy. In that sense, Envision is proud to be living out the original purpose of charter schools: places to test ideas and, if they work, share them. The job of the CPO is to ensure that we live up to that ideal.
What’s your favorite part of your new role?
I am interacting daily with broader swath of Envisioners, including students, teachers, and school leaders. I directly support a team of directors of academics and student services who are brilliant and collaborative. Plus, I still get to hang with ELP!
What are you bringing from ELP that you’re using in your new role?
My decade at ELP taught me that change happens not through mandate but through persuasion and inspiration. That requires communication that is clear, tight, and uplifting. I try to apply those skills every day.
Where do you see yourself and/or your role in the next few years?
I have so much to learn if I am to succeed in my new role, but I remind myself that over my 20 years at Envision, I’ve been here before. I was there when I had to figure out project-based learning as a brand new teacher. I was there when I joined ELP and had to learn how to facilitate learning for educators (a tough crowd!). And it’s where I am and will be for the foreseeable future: climbing a learning curve that’s real steep, pausing now and then to enjoy the view.
Justin Wells, Chief Program Officer
Exposure and practice to the art of public speaking has the power to deepen and strengthen our connection to self, our education, and our community.
Growing up, I devoted myself to school because it was the one thing in my life whose outcome I knew I could control.
If I did my homework, I got good grades.
If I tested well, I got good grades.
If I met my deadlines, I got good grades.
If I completed my reading log (even if sometimes I skipped reading) I got good grades.
Good grades meant a great report card and that meant that I could eventually go do big things in the world.
My teachers had no complaints by the time parent teacher conferences came, except that they would love it if I “spoke up more and participated in group discussions”. And each time I would tell them that I would work on it, but truthfully, it was the #1 piece of feedback I received for years to come.
I’ll be honest in saying that for this introvert, it was difficult to participate in class. I was afraid of judgment, but more importantly, I needed time to process my thoughts and in some ways, protect my inner voice.
As a first generation, oldest daughter of an immigrant single mother, being the shy, quiet, & reserved Yvonne was simply more comfortable than being in the spotlight. Besides, it had always gotten me the results I “needed”: good grades. And that’s all I needed to help pave the way for my siblings and I to “be successful”.
There were moments I got glimpses of my power as a speaker as the MC for my elementary school graduation & cultural events, but the excitement of those moments were never fully integrated in the classroom.
When I started high school at Metropolitan Arts & Tech (one of the first Envision Education Bay Area schools) I had no idea that my engagement with my education would completely transform. Our curriculum focused a lot on internalizing our learnings through deep reflection, critical thinking, creativity, and talking about it. Every semester we hosted ‘exhibitions’ as a way to share our work with our peers, family, and friends. We were required to present a collection of our work to showcase that we had achieved the learning outcomes of projects across subjects, which made me incredibly uncomfortable and way too nervous. I remember thinking “Why are they making us do all of this extra stuff? Can I just take a test?”
We’d spend hours preparing our talking points, our presentation boards, and even our outfits. Each time, it got easier and I reconnected with my love for public speaking. I say reconnected because I already had it in me. I was just not always in environments that pushed me to step up. The Yvonne that I knew myself to be, could also now fully exist in the classroom. Public speaking opened the door for me to be more authentically myself. To lean into a perceived contradiction where I had a hard time participating in class discussions, but could completely dominate a speech because I had been granted the time to practice and cultivate my art.
And I didn’t do it alone. I had an entire community in my teachers and my classmates. We were all in it together and all bonded over having to deliver presentations so frequently. I grew closer to my classmates because we’d spend hours giving each other feedback or exchanging ideas for how we’d present. We could collectively share our nerves and also work through them to deliver.
No matter who we were or where we came from, when we showed up to the classroom we were given the platform to share our ideas & deeply engage in our education from the lens of our lived experiences.
Presenting in the classroom allowed me to understand myself at a much deeper level, feel empowered by my education, and learn to create community through the art of public speaking.
My hope is that we can all see the power of public speaking beyond simply “taking the stage”, but also recognize its power in helping us reconnect with our most authentic selves, our education, and the collective power of doing things in community with others.
Exposure and practice to the art of public speaking has the power to deepen and strengthen our connection to self, our education, and our community.
We recently read an article by NGLC’s dynamite Knowledge Officer, Kristen Vogt. The piece shares an observation that many of us have seen in the field: graduate profiles are often discussed as something meant for high school students, with little clear connection to elementary and middle schools. Kristen shares examples of schools across the country aligning instruction across K-12 to graduate profiles, including elementary and middle schools (you will be particularly impressed by Megan Margerum in North Dakota). We love the recognition that portraits of a graduate are, among other things, a journey map, and these journeys are most successful when they are seen not just as standalone endings, but part of a student’s experience in elementary and middle school as well.
Interested in launching or revising your Graduate Profile? We can help.
We recently read an article by NGLC’s dynamite Knowledge Officer, Kristen Vogt. The piece shares an observation that many of us have seen in the field: graduate profiles are often discussed as something meant for high school students, with little clear connection to elementary and middle schools. Kristen shares examples of schools across the country aligning instruction across K-12 to graduate profiles, including elementary and middle schools (you will be particularly impressed by Megan Margerum in North Dakota). We love the recognition that portraits of a graduate are, among other things, a journey map, and these journeys are most successful when they are seen not just as standalone endings, but part of a student’s experience in elementary and middle school as well.
Assessment Design Partner, Josette Neal-De-Stanton, was joined by previous ELPer, Abby Benedetto, in Beijing this past August to continue our collaboration with Moonshot Academy.
Learn more about ELP’s previous work with Moonshot in 2018 in their Partner Profile.
Josette chats with ELP colleague, Courtney Katen, about her experience in Beijing.
The first and only other time I have been to Beijing was in 2018. Things were different then – ELP was still celebrating the incredible win of joining forces with our brilliant team members from SCALE, the only notions of a world-wide pandemic were still relegated to blockbuster movies or our wildest imaginations, and Moonshot Academy had not yet welcomed its first class of students…. In fact, the school did not even have classrooms yet (they were still in initial stages of construction for their first location). It was an easy and exciting thing to say yes to such a novel opportunity to travel around the world to learn, witness, and share with educators in China. And the days that Ruth and I spent with the founding team at Moonshot were remarkable in so many ways that pushed my thinking about how learners can lead their own learning journey, and revealed my biases and held stereotypes about education in a country that is not mine. By the end of that trip, teachers had learned about Performance Assessment and Deeper Learning, and I left holding on to really lovely connections with many of the teachers, and excitement about the possibility of this visionary school and the humans who were building it.
Fast forward to last month when I got the call from ELP that we were headed back to Moonshot five years later, and there was a chance for me to participate in this trip. It is fairly well known that teachers often don’t know of their impact on students until many years later if and when a student comes back to articulate how they were changed because of a moment in your class. This feels doubly true as a consultant. After a single workshop or even multi-year engagement, I sometimes wonder what happened with a client or system after I left… did I build enough capacity with the team there? Was there a change in leadership that brought in a new vision? Did anything stick? So to walk through the doors of Moonshot Academy in 2023 and see evidence of performance assessment and deep project-based learning on the walls of the hallways and in the planning documents of teachers and in the systems of the school itself was so inspiring! Students in this innovative school in Beijing are doing portfolio defenses about their learning, and capstone projects that allow them to follow their interests, and are actively working on developing and practicing really important transferable skills such as empathy, self-direction, and social responsibility!
The team at Moonshot is really dedicated to reimagining education for young people in Beijing, and it was really inspiring to learn with and from the faculty and staff. They are actively building a Deeper Learning community in China, and might host the first Deeper Learning Conference over there soon! It was a joy to be able to co-facilitate with Josette and watch the room respond to her magic and genius. I am excited to think about where they might go next as a K-12 school, and the learning journey that their students will be able to experience.
– Abby Benedetto
The team at Moonshot is really dedicated to reimagining education for young people in Beijing, and it was really inspiring to learn with and from the faculty and staff. They are actively building a Deeper Learning community in China, and might host the first Deeper Learning Conference over there soon! It was a joy to be able to co-facilitate with Josette and watch the room respond to her magic and genius. I am excited to think about where they might go next as a K-12 school, and the learning journey that their students will be able to experience.
This past school year (2022-2023), Milpitas Unified School District, in partnership with Envision Learning Partners (ELP), brought together its two middle schools to develop common, skills-based rubrics to guide the development and implementation of deeper learning assessments. Employing common rubrics fundamentally changes the student learning experience by elevating the level of assessment and instruction that must occur prior to the assessment. Through deeper learning assessments and common rubrics, we know we can close the opportunity gap as it will force instructional moves that evoke deeper learning to meet the needs of all students.
The goal with these assessments is to increase student engagement through relevance and to provide multiple modalities to demonstrate mastery. Traditional assessments are often not culturally responsive and then our historically marginalized students are further marginalized when placed in remedial classes based on these biased metrics. When we do this, students miss out on developing new skills, connecting knowledge to existing schema, analyzing and synthesizing their relevance, and incorporating them into their identity. Instead, Milpitas Unified is focusing on creating windows, mirrors, and doors for students to critically think about the world around them through implementation of deeper learning assessments.
This past year, through guided, collaborative learning from Envision Learning Partners, each middle schools’ core departments (ELA, math, science and social studies) developed skill-based rubrics in partnership with Envision Learning Partners. Collaboration was a key win for the district as teachers were energized by their learning. They engaged in deep conversations around culturally relevant instruction and grading for equity as a result of their shared understanding of deeper learning assessments and rubrics. Most importantly, teachers saw the value in collaborating with each other as they saw the strengths and knowledge they each brought to the work and how their thinking and pedagogy was being pushed and expanded.
The 2023-2024 school year will be implementation year 1 of deeper learning assessments and common rubrics. The partnership with ELP will continue to foster our teachers’ ability to align current assessments to High Quality Performance Assessment criteria, pilot the assessments, analyze student work and refine the rubrics through a calibration process. Through calibration we hope to unpack critical questions like:
We saw the profound impact HQPAs have on our students. Our science teams piloted a deeper learning assessment using a common rubric and found that students who were not always successful on traditional assessments, were able to thrive using this new assessment design. This speaks to the power of this work and the access deeper learning assessments and common rubrics provide to all students. Next year, we hope to share more learnings from our pilot and calibration efforts in partnership with ELP.
This past school year (2022-2023), Milpitas Unified School District, in partnership with Envision Learning Partners (ELP), brought together its two middle schools to develop common, skills-based rubrics to guide the development and implementation of deeper learning assessments.
have always been incredibly passionate about the work I do with students and families. I started my career as a Special Education Teacher in Philadelphia, Pa. At my core, I will always be a special educator. I transitioned into student services/ special education administrative work which allowed me to have a deeper understanding of the way systemic oppression impacts vulnerable populations. I learned how to center the needs of the community and work alongside those who are most impacted. While working in this role, I developed a passion for inclusive education – it can work when we work it (see article). This led me to another passion of mine – teaching. I work with the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University teaching aspiring general education teachers how to incorporate best practices into their teaching while challenging the narrative of what it means to educate students who learn differently. With my transition to ELP, I am hoping to bring a perspective that allows us to center the most vulnerable populations in the amazing work we do. I am hoping to uphold high expectations for all of the students we serve and, I am hoping that students who learn differently will see themselves reflected in the work we do with districts, organizations, and communities.
What are you hoping to learn while you’re at ELP?
I am hoping to learn how to design high quality performance assessments on a large scale while centering neurodivergent learners. I would like to support districts and school communities with inclusive education as it relates to high quality performance assessments and graduate portfolios. I am also hoping to learn more about research projects on a large scale and how to use that information to improve school outcomes.
What are you most excited about starting at ELP?
I am most excited about working with a team that centers human connection while making an impact on the world of education. I am looking forward to getting to know everyone on the team as well as getting to know our clients and their school communities.
Another project that I am incredibly excited to join is the work ELP is doing with the Oak Foundation. The case study aims to illustrate high-leverage school practices that support the well being and success of Black and LatinX students with learning differences. I am beyond honored to support this work.
What do you like to do when you’re not working?
Roilyn’s Bio:
Roilyn is a trailblazing advocate for inclusive education and has been in this work for the last 20 years. With an unwavering commitment to equality and empowerment, she has dedicated the past two decades to transforming the educational landscape for marginalized students.
Roilyn began her career as a special education teacher for the School District of Philadelphia. After teaching for 10 years, Roilyn transitioned into special education administration and served in schools on the east and west coast in similar capacities. Currently Roilyn works as an Assessment Design Partner and is a course lecturer in the graduate school of education at Stanford University. In her spare time she enjoys cuddles with her dog Sully, chatting with her nieces and nephew, and karaoke (mostly at home).
Learn more about Roilyn in her ELP blog post and/or connect with her on Twitter or LinkedIn.
I have always been incredibly passionate about the work I do with students and families. I started my career as a Special Education Teacher in Philadelphia, Pa. At my core, I will always be a special educator.
Hi! My name is Royce Conner, and I recently joined the team as ELP’s Executive Director. In many ways, I feel like I have returned home. While I am new to Envision, my education career began by learning about progressive education from leaders in the field such as Ted Sizer and the Coalition of Essential Schools. Since then I have put students at the center of each of my classrooms and schools. I am thrilled to be part of a team that cherishes the idea that students thrive when given authentic, challenging and rigorous work that is personally meaningful to them and their communities.
A bit more about me…
What experiences brought you to ELP?
A visiting professor from a teacher preparation program once visited my classroom. He observed students deeply engaged in projects that provided them various opportunities to use their knowledge and skills to answer challenging questions about the world and their places in it. Some students led Socratic seminars about the nature of goodness. Others wrote policy briefs for local legislators. A few wrote an original play to be performed along with local actors using interviews the students conducted with immigrants. When the professor left, he said, “This is the way school should be.”
I spent ten years learning the craft of teaching using projects and performance-based assessments. I became a lead teacher in my school, supporting new teachers as they designed projects and aligned performance assessments to local standards. My middle school students, the majority low-income students of color, would often return to my classroom as high school and college graduates sharing gratitude that the work we did in my classroom prepared them for what one student called “the world I almost missed out on.”
After my time in the classroom, I spent two years in the public policy arena, working on statewide and national education issues with Rhode Island Kids Count. I enjoyed policy, but I eventually felt the call to return to education. I moved to California to pursue a degree in educational leadership and policy. After that I spent two years consulting with various school districts, including Oakland USD. I then spent one year leading the recruitment team for San Francisco USD. Following SFUSD I entered the world of school leadership. I served as Head of School for three Bay Area charter schools. One of my schools scored a front page article in Education Week for its innovative blended learning design, and another connected me with Bob Lenz and PBLWorks for its dedication to project-based learning for our students in K-8.
Before joining ELP, my most recent role was as a Fellow with Foster America, a national nonprofit working to improve outcomes for foster youth and develop innovations for the child welfare system.
And this brings me to Envision. While my career has had many interesting turns, I am delighted that I find myself back in an organization that operates and promotes schools that are, like that professor once said, the way schools should be.
What are you hoping to learn while you’re at ELP?
I am going to learn a tremendous amount from our schools! I look forward to seeing how partners in rural, suburban and urban districts rally their school cultures around student-centered design and performance assessments. We know there is no such thing as “one size fits all,” so I cannot wait to learn about how our partners are implementing high-quality performance assessments, graduate profiles, and portfolio defense in their unique contexts.
What are you most excited about starting at ELP?
Truly, it’s the team. I have the great pleasure to work with expert educators, coaches, facilitators, designers, researchers and operations professionals. They are parents, siblings, authors, cooks, readers, adventurers, musicians and athletes. They appreciate a challenge and embrace the power of difficult conversations. As excited as I am to connect with schools, it is the team that brings me the most joy.
What do you like to do when you’re not working?
I would love to tell you that I dive deeply into great works of art and literature, but the truth is that I love my PlayStation and I play it like a teenager guzzling Mountain Dew. I am also a movie fan, especially horror movies. But I also love my outdoor time, especially hiking. In addition, I love to travel. So far I have traveled to 48 states (I’m looking at you, Mississippi and Hawaii!).
Anything else to add?
My favorite quote is “Don’t dream it—be it.” Extra points if you can name the source.
Royce’s Bio:
Royce joined Envision Learning Partners in 2023. A native of Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, he attended Brown University, where he was first introduced to progressive principles of education through Ted Sizer and the Coalition of Essential Schools. He spent 10 years teaching at Community Preparatory School in Providence, Rhode Island. He then worked on statewide and national education policy with Rhode Island Kids Count, where he was selected as an Emerging Leader by The Children’s Defense Fund. He moved to California in 2007 to attend Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education, where he earned a Master’s degree in Policy, Organization and Leadership Studies. He spent two years consulting with urban school districts and another year leading the recruitment team at San Francisco Unified School District. He then served as Head of School for three Bay Area charter schools. His most recent role was as a Fellow with Foster America, a national nonprofit working across the country to improve the child welfare system and increase opportunities for foster youth. Royce lives in Richmond, California with his husband. He is thrilled to be part of the team at Envision Learning Partners!
Connect with Royce on LinkedIn.
Hi! My name is Royce Conner, and I recently joined the team as ELP’s Executive Director. In many ways, I feel like I have returned home.
What did you most enjoy about working at ELP?
What I enjoyed most was the inspiration and hope that comes from working alongside people dedicated to changing not just the experience students have with assessment, but the role that assessment plays in adults’ understanding of what school is for. Working at ELP over the past 5 years showed me what humanizing this change process can look like, sound like, and feel like.
I have been especially inspired by how ELP moves in partnership with schools and districts:
What are your plans now?
I have joined ConnectED as the Director of Instructional Impact in Mathematics, where I will continue working in partnership with San Diego Unified, Colton Joint Unified, West Contra Costa Unified, and Oakland Unified. In my new role, I also look forward to future collaborations with my incredible colleagues (and friends for life) at ELP.
My new email address is: vdaro@connectednational.org.
What I enjoyed most was the inspiration and hope that comes from working alongside people dedicated to changing not just the experience students have with assessment, but the role that assessment plays in adults’ understanding of what school is for. Working at ELP over the past 5 years showed me what humanizing this change process can look like, sound like, and feel like.
ConnectED has worked to change public education and improve student outcomes for over 15 years. The organization was founded with the belief that every student deserves a great education – especially those furthest from opportunity. ConnectED works with school districts, colleges, and employers to create learning opportunities for students that help prepare them for success in college, career, and life. We broker partnerships that span K-12 schools, postsecondary education, and workforce to address systemic barriers that perpetuate educational inequalities.
To deliver on this promise ConnectED, in partnership with Envision Learning Partners, recognizes the very significant and real barrier that mathematics has traditionally played. Decades of research in a number of fields have consistently revealed that secondary mathematics, and in particular Algebra I, play a major gatekeeping role for post-secondary education and career opportunities. The transition from arithmetic to algebra involves a significant shift in reasoning and talking about equivalence, which is a fundamental concept in mathematics. The risks associated with underperformance in math are greatest for students who are historically underrepresented in postsecondary education such as students of color, youth from low-income households, and multilingual learners.
In response, ConnectED and ELP are working together to develop shared approaches, tools, and resources that support our partner districts to take their mathematics learning to the next level. Our approaches build student, teacher and leaders’ capacities with the Illustrative Mathematics curriculum to both strengthen the effectiveness of math instruction and improve student learning and engagement by making math more relevant for young people. Our work centers the use of embedded Mathematics Language Routines as drivers for building student-centered learning experiences, and as research-based strategies to simultaneously support mathematics and language learning for multilingual learners.
Specific Regional Solution
For the past 5 years ConnectED and ELP have been working closely with the San Diego Enhanced Mathematics Initiative. In this collaboration we have supported the district to build a coherent instructional system to support a new approach to mathematics; to pilot a new curriculum; to develop supplemental materials and projects; to support teachers and school sites; and to work closely with district leadership to develop and monitor implementation plans. The team in San Diego has developed a strong vision for modernizing mathematics for all. This work has predominantly been serving middle schools, with a growing number of piloting elementary schools and a few piloting high schools.
For the past 3 years ConnectED and ELP had also been supporting West Contra Costa Unified School District and Colton Joint Unified School District. Both districts are working to develop coherent instructional systems in mathematics through supporting middle schools to pilot and adopt high quality curriculum and cultivate aligned instructional approaches.
Video Club
Over the past 2 years, ConnectED and ELP have been piloting and researching the use of an approach to Professional Learning called Video Club. In Video Club, an Algebra 1 teacher, for example, brings a video clip from their classroom to share with other Algebra 1 teachers. Using ConnectED’s video analysis tagging tool, rewindED, teachers look for instances of high-leverage instructional moves and “tag” what they see in the video. The group of teachers then discusses what they observed in their colleagues’ classroom, what questions they have, and how they might apply any learning to their own classroom teaching. Through this process, teachers learn from one another and make shifts to their own instructional approaches in their classrooms.
Working closely with the Algebra 1 teachers in Oakland Unified, we have focused the Video Club on instructional moments where the class is engaged on 1 of the 8 embedded Math Language Routines within the Illustrative Mathematics curriculum. The Language Routines provide structured protocols to support students developing their mathematical understanding together with their use of language. These routines support students to make their thinking more visible and clear through both written and oral interactions, and by structuring opportunities for revision.
These projects are generously supported by The Gates Foundation and we look forward to being able to share our research findings from American Institutes for Research with you.
ConnectED has worked to change public education and improve student outcomes for over 15 years.
My career began volunteering at an elementary school in Washington, DC in 2001. As a staff member walked me to my assigned classroom, I noticed a room tucked away in the corner. There were only a few students in the space. Some students were wandering around, some were disengaged, some sleeping, and others were sitting at tables coloring or tracing the alphabet. There were multiple adults in the room, mostly talking and laughing but not really paying much attention to the students. Growing up, I attended the same school as my uncle, who had Down Syndrome. I recognized that room. I knew exactly who that room was for. It was the place where special education students were “contained”. That was the moment I decided to become a special education teacher. I’ve been committed to this work ever since.
Admittedly, we’ve learned a lot since 2001. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)1 held all schools and/or districts accountable for ensuring that students with disabilities received a Free and Appropriate Public Education (FAPE). Shortly thereafter, came the revival (originally introduced around 1994) of Inclusive Education. Educational researchers soon learned that students with disabilities had better academic outcomes in classrooms where they were included with non-disabled peers. The research also found that inclusion positively impacted all students in the classroom (National Center for Education Restructuring and Inclusion, 1995.) Based on this research and with the revision of IDEA 2004, schools began to adopt Inclusive Education as the pillar of serving all students in the educational environment.
The world of special education shifted. Students with disabilities were no longer excluded from the general education classroom and everyone felt as though true progress had been made. We lived in this fantasy for a while. Students with disabilities were no longer being served under the “separate but equal” approach. Everyone began to settle into the idea that including all students in the same classroom had less of a negative impact than was previously thought. Students without disabilities were still thriving (relatively speaking) and students with disabilities (and their families) were happy. As time progressed, challenges began to arise. Schools began to experience significant rates of disproportionality among certain racial and ethnic groups entering into Special Education. These same students were often being disciplined and/or suspended at a higher rate, placed in more restrictive learning environments, and were not meeting academic expectations. Schools began to wonder if Inclusive Education was the answer to serving all students. This is where educators began to ask questions:
Inclusive Education takes an immense amount of preparation and planning. It requires a team of educators who believe that all students can achieve, no excuses. It means that all systems are universally designed with the most vulnerable populations in mind. Inclusive Education means that everyone has the strategies, tools, and training necessary to deliver high quality instruction to all students. It means modeling structures during professional development, co-planning and co-teaching. It means using The UDL Guidelines to support curriculum design, unit, and lesson planning. Inclusive Education means every stakeholder has a voice that isn’t only heard but represented in the work. Most importantly, Inclusive Education means that all of our students are thriving and operating in their full genius.
Take a look at the data. Literally, pause and google “How effective is Inclusive Education?” or whatever variation of the phrase you’d like. In 30 seconds, you’ll find that Inclusive Education does work. There are some good examples of this AND that students with disabilities aren’t doing much better now than they were in 1994, or 2001, or even in 2023. Some educators like to attribute this to the pandemic but let’s be honest, the same issues were present before. We can no longer continue to ignore the fact that our infrastructure, our systems, and even our preparation programs were not designed to support students with disabilities or diverse learners. I know everyone is busy, I know everyone is exhausted. I know funding is an issue. I know COVID threw us all for a loop. I also know that not all of our students have what they need to be successful. In full transparency, I know since the inception of Inclusive Education, things actually haven’t gotten all that better, and so do you. With that being said, let me ask you some questions: What can we do to shift the data? What can we do to change the narrative? How can we center students with disabilities and diverse learning styles in the planning process, in our classrooms, in our staff development, and in our schools? What actionable steps have we taken since 1994?
No more excuses. Inclusive Education works when we work it. Even though our students are in Inclusive environments, the data says they are struggling academically, behaviorally, and emotionally. It’s time to shift.
Here is my CALL TO ACTION:
Let’s reconnect, re-engage, re-introduce, re-commit, and re-establish ourselves, our systems and all stakeholders. Our students deserve better. We can do better. Let’s just start, no more excuses.
Roilyn Graves is Envision Education’s Director of Special Education.
Note: All resources and research are linked.
My career began volunteering at an elementary school in Washington, DC in 2001. As a staff member walked me to my assigned classroom, I noticed a room tucked away in the corner.
This workshop will explore the often problematic relationship many students and educators have with STEM education emerging from traumatic experiences we simply never address. This workshop particularly focuses on the roots of STEM as it relates to white supremacy culture and STEM education, and how that bleeds into the way we see ourselves, or don’t, in in those fields. We will look at ELP’s HQPA principles (1: Eliciting evidence of learning that matters & 2: Tight on its criteria for success) as a means to address healing and thriving in the design of STEM assessments that matter. As 2 educators of color, we will create a learning environment that is safe especially for the most marginalized communities to have a voice, and use our expertise as STEM leaders to begin to change the narrative within our school structures. Participants will: have dialogue opportunities in pairs, and small groups, journaling time, creation of personal STEAM projects to help process their trauma, and leave with a plan created to address how the will disrupt STEM trauma in their lives/workplace.
This is an interactive hands-on workshop where participants will prototype a high quality performance assessment (HQPA) aligned to deeper learning competencies. Through learning stations, participants will explore the what and why of performance assessments and use quality criteria tools to analyze for rigor, learner agency, and authenticity. Then participants will prototype their ideal HQPA, and reflect on their own learning and leadership.
This learning experience is organized around the principle that learning happens when learners’ own ideas are an active focus of the sense-making process. This is true for students who are presented with problems in their math class and being challenged to make sense of the problem, rather than being told an algorithm. This is also true for educators who are being asked to structure learning environments in new ways. This session discusses how one district has redefined what math class is, and how that new definition is framing the ways that students, teachers, and administrators are engaging in learning, including professional learning.This example serves as a focal point for experiencing what a modernized math classroom looks like, sounds like, and feels like. The session begins with a series of questions that encourage participants to reflect on their experiences as mathematicians. Many educators have not experienced learning environments that promote deep learning, therefore, it is important to create safe spaces where participants honestly reflect on how this discrepancy may impact their professional stance. We will explore what matters most in mathematics classrooms and we model how to prioritize deep and robust mathematical understanding. Modern math classrooms seek to both heal the traumas incurred from experiencing systems — math education — designed to sort learners, and establish new routines and practices that center deep and diverse problem-solving. There are a multitude of ways that one could approach the task of healing through teaching and learning, for this session we look closely at mathematics learning environments that allow student ideas to fuel the teaching and learning. We will highlight the ways that this environment supports learners to make their thinking visible, how learners revise their thinking in an iterative sense-making process, and how students use formal and informal mathematical language to communicate their ideas.
Funders have felt that PBL + DL is not worth funding when trying to close achievement gaps for majority BIPOC learners. Others feel that BIPOC students MUST demonstrate that they have the basics they know (usually via standardized tests) before they engage in projects. What we have observed is that educators in the system need to know DL from the inside out. So how do we, as Black leaders, create the conditions for our educators (who are often not Black) to engage in deeper learning themselves? What does it mean to build or talk about a DL school system that dismantles racist + oppressive idealogy?
This workshop will explore the often problematic relationship many students and educators have with STEM education emerging from traumatic experiences we simply never address. This workshop particularly focuses on the roots of STEM as it relates to white supremacy culture and STEM education, and how that bleeds into the way we see ourselves, or don’t, in in those fields. We will look at ELP’s HQPA principles (1: Eliciting evidence of learning that matters & 2: Tight on its criteria for success) as a means to address healing and thriving in the design of STEM assessments that matter. As 2 educators of color, we will create a learning environment that is safe especially for the most marginalized communities to have a voice, and use our expertise as STEM leaders to begin to change the narrative within our school structures. Participants will: have dialogue opportunities in pairs, and small groups, journaling time, creation of personal STEAM projects to help process their trauma, and leave with a plan created to address how the will disrupt STEM trauma in their lives/workplace.
This learning experience is organized around the principle that learning happens when learners’ own ideas are an active focus of the sense-making process. This is true for students who are presented with problems in their math class and being challenged to make sense of the problem, rather than being told an algorithm. This is also true for educators who are being asked to structure learning environments in new ways. This session discusses how one district has redefined what math class is, and how that new definition is framing the ways that students, teachers, and administrators are engaging in learning, including professional learning.This example serves as a focal point for experiencing what a modernized math classroom looks like, sounds like, and feels like. The session begins with a series of questions that encourage participants to reflect on their experiences as mathematicians. Many educators have not experienced learning environments that promote deep learning, therefore, it is important to create safe spaces where participants honestly reflect on how this discrepancy may impact their professional stance. We will explore what matters most in mathematics classrooms and we model how to prioritize deep and robust mathematical understanding. Modern math classrooms seek to both heal the traumas incurred from experiencing systems — math education — designed to sort learners, and establish new routines and practices that center deep and diverse problem-solving. There are a multitude of ways that one could approach the task of healing through teaching and learning, for this session we look closely at mathematics learning environments that allow student ideas to fuel the teaching and learning. We will highlight the ways that this environment supports learners to make their thinking visible, how learners revise their thinking in an iterative sense-making process, and how students use formal and informal mathematical language to communicate their ideas.
We look forward to learning with you!
This workshop will explore the often problematic relationship many students and educators have with STEM education emerging from traumatic experiences we simply never address.
Designing a Common “Record of College Readiness Evidence” for Integrating Performance Assessment Evidence into College Applications: A Partnership of Reimagining College Access and Envision Learning Partners
The Reimagining College Access initiative is a national effort, led by the Learning Policy Institute and EducationCounsel, to advance the use of high-quality performance assessments completed by secondary students for higher education admissions, placement, and advising decisions. The ultimate goal driving this initiative is to increase college access to underrepresented students by expanding and diversifying the types of information taken into consideration in college admissions, while also reinforcing the efforts of high schools to provide meaningful and rigorous assessment experiences for students.
Over the last two years of the global COVID-19 pandemic, many higher education institutions discontinued their use of standardized college admission test scores (SAT/ACT) due to the logistical challenges of conducting secure testing and a growing awareness of the equity concerns associated with admissions criteria that largely depended on test scores and grades. California’s public universities, including the UC and Cal State systems, have completely ended the practice of including these test scores in their admissions formulae, and some private universities, including Harvard University, paused the use of these test scores in their admissions criteria for several years. This policy change has created an opportune opening for the consideration of other types of evidence, such as performance assessments and authentic demonstrations. However, the challenge of this opportunity is getting this evidence into a standard form that colleges will see as valid, trustworthy, a “value add” to the evidence they already solicit, and can be processed efficiently and equitably.
Over the last academic year (2021-22), ELP (represented by Justin Wells and Ruth Wei) has been working together with LPI (Dr. Monica Martinez and Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond) to tackle this challenge – to develop a common and easily interpreted “Record of College Readiness Evidence” that represents students’ authentic demonstrations of their learning and accomplishments in a standardized way that is simultaneously accessible and useful to college admissions reviewers and allows students to present evidence of their unique intellectual, personal, cultural experiences/contexts, learning dispositions, and college readiness skills.
To accomplish this purpose, ELP and LPI convened a nationally representative Advisory Panel that included higher education admissions representatives and college counseling / secondary school networks that engage students in authentic demonstrations of learning. Advisory Panel members provided input into a blueprint – a set of design specifications – to guide the development of a common “Record of College Readiness Evidence”, and provided feedback on initial drafts of the blueprint and the elements of evidence that would be solicited from student applicants. Simultaneously, ELP conducted a national scan of performance assessment by conducting a survey of school networks using performance assessments as part of their assessment systems to determine the most common learning outcomes and means of demonstrating those outcomes, with the goal of creating an inclusive menu of learning outcomes and genres/types of performance assessments for the “Record”.
In the next academic year (2022-23), ELP will again be partnering with LPI to create an online representation of the “Record of College Readiness Evidence”, with the goal of spurring interest and commitment from higher education institutions and secondary school networks to participate in a pilot of the Record in the 2023-24 admissions year. The ultimate goal is to create a common online platform that can be used by students to submit authentic evidence of their learning and accomplishments while also meeting the needs of college admissions reviewers to seamlessly integrate new evidence into their data and review systems, and use this evidence efficiently, systematically, and equitably. There is growing interest among higher education admissions leaders in learning more deeply about student capacities that are difficult to capture in existing application materials (e.g., Harvard University’s “Making Caring Common” project) – such as students’ intellectual, civic, and moral character, personal drive, specific cultural and personal contexts/experiences, resilience and adaptability in new situations, and innovative thinking. Reimagining College Access and ELP hope to make a convincing case that authentic demonstrations of learning and accomplishments, and students’ reflections on the significance of that evidence, are robust, direct sources of evidence of these hard-to-measure traits.
The Reimagining College Access initiative recently released a guidance document, authored by Aneesha Badrinarayan, aimed at colleges interested in integrating performance assessments into their college admission systems: Performance Assessment in College Admission: Designing an Effective and Equitable Process. Although the tool is designed for admission officers, it can also be used by K–12 educators to gain a better understanding of the considerations that colleges must take into account in the use of performance assessments in admissions. The tool defines performance assessment and then provides concrete guidance on how admission officers can incorporate information about students’ K–12 performance assessments into their application and review processes.
We encourage K-12 school networks interested in potentially partnering with LPI and ELP in a 2023-24 pilot of the online “Record of College Readiness Evidence” platform to reach out to us! Please contact Ruth Wei (ruth@envisionlearning.org) or Justin Wells (justin@envisionlearning.org) to learn more!
Designing a Common “Record of College Readiness Evidence” for Integrating Performance Assessment Evidence into College Applications: A Partnership of Reimagining College Access and Envision Learning Partners
The Reimagining College Access initiative recently released a guidance document, authored by Aneesha Badrinarayan, aimed at colleges interested in integrating performance assessments into their college admission systems: Performance Assessment in College Admission: Designing an Effective and Equitable Process.
Although the tool is designed for admission officers, it can also be used by K–12 educators to gain a better understanding of the considerations that colleges must take into account in the use of performance assessments in admissions. The tool defines performance assessment and then provides concrete guidance on how admission officers can incorporate information about students’ K–12 performance assessments into their application and review processes.
Click the image below to download this tool.
The Reimagining College Access initiative recently released a guidance document, authored by Aneesha Badrinarayan, aimed at colleges interested in integrating performance assessments into their college admission systems: Performance Assessment in College Admission: Designing an Effective and Equitable Process.
Envision Education has long been proud that we not only serve students directly through our Bay Area schools but also commit to serving public school students everywhere through our consulting division, Envision Learning Partners. Our understanding of our past and potential future is even clearer now, thanks to A Pragmatic Playbook for Impact: Direct, Widespread, and Systemic, which offers an illuminating framework for analyzing how mission-driven ed organizations work to spread the change they seek.
To help illustrate the framework, Bellwether Education Partners, in partnership with New Profit, conducted a case study on Envision Education, based on a series of interviews with longtime Envision teacher and now ELP leader, Justin Wells. For us at Envision, the case study was a chance not only to reflect but also to learn. We came out of the experience with a better sense of who we are and where we are headed as an organization, and we are grateful to Bellwether and New Profit for the opportunity.
On August 11th, Bellwether is hosting a webinar where you can hear ELP and other educational organizations discuss their various approaches to scaling impact.
Envision Education has long been proud that we not only serve students directly through our Bay Area schools but also commit to serving public school students everywhere through our consulting division, Envision Learning Partners.
Summer, while certainly not a vacation for most educators, can make possible more time for reflection and goal-setting. ELP is appreciative of two recent opportunities to reflect on the bigger picture of our work and to share those reflections with you.
Add to your podcast queue my recent discussion with Dr. Greg Goins on his excellent Reimagine Schools podcast. Mixing educational history and philosophy, Dr. Goins and I reflect on how performance assessment is situated within the larger movement known as deeper learning.
For the many of you actively working to broaden the adoption of good ideas, I recommend A Pragmatic Playbook for Impact, published by Bellwether Education Partners, which includes a case study on Envision Education and an upcoming August webinar that features ELP’s story. See below for more on this.
After another very challenging year for educators, we hope that summer has afforded you some time to look up to the horizons of your work. Please reach out to ELP for support as you consider your next move in the project of building a performance assessment system. Our talented team stands ready to help you train your teachers in HQPA, design a portfolio-defense system, or make your graduate profile a reality.
In community,
Justin Wells, ELP Executive Director
Summer, while certainly not a vacation for most educators, can make possible more time for reflection and goal-setting.
This resource comes from the 2022 Deeper Learning Conference and is a conversation about modernizing mathematics: perspectives from the classroom and beyond. This panel discussion explores the topic of mathematics teaching and learning in the current age and for the future. ELP Director of STEM Learning, Vinci Daro, is one of the four amazing panelists.
This panel discussion explores the topic of mathematics teaching and learning in the current age and for the future.
In schools all over the country, May is a month when many students share their learning—through project exhibitions, capstone presentations, defenses of learning, and other culminating experiences. Here’s to all the students and teachers out there, even in this difficult year, who are working to culminate learning in ways that are challenging, meaningful, and memorable. Learning is always a journey. It runs deeper when it is designed to feel like one.As you look to the 22–23 school year, please reach out to ELP for thought partnership and support. How will your students be sharing their learning in May of 2023? Now is the right time to ask. And summer is the best time to design those deep learning journeys for students.Speaking of memorable journeys, we’re in the midst of an important transition for Envision Education, ELP’s parent organization. After a remarkable tenure as our CEO for most of the past 10 years, Gia Truong is moving on. Many of you know Gia as a passionate leader for equity, deeper learning, and performance assessment. Her support for ELP’s mission has been unwavering, and her legacy includes theDeeper Learning Leadership Forum. Gia—from the entire ELP team, it’s been an honor and joy to travel with you.Going forward, we are excited to be partnering with our new Envision CEO Jillian Juman. Jillian introduces herself in this newsletter’s guest blog; read on to hear from her directly.In community,Justin Wells, ELP Executive Director
Part A: Doing Too Much: Disrupting the Transference of STEM Trauma
This workshop will explore the often problematic relationship many students and teachers have with STEM education emerging from traumatic experiences we simply never address. This workshop particularly focuses on the roots of science as it relates to white supremacy culture and science education, and how that bleeds into the way we see ourselves, or don’t, in science. We will look at ELP’s HQPA principles as a means to address healing and thriving in the design of STEM assessments that matter.
Part B: Don’t Do Too Much: Centering HQPA in STEM Assessments
This workshop will dive into the importance of incorporating culturally responsive practices and DEI authentically in order to thrive in your classrooms! Going beyond adding a trendy handshake or latest song into a presentation, we will be looking into how we use these definitions and ELP’s HQPA principles to create STEM assessments that are engaging to all demographics, particularly targeting your most disengaged students.
Join us for June’s ELP Lounge!
We’re excited to announce that in June, we’ll have incoming Envision Education CEO, Jillian Juman, as our ELP Lounge Special Guest!
Stop by to slow down. Connect, share, learn & heal. We can’t wait to see you!
Thursday, June 16th, 4:00-5:00pm PT (7:00-8:00pm ET)
Click here to grab your free ticket and let us know you’re coming!
The DLLF application deadline has been extended to May 31st!
The Deeper Learning Leadership Forum (DLLF) is a cohort-based leadership experience that aims to develop, strengthen, and support a group of educational leaders to work at the intersection of equity and design thinking. DLLF seeks to address issues of inequity in our school systems by bringing together leaders to define and unpack these challenges. On this journey, leaders will explore deeper learning practices; develop the skills to identify and disrupt oppressive ideologies, systems, and structures within education; and practice employing an equity-centered design thinking approach. Learn more about the program here.
In schools all over the country, May is a month when many students share their learning—through project exhibitions, capstone presentations, defenses of
From a professional standpoint, I was the Principal of the first International Baccalaureate French dual language public school in the country. I have seen how a graduate le arner profile empowers a community of diverse learners and how performance assessments make room for self-discovery. The work of Envision is aligned to my values as an educator and leader.
To be deeply understood and valued for who we really are is a basic human need. It is also unmistakably a privilege. It is a privilege because not everyone can trust that their whole selves will be tolerated in all spaces. It is a cultural loss. The impact is a ripple effect; we stop bringing the best of ourselves into spaces where difference is not well received. It is a missed opportunity to learn from one another and to consider the solutions created from divergent ways of thinking.
Growing up, I watched my black father from the south navigate different spaces. He fought his way through college with no plan and no support. Fumbling through life, he hid who he was to survive. He hid his childhood, the poverty, the abuse, the foster care, and the pain that lingers when mental health goes untreated and leads to starvation and death. He was a brilliant man and I am not sure how many people knew that. He was a shadow.
I think a lot about what it means to be a black woman, an educator, a leader, a good sister and daughter. I think about what experiences our young people and families deserve to ensure that they are both seen and heard. I think about what it means to be a disrupter of cultural norms and practices that have historically oppressed groups of people who have not experienced being deeply understood and cared for.
As the incoming CEO of Envision Education, I have a deep sense of pride in the work of Envision Learning Partners (ELP) and the number of students who are impacted by thoughtful collaboration with smart educators across the country. ELP is about establishing learning opportunities for young people to be deeply understood and appreciated for how they learn and share with the world. The development and execution of performance assessments is equity based learning because it requires expansion of knowledge and exploration with people who carry different perspectives and experiences. It provides opportunities for young people to be seen, heard, and celebrated. It empowers independent thought and dismantles practice where authenticity is for some not all.
I believe in our collective work as educators and the power of unity. Together we can move students from the shadows and into the light where all students can and will thrive.
Get to know Jillian more in the June ELP Lounge, RSVP here.
I would say that the work of ELP, the nationwide commitment to lifting up our young people by embracing their strengths and identity as part of the work is a
By Trevor Gardner
The tension between urgency and patience is a constant for educators. On one end we hold high expectations, pushing students to do more than they think they are capable of; we demand their best. On the other end we nurture; we meet them where they are; we remain steadfastly compassionate and understanding.
Paulo Freire first helped me understand this tension when I read what I believe is his most essential texts for school educators: Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to those Who Dare to Teach. In his “Fourth Letter: On the indispensable qualities of progressive educators for their better performance,” he frames the tension in this way:
[The progressive educator] must exercise wisdom in experiencing the tension between patience and impatience. Neither patience nor impatience alone is what is called for. Patience alone may bring the educator to a position of resignation, or permissiveness; that denies the educator’s democratic dream. Unaccompanied patience may lead to immobility, to inactivity… Untempered impatience threatens the success of one’s practice, which becomes lost in the arrogance of judging oneself the owner of history. Patience alone consumes itself in mere prattle; impatience alone consumes itself in irresponsible activism. Virtue, then, does not lie in experience either without the other but, rather, in living the permanent tension between the two. The educator must live and work impatiently patiently, never surrendering entirely to either (pg. 211).
If you have spent any amount of time with young people in schools – but especially as a classroom teacher – you have felt the weight of this tension and you have struggled with the layers of complexity that pull you in either direction. And if you currently work with young people in schools, as we emerge slowly from the global pandemic that forced students to endure nearly a year and a half of online “school”, isolated in their homes, their bedrooms, and their computer screens; I imagine you are experiencing the antagonism of this polarity in a way that is heavier, more messy, and more emotionally fraught than ever before.
Ukiah Camping with Students
Moving into my 23rd year as an educator, both as a classroom teacher and a school leader, I find myself struggling more than ever, as I look out at the 28 students in my 11th grade US History class, or when I sit in coaching meetings with my incredible teachers, with the wisdom to locate the equilibrium in this tension.
Belief in the possibilities of education feels like it is at an all time low. Engagement in the classroom feels more challenging to sustain. Desire to struggle through difficult work seems more short-lived.
When attempting to capture the feeling of this dynamic, I have been using the analogy of an athlete whose muscles have atrophied due to being sidelined for a long time due to injury. From March 2020 until August 2021, students (at least those in Bay Area public schools) did not step foot into a school building. They did not engage in small group discussion with their classmates. They did not get up in front of the class to model how to work out a math problem. They did not rotate around the room on a gallery walk, writing their thoughts on small posters and reading the ideas of their peers. They did not rush out the door to find their best friends for lunch.
Of course, after such a hiatus, they are less good at doing school. In this sense, yes, they have atrophied, at least as students in the classroom. But they have also built different muscles. They have learned to navigate the world in a pandemic, a world more complex than we have known before. They have learned to be closer to their families, to care for younger siblings doing online schooling and for elders facing health conditions. They have built muscles of resilience, awareness, and empathy.
Ukiah Camping with Students
What I am realizing more and more is that, if we are exercising the wisdom of our experience, as Freire asks us to do, then we must find ways to turn this incredibly challenging moment into an opportunity. Our urgency must be marshaled not only in support of our students, but also in questioning, transforming, and reimagining how schools (or at least our own classrooms) function.
Do we want our students to build back muscles that help them comply and fit into a box, an institution, a system that can feel disconnected, uninspiring, and even harmful? Do we want them to be better at enduring boredom and passivity? What are the muscles we want to rebuild as we take this long journey together back to an education that truly serves our students and our communities?
What if we add a third point to Freire’s tension between patience and impatience and we call it HOPE – and we allow ourselves to pull equally in the direction of what else is possible? What if we add an element in our lesson plans labeled hope? What if we ask ourselves every day how we are cultivating hope – in our classrooms, in our discipline policies, in our communication with families and caregivers, and in our interactions with our colleagues? Hope that a different way is possible. Hope that what I learn today matters. Hope that we will learn through this difficult moment together.
I know it is not simple. My students will certainly tell you that there have been more than a few US History lessons that have bored them to sleepiness or that did not inspire them to suck out all the marrow of life and use their knowledge of history to transform the world. I have work to do. At times I have let my urgency run over students and lose sight of the myriad struggles they continue to cope with. At other times my patience has left me mired in acceptance of the status quo. I too have atrophied and have questioned my purpose as a teacher and school leader.
But what if I, what if WE, collectively, placed the cultivation of hope as our primary objective? What if we met the challenges with what the incredible Shawn Ginwright calls “radical imagination… the collective dreaming about how things should be.” Imagine what schools could become.
Trevor Gardner has been an educator in the Bay Area for 20 years. He has taught high school English and history and has worked at multiple levels of school leadership and is currently the Director of Teaching and Learning at ARISE High School in East Oakland. Trevor is the author of Discipline Over Punishment: Successes and Struggles with Restorative Justice in Schools and also an alumni of ELP’s Deeper Learning Leadership Forum. Connect with Trevor on Twitter and LinkedIn.
By Trevor Gardner
March 15th and 16th, 2022 was ELP’s first in-person Deeper Learning Leadership Forum (DLLF) Cohort 5 convening since Covid began and it was a success! These amazing folks have been working together virtually since June 2021 but it’s hard to believe based on the amazing community and connections they’ve built in that time. We can’t wait to continue this life-changing experience with them!
Below are some photos from our time together, beautifully captured by long-time ELP friend, Thai Chu of Alive by Shooting.
Learn more about the Deeper Learning Leadership Forum here.
March 15th and 16th, 2022 was ELP's first in-person Deeper Learning Leadership Forum (DLLF) Cohort 5 convening since Covid began and it was a success! These
Cautiously, things are opening up. ELP has a growing number of dates on the calendar for in-person service. We are about to attend our first conference since the pandemic began. We look forward to seeing many of you at Deeper Learning 2022 in San Diego next week. (Read below to learn about ELP’s offerings at the conference.)It’s a good moment to be reminded that performance assessment system building is both big-picture and fine-grained. It’s the highly visible work of establishing a district-wide graduate profile; it’s also the more subtle work of ensuring that science tasks are as standards aligned and culturally responsive as possible. Depending on where there is energy and opportunity, a learning community can toggle between levels and still be making progress.Whatever level of the system you are ready to work on, we’re working to ensure that relevant ELP support is right around the corner. If you don’t see it on the calendar, reach out to us anyway. It’s likely we can meet your needs on short notice.In community,
Back by popular demand! Teachers know that the best assessments not only capture our students’ brilliance but also enable learners to see their progress. In this three-part workshop, you will learn the principles of high-quality assessment and apply them to the design of a task that aligns to your desired outcomes and provides evidence of your students’ learning. By the end of the workshop you will have an assessment that is ready to implement in your classroom.This workshop series is facilitated by ELP Assessment Design Partner, Soraya Ramos and ELP Executive Director, Justin Wells.
Click here for more details and to get your team registered.
We’re excited to announce our first ever ELP Lounge Guest:Trevor Gardner! Trevor is an educator, consultant, author, and anELP Deeper Learning Leadership ForumAlumni.This special event will include time to connect with each other and feel free to come with wonderings about Trevor’s Guest Blog: Urgency, Patience, and the Cultivation of Hope. Plan to stop in and slow down to connect, share, learn, & heal. We can’t wait to see you.
Thursday, April 21st, 4:00-5:00pm PT (7:00-8:00pm ET)
Click here to grab your free ticket and let us know you’re coming!
We’re looking forward to seeing many of you virtually and in-person next week! Here is the official line up of ELP’s sessions:
Don’t Do Too Much with Josette Neal-De-Stanton: How to make culturally responsive practice and DEI authentically enhance your science assessments.
This workshop will dive into the importance of incorporating culturally responsive practice and DEI authentically into your classroom! Going beyond adding a trendy handshake or latest song into a presentation, we will be looking into how we use these definitions and principles to create science assessments that are engaging to all demographics, particularly targeting your most disengaged students. Far too often we overthink how to incorporate culture into science, but it is easier than you think, and doesn’t have to involve embarrassment as you fumble to remember the lyrics to a Top 20 song to make a “cultural connection.”
Designed to Thrive with Alcine Mumby & Abby Benedetto: Creating High Quality Performance Assessments That Enable Marginalized Learners to Thrive.
Participants will explore the different features of high-quality performance assessment (HQPA) and design a prototype of a performance assessment experience that provides evidence of student learning/thinking in essential competencies. The session concludes with participants iterating on that prototype after centering the lived experience of a marginalized student your system may serve and reflecting on the changes needed to ensure that ALL students thrive in their performance assessment system.
Making Good On Our Promises with Justin Wells & Soraya Ramos: Designing A High Quality Performance Assessment System.
This is an interactive, hands-on workshop where participants will prototype a high-quality performance assessment (HQPA) aligned to deeper learning competencies. Learn the principles of high-quality assessment and apply them to the design of a task that aligns to your desired outcomes and provides evidence of your students’ learning.
Virtual Den Talk with Vinci Daro: A conversation about modernizing mathematics: perspectives from the classroom and beyond.
Cautiously, things are opening up. ELP has a growing number of dates on the calendar for in-person service. We are about to attend our first conference since
Like many educators not currently teaching, I’ve had multiple opportunities through this pandemic to be back in the classroom, serving as a substitute teacher. It’s helped me see how stressful things have been for teachers, students, and school leaders.
In the midst of another chaotic year, the idea of performance assessment system building might seem luxurious. Most schools are struggling to staff campus tomorrow. Those big plans for rolling out the district’s new graduate profile or developing your school’s performance outcomes? Maybe next year.
Still, when I’ve been subbing, looking over the shoulders of students communicating with their teachers on Google Classroom, I am reminded that the essence of teaching and learning remains: Students learn content and skills by working through the challenges that their teachers assign and guide them through.
What’s the student work? What kind of assignments? Such questions are always relevant, and whenever we raise and discuss them in dialogue with colleagues, we are engaged in the work of performance assessment system building, even in a year like this. Every assignment that a teacher sets up to advance student learning is an opportunity to apply the principles of High Quality Performance Assessment (HQPA).
ELP’s newest virtual workshop, debuting in February, is called “Building a Great Performance Assessment.” Designed for classroom teachers, it’s a place to revise or create a standards-aligned task that is ready to embed in instruction. It’s hands-on, small-scale, and, we hope, won’t require a sub.
Justin Wells, ELP Executive Director
The best assessments not only capture our students’ brilliance but also enable them to see and feel their progress. In this three-part workshop, you will learn the principles of high-quality performance assessment (HQPA) and apply them to the design of a task that aligns to your outcomes and provides evidence of your students’ learning. You’ll come out of the workshop with an assessment that is ready to implement in your classroom.
This workshop series is facilitated by ELP Assessment Design Partner, Soraya Ramos and ELP Executive Director, Justin Wells.
Session #1: Wednesday, February 16th, 1:00pm-3:00pm PT (4:00-6:00pm ET)
Session #2: Wednesday, February 23rd, 1:00pm-3:00pm PT (4:00-6:00pm ET)
Session #3: Wednesday, March 2nd, 1:00pm-3:00pm PT (4:00-6:00pm ET)
The ELP Lounge will offer time to share stories, thought partnership with peers, or just the chance to throw up your hands and say, am I the only one experiencing this??? Plan to stop in and slow down to connect, share, learn, & heal. We can’t wait to see you.
Thursday, February 17th, 4:00-5:00pm PT (7:00-8:00pm ET)
Click here to grab your free ticket!
Share space with change-makers like you who are in search of a collective experience to highlight current triumphs and challenges, leverage student voice, and move from aspiration to action.
ELP will be facilitating sessions both, in-person and virtually! Keep an eye out for more details.
Happening March 29th-31st, 2022. Learn more about the event and register here.
Like many educators not currently teaching, I’ve had multiple opportunities through this pandemic to be back in the classroom, serving as a substitute
We are honored to introduce Michelle Molitor, Executive Director of The Equity Lab. Their equity work began as a response to the urgent need for culturally responsive systemic change for our most vulnerable students. Ms. Molitor has partnered with and led work alongside several national and regional education agencies and works directly with organizations across the education ecosystem, including the Department of Education, philanthropic groups, district offices, schools, and education-facing nonprofits. Michelle wrote this piece in partnership with Nicole Young.
The Kids Are Not Alright… Michelle Molitor and Nicole Young
Even the kids are feeling it.
You can see it in the weary, glazed-over looks of your friends’ children on Instagram. Or in the hilarious quotes parents post about homeschooling on Twitter. Children, too, are tired of sitting in the house each day looking at their siblings, learning from their parents and their disembodied electronic teachers, and being unable to see their friends.
A friend recently posted about her four-year-old’s utter meltdown when she bombed their house for ants. He was devastated that she’d destroyed the only friends who had come to visit in weeks.
We’ve talked a lot about mental health during this pandemic, but we are often talking about adults. Kids, we assume, are resilient and much more adaptable than ourselves; we’ve decided they will be just fine. But children are feeling the same immeasurable strain adults are.
We are communal mammals, and our brains are not designed for social isolation. It’s difficult to parse the cascading grief we’re feeling at the loss of loved ones, time with friends, activities we enjoy, or income — even as adults. How much more onerous must it be for children, who face the same realities with less insight into what is causing them?
Some of the most accessible and cost effective mental health options for children in America are delivered through our schools. And when schools shut down, a lifeline for children in desperate need of counseling and support all but collapses.
In the COVID-19 world, we need to think differently about how we provide for the whole child. As traditional schooling changes, it is imperative that we consider how to support children with trauma, kids whose homes may not be safe, and queer and trans kids navigating their identities in hostile environments.
When we assume children are fine, that they are in less need of mental or spiritual support than ourselves, we are tacitly asking them to sublimate a portion of who they are. In doing so, we limit their complexity, ignore their needs, and most alarmingly, ask them to flatten themselves so that we can believe they are all right.
Grounding in History
There is a violent legacy of assimilation in American schooling. Throughout our nation’s history, the most vulnerable students have been rounded up, tracked, beaten, and punished for being who they are.
In 1824, then Secretary of War John C. Calhoun created the Bureau of Indian Affairs, an office in the U.S. Department of the Interior that was tasked with “civilizing” and controlling Indigenous and Native American tribes across the country.
In addition to forced displacement and brutal subjugation, the Bureau of Indian Affairs also oversaw the creation of “Indian boarding schools.” These schools, which operated for more than 100 years (from 1860 to 1978), were specifically designed to force the assimilation of Indian children to white culture and the English language.
Indigenous children were taken from their homes, often without their parents’ consent, and sent to live in these boarding schools. Their hair was cut and their clothes were burned, they were beaten for using their native languages, they were often abused by their caretakers, they were forced to practice Christianity, and their cultural and familial ties were severed.
In 1892, Richard H. Pratt, the man who established the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, famously delivered his “Kill the Indian, and Save the Man” speech. Indians were, in Pratt’s opinion, only worth saving if they could be Americanized. Every part of their Indian identity and culture was savagery that must be stripped away. His was the prevailing thought driving American policy and law through the turn of the 20th century and until the Indian Child Welfare Act was passed into federal law in 1978.
Even as John Dewey’s research was leading a national discussion about educating the whole child, Indigenous and Native American children were enduring an educational system that viewed their cultural identity as a scourge to be erased.
Listening to Those Most Impacted
By 1978, generations of Indigenous children had been forcibly assimilated through schools. In their own chilling accounts, survivors of this trauma recount the voicelessness that permeated their experience; they were unable to speak their own native tongues and unable to voice dissent in the language that was forced upon them.
Are we listening to our students when they tell us what they need today? As children fight to stay engaged on laptops all day or dissolve into tears over dead ants, do we hear them?
A global pandemic, we’re learning, affects everyone — in ways large and small. And instead of insisting children put on a bright face in the midst of such global uncertainty, it is incumbent upon us as educators, parents, and community members to ask them what they need to feel supported.
For children who are struggling in homes where their identities are under attack, this is even more important. How do we make room in our thinking, and eventually in our policy making, to prioritize the voices of LGTBQ students, students facing abuse, or those struggling with trauma and depression?
COVID-19 has cracked wide open the deficiencies in our education system. But as we reconfigure the system to support adult needs, are we listening to young people?
Advocate for Radical Change
We see echoes of the Indian boarding schools’ philosophies in our classrooms and schools today. Students are asked to leave their identities at the school door. Black, Latinx, poor, and immigrant parents are seen as nuisances rather than co-designers in their children’s education.
However, students do not come to school as empty vessels waiting to be filled. Instead, they come full of incredible strengths and their own individual stories. To make radical change in this area would be to create an education system that encourages children to lean into their identities and genius, rather than stifling them for adult comfort.
We will only see a radical shift in American education when we begin to devalue compliance and assimilation. As much as children need structure, they also deserve an education that is compassionate and treats them as the whole people they are.
If we reimagine an educational system that serves the whole child, parents, families, students, and educators must be equal partners in defining its purpose and leading its design. For vulnerable students, those facing abuse or those whose families would punish them for being LGBTQ, a holistic model must address the realities they face when they get home.
Ultimately, radical change means investing in the whole child being able to heal and thrive.
Build and Iterate
Assimilation is a tool, wielded by a racist, homophobic, sexist, and capitalist society to quell difference. Its dominance in our education system means that we are stifling children and actively ignoring their needs as physical, mental, and spiritual beings. But if such an oppressive system is designed, it can be redesigned.
This requires recreating an education system with the needs of the most marginalized children at the center. This necessitates adults mobilizing in support of children — not on their behalf. And it demands a different orientation to the many facets of childhood in a rapidly changing world.
Want to Learn More?
Watch Unseen Tears: The Native American Boarding School Experience in Western New York
OR
Read Moving Equity Work Toward Action in the Age of Covid-19
We are honored to introduce Michelle Molitor, Executive Director of The Equity Lab.
A Parent’s Reflection on the Driver’s Test Analogy
Here at Envision, we frequently use the Driver’s License Test analogy to talk about Performance Assessment: it is a clear and familiar example of showing you are ready for a momentous next step by demonstrating what you are able to do (drive) with what you know (driving rules and regulations).
As a mom, I recently had a chance to consider this analogy from a distinct vantage point: the passenger seat. Helping my daughter learn to drive has given me the opportunity to expand on this beloved Envision metaphor with some key observations related to Performance Assessment.
First, it can be abjectly terrifying to drive with an “emerging” driver. In Lola’s first few forays on the road, I had several white-knuckle experiences that will be familiar to any parent of teens. I had multiple visions of catastrophe. I may have screamed a couple of times. And I realized it was the loss of control that really unsettled me. It is daunting to realize there is NO OTHER WAY for your child to learn how to drive except by LETTING GO OF CONTROL. It dawned on me that it must also be hard for teachers to let go of control in the classroom. Of course, classroom performance assessment does not pose the threat of bodily harm the way hurtling over the Bay Bridge on my daughter’s maiden voyage did. But I found it interesting that I struggled to give up control even though I knew she was ready for this important step. I struggled in safer situations too—complete with pressing on the non-existent, passenger side brake—and sometimes found it hard to articulate instructions. It made me curious about how teachers confront and manage this struggle.
Secondly, teacher-student relationships really do make a difference in student success. Lola took the test twice: she failed the first time. The first instructor was dour, unfriendly, and impatient. According to Lola, she gave the directions (turn left, turn right) with very little time between instruction and execution. She wasn’t receptive to clarifying questions. She did not smile. Two weeks later and the difference could not have been more stark: the second instructor was friendly and engaging, immediately introducing herself to both of us. After the successful test, Lola was effusive about how different this second experience was. This instructor took the time to give Lola a friendly overview of what the test would be like. When she noticed Lola was nervous, she offered suggestions for how to relax a little bit. For Lola, having the instructor see and acknowledge her anxiety helped enormously. Out on the road, when Lola made some small mistakes, the instructor said things like “this is a mistake I make sometimes too, so just keep in mind xyz…”. She also gave directions clearly, with time for Lola to execute on them, and was patient with questions. With that kind of assessor in the seat next to her, Lola was able to drive the way she knew how, and of course she passed.
In the days since Lola has been whizzing around the Bay Area on her own, I have thought often about this woman, her skill at her job, and the way she helped my daughter. It strikes me that performance assessment, at its best, is about not only challenging the learner but also creating conditions for her success. And I’m once again grateful for teachers who are practiced in the art of both supporting students and letting them truly show what they know and are capable of.
For more of Monica’s “parent perspective,” check out this 2018 post in EdWeek: The Gift of Portfolio Defense.
A Parent’s Reflection on the Driver’s Test Analogy
ELP and Alliance kicked off our partnership in the 2018-19 school year. In our first year we worked together to deeply engage around building a graduate profile. In 2019-20, we have been engaged with the Alliance team to develop a vertical articulation of the graduate profile with the intention of using that vertical articulation as a tool for a few things:
ELP Executive Director, Justin Wells, with the Alliance team.
ELP looks forward to our continued partnership with Alliance!
For more information about Alliance, click here to see their Partner Profile.
ELP and Alliance kicked off our partnership in the 2018-19 school year. In our first year we worked together to deeply engage around building a graduate profile.
Why did you apply for the Deeper Learning Leadership Forum (DLLF)?
[ELP’s Deeper Learning Coach] Alcine had worked with our district for a year, helping us develop our Graduate Profile. During one of our training sessions, she informed me of the DLLF geographic plan to include our area. That year I was also assuming a new role of Director of Pupil Personnel/Equity Officer and felt that the forum would greatly benefit my professional growth as well as the direction of my district.
What are the benefits of being a part of the DLLF?
Learning from a group of diverse educators has been the greatest reward. There are members from large and small districts who are willing to go on the deeper learning/equity journey that will take our school systems to the next level.
How has it helped you with your professional work?
The DLLF experience has provided me with a network of educators that will serve as a professional learning community for 18 months and beyond. The structured and unstructured collaboration has allowed me to introduce ideas in my district that “disrupt” the typical processes of education.
What is your individual project?
Introducing equity systems across my district. Building the concept of equity in our district is definitely in its infancy stages. To complete my project, I used Kotter’s 8 Stages of Change to introduce and implement equitable practices in my district.Robert is the Director of Pupil Personnel and Equity Officer for the Mason County School District in Kentucky.
Learn more about the Deeper Learning Leadership Forum experience by clicking here.
Why did you apply for the Deeper Learning Leadership Forum (DLLF)?
I have two daughters – ages 12 and 9. Both attend our neighborhood K-8 public school, an easy five-minute walk from our home. Like many working parents with school-age children, my spouse and I juggled our work and parenting responsibilities in pre-COVID times to make sure we spent quality time with our children, provide support with math homework and longer-term projects, and support their participation in enrichment and extracurricular activities. Sometimes math homework sessions ended in tearful or rage-filled meltdowns, and at other times, perfectly decent drafts of writing projects ended up as torn or crumpled pages thrown across the room. On the flip side, one of my daughters exuberantly and proudly shares her creations in a game simulation, and the other eagerly accepted swim lessons after years of rejecting them so she could keep up with her friends at pool parties. If any of this sounds familiar, you are in good company. Based on my experiences as a parent, educator, and researcher, I have come to understand a singular truth about learning – that ALL learning is social-emotional learning.
Recall a time when you struggled to learn something new at some point in your life. What emotions did you feel in your struggle? What factors helped you persist in the learning process? I recall shedding tears over long division in third grade, lacking confidence to contribute to class discussions, and anxiety over a lifetime of failed swim lessons. Sometimes, all I needed was a friend to show me how they worked a problem, an invitation from a teacher to share my ideas, or an opportunity to practice the skill again and again. Thinking about those times, it is clear to me that there is a social-emotional component to all aspects of learning. Over the last two decades, researchers have documented the critical role that social-emotional factors play in student outcomes such as grades, school persistence, and test scores (Durlak, et.al., 2011; Greenberg, et.al., 2003; Sklad, et.al., 2012; Taylor, et., al, 2017). Encouragingly, in recent years, there has also been a growing awareness of the importance and value of students’ well-being (the Stanford Prevention Research Center (2019) defines well-being as “a holistic synthesis of a person’s biological, psychological, and spiritual experiences, resulting from interplay between individuals and their social, economic, and physical environments that promotes living a fulfilling life.”) and “whole-child development” (see Turnaround for Children’s Building Blocks for Learning for another whole-child framework) as a valued goal in and of itself.
From 2016-19, I had the opportunity to direct a research study with a team at the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, & Equity (SCALE) and ELP called “Measures of Social-Emotional Learning,” a project supported by the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Stuart Foundation, to explore the possibility of developing credible, instructionally-embedded sources of evidence about students’ SEL development that can be used to inform students’ and teachers’ next steps. We wanted to go beyond traditional pupil survey instruments that, in many cases, do not provide timely and immediately actionable information about specific students (there are a couple exceptions: the Co-Pilot/Elevate program developed by PERTS (Project for Education Research that Scales) engages students in multiple short-cycle administrations of a brief survey that provides targeted, disaggregated information to teachers and can be used to inform immediate next steps; Project Co-Vitality allows for tracking individual pupil responses over time. Both instruments are proprietary and require registration with their programs), to explore authentic sources of evidence in contexts where students actually apply social-emotional practices in the course of engaging with academic content. This study was completed in partnership with teachers in student-centered learning contexts where students were engaged in project-based learning and exhibitions/defenses of learning. The Executive Summary provides an overview of our findings.
The findings from that study have strongly influenced my understanding of the importance of whole-child development, the integration of social-emotional learning in all aspects of learning in school, and the learning environments that are necessary for students to develop as self-directed learners with ownership of their learning and agency over their lives. Teachers, families, and other adults in the school community play a critical role in shaping the learning environments and conditions that nurture students’ SEL development. These learning environments shape whether students feel empowered to make choices in their learning and whether student voices are honored and heard. A culture of mutual respect, support, and safety among students is needed to empower student voice and choice. If students are to have ownership and agency in their learning, they need a low-stakes “trial and error” culture where they feel safe not getting things right on their first, second, or even third attempt, where academic and creative risk-taking is applauded, and grading policies value growth and effort over initial success. A culture that values growth also provides regular opportunities to receive constructive feedback from peers and teachers, and supports students to act on that feedback. Through the study, our team came to understand that all teachers, not just counselors and advisory teachers, need to be equipped to understand the social-emotional well-being of their students and the role that all teachers play in creating the learning environments that support students’ SEL.
During the research project, based on evidence of how well teacher-developed measures of SEL worked for students, the research team authored a framework that describes opportunities for developing and demonstrating social-emotional learning in the context of PBL and Exhibitions of Learning. The framework proposes a set of design principles for credible and valid measures of SEL:
One key learning from the study was that students need an authentic purpose and audience for engaging with measures of SEL – this is similar to the way authentic performance assessments can spark and sustain student motivation and more validly measure a complex skill. For example, when students reflect on their own and their peers’ “team mindset” skills in the context of completing a joint project, the feedback they give each other and their own reflections on how they contributed to the project are more meaningful, honest, and valid than completing survey items on their collaboration skills without a specific context. Another key learning is that measures that engage students in socially constructed or peer-mediated sense-making (e.g., those in which students have opportunities to share learning goals with a buddy, discuss evidence of their progress on those goals, set new goals, and hold each other accountable) were seen as the most authentic and valid SEL measures by students and teachers. This is the “social” in social-emotional learning. Most students learn and perform best when they have opportunities to engage with others (whether peers, teachers, or mentors) in authentic discussions, collaborative projects, or when receiving feedback and coaching. This allows them to process complex ideas through conversation, build and validate their understandings, make meaning of common experiences, and refine their own ideas. The interactions students have with others in the process of learning something new is not just a “nice to have” – it is an essential component of the learning process.
The need for teachers to become better equipped to nurture their students’ SEL (and by extension, attend to their own social-emotional well-being) has been amplified by a range of crises and challenges over the last two decades — a rise in school shootings, growing awareness of the harms of in-person and cyberbullying, unnecessary use of police force in schools and disproportionate over-application of disciplinary action and criminalization of Black and brown students, increasing poverty and homelessness, children in foster care, a national opioid epidemic, the plight of undocumented immigrants living in constant fear of ICE, and the marginalization of LGBTQIA+ students, to name a few challenges to well-being that children in American schools currently face.
During the global COVID-19 pandemic crisis, it has become even clearer that we need to attend to the social-emotional needs of children as well as the adults that mentor them to create safe learning conditions that shape how students will be able to cope with the health crisis and a world where threats to their very existence feel more real than ever. The pandemic crisis and distance learning pulled back the curtains on deep systemic inequities in the ways students from Black, brown, and other marginalized communities have been left behind. Schools mobilized to provide for the needs of millions of children across the U.S. whose only steady meals came from the school lunch program, and did their best to overcome the deep gaps in access to the computing technology and Internet service needed to participate in online learning. Even with the heroic efforts of their schools, many of these students fell through the cracks and existing inequities widened. In addition, many public school students suffer from homelessness (114,000 in New York City and 17,000 in Los Angeles alone), lack of access to healthcare, worries for parents who must risk becoming infected everyday because they are essential workers, and sometimes abuse in the home. On top of these extraordinary stressors, Black and brown children suffer immensely from seeing the violent murders of people who look like them by the police and other individuals, with almost no consequences for perpetrators and no justice for the victims. And children of Asian American Pacific Islander descent are increasingly becoming witness to or victims of overt racist attacks by individuals blaming them for “bringing the Coronavirus”. In the face of these immense sources of stress, fear, and trauma, what should schools and teachers be doing to prepare for the next academic year, which begins in less than a month in some districts?
Rather than preparing to be instructors of content, teachers must be prepared to be instructors, coaches, and mentors of children. This juxtaposition of these two teaching dispositions is not a new idea; nor is it intended to be mutually exclusive. It is entirely achievable to be a teacher of children and a teacher of content. And in an equitable classroom that prepares students to cope with the current challenges in their lives and the world they will face as adults, teachers must fulfill both roles. However, it is imperative now more than ever that teachers attend to the needs of the whole child, not just their academic needs. In this moment, when there is so much healing and recovery that students, families, and teachers need to do in the face of a pandemic that continues to rob people of their health, jobs, homes, and basic sense of security, and heightened anger about the racial disparities in our justice system and basic civil rights, we will cause more harm than good if we simply return to the past patterns of policies, practices, and priorities of “normal” school, as argued by Adelric McCain (Network for College Success, UChicago) and Hugh Vasquez (National Equity Project). Indeed, we should remember that “normal” school has not worked well for vast numbers of school children, especially Black and brown children, English learners, and children with special needs. In many cases, students have been traumatized by their experiences with “normal” school. Dr. Pedro Noguera suggests constructive ways for reopening schools in a way that puts equity at the center.
This is a time to prioritize the well-being and social-emotional needs of students, their families, and their teachers. Before we can demand that teachers teach their content effectively (in-person or via distance learning) or expect that students catch up on all the academic learning that did not happen in the Spring, we have to ask whether members of the school community, but especially children, feel safe, seen and heard, and supported. The well known Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (1995-97) found that certain traumatic experiences in childhood are major risk factors for the leading causes of illness and death as well as poor quality of life in the U.S. However, the same study also found that the effects of these traumatic experiences can be offset by the presence of one dependable and caring adult in a child’s life. Sometimes, that adult is a mother, father, or a relative. More frequently, that stable, caring adult is a teacher or mentor (Paper Tiger film; Resilience: The Biology of Stress & the Science of Hope film). There are not enough school counselors, social workers, and mental health providers to meet the explosion in need, especially with anticipated school budget cuts (S. Kohli, Los Angeles Times, 5/7/20). Teachers and other caring adults in children’s lives will need to step up and work together to help children recover from the traumas experienced during the pandemic school closures and even before that.
Implications for pedagogy and practice. When teachers are instructors, coaches, and mentors of children, teachers begin not by testing students about their reading and math knowledge, but by prioritizing learning about their students – who they are as persons – their strengths, interests, and lived experiences, their families, their communities, and their cultural/language backgrounds. Teachers begin also by establishing classroom norms, routines, and a culture of safety, mutual respect, risk-taking, personal and social responsibility, personal and social awareness, peer support, and low-stakes learning through “trial and error”. They endeavor to build trusting relationships with their students and their families through ongoing communication and inviting families to be a partner in their students’ learning. They check in regularly with their students and invite them to share their successes, struggles, and needs. They create opportunities for students to build relationships with their peers, which provides a powerful authentic context for students to experience healing and support – something we learned from our research study on measures of SEL. Relationship building is an ongoing process that will be challenged by events in and outside the classroom across the year. When incidents of racial injustice and intolerance occur in school and outside of it, teachers do not gloss over these events or pretend they didn’t happen. Teachers who care for students’ social-emotional well-being confront these issues head-on, centering the voices of marginalized students as they process these issues and encourage students to respond in appropriate ways. Teachers are prepared to respond to instances of racism, disrespect, or conflict within the classroom as a mediator, rather than as a punisher, to repair relationships and restore a culture of mutual respect, as well as respond to crises or traumatic experiences (with the support of families, counselors, and social workers) that affect students’ social-emotional well-being.
Some teachers may have an intuitive ability to build relationships with students, create and maintain a classroom culture of safety, support, and mutual respect, and respond appropriately to the effects of trauma in students’ lives. However, this is a skill set that many teachers will need to learn and practice. Thankfully, there are resources and an established knowledge base to draw upon from counseling psychology, social work, and the mental health field. Below are some organizations and resources that can support your school staff as they consider beginning the journey to becoming instructors, coaches, and mentors of children, prioritizing the well-being of the whole child. Our team of ELP coaches has expertise and direct experience with these student-centered, whole-child pedagogies and practices; we have also created research-based tools and design frameworks for designing measures that elicit instructionally-embedded evidence of social-emotional practices that can help teachers better understand their students’ social-emotional strengths and needs and create learning environments that nurture their SEL development. We invite you to reach out to us to learn more about how we support districts and schools.
ChildTrends/Child Trauma Training Center (UMass)
Culturally Responsive Education Hub
National Child Traumatic Stress Network
Trauma Sensitive Schools (National Association of School Psychologists)
Forbes, H.T. (2012). Help for Billy. Boulder, CO: Beyond Consequences Institute.
Harris, N.B. (2018) The Deepest Well. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Kaiser Permanente & CDC (1998). Adverse Childhood Experiences Study
Menakem, R. (2017). My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. Central Recovery Press
Minahan, J. (2019, Oct). Trauma Informed Teaching Strategies. Educational Leadership, 77 (2), 30-35.
Newhouse, C. (2020, April 6). Four Core Priorities for Trauma-Informed Distance Learning. KQED Mind/Shift.
Porges, S. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company
Resilient Educator (2020). Essential Trauma-Informed Teaching Strategies for Managing Stress in the Classroom.
Teaching Tolerance (2020, March 23). A Trauma-Informed Approach to Teaching Through Coronavirus.
van der Kolk, B. (2015). The Body Keeps the Score. New York, NY: Penguin Random House.
Yusem, D. (2019, May 31). Restorative Justice in Schools: SEL in Action. Mindful Schools.
Emotional Well-Being and Coping During COVID-19 (UCSF)
That Discomfort You are Feeling is Grief (Harvard Business Review)
Self-Care for Teachers of Traumatized Students (Resilient Educator)
4 Self-Care Resources When the World is Terrible (Colorlines)
Durlak, J.A., Weissberg, R.P., Dymnicki, A.B., Taylor, R.D, and K.B. Schellinger (2011). The impact of enhancing students’ social and emotional learning: A meta-analysis of school-based universal interventions. Child Development, 82, (1), 405–432. https://www.cpr.org/sites/default/files/durlak_et_al-2011-child_development.pdf
Greenberg, M.T., Weissberg, R.P., O’Brien, M.U., Zins, J.E., Fredericks, L., Resnik, H., & Elias, M.J. (2003). Enhancing school-based prevention and youth development through coordinated social, emotional, and academic learning. American Psychologist, 58, 466-474.
Sklad, M., Diekstra, R., De Ritter, M., Ben, H., Gravestein, C. (2012), Effectiveness of school‐based universal social, emotional, and behavioral programs: Do they enhance students’ development in the area of skill, behavior, and adjustment? Psychology in the Schools, 49(9), 892-909. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.21641
Taylor, R.D., Oberle, E., Durlak, J.A., Weissberg, R.P. (2017). Promoting positive youth development through school‐based social and emotional learning interventions: A meta‐analysis of follow‐up effects. Child Development, 88(4), 1156-1171
I have two daughters – ages 12 and 9. Both attend our neighborhood K-8 public school, an easy five-minute walk from our home. Like many working parents with
What’s next? Enforcing “time served” is for prison guards, not stewards of genius.
Vinci Daro and Theresa Morris are two razor-sharp colleagues of mine. Among other qualities, they are math curriculum and assessment designers; they also help teachers shift the focus of learning to center students. The teacher works to guide, encourage, and create conditions for unfettering the growth of all students as full human beings, as problem solvers, thinkers, learners, and doers. That’s how I understand it, anyway. It is the opposite of my experience with high school math in particular, and I literally love them for it.
Once I heard Theresa very quickly answer a question about her mission and purpose: “Recovering lost potential.” Another time I saw Vinci’s response to a question about the values and principles she proposes when she is coaching or facilitating, and I think it was the only thing she wrote: “Students are brilliant.”
Think about that. What is happening in a course built on those directives? Let’s explore.
A few years back I heard from two high school students from different schools who designed and prototyped shoes with batteries built into the soles, which recharge via kinetic and solar energy from being used like shoes – walking around, and it helps if it’s sunny. Both students researched previous attempts at such a design. Both devised and revised proposals, plans, designs. Both went into the world to share their inquiries and challenges with professionals, mainly scientists and engineers. One used design thinking and the other used the engineering design process to get to a working prototype, and they did not solve the design challenges in the same way. One of these innovators was acquiring a patent in hopes of a licensing deal and navigating all of that, while the other had a batch of shoes manufactured and shipped to families in Ethiopia so they can be less impacted by rolling blackouts. He raised the money for that, too! They both spoke publicly about their process, challenges, and learning and expertly Both answered a barrage of questions from adults. One shared her story through a professional presentation in a giant auditorium and the other stood by a digital display of his project and walked groups of people through as they approached and investigated his station.
How do we design for that? One answer may strike you as suspiciously familiar.
Schools have found themselves bogged down by inflexible structures at a time when we need flexibility most. Some educators worry about students completing work too quickly and then not having anything to do with the remaining class time.
Rooting conditions for school success in things like seat time ultimately dilutes the data that actually measures student learning. Here are some things we will miss: what students can do now, their strengths and needs, how to support them, and what’s next for them. Pretty important stuff! Once you have them in front of you, how will you use that time to answer those other questions, and teach things that can be learned? Relationships, home visits, personalized interventions, bus passes, carpools, and other creative community support are more effective ways to address the high crimes of absence and tardiness!
Education shouldn’t be like serving a sentence. Let’s instead refocus our approach on what matters most and prepare ourselves to cultivate some genius. Model those transferable skills, bring all students relevant learning experiences, assist them in gaining useful strategies, expressing themselves, creating real things, taking initiative, and generally developing their powers! Let the reality of student brilliance and the high stakes of lost potential set the terms, not “time served.”
In other words, your students are not done yet. They’ve got way more to offer and more to learn. So what’s next for each of them and how will you let them do it?
What’s next? Enforcing “time served” is for prison guards, not stewards of genius.
ELPers, Alcine Mumby and Aragon Burlingham speak on camera about their experiences being part of the first Nexus Fellowship. The Nexus Fellowship was developed by the Equity Lab in response to the overwhelming need for race, equity, diversity, and inclusion (REDI) in the learning profession. The Fellowship helps leaders to create long-term organizational change around race and equity.
ELPers, Alcine Mumby and Aragon Burlingham speak on camera about their experiences being part of the first Nexus Fellowship. The Nexus Fellowship was
What experiences brought you into coaching?
I had the incredible experience to be on the team that founded Envision Learning Partners. I was half-way into my teaching career at that point and was offered the opportunity to design and create a way in which we could share some of what makes Envision special with others around the country who were interested. I spent 2 years feeling like I had gone back to grad school as we built ELP, as I was learning so much in the process! Wanting to put into practice for myself all of the rich growth I had experienced, I went back into the classroom at Envision for 5 more years. It was a natural and wonderful return to coaching in 2016 when I was able to re-join the team on this side of the organization.
What do you most enjoy about being a coach?
I feel so inspired by the brilliant educators with whom I get to cross paths and sit shoulder to shoulder while on my coaching journey. I was worried that I would miss the beautiful chaos of teenagers on a daily basis when I left teaching, but coaching provides similarly vibrant relationships with the folks I get to partner with. Coaching offers a bit of a different cognitive challenge as I get to think about units of change larger than my own classroom. This is invigorating and often makes my brain hurt in really cool ways.
What do you like to do when you are not coaching?
When not on a plane or sitting in an airport, you can find me running the trails of the incredible hills and redwood forests in the east bay, talking to every dog I pass on the sidewalk, enjoying the incredible food and wine that we have at our fingertips, traveling to far off magical lands as often as possible, cooking dinner for former students, and stepping out on a dance floor when the music is right.
What experiences brought you into coaching?
Hear why our newest Deeper Learning Coach, Morgan Vien, joined ELP and is excited about her new role working with our partners across the country.
Hear why our newest Deeper Learning Coach, Morgan Vien, joined ELP and is excited about her new role working with our partners across the country.
What experiences brought you into coaching?
As a student, I loved learning but found school more stifling than unleashing of my love of learning. As a high school teacher, I loved learning from my students and helping them discover themselves and the world around them. As a lead teacher, I always wanted more time to design amazing learning experiences, think about school-wide systems, and learn more about what other great schools are working on.
What do you most enjoy about being a coach?
As a coach, while I miss crazy teenager energy, I love the increased impact my work has on many other people’s students; I love the nitty-gritty of it too: learning, collaborating, and co-designing learning experiences and systems that help schools and districts in their process of transforming teaching and learning from the systems we all inherited.
What do you like to do when you are not coaching?
I am an activist, an artist, and an introvert! A big contradiction of things. I try to maintain space for calm, for creating and appreciating art in many forms, for reflection, and for just existing outside as part of the natural world, as well as fighting the fights that must be fought to make the world a better place.
What experiences brought you into coaching?
During the 2019 calendar year, ELP’s Alcine Mumby and Aragon Burlingham participated in the first Nexus Fellowship, a program from the Equity Lab. Nexus was designed in response to the overwhelming need for race, equity, diversity, and inclusion (REDI) in the learning profession.
This was a transformative experience for us and the other 14 Nexus Fellows! Michelle and her talented team curated a deep and personal experience for our new community of equity leaders. Nexus took us into a deep personalized leadership journey based on our identities around three specific design challenges: challenges with people, challenges with processes, and challenges with programs.
Watch the video to hear about the experiences of the Nexus Fellows and Equity Lab’s ED, Michelle Molitor.
Thank you Michelle and your exceptional team for creating this incredible program!
During the 2019 calendar year, ELP’s Alcine Mumby and Aragon Burlingham participated in the first Nexus Fellowship, a program from the Equity Lab.
Describe what you do at ELP?
I lead the operations side of Envision Learning Partners. This primarily involves behinds the scenes work to ensure our infrastructure and systems are running smoothly so our coaches can deliver high-quality professional development. ELP’s start-up culture has built our service and systems through many years of relationship building, prototyping, and refining.
What experiences brought you to ELP?
I began my work with Envision as an English teacher at City Arts and Tech [our school in San Francisco]. After stepping out of the classroom, I worked closely with all of our schools in a highly successful reading intervention program. In 2010, I became a founding member of the Envision Learning Partners team. We spent the first several years of ELP figuring out the most high leverage work we could do with our external partners. The journey has been amazing – we’ve grown our service from 3 team members serving 1 partner to 11 team members serving over 60 partners.
What do you enjoy most about working for ELP?
I am driven by the mission of ELP and expanding positive educational impact to all students. I believe deeply in providing access and high-quality learning experiences to all students. At ELP we primarily work with adult learners to refine their teaching practices and educational systems, but my motivation still comes from impacting students’ lives by shifting adult teaching and learning.
What do you like to do when you’re not working?
I spend most of my time on outdoor adventures with my wonderful husband and two children. We like to hike, rock climb, backpack, ski, and camp whenever we have the opportunity. Almost every morning before the sun is up you can find me at a barre class and I always sneak in time to read several novels per month.
Describe what you do at ELP?
I serve as the Director of Research and Innovation. My main role is to document the impact that designing and implementing high quality performance assessment systems has on outcomes for K-12 students, the learning environments that student experience, and systems and cultures that support student success. The “innovation” part of my work has to do with developing new tools, frameworks, and methodologies for the work we do with the latest evidence from research and practice. What that really means is that I support our coaches as a thought partner as they develop new products with their district and school partners, and codify tools, products, and practices into a unique ELP-branded suite of resources. I also spend a lot of time writing, reviewing, and explaining rubrics!
That’s a long story, but I’ll give it a try! I started my career in 1997 as a history teacher in New York City, at a Queens high school that was part of the small schools movement in the city, and regularly assigned projects and performance assessments to my students, even before I knew what PBL and performance assessments were. During my graduate studies at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, I studied the impact of a teaching performance assessment (Performance Assessment for California Teachers) on the learning of preservice teachers, having been inspired by teachers reporting that the NBPTS portfolio assessment had a tremendously positive impact on their professional learning. During my graduate studies, I also began supporting the work of the School Redesign Network at Stanford which was supporting the Bay Area Performance Assessment Consortium (BayPAC), and that’s how I met Bob Lenz, one of the founders of Envision Schools and my current colleagues, Justin, Alcine, Rachel, and Abby, among other founding teachers. Bob requested technical support from the School Redesign Network team. That’s how I ended up facilitating teams of Envision Schools educators as they developed their suite of disciplinary performance outcomes, rubrics, and the portfolio defense, and as teachers got calibrated on the portfolio rubrics. When Envision had its first graduating classes, I conducted a couple of small studies to evaluate the impact of the portfolio and defense on students’ learning experiences and then a follow-up study to learn how graduates who had been out of high school for one or two years were doing. Later, I also participated in collecting data for another set of studies that included Impact Academy and City Arts & Tech HS called the Study of Student Centered Schools (completed by the Stanford SCOPE Center). Between 2008 and 2020, I worked as the Director of Assessment Research and Development at SCALE – the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity, which evolved from the School Redesign Network. SCALE’s primary mission is to support districts, states, and higher ed institutions as they develop and implement balanced, credible, and reliable assessment systems that include performance assessments. I started working at ELP part-time in January 2018, when SCALE staff merged with ELP. I started working full-time at ELP in January of 2020. In many ways, it felt like coming back home, to a school organization with an assessment system that I was part of building. I am so proud of what Envision Schools have become and that we are a national and international leader in the performance assessment movement.
I love working at ELP because I feel so much at home here. I truly feel that my colleagues are like-minded people with the “same heart.” At ELP, I know my colleagues hold very similar beliefs about the potential of all students and a similar drive to do work that makes a difference in students’ lives. We rejoice and celebrate the same small victories, and we mourn and weep for the same systemic sources of injustice in our world. We geek out over backwards planning and all believe in the power of student work as a key lever for teacher learning. We support and care for each other, and know that even when we push back on one another, it is out of love. That’s what makes it feel like home.
I wish I had more time for all my non-work interests – but these days, when I’m able to come up for air, I enjoy making a delicious meal for my family, going for long walks, tinkering on my mandolin, piano, or violin (not all at once!), and shelter-in-place Karaoke nights with my family. Also, I enjoy cuddling with our long-haired Chihuahua-Papillon mixed pup and our aging tabby cat while catching up on the latest sci-fi or historical fiction drama on Netflix.
I serve as the Director of Research and Innovation. My main role is to document the impact that designing and implementing high quality performance
Describe what you do at ELP.
I am the Director of STEM Learning at ELP. I get to work with colleagues in many different roles — teachers, coaches, administrators, curriculum developers, assessment developers, and professional learning providers — to design learning experiences and assessment tools that help students become better problem-solvers, and better communicators about their problem-solving strategies. A big part of my work is figuring out how to set students up to use their own everyday language and the disciplinary language of mathematics and science to express and clarify their own ideas, and to build on each other’s ideas (for example, the Math Language Routines). Another big part of my work is developing tools to help educators sharpen their lens for analyzing student work to get better at identifying and describing evidence of learning, and to get better at planning instruction and assessment based on that evidence (for example, Collaborative Analysis of Student Work Protocol). I also get to collaborate on tools for observing classrooms, and for using observation data to plan instruction (for example Observation + Planning Tool); developing and adapting tools like these for distance learning contexts has kept me very busy this year. I am always on the lookout for projects in which the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics and the Next Generation Science Standards are used to optimize student curiosity and student agency.
What experiences brought you to ELP?
My journey to ELP was a happy and unplanned confluence of opportunities and relationships. I joined ELP in early 2018 as part of a team of colleagues from Stanford (Understanding Language/Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning & Equity), and one of the primary magnets that drew us to ELP was a clear commitment to both equity in education and anti-racism broadly. In that merging of people and projects, ELP gained STEM content expertise and I gained a bit more freedom to pursue projects that align with my interests in making school a place where students not only grow their competence in solving problems, but are recognized for their competence. Prior to joining ELP, I was the Director of Math Learning at UL/SCALE, and before that worked for many years with Ann Shannon and Associates, using the Shell Center Formative Assessment Lessons, which transformed my understanding of the importance of attending closely to the variety of ways students generate evidence their learning. I’ve had many opportunities to integrate my training as a cultural anthropologist and ethnographer into my work in math education, but often only secretly; ELP is a place where I get to be my whole self.
Part of the ELP team prototyping at a 2019 retreat.
What do you enjoy most about working for ELP?
Colleagues. The people. (ELP has the best people). The deep expertise and wisdom about working with schools and districts to shift mindsets, to re-align educational systems for equity and learning that matters, and to build tools collaboratively that make these shifts and re-alignments sustainable. Being able to draw on what ELP colleagues are doing at the scale of systems, and in relation to other content areas, provides a much more holistic perspective than is possible in professional settings narrowly bounded by content area.
I also enjoy all of the opportunities to collaborate with the incredible staff at Envision Schools. Partnering with STEM leaders at Envision Schools has been an ongoing source of energy and an actively experimental space for professional learning design and assessment design.
What do you like to do when you’re not working?
Anything that does not involve a screen: being and moving outside (walking, running, hiking, biking, kayaking); touching and reading printed pages; playing cards, Pentago, chess, Codenames, Just One, and other games with my 14 year old daughter and 11 year old son; playing with our accidental pet, Philmore the fabulous rat. And — when all goes well — living car-free until our summer cross-country road trip to Carrboro, NC, visiting family and friends along the way.
Describe what you do at ELP.
A Note from the Designers: Just so you know- we hear you and we are answering your call!
“Yes – we want to lean in and invite students to tell the journey of their learning in a Virtual Defense… but where do we start?”
We are thrilled that you are digging deeper into the Virtual Defense Toolkit! Each part of this Toolkit is being built with our own main design principle in mind: Tight on criteria, loose on path. Thus the Path Pace is intended to be a guide as you look at where you are currently, and how you might move as a system toward virtual student defenses and beyond.This tool includes suggested tasks and timelines for each of the primary stakeholder groups – students, advisors/mentors, and Admin. We then break down those tasks into week-long chunks. We invite you to explore this tool and then reflect on your context, your capacity, and what feels right for your community. Adopt what resonates, adapt what you want to modify, and hopefully this gives you a place to start. We will be offering resources for several of these tasks as the days go on, and are excited to continue to build what you may need as you take this on.
“This is awesome… but how do we support students to hold parts of this process?”
Yes! We are so glad you asked. Any student-centered assessment supports students to be co- designers of the experience and invites them to activate their agency in the process. This planning tool is built to help them set goals, track key information, manage workload and consider important factors as they prepare to defend their learning.In this new landscape, we know that circumstances and home learning contexts are unique to each student. As you engage in building towards a culminating event with your students, we invite you to question assumptions and let students lead where possible. They are the experts in their home contexts and can make choices about how and when to complete work, the best space in their home environments for hosting the event and of course- how to best be their authentic selves in this process.As always, these tools are an offering and we are excited to see how you use them and what other needs emerge. We are actively designing and releasing this package as needs become clear.Onward!We held a couple of sessions to answer questions and dream with you all. We were excited to learn more about the complexities you’re working through and to imagine how we can support.
Virtual Portfolio Defense Webinar: Tuesday, April 14th
Virtual Defense: Ask Me Anything Session: Thursday, April 16th
Join the conversation on Twitter by tagging us @EnvisionSchools and using the hashtag #ELPVirtualDefense.
Stay Well,
Morgan Vien & Abby Benedetto, ELP Deeper Learning Coaches
A Note from the Designers: Just so you know- we hear you and we are answering your call!
We are delighted to announce the education leaders that have been selected to join the newest cohort of our Deeper Learning Leadership Forum. The Deeper Learning Leadership Forum (DLLF) is a cohort-based leadership experience that aims to develop, strengthen, and support a group of educational leaders to work at the intersection of equity and design thinking. As DLLF members cultivate relationships and learn across their diverse contexts, they will become more adept and strategic at leading reform efforts in their local systems, thus producing more equitable deeper learning outcomes across the country.
Meet our fourth cohort leaders here. Click the link and scroll down to Cohort 4!
Envision Education is seeking a dynamic, experienced educator and leader to build on the successes of our three high schools and two middle schools and establish Envision Schools as exemplar schools of equity and excellence for our students and for Envision Learning Partners. The Chief Academic Officer (CAO) will do this by providing vision, management experience, educational expertise, and operational oversight. Click here for the official position description.
Questions? Contact David Edwards, Director of Talent and Human Resources – dedwards@envisionschools.org – 510.451.2415 x 107
ELP has been selected as an approved learning partner by IL-EMPOWER for Illinois schools. IL-EMPOWER is the statewide system of support that empowers schools with greater choice in determining their path to improved student outcomes. Schools are informed through a continuous school improvement process which includes analysis of academic and school quality indicators, a system needs assessment, and selecting an approved learning partner like ELP.
To learn more about our partnership, click here.
ELP spends much of its time delivering PD to our partners from coast to coast. Many partners don’t realize that we also turn our PD chops inwards to refine our practices, learn from each other’s work in the field and have some fun along the way! At our last retreat, we focused our efforts on refining our definition of High Quality Performance Assessments. We believe a High Quality Performance Assessment…
We’ll expand on this suite of definitions in the coming weeks – stay tuned!
Happy Holidays from the ELP team!
We are delighted to announce the education leaders that have been selected to join the newest cohort of our Deeper Learning Leadership Forum.
The Assessment for Learning Conference is next month! Below is a sneak peak at the ELP-lead sessions!
Join ELP for the following sessions at the Deeper Learning Conference on March 25-27, 2020 in San Diego, CA!
Observe an entire Portfolio Defense, learn how the model works, and reflect on how you can apply the concepts in your own context.The Portfolio Defense is the capstone activity of a whole-school performance assessment system. It is the culmination of a student’s 4-year journey. Similar to a masters defense, students stand before a panel of peers, educators, and mentors to demonstrate — to the panel and to themselves — that they are ready to graduate and ready for a successful future.A Defense Design Studio consists of two parts:
Join ELP at our partner school’s DDS:
Bay Area Envision Education DDS dates TBD.
The Assessment for Learning Conference is next month! Below is a sneak peak at the ELP-lead sessions!
Grad Profile Workshop Series: Jan 28, Feb 5 & Feb 10 (Sold out but more dates to come!)
In this three-part workshop series, led by Deeper Learning Coach, Abby Benedetto, participants will explore the value of having a Graduate Profile, develop and define a draft, and then learn how to implement and measure it once they take it back to their school, district, etc.
Given the surprisingly high demand for this workshop, we have sold out! We are currently scheduling another set of dates, as soon as late February. Please use this Google Form to join the interest list and be the first to know as soon as new dates/times have been confirmed.
Session A: Intro to the Graduate Profile
This workshop is designed for folks who are learning about the concept of a Graduate Profile (aka Vision of a Graduate, Portrait of a Graduate). We will explore what a Graduate Profile is and why it is an important shift for schools, districts, systems, etc., as well as what it means to situate the Graduate Profile as your organizing principle. Participants will brainstorm the skills they believe would be ideal for their graduates, then have an opportunity to check that brainstorm against quality criteria, ideate and revise again. Participants will leave with a draft prototype of a graduate profile as well as a plan to engage stakeholders in a vital input/feedback process in order to move toward a more finalized draft.
Session A TLDR: You have heard about this thing called a Graduate Profile and want to take your first leap into learning more.
Session B: Defining Your Graduate Profile
Once participants have a draft of a Graduate Profile (aka Vision of a Graduate, Portrait of a Graduate) that includes larger skill categories, the next step is to define what you actually mean by those categories in the form of Performance Outcomes. During this session, we will clarify what Performance Outcomes are, determine the scope of the Outcomes that you are drafting (individual school, district-wide, etc.), and practice creating high quality Performance Outcomes for your Graduate Profile. This language will then be used to design shared assessment tools and much, much more. Participants will leave with a more fully defined set of skills for their Graduate Profile, as well as a plan to engage stakeholders in a vital input/feedback process in order to move toward a more finalized draft.
Session B TLDR: You have a list of amazing skills/competencies that you want for your graduates, and you are ready to get more specific about what that really means.
Session C: Select & Design Your Culminating Performance Assessment
Once you have your Graduate Profile designed and defined, you need to create a system that actually measures it. If you don’t, it remains a pretty poster on the wall. One component of that measurement system is a culminating assessment that gives you and your students concrete evidence of how they are able to demonstrate the skills of your Graduate Profile. In various groups, participants will explore different types of exhibitions (student-led conferences, capstones, portfolio defenses, etc.) and design a prototype of a culminating exhibition that provides evidence of student learning/thinking of essential competencies.
Session C TLDR: You want to design a culminating performance assessment that will measure your Graduate Profile.
Assessment for Learning Conference- Winter Launch: February 3rd
ELP is pleased to partner for a second year with the Center for Innovation in Education and Next Generation Learning Challenges on the Assessment for Learning Conference!
Assessment for Learning is a continuing process based in learner goals, relationships, complex tasks, reflection and exhibitions of learning. The Winter Launch is about setting goals and building relationships before the spring conference on May 6th & 7th, 2021.
The focus of the Winter Launch is on connection and inquiry, and we won’t be introducing new content through traditional conference sessions like panels and presentations at this event.
You’ll spend most of your time during the Winter Launch in small group conversations on big questions about assessment. We’ll use a new guided reflection process to help make sense of this moment and envision a more just and student-centered future.
You’ll finish the event with learning intentions for the rest of this year, new ways to connect with AFL peers, and the charge to invite more people into this community.
This is an event for people who are passionate about building the movement to make assessment for learning the norm in our education systems. We expect that most participants will be people who support assessment in schools, districts and networks; people who implement and advocate for assessment-related policies; and teacher leaders.
Grad Profile Workshop Series: Jan 28, Feb 5 & Feb 10 (Sold out but more dates to come!)
The ELP team had a full and exciting year in 2018-19:
ELP added 20 cities to it’s operational reach this fiscal year, totaling 56 cities in the US and one in Beijing. ELP also quadrupled its support of State Departments, working with Virginia last year, and serving Ohio, Kentucky, and Colorado this year.
ELP is relaunching our blog – keep up with past newsletter content, including more in-depth articles and shared resources! Click on any of the section titles in the newsletter for a quick link to that blog post.
ELP was recently highlighted in an EdWeek article, thanks to a partnership between two of our team members, Ruth Chung Wei & Vinci Daro, and a charter school in Washington DC. Two Rivers Public Charter School started offering a 12-month program for teachers focused on better defining, teaching, and assessing critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Ruth and Vinci provided feedback to the cohort members on their assessment task designs.
Check out the whole July 2019 announcements!
ELP was in 44 cities across the country last year, take a look at the updated map on our new website homepage to see where we’ve been.
At the beginning of the current health crisis, ELP developed some resources for those pursuing virtual portfolio defenses. Now, we have an entire webpage dedicated to those tools, examples, and more.
ELP was proud to partner with the Learning Policy Institute and the Linked Learning Alliance to launch the “Defending Learning at a Distance” series, which presented opportunities to observe students’ virtual defenses of learning and engage in conversations with the inspiring students and educators who have remained committed to performance assessment despite school closures. There is still time to share your students’ stories, click here to find out more.
Did your school pilot virtual defenses this year? If so, we’d love to hear from you! Click here to let us know how it went and what you would do differently next time.
ELP is proud to announce that we have received funding for three more years, which allows for two more cohorts of the Deeper Learning Leadership Forum! This generous grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation will allow ELP to continue addressing issues of inequity in our school systems by bringing together leaders to define and unpack these challenges. For more information about the program and to meet our cohort members, click here.
It is with heavy hearts that we say goodbye to two ELPers, Director of Partnerships, Aragon Burlingham, and Alternative Assessments Coordinator and Coach, Theresa Morris.
ELP was in 44 cities across the country last year, take a look at the updated map on our new website homepage to see where we’ve been.
ELP is excited to share our Den Talk for this year’s Deeper Learning Conference- Listening to Black Women: What Conditions Enable Black Women Deeper Learning Leaders to Thrive?
Deeper Learning Coach, Alcine Mumby, will be hosting and spotlighting the wisdom of 3 Black women leaders: LaShawnna Harris, Sabrina Moore, and Kai Mathews. All three are alumni of ELP’s Deeper Learning Leadership Forum.
This will be a Kiva panel where Black women systems leaders from various levels of the deeper learning movement with embodied knowledge and expertise will share their wisdom on creating conditions for Black women and Black learners to thrive in this community. Participants will take notes as they listen deeply, scribing exact words and phrases that resonate with them, then reflect on the shifts and new learning created when they listened to understand to Black women. This promises to be a transformative den experience for participants as they seek to practice the foundational equity skill of listening to disrupt/dismantle their own beliefs about deeper learning, leadership, and equity for liberation.
Kai Mathews
Dr. Kai Mathews is the MTSS (Multi-tiered System of Support) Director at UCLA’s Center for the Transformation of Schools. In this position, she co-leads a statewide pilot aimed at improving school climate and conditions. Dr. Kai (as her students call her) has dedicated her life to creating innovative and equitable learning environments for underrepresented populations. She is an educator, researcher, and creative strategist who is passionate about innovative reforms and practices in K-12 and higher education. With over 10 years of practical work and research experience with students, teachers, and administrators in various school districts around the country, her areas of expertise and passions include educational equity; culturally responsive, inclusive, sustaining education; Project-Based Learning (PBL); Universal Design for Learning (UDL); Blended Learning (BL); and Design Thinking.
As a former 8th grade teacher at High Tech Middle, Chula Vista, Dr. Kai prides herself in creating immersive, project-based learning environments that push, uplift, and teach the whole child and allows students to engage in critical inquiry, social advocacy, and divergent dialogue.
She has a Ph.D. in Leadership Studies with a specialization in K-12 education from the University of San Diego, an M.A. in Communication from Ellis University, and a B.A. in English with a minor in Creative Writing from Spelman College.
Sabrina Moore
Sabrina “Bri” Moore, is an Oakland native. She has been a student, teacher, and is now an administrator in service of students and families in Oakland.
Sabrina “Bri” came to education as a career changer. She remembers the day she made the decision to leave a 15 year career with AT&T Telecommunications for teaching. She was in the midst of obtaining a masters degree and remembered her high school teacher telling her “if you get a masters degree you can be a teacher.” She quit a few months later to do just that and has been pushing for Oakland students ever since.
Her orientation towards school leadership began during her time with Teach Tomorrow in Oakland as a facilitator of professional development and providing mentoring and coaching support to new teachers. “I was encouraged as a new teacher to take risks, to try new approaches and to share my successes and failures with my colleagues,” recalls Moore. “If offered an opportunity to learn something new as a teacher, or as a teacher leader, I never said no- I took all opportunities offered to me to continue to learn and grow.” The same has been true of her in administration. Seeking every opportunity to learn, grow and improve for kids.
She is currently pursuing a doctorate of education in social justice from California State University East Bay in hopes to become the future superintendent of Oakland Unified School district.
When asked to describe her leadership style, Bri says she sees herself as “an anti-racist liberatory leader who is unapologetically Black, Proud and pushing for kids that look like me, come from where I come from and deserve way more than we get”, she is also dedicated to speaking truth to racism so we can see a change to systems, practices and policies that stay perpetuating hate and marginalizing folk.
Bri currently serves as the principal at MPA Primary, facilitates diversity, equity and inclusion professional learning for several organizations, provides adjunct professional learning for new principals and is a new principal mentor for OUSD. She works from one core value, “Kids First” and believes everything else is secondary. She loves what she does so much, even on the worst day she’s SMILING!
Sabrina believes that teaching and leading changes lives and with the best team possible strives for excellence in education. She is driven by the dream of seeing, “kids like me be whatever they want – no excuses and every opportunity to Live their best Lives.”
LaShawnna Harris
LaShawnna Harris is the Founder and President of Creative Station LLC a NYC based education consulting firm. She received a B.S. in Management from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, M.S. in teaching from the Fordham University and a M.S. in school building leadership from Mercy College.
LaShawnna previously worked as an elementary school teacher, math staff developer, assistant principal, founding principal, new principal coach and most recently as the Senior Director of School Improvement for the New York City Department of Education.
As the founding principal of PS 330Q, it was her vision that all students would learn in a supportive environment that focused on their academic and social-emotional development, so they could pursue and achieve their dreams. LaShawnna was noted in the Huffington Post article, “Why School Culture Matters, and How to Improve it” by Michael Haberman that showcased her work with Morrison Healthcare through the school’s PENCIL partnership to improve school culture.
She has a passion and commitment to supporting school leaders with school improvement. Her strengths are facilitating small group professional learning community sessions on managing complex change, strategic planning, collaborative problem solving and improved systems and Operations.
Register for the session using this link: https://sched.co/i5i4
For more information about the Deeper Learning Conference and to register, click here.
Learn more about Deeper Learning Coach, Alcine Mumby, in her “I am ELP” highlight.
ELP is excited to share our Den Talk for this year’s Deeper Learning Conference- Listening to Black Women: What Conditions Enable Black Women Deeper Learning
The AfL Conference was a powerful experience for me in many ways. A huge part of my job is curating learning experiences that shake up “business as usual.” In a conference design role, it was interesting to design an experience for 400 people that felt personal, reflective and inclusive. That being said, I think we did that. I am stoked to continue to build out this muscle and imagine what is possible for this gathering. One shift I would make for the future is to support presenters to design even more hands on learning experiences for participants. As leaders who believe in learner-centered processes, we have to practice what we preach and this conference experience is a great place to prototype that work across contexts.
Stay tuned for AfL Conference 2021, as well as resources from this year’s conference!
In light of the current health climate, the difficult decision to cancel Deeper Learning 2020 was made. The event will not be rescheduled to later on this year, instead all efforts will be put toward making DL2021 an epic event, set for March 23-25, 2021! The Envision Learning Partners look forward to connecting with everyone in San Diego next year!
Registration will open in September. For more information, click here.
The AfL Conference was a powerful experience for me in many ways. A huge part of my job is curating learning experiences that shake up "business as usual."
Join us for the next round of our three-part workshop series, led by Deeper Learning Coach, Abby Benedetto. Participants will explore the value of having a Graduate Profile, develop and define a draft, and then learn how to implement and measure it once they take it back to their school, district, etc.
Session A: Intro to the Graduate Profile
Tuesday, April 6th, 2021⋅9-12pm PT / 12-3pm ET
You have heard about this thing called a Graduate Profile and want to take your first leap into learning more.
Session B: Defining Your Graduate Profile
Tuesday, April 13th, 2021⋅9-12pm PT / 12-3pm ET
You have a list of amazing skills/competencies that you want for your graduates, and you are ready to get more specific about what that really means.
Session C: Select & Design Your Culminating Performance Assessment
Tuesday, April 20th, 2021⋅9-12pm PT / 12-3pm ET
You want to design a culminating performance assessment that will measure your Graduate Profile.
For a description of the sessions, FAQs, and to register- click here.
The 2021 Assessment for Learning Conference is a two-day virtual learning experience. Sessions will be ‘flipped’ so that we can spend our live time together in smaller group discussions of content, questions of practice, and design. The Conference will be a chance to build the collective knowledge and shared vision of the Assessment for Learning community.
The AFL2021 Call for Submissions is open and stipends are available! Propose a session today to share your work with a community of educators and policymakers who are committed to fundamentally #RethinkAssessment. How has assessment for learning helped us navigate the crises of the past year? And what must we learn from from this in order to build a more just and student-centered future of public education? Proposals are due March 29th.
Visit the AFL2021 website to learn more!
ELP is excited to share our Den Talk at this year’s conference: Listening to Black Women: What Conditions Enable Black Women Deeper Learning Leaders to Thrive?
Deeper Learning Coach, Alcine Mumby, will be hosting and spotlighting the wisdom of 3 Black women leaders: LaShawnna Harris, Sabrina Moore, and Kai Mathews.
Click here for more details about this session and bios of the three women being highlighted.
ELP is pleased to announce that applications and nominations for the 5th cohort of The Deeper Learning Leadership Forum (DLLF) are now open!
The DLLF is a cohort-based leadership experience that aims to develop, strengthen, and support a group of educational leaders to work at the intersection of equity and design thinking.
We are seeking diverse applicants and nominees for our fifth Cohort who are interested in working with other education leaders to address the single biggest challenge facing public education today: inequity.
Click here for more details, links to apply or nominate someone, and a list of FAQs.
Applications due Monday, March 29th.
Join us for the next round of our three-part workshop series, led by Deeper Learning Coach, Abby Benedetto. Participants will explore the value of having a
ELP will be moving our annual Defense Design Studio energy to sharing stories in the hopes of inspiring others to take on the powerful practice of student defenses of learning. We have partnered up with the Learning Policy Institute and the Linked Learning Alliance as part of the California Performance Assessment Collaborative to bring you an online series of virtual defenses and behind-the-scene interviews.
Take a look at the first video in the series, Envision senior, Dani Martin, who vlogs about preparing for her virtual defense.
Click here for more information, including how you can get involved!!
This podcast situates where Assessment, Deeper Learning, Equity and Systems Change meet. Transforming schools is not light work. We illuminate complexities, lift up what’s working and imagine a path forward. With our equity lens we seek to learn from marginalized identities AND intentionally lift up their expertise.
Use this link to check out the first three episodes.
ELP just held our second Twitter Chat earlier this month and the focus was all about students defending their learning in math. The online conversation was held by our Director of STEM, Vinci Daro and previous Deeper Learning Coach & math enthusiast, Jim Malamut.
Keep an eye out for our next Twitter Chat by following ELP on Twitter at @EnvisionSchools and using the hashtag #ELPCoachChat!
Click here to see the resources from our first chat, held in March, which focused on Developing & Measuring your Grad Profile with Deeper Learning Coaches, Abby Benedetto & Suzanne Malek.
ELP will be moving our annual Defense Design Studio energy to sharing stories in the hopes of inspiring others to take on the powerful practice of student
Summer Graduate Profile Workshops
Join us for one of the consecutive 3-day workshops to build community with other educators, and to imagine the possibilities when we center systems of education around the skills that young people need in order to thrive.
Participants will explore the value of having a Graduate Profile, develop and define a draft, and then learn how to implement and measure it once they take it back to their school, district, etc. These workshops will be led by Deeper Learning Coach, Abby Benedetto.
We are also offering an additional option for a direct consultation with Abby after the session of your choice. This would be a great time to get your team’s questions answered and customized suggestions
August 24-26th, 2021 ‣ 9am-12pm PT/12-3pm ET
Designed to Thrive Workshop Series
This three-part workshop series asks, “What kind of performance assessment experiences would we create to ensure that learners, especially those farthest from opportunity, thrive when we operationalize our current vision/profile of a graduate?”
Participants will explore the different features of high quality performance assessment (HQPA) and design a prototype of a performance assessment experience that provides evidence of student learning/thinking of essential competencies. The series concludes with participants iterating on that prototype after centering the lived experience of a marginalized student your system may serve, and reflecting on the changes needed to ensure that ALL students thrive in their performance assessment system.
This workshop series is facilitated by Deeper Learning Coaches, Alcine Mumby and Abby Benedetto.
Aug 4th, 11th & 18th ‣ 9:30am-12:30pm PT / 12:30-3:30pm ET
CuriOdyssey STEMCorps
Are you a teacher interested in developing your early science teaching skills? CuriOdyssey is offering grant-funded professional development for the 2021-22 school year. This PD focuses on building comfort, competence and capacity to deliver science ed, aligned with NGSS. Learn more here.
Summer Graduate Profile Workshops
There is statewide support for Deeper Learning in Colorado, and Envision Learning Partners is playing a key role.
In 2007, the state of Colorado asked districts to choose the ways their students will demonstrate college and career readiness, and therefore readiness to graduate from high school.
This Graduation Guidelines menu lists the options. In the mix of more traditional tests, two options provide a clear pathway for students to graduate by demonstrating their skills through an individualized product or presentation: Capstone Projects and Collaboratively Developed Standards-Based Performance Assessment.
Since April 2018, Envision Learning Partners has been honored and energized to work in an accelerated way with educators at every level of the Colorado educational system, to design meaningful and sustainable assessment systems worthy of and accessible to every student in Colorado, strongly aligned to the demands of a wide variety of 21st century college and career options.
This June marks the close of two incredible first-year partnerships between ELP and the Colorado Department of Education, as well as the Colorado Education Initiative; both projects involve educators from every corner of the state to transform education statewide.
There is statewide support for Deeper Learning in Colorado, and Envision Learning Partners is playing a key role.
In a recent conversation with fellow advocates of performance assessment, a colleague made the point that our job as educators is not to teach standards but to teach students.
Of course, standards play an important role in guiding teachers’ work. But given the structures and incentives of our system, it’s easy for standards to slip into the position of ends rather than means. Tragically, covering standards—“I taught it; some got it.”—feeds inequities that plague education. When we truly reorient to “teaching students,” we stay focused on those whole human beings in our classrooms. What do our students need to achieve, how will we know they have achieved it, and how do we support their getting there? This is performance assessment system design.
The graduate profile movement is a boon, pushing students into the focal point of our energies. Social-emotional learning (SEL) is trending, reminding us to attend to the whole child. But none of these ideas will translate into lived learning experiences until students are regularly tackling rigorous and real-world challenges that elicit the skills they need to practice and master. Our kids need high-quality performance assessments.
Join us on twitter for more conversation about the importance of teaching students over standards, using the hashtag #TeachStudentsNotStandards
Sincerely,
Justin Wells, ELP Executive Director
In a recent conversation with fellow advocates of performance assessment, a colleague made the point that our job as educators is not to teach standards but to teach students.
During his keynote at last fall’s EdLeader21 Conference, educational thought leader, Tony Wagner, did not mince words. “A graduate portrait without an assessment,” he said, “is useless.”
The audience members—mainly district leaders from around the country—audibly shifted in their seats. Although it’s hard to disagree, it’s also hard to pull off. How can school districts assess skills that are as complex as the ones we see on a typical graduate profile?
Tony followed up his challenge with two recommendations:
He’s right. Portfolio assessment and presentations of learning (which come in many forms, including defenses and student-led conferences) are two effective, customizable, scalable, and actionable ways to move from “poster to practice.”
ELP cheers the graduate profile movement because of its potential to change our society’s conception of education’s purpose. But we also worry for the movement. If we don’t see graduate profiles made visible in the actual work of our students—“show don’t tell,” says this old English teacher—then we’re destined to look back on this as another edu-trend that came to nothing. That’s why Tony Wagner’s admonition is so urgent.
The challenge of assessing graduate profiles is one of the major themes of next month’s Assessment for Learning Conference. I know I will see many of you there, and I am excited for the opportunity to work on this together.
Justin Wells,
ELP Executive Director
During his keynote at last fall's EdLeader21 Conference, educational thought leader, Tony Wagner, did not mince words. “A graduate portrait without an
ELP is thrilled to welcome Morgan Vien to our team of Deeper Learning Coaches. Fabulously talented and exploding with ideas, Morgan complements our team with her experience in K-8 school leadership (most recently, serving as principal at ASCEND School in Oakland) and facilitating design thinking (as a School Retool Coach for Stanford’s d.school). We, and our client partners, are going to learn so much from her. Please welcome Morgan when you see her out in the field.
In other ELP news, we recently hatched a new strategic plan, our first since joining forces with the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity (SCALE) over a year and a half ago. ELP’s vision—every student in America is learning within a high-quality performance assessment system—is ambitious in scale and generational in scope, so we know we need to set ourselves up for the long haul. In the coming three years, our strategic priorities are:
As always, we welcome your thought partnership. Let us know what you think about our plan, or ask any one of us to elaborate when our paths cross in the field.
Sincerely,
Justin Wells, ELP Executive Director
ELP is thrilled to welcome Morgan Vien to our team of Deeper Learning Coaches.
The COVID crisis deepens. All of us engaged in the endeavor of learning—students and teachers—now gather ourselves for what we know will be a strange, trying, and unpredictable school year ahead.
As your learning community makes its mad design dash to the start of the school year, with all your contingency plans and spreadsheets and multiple scenarios, don’t forget to keep your graduate profile, or whatever serves as your overarching set of desired learning outcomes, close at hand. Refer often to that list, and keep asking, How are we designing ways for our students to practice these skills?
This pandemic is driving home the pre-pandemic truth that learning is not about seat time or content delivery or testing, all of which crumbled with startling quickness last spring. Learning has always been and will always be about improving one’s skills through practice, guided by coaching. Conceived as such, learning is remarkably flexible. Practice, guided by coaching, can happen at home independently, or on a video call, or in a sparsely desked classroom with children in masks. Establish practice routines for the key skills of your course. Introduce them as early as possible in the school year. Design those routines to be portable, and demonstrate that portability to your students by simulating at-home practice when you have them in your classrooms, and in-classroom practice when you have them on a video call.
I have more to say about elevating the “practice question” in a blog I recently contributed to our friends at Future Focused Education.
We can rise to this challenge, especially if we apply the principles of High-Quality Performance Assessment, and we can make school better than it was before.
In solidarity with educators everywhere,
Justin Wells, ELP Executive Director
The COVID crisis deepens. All of us engaged in the endeavor of learning—students and teachers—now gather ourselves for what we know will be a strange, trying,
Have you had a chance to read Jal Mehta’s piece in Ed Week, “Why Equity Has Been a Conservative Force in American Education—And How That Could Change”? If you haven’t, you should.
Mehta argues that “the effort to close achievement gaps has in practice doubled down on the century-old industrial model of schooling, leaving in place all of the essential elements of its grammar: teaching as transmission, batch processing of students, conventional assessments, tracking and leveling, and all of the rest. Anything that moves away from those assumptions—like project-based learning, problem-based learning, interdisciplinary learning, authentic assessment, or constructivist pedagogy—is seen as ‘risky;’ something that is ‘OK for the privileged kids’ but somehow distracts from the real work of closing achievement gaps on state-sponsored tests.”
We at Envision Learning Partners see deeper learning not as a risk but as a moral imperative, not only because all children deserve it, but also because it’s the right way to make change. I agree with Mehta’s notion of “liberatory design,” which “assumes that teachers and students would like to develop engaging, meaningful learning experiences, and that the problem is not them but the institutional structures and culture of schools that constrains them.” I am fortunate to witness proof of this regularly in my work when, for example, I see the excitement among students and teachers who have designed and implemented a portfolio-defense system.
The teachers and leaders who reach out to partner with ELP have drawn similar conclusions about deeper learning. We are proud to serve their schools and districts, and we are always inspired by their courage to do this work.
Sincerely,
Justin Wells, ELP Executive Director
Have you had a chance to read Jal Mehta’s piece in Ed Week, “Why Equity Has Been a Conservative Force in American Education—And How That Could Change”? If you haven’t, you should.
As you work furiously and heroically to serve your students through the COVID-19 crisis, ELP offers this advice: Don’t forget about your graduate profile. Now’s the time to lean into it.
It doesn’t matter whether your performance assessment system is well established or just getting off the ground, whether you’re currently reaching your students through Zoom or printed worksheet packets. If your learning community has a graduate profile or similar set of learner outcomes, you should use that language to remind your students of their assets and to challenge them to grow. Most graduate profiles were designed to focus us on the skills students need to navigate a fast-changing world with an unpredictable future. Now we get to put them to the test.
Many graduate or learner profiles, for example, target a competency that has to do with being a “self-directed learner.” Let’s admit that it’s a concept more aspirational than operational. In most of our highly-structured learning environments, young people have very little opportunity to practice being self-directed. Guess what? Now they need it. And we need to teach it. So invoke the skill, express high expectations for students to develop the skill during this time, give them ideas for how to practice and demonstrate it, structure opportunities for them to reflect on it, and challenge them to document evidence of their growth. This goes for any skill that’s on your graduate profile.
Stay tuned. In coming weeks, ELP will continue to share suggestions for ways to leverage or advance the elements of your performance assessment system: the use of portfolios, running defenses of learning virtually, building a culture of revision and reflection. There are enormous opportunities in this crisis for students to practice and be assessed on the skills we say are important.
Sincerely,
Justin Wells, ELP Executive Director
As you work furiously and heroically to serve your students through the COVID-19 crisis, ELP offers this advice: Don’t forget about your graduate profile.
The Practice Question
Across education, I see the development of a healthy habit, and the performance assessment movement deserves plenty of credit for it. Educators everywhere, when considering a desired learning outcome, are reflexively asking, “How would we measure that?”
This is good. Asking the measurement question holds us accountable to our goals; answering it points us to actions.
But there’s another question that is just as focusing, should be just as reflexive, and would not hurt to come first: “How will our students practice that skill?”
Answer the practice question, and the measurement answer comes easily. It’s not so easy the other way around.
As a young teacher, I too often measured things that my students didn’t get to practice. I whipped out a public speaking rubric when students presented at the front of the room. I assessed them on their volume and eye contact. But we hadn’t practiced those skills in class.
Collaboration shows up on most graduate profiles. How will our students practice that skill? Answer it honestly. Assigning some group work is not the same thing as practicing collaboration.
Another grad profile meme—critical thinking—is not any kind of thinking. It’s grappling with “How might I be wrong?” How do students practice that skill? If a student has gone through a school year without consciously changing her mind on anything, then I doubt she has really practiced critical thinking.
I applaud what I see announced on graduate profiles all over the country—really important skills that schools can help kids get better at: inquiry, citizenship, creativity, persistence, problem solving, cultural competence, and so on. But it’s not fair to measure things that students haven’t had an opportunity to practice.
A high-quality performance assessment system knows its desired outcomes and its measurements; it also takes responsibility for scheduling practice.
Please share with us one of your favorite ways to help your students practice a key skill!
Sincerely,
Justin Wells, ELP Executive Director
The Practice Question
Here at Envision Learning Partners, we believe that every student deserves to learn within a high-quality performance assessment system. That means every student goes to a school where:
If a school does not have these conditions in place, or isn’t actively working toward them, then I hesitate to call it a good school, no matter how high its test scores, shiny its hallways, or champion-like its teachers.
We in the performance assessment movement must clamor for focus on the quality of our students’ work—not proxies for their work, like test scores or classroom observations, but the work itself. How are you focusing on and highlighting your students’ work? Drop us a line to let us know!
I invite you to read more of my thoughts on the subject in “What Is a Good School?,” a short piece I wrote for EdWeek’s Learning Deeply blog.
Sincerely,
Justin Wells, ELP Executive Director
Here at Envision Learning Partners, we believe that every student deserves to learn within a high-quality performance assessment system.
The “yes buts”—the common objections to performance assessment—keep dropping away.
The latest comes with the revolutionary announcement from the UC Board of Regents last week: Going forward, the SAT or ACT test is not required for admission to a UC campus. The requirement will be phased out completely by 2025.
And just like that, there goes the “yes but the SAT” counterargument to performance assessment system building. An institutional practice that had seemed entrenched is now revealed by the pandemic to be fragile.
We can add the SAT to a growing list that includes “Yes but instructional minutes,” “Yes but the end-of-year standardized tests,” and “Yes but the course grade.”
Meanwhile, the concept of a defense of learning has proven resilient in this crisis. ELP is proud to partner with the Learning Policy Institute and the Linked Learning Alliance to launch the “Defending Learning at a Distance” series, which in coming weeks presents multiple opportunities to observe students’ virtual defenses of learning and engage in conversations with the inspiring students and educators who have remained committed to performance assessment despite school closures. (For those of you wondering about ELP’s long running practice of Defense Design Studios, this series is where we are putting that energy this year.)
Watch this web page closely for upcoming dates associated with the “Defending Learning at a Distance” series. There are some events happening later this week. And more will be added as plans get solidified. Students and schools are moving fast. Don’t take it from us: Watch Envision student Dani Martin vlog about preparing for her virtual defense. I can’t wait to witness what students have to say about their learning in the next couple weeks, and to discuss the implications of this with all of you in the months to come.
Stay safe,
Justin Wells, ELP Executive Director
The “yes buts”—the common objections to performance assessment—keep dropping away.
I am excited about the upcoming Assessment for Learning Conference and encourage everyone in the performance assessment movement to join us in San Diego this February (11–13th).
For the past three years, the educators and system leaders of the Assessment for Learning Project have been designing, learning, and innovating together to reimagine what’s possible for assessment. Having learned much from being part of this community, ELP has been hungry to see it grow. So we’re thrilled that the Assessment for Learning Project is stepping up to host its first-ever conference. The event will be populated with some of the most innovative, thoughtful, equity-minded, and visionary educators and system leaders when it comes to assessment.
ELP is proud to be a co-designer of the conference, and it’s shaping up to be a cutting-edge learning experience for attendees, who will be challenged to apply innovative assessment principles to their own 3-day learning journey. This is a conference designed for practicing, not preaching.
There are so many educators around the country who are doing incredible work to transform assessment, and this conference is a chance for us to learn with each other and build on the momentum to create an Assessment FOR Learning movement. I hope you will join us!
For more info and to register, go to www.assessmentforlearningconference.org.
Sincerely,
Justin Wells, ELP Executive Director
I am excited about the upcoming Assessment for Learning Conference and encourage everyone in the performance assessment movement to join us in San Diego this February (11–13th).
Sometimes it’s important, in our jargon-loving profession, to put things as plainly we can. That’s certainly true for a concept such as performance assessment.
A word that comes in handy is the word challenge. I use it for two key questions:
The first is, How are we challenging our students?
Schools and districts that are consciously building a performance assessment system tend to have crisp answers to that question: “We challenge our students to do a year-long research project.” “Our 3rd graders plan and facilitate their own conferences.” “11th graders must design and implement a statistical analysis with help from an outside expert.” “Our kids have to defend their learning every two years.”
The second question is then, How are we challenging ourselves and our system to prepare our students for their challenges?
Again, I am encouraged by crisp answers: “We look at student work and calibrate on our rubrics once per month.” “Our grade level teams meet in the summer to design two multi-disciplinary projects per year.” “The science department will be using a Next-Gen-aligned rubric for assessing inquiry projects next year.” “We’re investing in PD so that our teachers can teach public speaking across the curriculum.”
Try it. As you build your performance assessment system, keep asking, “How are we challenging our students?” and “How are we challenging ourselves?” Tighten up your answers. Then live them.
Sincerely,
Justin Wells, ELP Executive Director
Sometimes it’s important, in our jargon-loving profession, to put things as plainly we can. That’s certainly true for a concept such as performance assessment.
One widespread way that schools have adapted to the pandemic, particularly at the secondary level, is a dramatic restructuring of the “bell schedule.” In the virtual and hybrid contexts we’re now operating in, many students are taking, and teachers are teaching, fewer classes at one time, typically made possible by shortening the length of courses or chunking them into alternating modules (which is what we are doing here at Envision Schools).
The challenges are obvious: These new schedules are born of compromise. They are harder to manage for some disciplines than others. Abrupt change is exhausting. But they do present an opportunity for advancing a key element of your performance assessment system—the culture of reflection and revision among teachers.
In a functioning performance assessment system, students’ work (their response to assignments) informs teachers’ work (their design of assignments) in a process that is collaborative and continual. With courses on faster cycles, there are more opportunities to iterate. A semester-long course, if offered twice during the year, doubles the pace of iteration.
Let’s acknowledge that making time for collaborative revision of courses is not easy. Right now, the brute logistics of delivering instruction in the midst of a pandemic are monopolizing our energies. But as we get deeper into the fall, ELP urges educators to dedicate some of your precious PD time, in whatever form it comes, to sharing assessments and analyzing student work, building your system’s muscles for reflection and revision.
Shorter courses demand even crisper answers to the questions that never go away: What do students need to learn, and how will we know they have learned it?
When teachers do have opportunities to share their work with each other, we encourage you to use ELP’s principles of High Quality Performance Assessment (HQPA) as a common language for exchanging feedback. We offer both a set of look-fors and single-point rubrics for each of the five principles. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us with questions on how to use these tools in your learning community.
with respect and gratitude for the work of educators everywhere.
One widespread way that schools have adapted to the pandemic, particularly at the secondary level, is a dramatic restructuring of the “bell schedule.” In the
ELP continues to have a strong presence at conferences all over the US in 19-20:
Upcoming conferences:
NEW ELP PARTNERS FOR 19-20
Each school year, ELP welcomes new education partners from across the country. Please join us in welcoming:
GATES FOUNDATION PROFESSIONAL LEARNING PARTNERSHIP GRANT
We are delighted to share that ConnectED and Envision Learning Partners are partnering with the San Diego Unified School District to enhance the integrated sequence of the Illustrative Mathematics high school curriculum. This work is funded by a grant from the Gates Foundation. In collaboration with our partners, we will leverage existing curriculum-embedded instructional resources and parent engagement approaches, elevating strategies that close achievement gaps for English Learners.
ELP continues to have a strong presence at conferences all over the US in 19-20.
The Assessment for Learning Conference 2021
ELP is pleased to partner again with the Center for Innovation in Education and Next Generation Learning Challenges on the 2021 Assessment for Learning Conference!
The guiding question for AFL 2021 is: How will the assessment for learning movement lead us through the crises of the moment to a more just, equitable and student-centered future of learning?
AFL 2021 blurs the line between conference and community of practice. Think of it as a series of missions to escape the gravitational pull of our assumptions and to-do lists, so that we can find space for sharing, reflecting, connecting and imagining.
Get a head start on AFL 2021 right now! Join one of the free 75-minute virtual sessions to cut through the space junk, surface challenges and opportunities, share resources, and help us set the priorities for AFL 2021!
The National Geographic Society
ELP had the pleasure of leading the National Geographic Society and members of their global community through a Design Sprint. In facilitating a Liberatory Design Process, the team was able to develop a set of design principles that will be the foundation for future work and a lens with which to understand and refine past work.
DLLF: Where are they now?
We’re highlighting some of the DLLF alumni who are making moves- achieving goals, serving their communities, and impacting the future of education. Click here to read more about some of their achievements.
ELP has worked with 58 educational leaders from all over the United States since 2016 and we’re excited to open applications for our fifth cohort early next year!
The Assessment for Learning Conference 2021
Explore our diverse events. Enhance your expertise, connect with thought leaders, and broaden your horizons.
A newly published case study from the Center for Innovation in Education (C!E), featuring Envision Learning Partners in Appendix C, highlights Allen County, Kentucky’s multi-year effort to redesign assessment and accountability through Inclusive Design. The report, Better Together, shows how the district co-created their graduation competencies called “Profile of A Patriot” and embedded project-based learning and performance assessments to place students’ passions and real-world skills at the center of learning.
Envision Learning Partners has been proud to support Allen County in this work, and we’re excited to share C!E’s new case study. We’ve partnered closely with C!E through the Assessment for Learning Project, working together to advance learner-centered assessment practices nationally.
By Michael Viera, Envision Education’s College and Career Pathways Manager
Several years ago the city of Oakland came together to support college and career programming for high schoolers, by advancing and deepening career pathways in alignment with the Linked Learning Alliance standards and methodology. The Linked Learning Alliance hosts an annual conference where educators share best practices and takeaways from school sites around the state. Oakland schools always show out in big numbers at the conference, but this year it took place in downtown Oakland, so the presence was even greater.
I had been to the conference previously, but this time was different. Being my 3rd year at Envision in this role, I felt like I finally understood what it was all about. I had colleagues from Envision Learning Partners in attendance and collaborating with me. I got to connect with colleagues from other Oakland schools. I knew what to look for and who to listen to in order to improve our programming at Envision Academy and across the Envision network.
The conference was motivating, to say the least. It is a breath of fresh air being in rooms of educators who are excited and realistic about their work in schools, and who understand the skills students need to have success in their futures.
I came back from the conference and immediately organized Envision Academy’s first job fair since COVID. We had twelve community partners visit our campus to share information with students on internship opportunities, after school and summer programs, and community resources. Students seemed excited about these experiences that they can be a part of outside of their regular curriculum.
At the end of the event, two students stayed back and pulled me aside. I thought something bad had happened. Instead, one of them simply said, “Mr. Viera, we just wanted to thank you for putting together this event. It’s really inspiring to see all these opportunities we didn’t know about until now.”
After a couple of weeks of back and forth emails and phone calls with partners, planning meetings with administration, and quite literally running around setting up tables and chairs on the day of the event, those students made it all worth it. When students are able to take their learning outside of school walls and make connections with their community, they feel seen and they thrive.
Hear from Michael and ELP Assessment Design Partner, Josette Neal-De-Stanton on their takeaways from the Linked Learning Conference.
Envision Education is excited to share the culmination of its two-year research project, Pursuing Equity for Black & Latine Students with Learning Differences, which
documents and illustrates the systems, practices, cultures, and supports that are associated with the well being and success of Black and Latine students with learning differences – students with disabilities and multilingual students with disabilities.
In 2023, Envision Learning Partners (ELP) and Social Policy Research Associates (SPR) embarked on a research study to identify and learn from schools that demonstrated positive outcomes for Black and Latine students with learning differences (including students with disabilities and multilingual learners). After a review of data from secondary schools across the country, the study team identified two schools for a more in-depth study, which was conducted during the 2023–2024 school year.
The results of the research are shared through case studies of the two schools that were the focus of the research: 1) Crosstown High: Building a Culture of Inclusion; 2) Capital City: An Inclusive School Community Committed to Whole-Child Learning and Well Being; and 3) An Executive Summary/Synthesis of Findings.
In addition, we have authored four practice briefs based on the findings of the research that provide practical steps that schools can take to create more inclusive environments that support the success of Black and Latine students with learning differences.
This research was made possible through the generous support of New Profit, a venture philanthropic organization, and the Oak Foundation.
I began working at ELP in January 2018 as the Director of Research and Innovation. Since then, I’ve been working on the nationwide team providing direct service and technical consulting to client partners and creating assessment products, as well as directing ELP’s research projects.
I’m excited to share that in July 2025, I stepped into a new role: Senior Director of Assessment for Envision Education. This role encompasses responsibilities for the whole organization – Envision Schools and Envision Learning Partners. Envision Schools runs four charter schools in the Bay Area (in San Francisco, Oakland, and Hayward). My new responsibilities include overseeing the design and implementation of a comprehensive assessment system for the schools, ensuring the use of rigorous, standards-aligned assessment practices that demonstrate student achievement of core academic skills. At the same time, our system aims to provide regular opportunities for students to demonstrate ambitious learning outcomes aligned to Envision’s graduate profile competencies in real-world-relevant, meaningful, and culturally sustaining contexts. We seek to more systematically integrate authentic and high-quality project-based learning and student-led conferences at all grades 6-12, and portfolios + defenses at grades 8, 10, and 12. We want to develop our schools as models of a balanced and comprehensive assessment system that supports student achievement of both foundational academic skills and ambitious, authentic demonstrations of learning. This new assessment system is described more fully in our new Envision Way documents.
In my new role, I also continue to work with my ELP colleagues, supporting the learning and effectiveness of our national team of Assessment Design Partners, and developing new services aligned to the Envision Way as we seek to meet the evolving needs of both external district partners and our own schools. Our long-term strategy is to strengthen our own schools so they are clear models of the quality assessment systems that we are also seeking to strengthen in partnership with districts. We call this the “flywheel” because of the reciprocal nature of our learning and development work as we pilot new practices, collect data, and evaluate their effectiveness in our schools and in partnership with external districts.
I continue to also be involved in exploring ways for Envision Education to gather evidence of its effectiveness through systematic collection of evidence in our own schools (in partnership with John Ericson, our Director of Data & Assessments), and by initiating research projects to collect evidence of the impact of ELP’s work with districts. I am also continuing to coordinate the research project “Pursuing Equity for Black & Latine Students with Learning Differences”. We wrapped up two years of school case study work in July, and are preparing to launch a two-year professional-development pilot and evaluation phase of the project with a large school district. More news to come!
What do you enjoy most about working for Envision?
It’s definitely always been the people. I truly enjoy working alongside colleagues with a similar commitment to our most marginalized students and who are striving so hard to create supportive, inclusive learning environments that lead to equitable learning outcomes. I am learning so much from my ADP colleagues as well as my Academic Programs Team colleagues. They are all so incisive and brilliant and I have so much to learn from them. I truly feel blessed and lucky to have them as colleagues!
I’m also proud to be working in an organization with a commitment to its pro-Black, anti-racist stance, engaging us all in developing a self-awareness of our individual and collective contributions to our cultural norms, and providing the space to engage in productive struggle to begin changing those norms.
Last, I love that Envision honors hard work while also honoring our need for joy, self-care, and rest! The yoga and art breaks, retreats, sound baths, line dancing, karaoke nights, breaking bread together, and other opportunities to take mind breaks are all helpful reminders that we are whole people who also need laughter, rest, and nourishment to thrive. My family always gets a kick out of hearing about the latest fun things I get to do with my work friends!
Impact Academy alum, Kina Evans, shares how her time at Impact shaped her path from student to educator and now CEO. Walking the halls of Impact Academy, Kina learned not just academics, but how to find her voice, lead with confidence, and envision a future bigger than herself. After earning her master’s degree and teaching for six years, she founded Bully Talk Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to empowering youth and transforming school culture. In her ELP Guest Blog, Kina reflects on how Impact Academy’s lessons continue to guide her work as a leader, advocate, and change maker.
Walking through the halls of Impact Academy in Hayward, CA was where my journey truly began. As a student, I didn’t just learn academics—I learned how to find my voice, lead with confidence, and envision a future bigger than myself. Those experiences planted the seeds for everything that would come after graduation.
After Impact, I pursued higher education and proudly earned my master’s degree. One of my proudest moments came when I was invited to appear on The Jennifer Hudson Show, where I was able to share my story and the mission behind my work. It was a reminder that the impact of our voices can carry far beyond the classroom.
For six years, I poured my heart into teaching, working directly with students and families every day. Teaching was more than a job—it was a calling, and it gave me the foundation to see where my true purpose was leading me. Eventually, I made the decision to transition into substitute teaching so I could dedicate more of my time and energy to building Bully Talk Inc., the nonprofit I founded to empower
youth, transform school culture, and create safe spaces for students everywhere.
Looking back, I can see just how much Impact Academy changed my life. From the lessons I learned as a teenager to the resilience and drive I carry today, Impact has been a thread running through every step of my journey. It helped shape not just who I was then, but who I am now—a leader, an advocate, and someone committed to making a difference in the lives of others.
Earlier this spring, Assessment Design Partners Roilyn Graves and Soraya Ramos spent time in Roanoke County Public Schools in Virginia, collaborating with district and school leaders to refine and pilot a culminating performance assessment system aligned to the district’s Opportunity-Ready Skills.
During their visit, they had the opportunity to tour Glenvar High School—and were inspired by an incredible student-led initiative: the G-Bees. This club involves students in every aspect of beekeeping, from hive maintenance to harvesting honey, and even crafting a range of products like lip balm, soap, candles, hot honey, and more.
Through this hands-on work, students are not only gaining valuable entrepreneurial experience, but also raising funds for outdoor education and scholarships. It’s a powerful example of student-centered, purpose-driven learning at its best.
The G-Bees program is truly performance assessment in action—students applying their knowledge and skills in meaningful, real-world ways. While online sales aren’t available, we’re excited to share their story as a model of what authentic, engaged learning can look like.
Learn more about the program through this link.
Challenge Success-Stanford Survey of School Experiences, our student experience survey with dozens of school teams each year. While the survey covers many topics within student well-being, engagement, and belonging, one of the key metrics we discuss with schools is stress. Across hundreds of thousands of responses and 10 years, assessments, tests, and grades are consistently some of the top sources of stress for middle and high school students.
Experiencing stress is not negative in and of itself. In fact, learning how to adapt to productive stressors such as a difficult subject or strenuous exercise is how we grow and develop. However, the stress students feel from assessments is too often an unhealthy form of stress. Traditional summative assessments, typically tests and quizzes, are clearly linked in students’ minds to grades, transcripts, and the post-secondary stakes associated with them. In this context, assessment can become a source of fear, anxiety, and dread. Some students respond to this stress by plowing hours of time studying and preparing at the expense of their sleep and other activities, while others might shut down, procrastinate, or resort to last-minute cramming. These strategies might help them score well, but don’t do much for long term learning.
Schools are in a challenging position because they are responsible for promoting student engagement, well-being, and belonging while also preparing them for post-secondary admissions and learning in the higher education system.
How can schools help students engage in rigorous, transferable learning in ways that help navigate this tension?
One promising path is to take a clear eyed look at assessment practices. When schools make time to consider why and how they assess, who their assessments are for, and ultimately what they want their assessments to look like, they often express a desire to make assessment to feel authentic and personally meaningful. They want assessments that inspire effort and growth, that demonstrate high levels of learning and a depth of understanding, and most of all that feel meaningful and important to their students.
In other words, they want more performance assessment.
Performance assessments are tasks where students apply their knowledge and skills to solve real problems, create authentic products, or demonstrate mastery in contexts that mirror professional or real-world situations. Think science experiments designed to solve local environmental problems, history projects creating museum exhibits, or math challenges proposing a redesign of a public park.
While talk of performance assessment often centers around all the ways it is a superior measure of complex, transferable skills, what I want to lift up here is how performance assessment done well is also a major lever for students’ overall well-being, engagement, and belonging.
One of the biggest stressors for students is the uncertainty surrounding traditional assessments. They worry about what will be on the test, whether they studied the right material, and how their performance will impact their grades. This anxiety is not just about the difficulty of the work—it’s about the unpredictability of the assessment itself.
Performance assessments help eliminate this unnecessary stress by making expectations clear. During high quality performance assessments, students receive rubrics, exemplars, checklists, and guides that outline exactly what success looks like. With excellence made clear, instead of wondering “Will this be on the test?” students can instead start asking “How can I make my work stronger?” There’s still pressure to perform, but it’s a productive pressure, the kind that pushes students to pursue their best rather than paralyzing them with fear.
Additionally, traditional assessments often take a “stop and measure” approach, where the assessment feels like a separate event from the learning. This disconnection positions assessment as an, often high-stakes, judgment rather than part of the learning process. With performance assessments, students have the opportunity to learn through the assessment itself. They reflect on their work, receive feedback, and have opportunities to improve as they work towards a final product. The standards for quality remain high, but the process of pursuing those standards nurtures effort through emphasis on quality, revision, and growth rather than relying on high stakes for high, stressful effort.
A common complaint from students is that schoolwork feels meaningless. They don’t see how what they’re doing in class connects to the world outside school or their future goals. In our Challenge Success Survey data, our most consistent finding is that students are mostly “doing school” when it comes to their engagement. They are working hard, paying attention, and turning in assignments, but they don’t have a strong sense of purpose, let alone interest in their work. Traditional assessments reinforce this disconnect, as they often emphasize memorization and rote recall rather than deep understanding and application.
Performance assessments change this dynamic by making learning more relevant. Instead of filling out study sheets to prepare for taking multiple-choice tests, students can be asked to tackle complex projects, solve real-world problems, and create authentic artifacts that mimic the kind of work professionals do. When students see that their work has real-world applications, they are more likely to find it meaningful and stay engaged.
Another key component of performance assessments is choice. Students have more agency in how they demonstrate their learning, whether that means choosing different materials, exploring unique lines of inquiry, or deciding how to present their findings. This autonomy increases motivation and makes learning more enjoyable. Plus, when students are able to tap into their strengths in their particular approach to the task, the assessment becomes more personally meaningful and enjoyable.
Belonging is a crucial element of a healthy school experience, and performance assessments can play a major role in building a strong classroom community and individual excellence.
Belonging starts with connection, and performance assessments create space for meaningful teacher-student interactions. Because these assessments often involve complex work and ongoing feedback, teachers have more opportunities to connect with students one-on-one. These conversations help build trust and rapport, reinforcing the idea that teachers are there to support learning, not just evaluate performance.
Additionally, performance assessments encourage peer collaboration. Unlike traditional tests, which often promote competition and isolation, performance-based tasks allow students to collaborate, give each other feedback, and share ideas. This fosters a sense of shared purpose and community, shifting the classroom culture from “every person for themselves” to “we’re in this together.” The result? A stronger sense of belonging and a more positive learning environment.
Belonging is also related to our sense of identity. As we seek to inspire all learners to high levels of personal excellence, performance assessments provide opportunities to embrace a broader vision of excellence. Traditional high-stakes tests tend to privilege certain test-taking skills and a narrow range of talent, while performance assessments allow multiple ways to demonstrate understanding, empowering students from different backgrounds or with different strengths to succeed. Additionally, when students are able to make individually meaningful choices in their work, they are able to bring more of their full selves to their learning and to the classroom community.. This not only enriches their personal experience, it creates greater opportunity for connection and relationship building with teachers and peers.
It’s also important for students to see examples of successful work from people with diverse backgrounds, especially in fields where certain groups have been historically underrepresented. For example, young women of color in science classes can and should see examples of women of color thriving in those fields through exemplars, stories, and real-world models. Seeing themselves reflected in the work they’re being asked to do can build both belonging and ambition.
Shifting toward more performance-based assessment is no small task. It requires thoughtful planning, sustained effort, and, often the guidance of experienced experts like the team at ELP. But the rewards make it worth the investment. Students’ well-being, engagement, and sense of belonging are deeply interconnected, shaping their entire experience of school. High-quality performance assessments are one of the most effective tools we have as educators to nurture these dimensions of student thriving. By integrating them into our practice, we can create learning environments that challenge students intellectually while supporting them emotionally, socially, and developmentally.
Roanoke County Public Schools has been partnering with Envision Learning Partners for the past four years to develop and implement a comprehensive performance assessment system aligned with their Opportunity Ready Graduate Profile. This collaboration has fundamentally transformed how students demonstrate essential skills needed for future success in an increasingly complex world.
The journey began a decade ago when Roanoke County developed their C-Change Framework, which meticulously detailed the conditions needed for deeper learning to thrive within school communities. This framework addressed multiple dimensions, including school and classroom climate, professional growth, support services, and learning culture. It also emphasized finding balance between preparing students for standardized testing and developing the critical skills needed to navigate a rapidly changing world.
Working with diverse stakeholders, they articulated the Opportunity Ready Graduate Profile, which defines the skills and attributes necessary for students to successfully navigate evolving life and career pathways and seize opportunities that come their way. Despite this solid foundation, the district initially struggled to quantify these skills in ways that were both meaningful and conducive to growth.
This challenge led Roanoke County to form a strategic partnership with Envision Learning Partners. Over the past four years, they’ve evolved from conceptualizing what their assessment system could be to implementing a robust program across all 26 schools in the district. This systematic approach to performance assessment now forms a cornerstone of their educational philosophy.
At the heart of this work is the Opportunity Ready Portfolio Presentation, where students demonstrate mastery of three critical skills: Communication, Collaboration, and Critical Thinking. Using a structured process guided by clear rubrics and expectations, students select artifacts from their in-school and out-of-school learning experiences as evidence of their skill development.
Each student presentation is guided by the driving question: “How have I demonstrated and grown in my Opportunity Ready Skills as a Communicator, Collaborator, and Critical Thinker this school year, and how will I apply these Opportunity Ready skills to what’s next for me, including my future career?”
Trained panel members, including at least one member from the school’s design team, evaluate these presentations using standardized rubrics that assess specific performance outcomes for each skill area. The panels follow a structured protocol for scoring student work, ensuring consistency and fairness while providing constructive feedback.
“We learned that you don’t know what your students are capable of until you ask and give them a chance to respond,” shares one district leader. “We have been blown away by what our students are able to demonstrate through our performance assessment system.”
The impact of this work extends throughout the educational community:
For students, the process has revealed the power of reflection. Many students express surprise at how much they’ve grown until they take time to reflect on their learning journey. This metacognitive awareness strengthens their sense of personal growth and achievement.
Teachers, while initially cautious about the workload involved in preparing for conferences and defenses, become enthusiastic advocates after witnessing students’ presentations. As one administrator noted, “To a person, they are invigorated and excited to begin planning for the next year once they see it in action.”
For administrators and district leaders, the presentations have rekindled passion for educational transformation. “The impact the presentations have on the panel, parents, and staff has reignited our drive for this work,” reports a district representative.
The most compelling evidence comes from individual student experiences. One particularly moving example involved a student who had struggled significantly during middle school. During their senior defense, the student articulated their growth journey with such clarity and reflection that “there was not a dry eye in the room.” This transformative moment exemplifies how the process helps students recognize and celebrate their own development while preparing them for future challenges.
Through this ongoing partnership with Envision Learning Partners, Roanoke County Public Schools continues to refine and expand their performance assessment system. The district’s commitment to developing the whole student—not just academic knowledge but essential life skills—positions their graduates to thrive in whatever paths they choose after high school, whether in higher education, careers, or military service.
By creating authentic opportunities for students to demonstrate mastery of critical skills, reflect on their growth, and connect their learning to future aspirations, Roanoke County Public Schools is preparing students not just for tests, but for life beyond graduation in a rapidly changing world.
Every year, 11th grade students at Envision Academy, our Oakland 6-12 grade school, complete a week-long internship as part of their Work-Based Learning experience, known as World of Work (“WoW“). The purpose is for students to gain work experience and develop career interests and ambitions through internships in professional settings. The internships are intended to expose students to the rigor and requirements of full-time jobs, while allowing them to explore passions outside of the regular school structure.
The Envision Learning Partners team used this as an opportunity to collaborate on a project that showcased the power of student voice with a group of three EA interns. What began as an initiative to capture the amazing work through Student Led Conferences and Portfolio Defenses quickly evolved into a dynamic social media campaign, all thanks to the creativity and expertise of our interns. This experience served as a powerful reminder of the impact student-driven initiatives have on everyone involved.
Quotes from the interns about their experience:
Resources used by the ELP team throughout the week:
Envision Academy’s World of Work Internship Exhibition:
Envision Learning Partners has had the honor of working with Antelope Valley Union High School District since 2017 and we’re excited to share an update on how they are Integrating Portfolio Defenses into the Curriculum: All-in for Success in this Guest Blog written by Duane Robertson.
It is more critical than ever to equip students with a range of skills that will prepare them for college, careers, and life. One strategy that has been implemented in the Antelope Valley High School Districts (AVUHSD) Career Technical Education (CTE) pathways is the Portfolio Defenses. The portfolio defenses not only enhances communication but also fosters students confidence, critical thinking, and collaboration. Recognizing this importance, AVUHSD set a plan to integrate the portfolio defenses into the curriculum, making them an essential component of pathway students’ learning experiences. The implementation plan, the challenges faced, and the successes achieved by AVUHSD is outlined below.
Identifying the Need
After discussions with CTE administration and feedback from teachers, it became apparent that many students lacked opportunities to practice public speaking in structured, meaningful ways – especially after COVID 19. While presentations occasionally appeared in class, they were sporadic and often lacked uniform standards, rubrics or assessments. To address this gap, portfolio defenses were implemented to incorporate presentations as a formalized, skill-building component of CTE pathways.
Setting the Objectives
The primary goals for integrating defenses into the curriculum included:
Developing the Plan
The implementation plan was multi-faceted and involved the following steps:
Overcoming Challenges
While the initiative was ultimately successful, it came with its share of challenges:
Measuring Success
The impact of this initiative was evaluated through teacher and student reflections, and academic outcomes. Key findings included:
Expanding the Vision
Encouraged by the success of the program, plans are underway to further enhance the initiative by extending portfolio beyond CTE classes:
Conclusion
Integrating portfolio defenses into the curriculum has transformed the learning environment, empowering students with communication skills that extend far beyond the classroom. This initiative exemplifies how thoughtful planning, collaboration, and a commitment to students can create meaningful change in education. As students continue to excel in their portfolio defenses and critical thinking abilities, the benefits of this learning strategy reaffirm the importance of such initiatives in preparing our students for the future.
Duane Robertson is the Coordinator of CTE for the Antelope Valley Union High School District.
Mr. Robertson left his position as a multimedia and computer science instructor and Academy Coordinator of the Lancaster High School Engineering and Multimedia Academy, the first Linked Learning Silver-Certified academy. He previously taught business classes as an Adjunct Instructor, after a 15 year career as a project manager. He received his B.S. in Business with an emphasis in Management from Cal State Dominguez Hills, and his first Masters Degree in Education from Chapman University and a 2nd Masters in Administrative Leadership from Cal State Bakersfield.
Duane’s desire to reach students led him to his current role as CTE Coordinator for the Antelope Valley Union High School district. Under his leadership, the CTE classes and academies continue to align with the district’s vision of “every student who graduates will be prepared to pursue college and any career to which he or she aspires”.
Duane is also an alumni of ELP’s Deeper Learning Leadership Forum, Cohort 4.
ELP hopes to see you at the Deep Learning Conference in sunny San Diego this April 2025! Learn more about our Den Talk, Deep Dive, and Workshop opportunities!
When Envision CEO Jillian Juman and Chief Program Officer Justin Wells get on a plane together, they tend to have a deep and lively conversation about assessment. What makes for a comprehensive assessment system, one that truly prepares students to be global citizens that can drive systemic change, and what sustains such a system? Envision Education—known for portfolio-defense and other forms of high-quality performance assessment—has been innovating on assessment solutions for over 20 years. Lately, our talks circle the reflection that our current system is incomplete and not meeting the challenges of the time. Listen in—and join in—as Jillian and Justin bring their ongoing conversation out of the jet stream and into the Deeper Learning Den (to the welcome of Deeper Leaners and to the relief of plane passengers).
This deep dive addresses the problematic relationship students and teachers often have with STEM education, rooted in unaddressed trauma. It focuses on how white supremacy culture shapes science and impacts individuals’ sense of belonging in STEM. Participants will explore ELP’s HQPA principles 3: Open to different learner approaches and 5: A learning experience in itself to design STEM assessments that promote healing. Through dialogue, journaling, and personal timelines, participants will examine STEM trauma and develop strategies to disrupt it in their lives and work. By the end, participants will have tools to address and prevent STEM trauma transference in their classrooms and assessments. The workshop is split into two sections: naming and releasing trauma, and designing with critical hope.
In today’s world, where misinformation spreads rapidly, it’s crucial to equip educators with the tools to create effective, reliable performance assessments.
This interactive session will explore the “what” and “why” of high-quality performance assessments, emphasizing the importance of authentic assessments that foster critical thinking. Participants will engage in a newsroom activity to examine the impact of misinformation on society by sharing current headlines circulating in our ecosystem and practice critical thinking to evaluate the legitimacy of information sources.
Participants will leave with actionable strategies to enhance their assessments, ensuring they not only measure student understanding but also prepare learners to navigate a complex information landscape effectively.
In this special Guest Blog Video Interview, Assessment Design Partner, Josette Neal-De-Stanton, interviews her very own brother, Rene Neal-De-Stanton.
Rene is currently a science teacher byway of nursing school with a background in entertainment and dance.
They discuss the importance of project-based learning in science and dive into the importance of representation and equity in the classroom.
Six years into the Graduate Profile Journey, DJUSD is finally starting to make some systematic moves towards implementation. After exploration of different approaches to implementation, DJUSD has landed on a strategy that fits its context as a traditionally decentralized and high achieving district. The approach is to anchor each of the six graduate profile outcomes at strategic grade levels so that when students leave DJUSD they will have had robust experiences with all six during their career. The opportunity for providing these robust experiences is the power and potential of performance assessments.
There are two important actions taking place in the 2024-25 school year to advance this strategy. First, in partnership with Scaling Student Success and Envision Learning Partners, we are working with a teacher leadership team of sixth grade teachers to design a performance assessment focused on the Adaptability and Resilience Outcome of our Graduate Profile. This group is underway and is energized about the opportunities to develop adaptability and resilience in their students who are at a key transitional stage in their personal and academic lives. The second action item in progress comes from our Grade 9 Ethnic Studies Leadership Team. The DJUSD Ethnic Studies Course, which is in its second year of
implementation, culminates with a Youth Participatory Action Research Project (YPAR). The Ethnic Studies Leadership Team seized on the opportunity to create alignment with the Civic and Cultural Awareness Graduate Profile Outcome and their YPAR project. The group is in the final stages of developing a Civic and Cultural Awareness Rubric which will solidify the Civic and Cultural skills, knowledge, and dispositions to be taught and assessed through the YPAR project. This will help move the YPAR project from a traditional project to a high quality performance assessment.
Earlier this year, Learning Policy Institute (LPI) released this resource that outlines 10 features from effectively redesigned high schools and highlights examples of schools that are putting the features into practice to create powerful learning opportunities for youth.
ELP was honored to be listed under the Additional Resources. If you are interested in a redesign or have any questions, contact the ELP team to schedule your free consultation.
Click here to download this resource.
In this special Guest Blog Video Interview, hear from Alcine Mumby and Laureen Adams, interviewed by Niloy Gangopadhyay and Courtney Katen.
This interview was sparked by Alcine’s recent travel to the Ghana ASCD Educators’ Summit 2024 earlier this year.
Learn about Alcine and Laureen’s history- all starting in Oakland at Envision Academy, what Laureen took away and still carries with her as leader of the Tutu Institute in Ghana, why she believes so deeply in performance assessment, and what’s up next for her work continuing to support educators and systems.
Bullitt County Public Schools is a public school district in Shepherdsville, KY that serves students from pre-K through 12th grade. The district is committed to providing a world-class education that prepares students for success beyond high school.
Envision Learning Partners has worked with Bullitt County Public Schools since 2018, partnering on their Graduate Profile development and performance assessment system. Bullitt County’s Superintendent, Dr. Jesse Bacon, and Assistant Superintendent, Dr. Adrienne Usher, are also both alumni of ELP’s Deeper Learning Leadership Forum.
In this Partner Profile, we hear from Assistant Superintendent, Adrienne Usher.
How are you advancing your Performance Assessment System? Is there one story you can share that illustrates how this work is benefitting your school, students or teachers?
Advancing the Performance Assessment System in Bullitt County Public Schools involves the creation of Graduate Profile Performance outcomes for students in Grades K-2, 3-5, and 9-12. A notable story comes from a graduate of the district who, after completing postsecondary education, entered the workforce. This individual reflected on a high school assessment experience involving a presentation to a city council to solve a community problem, which proved invaluable when preparing for an engineering position interview. College courses, according to this graduate, did not fully address aspects of the interview process, including content, dispositions, and competencies. This example highlights the effectiveness of the performance assessment system in preparing students not only for specific occupations but also for broader workforce preparation.
What have you learnt during this process?
The process of transforming assessment has revealed the need to rethink its purpose and identify who truly owns it—students. While teachers play a critical role in this process, it is students who take ownership of their learning. Empowering students to demonstrate their learning fosters motivation and a deeper understanding of its larger purpose.
What is the impact you are seeing on students and their work?
The implementation of performance assessments and student ownership of learning is having a significant positive impact on students and their work. Students are more motivated as they recognize the relevance of their learning beyond the classroom. This approach is also fostering necessary dispositions and competencies, aligned to our Graduate Profile, preparing students for future challenges in higher education, the workforce, and beyond. By developing the skills to articulate their knowledge and connect it to meaningful purposes, students are not only achieving academic success but also growing into lifelong learners equipped for a dynamic and evolving world.
What is the impact you are seeing on teachers and their practice?
The gradual shift embedding performance assessments is creating meaningful changes in teachers and their practice. Teachers are rethinking the purpose of assessment on a continuum of traditional, transitional, and transformational methods that emphasize student ownership of learning combining academics and our Graduate Profile competencies. Teachers are becoming facilitators of learning, guiding students to take responsibility for their growth and encouraging reflection and self-assessment. This approach is also enhancing teachers’ instructional practices, as they integrate more student-centered strategies and focus on developing dispositions and competencies alongside content knowledge. The process is reinvigorating teachers’ sense of purpose and enthusiasm for a new school experience.
What is the impact of this work ON YOU as a practitioner?
The impact of this work I have experienced, as a practitioner, is related to understanding a larger purpose for school and its connection to the community and society. School can be viewed as a place to gain knowledge and get a high school diploma and it ends there. However, connecting school and assessment that impacts students in more comprehensive ways is about life preparation. In reality, the school experience, which includes teaching, learning, and assessment, is a reflection of what the greater community (students, parents, community members, industry partners, etc.) values. If communities want graduates to be more prepared and successful in the workforce and as citizens, collaboration that provides opportunities for learning and assessment which connects academics to real world problem solving is a future-focused necessity.
Learn more about the great work being done in Bullitt County in this EdWeek article.
“My parents wanted to give me the values of education that they were unable to have when they were in school. They wanted us to be proud of who we are because we deserve to be the types of people that our kūpuna were. It is not our fault that our practices were interrupted but it is our kuleana to make sure that it does not happen again.” –Grade 12 HFCS student
“Less learning is shared on tests than Hōʻike which incorporates interviews, online research, and book research. If SAT was the only way to demonstrate my learning that would’ve been a big struggle and I would’ve just studied for the test and afterwards forgot.” –Grade 12 HFCS student
“We use our Hō`ike Capstone Projects to give back to our community….It is important to share the knowledge ʻĀnakala Bo gave to us because like he said, it is useless if no one uses it.” –Grade 8 HFCS student
Hawaiian-focused Charter Schools (HFCS) are a consortium of public charter schools that have been designing and implementing culturally sustaining curriculum, instruction, and assessment since the early 2000s. Currently, there are 17 HFCSs, serving over 4,000 students, more than 80 percent of whom are part Native Hawaiian. What distinguishes these schools from regular public schools is that they center ʻĀina-based Education. ʻĀina-based learning experiences allow learners to create authentic, reciprocal relationships with the land, people, and resources of a specific community which fosters the development of ʻOiwi (indigenous) Leadership skills. This becomes an integral part of the learner’s
identity and a catalyst for a personal commitment to the health and well-being of that community. It is situated in learning that honors the past, present and future in order to ensure the sustainability and productivity of all forms of life. More specifically, ʻāina-based education embodies the wisdom of the ʻōlelo noʻeau: ‘O ka hā o ka ʻāina, ke ola o ka poʻe (The health of the land is the health of the people).” (Hakipuʻu Academy, Ke Kula ʻo Samuel M. Kamakau, Mālama Honua, 2020)
The HFCS have also been engaged in developing and implementing school-specific Culturally Relevant Assessment systems that are grounded in the HFCS Cultural Competency Framework inclusive of cultural artifacts, academic work, and hōʻike (Hawaiian cultural performance assessments).
Assessments are also aligned to the commonly adopted HFCS Vision of the Graduate, represented below:
The HFCS have been supported financially by Kamehameha Schools Kaiāulu, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, and other philanthropic organizations focused on culturally sustaining education, and partners with Hawaiian culture and assessment experts, such as Chelsea Keehne from Kamehameha Schools, a private educational institution. Dr. Keehne and other school leaders such as Dr. Denise Espania, Dr. Meahilahila Kelling, Paul Kepka, Dr. Kanoe Ahuna, and Buffy Cushman-Patz have led and facilitated efforts across the schools to develop their own local authentic assessment systems that align with the HFCS Vision of the Graduate while also honoring and centering each school’s unique graduate learning outcomes. This work began in 2012 through the Culturally Relevant Assessment Project. Its website documents their collective work and includes a number of school examples.
Among the common tools that have been adopted to support CRA in each school are the HFCS Process Rubric; the Kupukupu Framework and Unit/Lesson Plan templates; the HFCS Assessment Profile; the Hōʻike Capstone Project Continuum; the Kupukupu External Review; and an HFCS Assessment Profile Instructional Guide. These resources can be found at the project website.
The quotes below from students illustrate the impacts that implementing the Hō`ike Capstone Projects have had on students and their families.
“The Hō`ike Capstone Project was an achievement not only for my school, but because it had to do with my Hawaiian culture. I learned so much about my culture that I didn’t know before. –Grade 8 HFCS student
“I feel proud… Me nā makakilo a me ku’u na’au pēlā nā kūpuna e ola ai (Singing: With observing eyes and my na’au, that is how kūpuna lived.)” – Kindergarten HFCS student
One performance assessment may not make a profound impact on students, but an accumulation of such assessments across the grades certainly should. This impact should be evident in the senior capstone hōʻike. As a network school educator stated, “Our seniors should be able to think about everything that happened, from kindergarten up to graduation, and be able to use all of their cultural experiences to build their hōʻike.”
To learn more about the HFCS and culturally relevant learning and assessment examples, below are a few video examples:
Beginning in 2022-23, Envision Learning Partners was privileged to learn from and collaborate with five Hawaiʻi public charter schools as they documented their school-specific capstone projects. The schools include four HFCS: Kamaile Academy, Ke Kula ʻo Samuel M. Kamakau Hawaiian Language Immersion School, Kanuikapono School, and Mālama Honua School; and one additional public charter school – SEEQS (School for Examining Essential Questions of Sustainability). ELP’s coaching team had previously supported Kamaile Academy, Mālama Honua School, and SEEQS in the mid 2010s by sharing Envision’s portfolio defense model. In this round of collaboration, Justin Wells, ELP’s former Executive Director (now Envision’s Chief Program Officer) provided support and feedback to school leaders as they shared their locally developed capstone assessments in order to more clearly communicate the components of their systems in a form that could be readily understood by an external audience. These final materials were submitted for review for entry into the Performance Assessment Resource Bank (PARB), received feedback from performance assessment experts, and after 1-2 rounds of revision, all were accepted as “Project-Certified” performance assessments to be shared broadly to an international audience. These are the first intentionally designed culturally relevant assessments that the PARB has included and as a result of this collaboration, ELP was able to modify and improve its High Quality Performance Assessment/PARB review instrument to recognize and honor the culturally relevant aspects of performance assessments that are designed to serve and meet the needs of diverse students.
When I was a kid, I was thrilled by timed multiplication tests. You know the ones. Fresh paper flipped with the blank side up, while you recite to yourself…
Then go! You flip your paper and, hardly registering the numbers, answer 60 multiplication problems in 60 seconds (or less) with the speed of Usain Bolt. And when the time is up, you pass the paper to a classmate, hopefully a friend, to grade your paper in purple gel pen and find out whether you are a math genius or…well…hopefully you have other talents.
I loved it. To me, math was speed and accuracy. As I went from carrying the one to the Pythagorean Theory, I learned procedures to solve problems with speed and accuracy, hardly registering the numbers. Until I couldn’t anymore.
Eventually, the concepts became too abstract and the procedures couldn’t carry me to any solution – let alone with accuracy and speed. Eventually, I figured that I reached my limit and stopped. As my identity as a ‘math person’ ended, so did aspirations to work in the sciences and anything STEM related. With one course, my plans for my life changed.
Later in life, math and I were reintroduced, this time as a teacher. And I saw that my journey directly conflicted with what we ask of our students: be lifelong learners, persevere, you can do anything you put your mind to. It was then that a thought occurred to me: we’ve been thinking about math all wrong.
So here’s a reframe. The purpose of math class is not to learn numbers and theorems. That’s a byproduct. Instead, the purpose is to learn how to think, problem solve, and investigate our world. Everyday phenomena – natural or socially constructed – are linked to mathematics. It adds data, color, insights, and questions. How we approach a new or difficult math problem informs how we approach challenges that we encounter in our lives. Sure, learning new strategies is an important part of what educators teach in math. But perhaps more powerful is the idea that you can find and use new strategies in creative ways. That we all think differently. That we can build on each others’ ideas. We can aim to support students as they build up their toolboxes and practice being problem-solvers, innovators, and world builders in a variety of circumstances.
We see this shift with the eight standards for mathematical practice, which describe the “processes and proficiencies” that learners will need to be effective in their math education. Simply applied to finding solutions to problems, our learners likely won’t internalize the power of these practices. However, applied as an approach to problem solving, students become empowered in their learning and move toward liberation. When students ask, “Why do we need to learn this math?” We can respond, “So you can change the world.”
This reframe requires safe learning spaces where our students can make mistakes, try new strategies, and explore their world. It requires projects, games, and exploration. Going into next school year, how can we move away from a focus on speed, accuracy, and learning math as a checkbox for the next level of math? How can we move toward liberation?
If we are truly pursuing justice – now and in the future – then we have to change the way we think about math class.
This Guest Blog was written by Envision Education’s Director of STEM, Kala Stepter. Connect with her on LinkedIn.
By Tara Curry-Jahn, Partner, Leadership+Design
A family vacation can be about prioritizing presence and connection, relaxing, doing activities and creating fun memories, while also enjoying good food and conversation. However, in some worlds it can also feel like “forced family time,” because being under the same roof or on a joint itinerary can feel like testing the limits of patience and politeness. While both of those options can be true at the same time and were for me earlier this month, it also reminded me that vacations are experiences ripe to practice experience design. Although, when I found myself on “the balcony” watching myself and my family on “the “dance floor” (a metaphor we use at Leadership+Design (L+D) to help leaders reflect on their role or behavior both while doing
something and observing yourself do that thing), it felt like we unintentionally missed a design opportunity, which as an attendee of many professional gatherings feels more common than not.
Think about the gatherings you attend each year. If you were to use the mental model that everything is designed, how many of those gatherings were designed well? How do you decide if it was designed well, what metrics would you use? If you had to guess, what and whom were they designed for? What were the outcomes the planners tried to achieve?
This year at gatherings, I felt deep connection and relationship, disconnection and minor loneliness, high expectations and missed opportunities and both joy and awe. As a human-centered designer (who has a disposition for wanting to connect with other people), it’s difficult for me to participate in things and not use the lens described above and have those questions rattling around in my head. Having both been on the planning and attending side of events, I often wonder if we spend enough time mapping out our intentions and “why” the gathering exists, as Priya Parker asked us to do in The Art of Gathering.
There seem to be three main design categories related to the level of human connection in programs or gatherings:
First, there is being together in person, in community, in authenticity, etc. If this is the goal, likely there has been attention paid to helping people be in proximity to one another and build relationships. It’s not always easy or cost effective, but it is a design tool you can use to achieve your outcomes. I will say though that you can have proximity, but not create a feeling of being together.
Second, there is designing to keep people separate, which is actually not a gathering, but could be a decision when you scope your desired outcomes. This may be a more efficient or cost effective strategy on the surface, but it depends on the type of experience you want to create and are honest about the costs of asking for engagement virtually or for people to work independently.
The third option is the combination of being together physically (or virtually in some instances) but feeling or functionally remaining separate (in practice or mindset).
This year, I have attended well designed experiences that create human connection, a design principle I was looking for. This contributed to my growing awareness of how we conceive and design experiences for humans to gather and whether the true outcome is bringing people together and creating connection, keeping them separate, or bringing them together and still missing the opportunity to help attendees feel belonging, inclusion and connection.
It comes back to the foundational reality in decision making, design matters. I believe that in “our day and age” human connection also matters. If you want human connection, you need to design gatherings with this in mind, including the invitation, the space, the roles, and the schedule so people can find the time to connect. This is true for vacations, conference, book clubs or neighborhood block parties. We need to know who we are designing for, build trust in our communities to ask if we are effective, and realize that while it’s not efficient, sometimes being together and connected will help us as humans and leaders.
What can we do differently?
Below are some ideas on how to build additional human connections through gathering and being together. In addition to my experience at convenings this spring, I have also found some great resources to push my thinking and help my personal “aha” feel more rooted and connected to a larger community of people having a similar “aha” about what will help us as educators, community members, parents, and leaders.
The other day, I discovered an interview by the New York Times with Robert Putnam, author of numerous books including a favorite of mine, Bowling Alone and most recently The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again. In the interview he shared how the structures or lack thereof that our culture employs deepen the feelings of loneliness and disconnection. The outcome of this disconnection impacts the level of separation we feel with “the other side” and he asserts that by involvement in community and civic groups we will learn about one another and build trust and connection. Even if we are opposites in our beliefs, if we are together and not separate, our future is more optimistic.
I recently dug into last year’s report by Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation 2023: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community which lays out the true implications on personal and societal health when we are more separate than together.
Putnam also references the level of politically-induced division and how it’s creating a lot of feelings on all sides. Decisions are made about who people are by what we think we know about them. In an effort to personally challenge my own mental models, leveraging tools and processes help.
Organizations like Starts With Us, which describes itself as “a movement to empower millions of Americans just like you — tired of our culture of contempt and energized to foster critical thinking and constructive communication across our lines of difference” can be great resources to locate and practice tools that help us build empathy, and as Putnam suggests, have conversations that build trust and human connection.
Leadership+Design, has taken on a similar cause by developing a human-centered curricular resource, Design For Election Season, to help school communities (both students and adults) practice the skills of being curious and developing empathy and understanding for someone who has a different lived experience or set of beliefs. The “container” for learning is political in nature (not partisan), but it’s rooted in the belief that as humans we need to spend time learning from and listening to one another. The resource shares tools and protocols to help structure that learning.
On recent drives with my 8 year old son, we listen to the book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt. The book focuses on the mental and physical health implications of technology use, specifically on young people. As I reflect on my own feelings about togetherness and separateness, and my time on the patio with my family, it relates to what we are willing to do about the changes we want.
A colleague at Leadership+Design reminded me that while I can only control myself (related to technology use), I can initiate a conversation about how I feel at that moment, share my reaction to being together, but separate. I could share my goals for our time together and enter into a conversion about what brought us all to the gathering. This is something in my control.
All of this to say, let’s do better. Assessment for Learning convening was a relatively small group of education leaders who prioritized designing for connection, but that was a choice we made. In contrast, it felt like my family vacation took a “wait and see” approach. We can also make choices starting with the patio conversations, the armrest airplane engagement and the commitment to looking across “the aisle” to build
relationships and trust. We can continue to be told by the media, the Surgeon General, and Putman how bad things are when we don’t have a strong social fabric to care about and not fear one another. However, they and many others continue to remind us, it’s up to us whether we plan our lives, relationships, gatherings and organizations to simply happen or whether we design them to be catalysts for change and improved connection.
ELP is excited to announce that we have published five new performance task resources in the Performance Assessment Resource Bank (PARB), an online resource that ELP has stewarded since 2018.
The five new resources are capstone portfolios, projects, and/or portfolio defenses from a consortium of schools in Hawai’i – the Hawaiian Focused Charter Schools (HCFS), which has been developing and implementing culturally sustaining curriculum, instruction, and assessment strategies to cultivate and preserve the language and culture of native Hawaiians. As part of its Culturally Relevant Assessment project, four HFCS schools and an additional charter school submitted capstone projects, ranging from Kindergarten through 12th grade capstones, for review and feedback from ELP during the 2022-23 academic year. Included among these five capstone projects is a Hawaiian-language kindergarten capstone project, the first non-English project to be included in the PARB. The revised projects were then submitted for a formal review process by performance assessment experts for inclusion in the Performance Assessment Resource Bank (PARB), using a hybrid review instrument, “ELP High Quality Performance Assessment Criteria + PARB/ILN Quality Criteria for Performance Assessments,” that combines ELP’s HQPA criteria and the PARB/ILN Quality Criteria developed by SCALE to vet submissions for the PARB.The instrument was adapted to include ʻāina (land)-based learning outcomes. All five of the submitted projects from the HFCS schools met project certification criteria after one or two cycles of review and feedback. ELP benefited from the experience of reviewing these submissions to deepen our understanding of culturally sustaining performance
assessment and broadening our practice to be more inclusive of the diverse learners that our nation’s schools serve. This project was completed with the funding and support of the Kamehameha Schools, a private educational institution in Hawaiʻi that aims to improve the capability and well-being of Native Hawaiians through education.
We encourage you to peruse these resources and reach out to learn more!
This is an interactive hands-on workshop where participants will prototype a high quality performance assessment (HQPA) aligned to deeper learning competencies. Through learning stations, participants will explore the what and why of performance assessments and use quality criteria tools to analyze for rigor, learner agency, and authenticity. Participants will then prototype their ideal HQPA and brainstorm the potential implications on their school structures and pedagogies. The design experience will culminate with participants sharing their performance assessment tasks, identifying next first steps, and reflecting on their own learning and leadership.
Join us to…
This workshop will dive deeply into the characteristics of High-Quality Performance Assessment. We know that one area where schools can improve students’ experiences is engaging them in rigorous, authentic assessments that provide students opportunities to lead their own learning experiences. Through performance assessments, students learn how to reflect, revise, and communicate in ways that strengthen teachers’ learning outcomes. Performance assessments also re-engage teachers in the craft of teaching, activating their own creativity and love of learning.
Participants will learn the characteristics of High-Quality Performance Assessments (HQPA). They will observe students engaged in a defense of learning and reflect on how the practice demonstrates the qualities of HQPA. We will also discuss examples of performance assessments and consider what teachers and leaders can do on Monday morning to move towards implementing performance assessments across schools and systems. Participants will leave the session understanding what is required to create outstanding performance assessments and excited to either start building new assessments or revising current assessments.
Learn more about the event here
“Inclusive and Personalized School Environments Where Black and Latinx Students with Learning Differences Thrive”
Students with disabilities and multilingual learners are often subjected to exclusion from robust learning experiences and social disconnection. Participants will dive into the Effective Learning Environments for Learning Differences framework, which summarizes systems and supports implemented by four secondary schools that have a track record of success in supporting the thriving of Black and Latinx students with learning differences. The framework highlights inclusive, personalized, and competency-based practices that promote student belonging, engagement, and growth. Drawing on the framework school leaders and students from two schools will share practices, systems, and supports that support thriving among students with learning differences. Participants will use the framework to reflect on their own school learning environments for students with learning differences, challenges, and implications for their own work in schools serving students with learning differences.
The Effective Learning Environments for Learning Differences framework was developed with a central focus on learning and well-being outcomes for Black and LatinX students with learning differences (students with disabilities and multilingual learners), who represent some of the most marginalized and underserved groups in U.S. public schools. We seek to equip school leaders with greater understanding of the conditions under which these students can be successful and thrive.
The Panel will include two school leaders, two students/graduates of inclusive, competency-based schools, and three researchers responsible for documenting the characteristics of the schools’ inclusive learning environments in case studies completed in June 2024.
Learn more about the full event and register by clicking here.
As you now know, May 2024 is my final newsletter as Executive Director of Envision Learning Partners. My year with this tremendous team ends on June 30th, and OH what a wonderful year it has been! I take with me many lifelong memories and profound lessons. When I was interviewing for this role, I shared with the panel that one of my overarching motivations for joining the team at Envision was to reignite my optimism for public education. Too many experiences up to that point left me wondering whether systems were capable of making changes that truly met the needs of all students. And then I joined ELP! In the last year, I saw systems leaders engage in exemplary conversations about how to operationalize equity. I spoke to innovative educators working together to change assessment systems across an entire state. I heard students reflect on their learning while charting a course towards a successful future that was previously too intangible to embrace. Most important to me, I worked with a team here at ELP bursting with genius, creativity, and optimism. I am grateful to the ELP team for all they have done to shift schools in the direction of justice. And I am equally grateful to you, the ELP community, for embracing the optimism of change. I look forward to our paths crossing again.
Until next time,
Royce
An exasperated mother once entered my Principal’s Office unannounced and asked for some time to discuss concerns about her daughter. After listening to a barrage of incidents about battles to get to the morning bus, hurled insults at the dinner table, and intense homework rebellion, I asked a question I love to ask every parent: “What are your hopes and dreams for your child?”.
Her answer stuck with me. Without hesitating, the parent shared, “I never want my daughter to experience failure.” No wonder she was exasperated. She might as well hope her daughter never experiences gravity.
Failure is a universal human experience. Failure helps us understand where our boundaries and limits are and defines a path for expanding them. Failure reminds us of our imperfections and inspires us to find colleagues with complementary skills and talents to our own. Failure helps us savor success without slipping into arrogance.
While an important experience, failure should not be defined as an antonym of success. A recent article in The Hechinger Report discusses how important it is that we embrace failure as an invaluable teaching opportunity. The authors share that developing deeper learning competencies requires serious, guided reflection by students about why they failed. Students can then develop a growth mindset that sees failure as opportunities to shine a light on personal development and, over time, celebrate growth. Failure, therefore, can be seen as the dawn of success, not the absence of it.
As a community that cherishes how deeper learning addresses students’ holistic needs, let us encourage our schools to develop safe opportunities for students to learn from their failures and, as a result, accelerate their personal development.
Take care,
Royce Conner, Executive Director
On May 15 and 16th, 2024 educators from across the country came together in Oakland, CA for a two-day Assessment for Learning (AFL) Deep Dive and focused on student demonstrations of learning.
Together, we continued to pursue AFL’s essential question: What can we learn together about how assessment for learning relates to learner belonging, equity and liberation? Specifically, we explored “How do we build aligned and coherent performance assessment systems that promote learner belonging, equity and liberation?”
The event included background knowledge of Oakland education with ELP Assessment Design Partner, Josette Neal-De-Stanton, and longtime Oakland education leader, Gary Yee, school site visits hosted by Envision Academy and ARISE High School where folks experienced student presentations of learning, new tools were presented, and community connections were strengthened.
The AFL Blog will soon have posts from Storytellers about their experience at the event; learn more as those come out and see previous blogs from other AFL events by clicking here.
Dear ELP Community:
I am writing with news about a transition for Envision Learning Partners. This past year has been eventful for us (as I am sure it has been for you). We onboarded a new Executive Director and a new Assessment Design Partner. We completed strategic plan processes for both Envision Learning Partners and Envision Education org-wide. We are about to finish a 3-month study of our impact and ways to expand it. Now, as we wrap up the school year, we consider the future and make decisions about how to navigate education’s changing times and shifting landscapes.
Royce Conner, ELP’s Executive Director, will be transitioning from his role on June 30th. We are grateful to Royce for the important contributions he has made and projects he has led during his tenure, and we deeply support him as he moves into the next chapter of his distinguished career as an educator. Feel free to connect with Royce on LinkedIn.
Royce’s responsibilities will be distributed across Envision Education as part of a comprehensive org-wide strategy to deepen the integration between our schools (our local impact) and our consulting service (our nationwide impact). Out in the field, our remarkable team of coaches and operations professionals will continue to help school districts build high-quality performance assessment systems. In my role as Chief Program Officer, I am excited for the opportunity and the commitment to make the sum of “One Envision” to be greater than its already powerful parts.
As we head into the summer, when educators often feel a welcome shift in pace, I invite you to reach out to me with questions or wonders. ELP remains your steadfast partner in our movement to bring high-quality performance assessment to all students.
In community,
Justin Wells, Chief Program Officer
Realizing the full potential of student-centered learning requires transformation of traditional approaches to assessment and accountability. To truly move to student-centered learning at scale, education systems must be redesigned.
Envision Learning Partners is honored to have co-authored a new paper alongside the Aurora Institute, the Center for Assessment, the Center for Innovation in Education, the Great Schools Partnership, and KnowledgeWorks.
SEEQS: the School for Examining Essential Questions of Sustainability is a public charter school in Honolulu, HI serving students in grades 6-8 that opened in 2013. SEEQS exists to foster the next generation of systems thinkers, environmental advocates, and community leaders in Hawaiʻi and beyond. SEEQS’s methodology is embedded in the structure and schedule of the school day itself; students begin every day with community building and play in their advisories or physical activity groups, followed by content courses, and ending with a two-hour project-based learning block called EQS, or Essential Questions of Sustainability. EQS is the cornerstone of the SEEQS model, as it allows students to engage in real-world learning that emphasizes the practical applications of the content courses as they relate to modern issues of sustainability that directly impact their communities. With all of this in mind, SEEQS’s Portrait of a Graduate is a student who continuously reflects on and utilizes the five SEEQS Sustainability Skills: Managing Effectively, Communicating Powerfully, Collaborating Productively, Reasoning Analytically, and Thinking Systemically. Using these Sustainability Skills, SEEQS Students, or SEEQers, can move on to become stewards of Planet Earth and healthy, effective citizens of the world.
This framework of interconnected skills that comprise a sustainability-focused mindset is what students are defending as they finish 8th grade. SEEQS worked with Envision Learning Partners early in its developing stages to build out a Portfolio Defense process that felt authentic to the school’s community-centered values and vision for a sustainable future. Students select five different projects from across their three years at SEEQS that exemplify their growth and understanding of the five Sustainability Skills in the Portfolio. After successfully completing the Portfolio, students choose two of the five skills to focus on for the Defense presentation to a panel of faculty, community guests, and a 7th grade peer.
Over time, SEEQS has refined its Portfolio Defense system to pull out the Portfolio as its own important piece of work that stands on its own before the Defense process. We learned from Envision the analogy of “the Portfolio as a resume and the Defense as an interview,” and we worked with students to really think about a resume that stands on its own.
Another crucial series of iterations in SEEQS’s Portfolio Defense system has been its multi-stage onboarding and calibration process. Faculty panelists begin preparing months in advance with a series of orientation sessions, delving into the rubric, collectively evaluating and discussing previous years’ portfolios, and coming to a consensus about the attributes of high-quality work that are most impactful in a successful Portfolio Defense. The school has also spent years building a database of willing and able external panelists (community partners, sustainability experts, educators from other schools, etc.) and by doing so, providing a form of professional development to others.
SEEQS’s next goal is to “indigenize” the Portfolio Defense process to be more expansive and inclusive of cultural values in Hawaiʻi. They plan to do this by working with a number of Hawaiian-focused charter schools that also implement culminating performance assessments.
Every year, 8th graders have meaningful and profound things to say about their learning experiences when given the opportunity to reflect on it. They read and hear amazing quotes from students during their defenses every year that they document and hold onto; this record includes statements like the one below from Ansel B., class of 2023:
“Before I came to SEEQS, I didn’t care as much, but over my time at SEEQS I’ve started to see that the world isn’t just this nebulous idea; it’s the people and places around us, and a major step to being a steward of planet Earth is to care about the world around you.”
The impact that Portfolio Defense has had on SEEQS students is immense. Many alumni and parents reflect both during and after the process about the value of the reflections and skills that the process aids in growing. One parent of an alumni, Lisa W., shared this testimony after seeing her son successfully present his portfolio:
“The middle school years are especially filled with doubt as they try to fit in with their peers and start to question who they are. Creating the space and requiring them to reflect on and recognize this growth in themselves at such a young age is such a huge building block in knowing, loving and appreciating who they are. The satisfaction of completing such a rigorous assignment, watching the doubts and nervousness transform into relief and celebration was so uplifting. Then seeing the subtle shift in their energy, a little less self doubt, that little more confidence – was priceless.”
Even with so many developments and changes to their process over the last ten years, SEEQS has bigger plans ahead. As they build out a high school, they plan to follow a student’s development over a longer period of time by repeating the Portfolio Defense process in grades 10 and 12. Beyond reflecting on just their growth in the Sustainability Skills in 8th grade, high school SEEQers will have to demonstrate proficiency in two of the five skills in 10th grade, then all five by the end of their SEEQS career. Through internships, community action projects, and other opportunities to become deeply involved in real-world issues, SEEQS students will have assembled an impressive collection of advocacy and research that will prepare them for whatever comes next.
Hear more about SEEQS, including a more about our prior work together, on this episode of the Learner-Centered Collaborative Podcast: Keeping Humanity at the Center of Assessment with Buffy Cushman-Patz, SEEQS Executive Director.
Hi I’m Michael, an 11th grade student from Envision Academy, born and raised here in the Bay Area. Interests that I have are the inner workings of cars and what goes into building/modifying them. I’m very interested in the Mechanical Engineering world and would love to pursue a career in it. I look forward to spending the week with the ELP team and learning from them in order to grow as both a person and finding out what makes things work.
I chose to go to Envision Academy in Oakland because I heard great things about the school from my older brother who also attended for the full 4 years. So far I’ve had a great experience at Envision Academy with the school being very inclusive, I never feel out of place.
Here are a few things that I am doing at school: A bridge project in my Physics class where me and a group of students work together to design a bridge that can hold up at least one brick. A satirical piece of writing in my English class where I am pointing out a problem of my choice in today’s world/society while incorporating ideas like irony into the text.
Right now I am looking at colleges which can help the dream of me wanting to become a Mechanical Engineer with a friend of mine contributing to it as well. We have a full list of colleges with each being color coded to indicate how likely we are to be accepted, with green being we are sure to get in and red being a longshot. I am currently looking at Georgia Tech and Stanford University as my top two choices for Mechanical Engineering classes.
What I want to take from this experience of working with the ELP team is how organized and calculated I can get with all my work, but also researching so I can continue to investigate more opportunities that I and others can benefit from.
My week here has been amazing. Being able to meet all these amazing people that helped me settle in and feel welcome was exciting. I got to learn what goes on behind the scenes here and also have my share in the conversations not being left out of meetings and being asked for my inputs on a variety of subjects. A skill I improved at was my communication and planning skills. By being able to participate in the meetings I got better at talking with people that are older but also come from different backgrounds than me. Having control over my schedule also gave me a better understanding on how to handle my time in order to get the work I need done but also make time for other things, whether that be meetings or interviews by my fellow peers. I would recommend that other schools also start to implement an internship week of sorts because the opportunities and just overall knowledge that gain from a work environment is different to that of a school one. The amount of connections you can gain would be very helpful for students so that they get a sense of what their future can hold for them and it would also help them narrow what it is they actually want to do.
Cristian: “I chose this because David, my mentor, the senior directive of student services, made me interested in learning more about the school policies and how they work. I want to gain a different perspective of life, although there are many other opportunities, I want one that hears about students and how they feel when it comes to certain activities. I want to improve my communication skills, not just with students but with adults too. I want to become a structural engineer/architect. What interests me about Envision is its cultural theme and how inclusive they are with African American, hispanic, etc, and how they treat them and their months for example black history month, especially with how inclusive they can be. I’m a sports guy. I play a different variety of sports like baseball, soccer, football, etc. I played for the school soccer team this year. I was thinking of going to a college in Boston or Riverside, San Jose State university.”
Jesus: “I chose this internship because it was close to my home and the work seemed interesting to do throughout the week. I want to learn what are the steps that ELP does to work with the school and how the hiring process works here. I want to improve my communication skills. What interested me about Envision was how it was really close to my house and my siblings had already gone to Envision before. I want to pursue a career in real estate. I like to play soccer, baseball, and I’m interested in the process of making music. I also like to play different instruments like the guitar, accordion, and the drums. I was thinking of trying out Sonoma State, UC Santa Cruz, Cal State, and UC Davis.”
Melanie: “I wanted to go into a medical field assisting but things didn’t work out, but Mr.Viera introduced me to Ms.Kat and the idea interested me because she works with HR and the higher ups, staff, and teachers so I wanted to look more into what goes on behind the scenes at Envision to make things work at the school. I want to learn more about the environment and Ms.Kat’s routine, and what goes on behind the scenes because I didn’t think that all this went on to make the school work. I thought it was just the Principal and the staff at the school. I want to improve my communication skills and hands on work with computers like google docs and sheets. What interests me about Envision is that it’s a small community so you’re able to know almost everybody and with how it is an art and technology school I had an interest in going here when I was coming out of middle school. I’m very interested in the medical field, more specifically the dental industry. I like to explore, hang with my friends, and create memories while also having fun. Some colleges I have on my mind are UC Santa Cruz, UC Santa Barbara, and Cal Poly.”
Cristian: “I learned a lot of communication skills, being able to interview teachers, students, and other staff, all of these being people I do and don’t know broadened my interviewing skills. I got to create more and better bonds with all these people. Other Jobs I did were to attend a lot of meetings. The fun part about that was being able to go out, visiting the office, and getting a lot of new views/perspectives on different topics. My experience here was good. I got to meet new people and learn more about them, their job titles, and all the work they do to make everything happen. I think it’s a good idea to add an internship week for other schools because it’s a valuable learning experience, getting them slowly out of their comfort zone white also giving them knowledge on career paths that they themselves might want to pursue after the week is done.”
Jesus: “My week here went well and I definitely learned about the process of how teachers are hired and what they look for in teachers. A skill I improved on was being able to stay focused on a piece of work since I’m very easy in getting distracted so this internship bettered my focus. I would recommend this internship to other Envision students because it’s an easy job but you gain so much knowledge and you learn a lot from being here. I would recommend other schools to also start doing an internship style week because of the amount of opportunities you gain. For example, I was able to get a letter of recommendation from my mentor here. You also get to actually experience what the working world is like and it’ll give an early opportunity for students to learn about it.”
Melanie: “My week was very flexible and very calm, the first day I got an understanding of what the rest of my week was going to look like. After that I spent my time doing my work and overlooking my mentor to get a better understanding of what she does. I’ve learned that the process of having new people is not just accepting the job on the spot there is so much behind it. It can take weeks looking at them and accepting new staff and what they actually look at for potential staff. I improved my understanding and listening better with one on one talks with my mentor, asking her questions, and also just paying attention better. Just comprehension skills overall. I do recommend for other schools to start an internship like week because of the new environment you can get into and the vast majority of opportunities you can get by just meeting new people. A lot of students might not get the most out of just going to school so it would be very great to also learn about other experiences at other workplaces, while also giving students new jobs to look at that they might be interested in pursuing in their future.”
Vermont has been on an ambitious journey to implement student-centered, proficiency-based learning for over twenty years. That journey continues to evolve today, and this blog shares some of the key points along the way.
A publication by the Vermont Department of Education in 2003, “High Schools on the Move,” addressed “the critical issues facing Vermont high schools” and identified principles that remain at the heart of Vermont’s work today. These include:
(A Report to the Vermont Legislature on Career and Technical Education)
The task force recommended a focus on personalized learning environments that would enable students to take risks in a supportive setting and prepare them for life after graduation. The What and Why of Act 77 outlines additional milestones along Vermont’s path towards the Flexible Pathways Initiative, created by Act 77 of 2013 and found in statute under 16 V.S.A. § 941. This Act was “established to encourage and support the creativity of school districts as they develop and expand high-quality educational experiences that are an integral part of secondary education in the evolving 21st Century classroom; to promote opportunities for Vermont students to achieve postsecondary readiness through high-quality educational experiences that acknowledge individual goals, learning styles, and abilities; and to increase the rates of secondary school completion and postsecondary continuation in Vermont.”
The Flexible Pathways Initiative paved the way for the inclusion of proficiency-based learning in Vermont’s State Board of Education Rules, Series 2000, The Education Quality Standards, that went into effect in April 2014. These rules state:
In an effort to develop a shared vision for both proficiency-based learning and college and career readiness, in 2017 the VT Agency of Education began collaborating with the field to develop a statewide Portrait of a Graduate (PoG). Approximately sixty educators from across the state gathered to react to the initial draft. That version was influenced by a blog post, The Graduate Profile: A Focus on Outcomes, from Edutopia by Ken Kay that stated:
Over the next two years, more than three hundred students, parents, educators, and community members contributed to the final version of the Vermont PoG. The PoG provided guidance in the development of proficiency-based graduation requirements and articulates the vision for learners who are prepared for success in college, career, and life. Personalized Learning Plans, a requirement in Act 77 for students in grades seven through twelve, serve as a vehicle for documenting a learner’s progress towards the attributes of the PoG.
Fast forward to 2020. . . Vermont educators had been working hard to implement the expectations within the Education Quality Standards for local graduation requirements, however, a survey that year revealed a wide variation in requirements across the state. Depending upon the supervisory union or district a student attended, there was a range from six to one hundred thirty-five Proficiency-Based Graduation Requirements. This indicated that expectations for graduation, which are determined locally and approved by school boards, were being interpreted in a variety of ways. Educators moved forward with the development of PBGRs with good intentions, however, a collective understanding for these expectations had not been developed. Unintentionally, this range in PBGRS created inequitable expectations for learners across the state.
Concern about this lack of coherence and the impact on students, especially those who move frequently or attend Career Technical Education Centers from several different sending schools, gave “birth” to the Proficiency-Based Graduation Hierarchies. Content Specialists started by determining what it means to be literate in their content area and distilled the essential information into an overarching Proficiency-Based Graduation Requirement. Critical Proficiencies represent the enduring knowledge and skills within a content area and promote high expectations for all students. Priority Performance Indicators represent the skills and knowledge that will be taught and assessed. Finally, Proficiency Scales indicate the progression of learning over time. Once this information was drafted, the Hierarchies went through an internal review process using quality criteria documents as lenses for providing feedback. After an additional two rounds of feedback from the field, the Hierarchies were revised, finalized, and posted on the VT AOE website.
Since Vermont is a local control state, supervisory unions and districts are not required to adopt the PBGR Hierarchies. However, in the spirit of continuous improvement, educators are encouraged to adopt the PBGR Hierarchies, adapt them to fit their context, or use each Hierarchy to refine locally defined PBGRs.
As part of VT AOE’s continuous improvement process, members of the Student Pathways Division are working with educators in SU/SDs to support the processes of adapting, adopting, or refining local PBGRs through Participatory Action Research (PAR).
Numerous resources have been developed over time to support Vermont’s efforts to implement proficiency-based learning. The Vermont Framework for Proficiency: Resources to Support Implementation is composed of stackable documents that enable educators to access the information that is most relevant to the needs of their particular school system. It is organized from a backward-designed perspective so that the initial documents lay the foundation for subsequent work and inform decisions regarding next steps. The resources also demonstrate how different parts of the Framework for Proficiency connect and build upon one another. The hope is that by sharing these resources and Vermont’s journey, others can benefit and join us on the road to proficiency.
Guest Blog written by Pat Fitzsimmons
Resource Corner: Scaling Student Success Briefs & Policy White Paper
For educators and educational leaders seeking to bring your Graduate Profile to life, Scaling Student Success has released a series of Practice and Policy Briefs to support this journey! The Briefs tell the story of five different districts across California that are successfully integrating their Graduate Profiles (or Learner Portraits) into their curriculum, culture, and classrooms, and seeing a positive impact on student success. They’re a valuable learning resource for any school interested in redefining student success! Learn more and access the briefs here.
Scaling Student Success also recently authored a white paper focused on statewide policy recommendations that support many of the transformation systems we want to see in schools (graduate profiles, authentic assessments, etc.). ELP has offered to be listed as one of the organizations to officially “sign on” to the paper. Click here to read: A Student-Centered Approach to Education.
One of our long-time partners, SEEQS (the School for Examining Essential Questions of Sustainability) Public Charter School in Honolulu, HI has been implementing their Portfolio Defense system for over ten years now, and they have gone through many iterations refining the process for their school community and sustainability-focused values. Now in their 11th year, they have created The SEEQS Sharing Hub, their in-house professional development service, and have announced a three-part series that offers an in-depth look at all of the structures and steps that lead to a rigorous and meaningful culminating experience for their students. Join them for one, two, or all three of them:
Get an overview of the SEEQS Portfolio Defense process from start to finish. We’ll discuss school structures that make it possible, as well as what it looks like for students. This session would be great for anyone interested in what the SEEQS Portfolio Defense processes look like, whether you’re curious about exploring them for your school or classroom, or whether you’re already implementing them and want to hear details about how another school does it.
Learn about the nuts and bolts of what makes student portfolios and reflections, and how we assess them. Look at student work and practice giving feedback to students who are involved in the process. This session would be great for those who have already started a portfolio defense process at their school and want to learn about the SEEQS portfolio writing, revision, and assessment process (which we do as a separate part of the portfolio defense process).
Experience what our Portfolio Defenses look and feel like in real time. On the first day of this workshop, participants will learn about the entire process and watch an exemplary (live) Portfolio Defense presentation by a current 8th grader. On the second day, participants will observe multiple portfolio defense presentations, the scoring process, and have the opportunity to debrief and reflect with experienced practitioners. Participants will leave with a toolkit of usable materials and structures that SEEQS uses to implement its Portfolio Defense System.
Hear more about SEEQS, including a little bit about our prior work together, on this episode of the Learner-Centered Collaborative Podcast: Keeping Humanity at the Center of Assessment with Buffy Cushman-Patz.
Happy New Year! As we dip our toes into the sea of 2024 and all that will come with it, we should take advantage of embracing the opportunities that come from the question “What will we do next?”.
As soon as I dipped my toes into this year, I came across an article in Ed Week titled “What 2024 Will Bring for K-12 Policy: 5 Issues to Watch.” To stretch the metaphor one final time, I feared the article would make me want to tear my feet from the water before sharks arrived. (Huge “Jaws” fan here)
Then I came to Issue #5, and the seas calmed.
Sitting at the end of an expansive policy list spanning everything from private school vouchers to AI came five words that sparked immense optimism in me: “Rethinking measures of student success.” The work that we have dedicated ourselves to is one of the country’s top policy priorities this year! Many of us have been advocating for more equitable approaches to assessing students and transforming schools for decades. For the first time in a long time, our national moment may have arrived.
With our work being recognized on a national level, I suggest it is time for us to consider what we will do next at the local level. For example, California districts should consider writing Graduate Profiles and performance assessments into your LCAP plans. If you need support or thought partnership around how to plan and implement this work, Envision Learning Partners stands ready to support you at whatever point you are in your journey.
Welcome to 2024, and we wish you a joyful year of celebrating the achievements of our schools and students!
Over the last three decades, standards-based reforms have attempted to close opportunity gaps – mostly by tapping large scale assessment and accountability systems. But these assessment systems were not designed to provide real-time feedback to support teaching and learning at the classroom level. We also know that systemic racism is deeply ingrained in the history of assessment in our nation. But we can build and envision different ways of measuring learning, especially by centering students in these systems.
In this keynote, Alcine Mumby of Envision Learning Partners discussed how performance assessment can be a key equity strategy – giving students the opportunity to declare what they know, how they’ve learned it, and how they plan on using that knowledge to change the world.
ELP was honored to partner with so many other incredible organizations to develop this resource.
Beyond the Horizon: Blazing a Trail Toward Learner-Centered School Quality Systems includes recommendations for education leaders at every level of the system, mapping the course for the future of assessment and accountability.
Created in collaboration with leaders in K-12 student-centered learning from across the country, these recommendations support a learner-centered accountability system that would:
What’s your new role?
I am serving as the Chief Program Officer (CPO) of Envision, a new role for the organization. My job is to steward the overall academic model of Envision Education, which is enacted through our four charter schools in the San Francisco Bay Area and through our nationwide consulting arm, Envision Learning Partners (ELP).
What does Envision Education hope to achieve with this shift?
Before the CPO role was created, the bridge between ELP and our schools ran through the CEO, at the very top of the organization. The intent of my role is to lower the altitude of that bridge and add lanes. I am working to increase the bandwidth of learning between our schools and our nationwide coaching.
How does it support Envision E ducation’s mission and vision?
Since its founding, Envision has been dedicated to the idea that students deserve an education that attends not just to what they know, but also to what they can do and how deeply they can reflect. (See our principles of High-Quality Performance Assessment, or HQPA.) And we’ve always been committed to serving not only students in our own schools but also students everywhere, by sharing our ideas with public schools and advocating for shifts in policy. In that sense, Envision is proud to be living out the original purpose of charter schools: places to test ideas and, if they work, share them. The job of the CPO is to ensure that we live up to that ideal.
What’s your favorite part of your new role?
I am interacting daily with broader swath of Envisioners, including students, teachers, and school leaders. I directly support a team of directors of academics and student services who are brilliant and collaborative. Plus, I still get to hang with ELP!
What are you bringing from ELP that you’re using in your new role?
My decade at ELP taught me that change happens not through mandate but through persuasion and inspiration. That requires communication that is clear, tight, and uplifting. I try to apply those skills every day.
Where do you see yourself and/or your role in the next few years?
I have so much to learn if I am to succeed in my new role, but I remind myself that over my 20 years at Envision, I’ve been here before. I was there when I had to figure out project-based learning as a brand new teacher. I was there when I joined ELP and had to learn how to facilitate learning for educators (a tough crowd!). And it’s where I am and will be for the foreseeable future: climbing a learning curve that’s real steep, pausing now and then to enjoy the view.
Exposure and practice to the art of public speaking has the power to deepen and strengthen our connection to self, our education, and our community.
Growing up, I devoted myself to school because it was the one thing in my life whose outcome I knew I could control.
If I did my homework, I got good grades.
If I tested well, I got good grades.
If I met my deadlines, I got good grades.
If I completed my reading log (even if sometimes I skipped reading) I got good grades.
Good grades meant a great report card and that meant that I could eventually go do big things in the world.
My teachers had no complaints by the time parent teacher conferences came, except that they would love it if I “spoke up more and participated in group discussions”. And each time I would tell them that I would work on it, but truthfully, it was the #1 piece of feedback I received for years to come.
I’ll be honest in saying that for this introvert, it was difficult to participate in class. I was afraid of judgment, but more importantly, I needed time to process my thoughts and in some ways, protect my inner voice.
As a first generation, oldest daughter of an immigrant single mother, being the shy, quiet, & reserved Yvonne was simply more comfortable than being in the spotlight. Besides, it had always gotten me the results I “needed”: good grades. And that’s all I needed to help pave the way for my siblings and I to “be successful”.
There were moments I got glimpses of my power as a speaker as the MC for my elementary school graduation & cultural events, but the excitement of those moments were never fully integrated in the classroom.
When I started high school at Metropolitan Arts & Tech (one of the first Envision Education Bay Area schools) I had no idea that my engagement with my education would completely transform. Our curriculum focused a lot on internalizing our learnings through deep reflection, critical thinking, creativity, and talking about it. Every semester we hosted ‘exhibitions’ as a way to share our work with our peers, family, and friends. We were required to present a collection of our work to showcase that we had achieved the learning outcomes of projects across subjects, which made me incredibly uncomfortable and way too nervous. I remember thinking “Why are they making us do all of this extra stuff? Can I just take a test?”
We’d spend hours preparing our talking points, our presentation boards, and even our outfits. Each time, it got easier and I reconnected with my love for public speaking. I say reconnected because I already had it in me. I was just not always in environments that pushed me to step up. The Yvonne that I knew myself to be, could also now fully exist in the classroom. Public speaking opened the door for me to be more authentically myself. To lean into a perceived contradiction where I had a hard time participating in class discussions, but could completely dominate a speech because I had been granted the time to practice and cultivate my art.
And I didn’t do it alone. I had an entire community in my teachers and my classmates. We were all in it together and all bonded over having to deliver presentations so frequently. I grew closer to my classmates because we’d spend hours giving each other feedback or exchanging ideas for how we’d present. We could collectively share our nerves and also work through them to deliver.
No matter who we were or where we came from, when we showed up to the classroom we were given the platform to share our ideas & deeply engage in our education from the lens of our lived experiences.
Presenting in the classroom allowed me to understand myself at a much deeper level, feel empowered by my education, and learn to create community through the art of public speaking.
My hope is that we can all see the power of public speaking beyond simply “taking the stage”, but also recognize its power in helping us reconnect with our most authentic selves, our education, and the collective power of doing things in community with others.
We recently read an article by NGLC’s dynamite Knowledge Officer, Kristen Vogt. The piece shares an observation that many of us have seen in the field: graduate profiles are often discussed as something meant for high school students, with little clear connection to elementary and middle schools. Kristen shares examples of schools across the country aligning instruction across K-12 to graduate profiles, including elementary and middle schools (you will be particularly impressed by Megan Margerum in North Dakota). We love the recognition that portraits of a graduate are, among other things, a journey map, and these journeys are most successful when they are seen not just as standalone endings, but part of a student’s experience in elementary and middle school as well.
Interested in launching or revising your Graduate Profile? We can help.
Assessment Design Partner, Josette Neal-De-Stanton, was joined by previous ELPer, Abby Benedetto, in Beijing this past August to continue our collaboration with Moonshot Academy.
Learn more about ELP’s previous work with Moonshot in 2018 in their Partner Profile.
Josette chats with ELP colleague, Courtney Katen, about her experience in Beijing.
The first and only other time I have been to Beijing was in 2018. Things were different then – ELP was still celebrating the incredible win of joining forces with our brilliant team members from SCALE, the only notions of a world-wide pandemic were still relegated to blockbuster movies or our wildest imaginations, and Moonshot Academy had not yet welcomed its first class of students…. In fact, the school did not even have classrooms yet (they were still in initial stages of construction for their first location). It was an easy and exciting thing to say yes to such a novel opportunity to travel around the world to learn, witness, and share with educators in China. And the days that Ruth and I spent with the founding team at Moonshot were remarkable in so many ways that pushed my thinking about how learners can lead their own learning journey, and revealed my biases and held stereotypes about education in a country that is not mine. By the end of that trip, teachers had learned about Performance Assessment and Deeper Learning, and I left holding on to really lovely connections with many of the teachers, and excitement about the possibility of this visionary school and the humans who were building it.
Fast forward to last month when I got the call from ELP that we were headed back to Moonshot five years later, and there was a chance for me to participate in this trip. It is fairly well known that teachers often don’t know of their impact on students until many years later if and when a student comes back to articulate how they were changed because of a moment in your class. This feels doubly true as a consultant. After a single workshop or even multi-year engagement, I sometimes wonder what happened with a client or system after I left… did I build enough capacity with the team there? Was there a change in leadership that brought in a new vision? Did anything stick? So to walk through the doors of Moonshot Academy in 2023 and see evidence of performance assessment and deep project-based learning on the walls of the hallways and in the planning documents of teachers and in the systems of the school itself was so inspiring! Students in this innovative school in Beijing are doing portfolio defenses about their learning, and capstone projects that allow them to follow their interests, and are actively working on developing and practicing really important transferable skills such as empathy, self-direction, and social responsibility!
The team at Moonshot is really dedicated to reimagining education for young people in Beijing, and it was really inspiring to learn with and from the faculty and staff. They are actively building a Deeper Learning community in China, and might host the first Deeper Learning Conference over there soon! It was a joy to be able to co-facilitate with Josette and watch the room respond to her magic and genius. I am excited to think about where they might go next as a K-12 school, and the learning journey that their students will be able to experience.
– Abby Benedetto
This past school year (2022-2023), Milpitas Unified School District, in partnership with Envision Learning Partners (ELP), brought together its two middle schools to develop common, skills-based rubrics to guide the development and implementation of deeper learning assessments. Employing common rubrics fundamentally changes the student learning experience by elevating the level of assessment and instruction that must occur prior to the assessment. Through deeper learning assessments and common rubrics, we know we can close the opportunity gap as it will force instructional moves that evoke deeper learning to meet the needs of all students.
The goal with these assessments is to increase student engagement through relevance and to provide multiple modalities to demonstrate mastery. Traditional assessments are often not culturally responsive and then our historically marginalized students are further marginalized when placed in remedial classes based on these biased metrics. When we do this, students miss out on developing new skills, connecting knowledge to existing schema, analyzing and synthesizing their relevance, and incorporating them into their identity. Instead, Milpitas Unified is focusing on creating windows, mirrors, and doors for students to critically think about the world around them through implementation of deeper learning assessments.
This past year, through guided, collaborative learning from Envision Learning Partners, each middle schools’ core departments (ELA, math, science and social studies) developed skill-based rubrics in partnership with Envision Learning Partners. Collaboration was a key win for the district as teachers were energized by their learning. They engaged in deep conversations around culturally relevant instruction and grading for equity as a result of their shared understanding of deeper learning assessments and rubrics. Most importantly, teachers saw the value in collaborating with each other as they saw the strengths and knowledge they each brought to the work and how their thinking and pedagogy was being pushed and expanded.
The 2023-2024 school year will be implementation year 1 of deeper learning assessments and common rubrics. The partnership with ELP will continue to foster our teachers’ ability to align current assessments to High Quality Performance Assessment criteria, pilot the assessments, analyze student work and refine the rubrics through a calibration process. Through calibration we hope to unpack critical questions like:
We saw the profound impact HQPAs have on our students. Our science teams piloted a deeper learning assessment using a common rubric and found that students who were not always successful on traditional assessments, were able to thrive using this new assessment design. This speaks to the power of this work and the access deeper learning assessments and common rubrics provide to all students. Next year, we hope to share more learnings from our pilot and calibration efforts in partnership with ELP.
have always been incredibly passionate about the work I do with students and families. I started my career as a Special Education Teacher in Philadelphia, Pa. At my core, I will always be a special educator. I transitioned into student services/ special education administrative work which allowed me to have a deeper understanding of the way systemic oppression impacts vulnerable populations. I learned how to center the needs of the community and work alongside those who are most impacted. While working in this role, I developed a passion for inclusive education – it can work when we work it (see article). This led me to another passion of mine – teaching. I work with the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University teaching aspiring general education teachers how to incorporate best practices into their teaching while challenging the narrative of what it means to educate students who learn differently. With my transition to ELP, I am hoping to bring a perspective that allows us to center the most vulnerable populations in the amazing work we do. I am hoping to uphold high expectations for all of the students we serve and, I am hoping that students who learn differently will see themselves reflected in the work we do with districts, organizations, and communities.
What are you hoping to learn while you’re at ELP?
I am hoping to learn how to design high quality performance assessments on a large scale while centering neurodivergent learners. I would like to support districts and school communities with inclusive education as it relates to high quality performance assessments and graduate portfolios. I am also hoping to learn more about research projects on a large scale and how to use that information to improve school outcomes.
What are you most excited about starting at ELP?
I am most excited about working with a team that centers human connection while making an impact on the world of education. I am looking forward to getting to know everyone on the team as well as getting to know our clients and their school communities.
Another project that I am incredibly excited to join is the work ELP is doing with the Oak Foundation. The case study aims to illustrate high-leverage school practices that support the well being and success of Black and LatinX students with learning differences. I am beyond honored to support this work.
What do you like to do when you’re not working?
Roilyn’s Bio:
Roilyn is a trailblazing advocate for inclusive education and has been in this work for the last 20 years. With an unwavering commitment to equality and empowerment, she has dedicated the past two decades to transforming the educational landscape for marginalized students.
Roilyn began her career as a special education teacher for the School District of Philadelphia. After teaching for 10 years, Roilyn transitioned into special education administration and served in schools on the east and west coast in similar capacities. Currently Roilyn works as an Assessment Design Partner and is a course lecturer in the graduate school of education at Stanford University. In her spare time she enjoys cuddles with her dog Sully, chatting with her nieces and nephew, and karaoke (mostly at home).
Learn more about Roilyn in her ELP blog post and/or connect with her on Twitter or LinkedIn.
Hi! My name is Royce Conner, and I recently joined the team as ELP’s Executive Director. In many ways, I feel like I have returned home. While I am new to Envision, my education career began by learning about progressive education from leaders in the field such as Ted Sizer and the Coalition of Essential Schools. Since then I have put students at the center of each of my classrooms and schools. I am thrilled to be part of a team that cherishes the idea that students thrive when given authentic, challenging and rigorous work that is personally meaningful to them and their communities.
A bit more about me…
What experiences brought you to ELP?
A visiting professor from a teacher preparation program once visited my classroom. He observed students deeply engaged in projects that provided them various opportunities to use their knowledge and skills to answer challenging questions about the world and their places in it. Some students led Socratic seminars about the nature of goodness. Others wrote policy briefs for local legislators. A few wrote an original play to be performed along with local actors using interviews the students conducted with immigrants. When the professor left, he said, “This is the way school should be.”
I spent ten years learning the craft of teaching using projects and performance-based assessments. I became a lead teacher in my school, supporting new teachers as they designed projects and aligned performance assessments to local standards. My middle school students, the majority low-income students of color, would often return to my classroom as high school and college graduates sharing gratitude that the work we did in my classroom prepared them for what one student called “the world I almost missed out on.”
After my time in the classroom, I spent two years in the public policy arena, working on statewide and national education issues with Rhode Island Kids Count. I enjoyed policy, but I eventually felt the call to return to education. I moved to California to pursue a degree in educational leadership and policy. After that I spent two years consulting with various school districts, including Oakland USD. I then spent one year leading the recruitment team for San Francisco USD. Following SFUSD I entered the world of school leadership. I served as Head of School for three Bay Area charter schools. One of my schools scored a front page article in Education Week for its innovative blended learning design, and another connected me with Bob Lenz and PBLWorks for its dedication to project-based learning for our students in K-8.
Before joining ELP, my most recent role was as a Fellow with Foster America, a national nonprofit working to improve outcomes for foster youth and develop innovations for the child welfare system.
And this brings me to Envision. While my career has had many interesting turns, I am delighted that I find myself back in an organization that operates and promotes schools that are, like that professor once said, the way schools should be.
What are you hoping to learn while you’re at ELP?
I am going to learn a tremendous amount from our schools! I look forward to seeing how partners in rural, suburban and urban districts rally their school cultures around student-centered design and performance assessments. We know there is no such thing as “one size fits all,” so I cannot wait to learn about how our partners are implementing high-quality performance assessments, graduate profiles, and portfolio defense in their unique contexts.
What are you most excited about starting at ELP?
Truly, it’s the team. I have the great pleasure to work with expert educators, coaches, facilitators, designers, researchers and operations professionals. They are parents, siblings, authors, cooks, readers, adventurers, musicians and athletes. They appreciate a challenge and embrace the power of difficult conversations. As excited as I am to connect with schools, it is the team that brings me the most joy.
What do you like to do when you’re not working?
I would love to tell you that I dive deeply into great works of art and literature, but the truth is that I love my PlayStation and I play it like a teenager guzzling Mountain Dew. I am also a movie fan, especially horror movies. But I also love my outdoor time, especially hiking. In addition, I love to travel. So far I have traveled to 48 states (I’m looking at you, Mississippi and Hawaii!).
Anything else to add?
My favorite quote is “Don’t dream it—be it.” Extra points if you can name the source.
Royce’s Bio:
Royce joined Envision Learning Partners in 2023. A native of Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, he attended Brown University, where he was first introduced to progressive principles of education through Ted Sizer and the Coalition of Essential Schools. He spent 10 years teaching at Community Preparatory School in Providence, Rhode Island. He then worked on statewide and national education policy with Rhode Island Kids Count, where he was selected as an Emerging Leader by The Children’s Defense Fund. He moved to California in 2007 to attend Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education, where he earned a Master’s degree in Policy, Organization and Leadership Studies. He spent two years consulting with urban school districts and another year leading the recruitment team at San Francisco Unified School District. He then served as Head of School for three Bay Area charter schools. His most recent role was as a Fellow with Foster America, a national nonprofit working across the country to improve the child welfare system and increase opportunities for foster youth. Royce lives in Richmond, California with his husband. He is thrilled to be part of the team at Envision Learning Partners!
Connect with Royce on LinkedIn.
What did you most enjoy about working at ELP?
What I enjoyed most was the inspiration and hope that comes from working alongside people dedicated to changing not just the experience students have with assessment, but the role that assessment plays in adults’ understanding of what school is for. Working at ELP over the past 5 years showed me what humanizing this change process can look like, sound like, and feel like.
I have been especially inspired by how ELP moves in partnership with schools and districts:
What are your plans now?
I have joined ConnectED as the Director of Instructional Impact in Mathematics, where I will continue working in partnership with San Diego Unified, Colton Joint Unified, West Contra Costa Unified, and Oakland Unified. In my new role, I also look forward to future collaborations with my incredible colleagues (and friends for life) at ELP.
My new email address is: vdaro@connectednational.org.
ConnectED has worked to change public education and improve student outcomes for over 15 years. The organization was founded with the belief that every student deserves a great education – especially those furthest from opportunity. ConnectED works with school districts, colleges, and employers to create learning opportunities for students that help prepare them for success in college, career, and life. We broker partnerships that span K-12 schools, postsecondary education, and workforce to address systemic barriers that perpetuate educational inequalities.
To deliver on this promise ConnectED, in partnership with Envision Learning Partners, recognizes the very significant and real barrier that mathematics has traditionally played. Decades of research in a number of fields have consistently revealed that secondary mathematics, and in particular Algebra I, play a major gatekeeping role for post-secondary education and career opportunities. The transition from arithmetic to algebra involves a significant shift in reasoning and talking about equivalence, which is a fundamental concept in mathematics. The risks associated with underperformance in math are greatest for students who are historically underrepresented in postsecondary education such as students of color, youth from low-income households, and multilingual learners.
In response, ConnectED and ELP are working together to develop shared approaches, tools, and resources that support our partner districts to take their mathematics learning to the next level. Our approaches build student, teacher and leaders’ capacities with the Illustrative Mathematics curriculum to both strengthen the effectiveness of math instruction and improve student learning and engagement by making math more relevant for young people. Our work centers the use of embedded Mathematics Language Routines as drivers for building student-centered learning experiences, and as research-based strategies to simultaneously support mathematics and language learning for multilingual learners.
Specific Regional Solution
For the past 5 years ConnectED and ELP have been working closely with the San Diego Enhanced Mathematics Initiative. In this collaboration we have supported the district to build a coherent instructional system to support a new approach to mathematics; to pilot a new curriculum; to develop supplemental materials and projects; to support teachers and school sites; and to work closely with district leadership to develop and monitor implementation plans. The team in San Diego has developed a strong vision for modernizing mathematics for all. This work has predominantly been serving middle schools, with a growing number of piloting elementary schools and a few piloting high schools.
For the past 3 years ConnectED and ELP had also been supporting West Contra Costa Unified School District and Colton Joint Unified School District. Both districts are working to develop coherent instructional systems in mathematics through supporting middle schools to pilot and adopt high quality curriculum and cultivate aligned instructional approaches.
Video Club
Over the past 2 years, ConnectED and ELP have been piloting and researching the use of an approach to Professional Learning called Video Club. In Video Club, an Algebra 1 teacher, for example, brings a video clip from their classroom to share with other Algebra 1 teachers. Using ConnectED’s video analysis tagging tool, rewindED, teachers look for instances of high-leverage instructional moves and “tag” what they see in the video. The group of teachers then discusses what they observed in their colleagues’ classroom, what questions they have, and how they might apply any learning to their own classroom teaching. Through this process, teachers learn from one another and make shifts to their own instructional approaches in their classrooms.
Working closely with the Algebra 1 teachers in Oakland Unified, we have focused the Video Club on instructional moments where the class is engaged on 1 of the 8 embedded Math Language Routines within the Illustrative Mathematics curriculum. The Language Routines provide structured protocols to support students developing their mathematical understanding together with their use of language. These routines support students to make their thinking more visible and clear through both written and oral interactions, and by structuring opportunities for revision.
These projects are generously supported by The Gates Foundation and we look forward to being able to share our research findings from American Institutes for Research with you.
My career began volunteering at an elementary school in Washington, DC in 2001. As a staff member walked me to my assigned classroom, I noticed a room tucked away in the corner. There were only a few students in the space. Some students were wandering around, some were disengaged, some sleeping, and others were sitting at tables coloring or tracing the alphabet. There were multiple adults in the room, mostly talking and laughing but not really paying much attention to the students. Growing up, I attended the same school as my uncle, who had Down Syndrome. I recognized that room. I knew exactly who that room was for. It was the place where special education students were “contained”. That was the moment I decided to become a special education teacher. I’ve been committed to this work ever since.
Admittedly, we’ve learned a lot since 2001. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)1 held all schools and/or districts accountable for ensuring that students with disabilities received a Free and Appropriate Public Education (FAPE). Shortly thereafter, came the revival (originally introduced around 1994) of Inclusive Education. Educational researchers soon learned that students with disabilities had better academic outcomes in classrooms where they were included with non-disabled peers. The research also found that inclusion positively impacted all students in the classroom (National Center for Education Restructuring and Inclusion, 1995.) Based on this research and with the revision of IDEA 2004, schools began to adopt Inclusive Education as the pillar of serving all students in the educational environment.
The world of special education shifted. Students with disabilities were no longer excluded from the general education classroom and everyone felt as though true progress had been made. We lived in this fantasy for a while. Students with disabilities were no longer being served under the “separate but equal” approach. Everyone began to settle into the idea that including all students in the same classroom had less of a negative impact than was previously thought. Students without disabilities were still thriving (relatively speaking) and students with disabilities (and their families) were happy. As time progressed, challenges began to arise. Schools began to experience significant rates of disproportionality among certain racial and ethnic groups entering into Special Education. These same students were often being disciplined and/or suspended at a higher rate, placed in more restrictive learning environments, and were not meeting academic expectations. Schools began to wonder if Inclusive Education was the answer to serving all students. This is where educators began to ask questions:
Inclusive Education takes an immense amount of preparation and planning. It requires a team of educators who believe that all students can achieve, no excuses. It means that all systems are universally designed with the most vulnerable populations in mind. Inclusive Education means that everyone has the strategies, tools, and training necessary to deliver high quality instruction to all students. It means modeling structures during professional development, co-planning and co-teaching. It means using The UDL Guidelines to support curriculum design, unit, and lesson planning. Inclusive Education means every stakeholder has a voice that isn’t only heard but represented in the work. Most importantly, Inclusive Education means that all of our students are thriving and operating in their full genius.
Take a look at the data. Literally, pause and google “How effective is Inclusive Education?” or whatever variation of the phrase you’d like. In 30 seconds, you’ll find that Inclusive Education does work. There are some good examples of this AND that students with disabilities aren’t doing much better now than they were in 1994, or 2001, or even in 2023. Some educators like to attribute this to the pandemic but let’s be honest, the same issues were present before. We can no longer continue to ignore the fact that our infrastructure, our systems, and even our preparation programs were not designed to support students with disabilities or diverse learners. I know everyone is busy, I know everyone is exhausted. I know funding is an issue. I know COVID threw us all for a loop. I also know that not all of our students have what they need to be successful. In full transparency, I know since the inception of Inclusive Education, things actually haven’t gotten all that better, and so do you. With that being said, let me ask you some questions: What can we do to shift the data? What can we do to change the narrative? How can we center students with disabilities and diverse learning styles in the planning process, in our classrooms, in our staff development, and in our schools? What actionable steps have we taken since 1994?
No more excuses. Inclusive Education works when we work it. Even though our students are in Inclusive environments, the data says they are struggling academically, behaviorally, and emotionally. It’s time to shift.
Here is my CALL TO ACTION:
Let’s reconnect, re-engage, re-introduce, re-commit, and re-establish ourselves, our systems and all stakeholders. Our students deserve better. We can do better. Let’s just start, no more excuses.
Roilyn Graves is Envision Education’s Director of Special Education.
Note: All resources and research are linked.
This workshop will explore the often problematic relationship many students and educators have with STEM education emerging from traumatic experiences we simply never address. This workshop particularly focuses on the roots of STEM as it relates to white supremacy culture and STEM education, and how that bleeds into the way we see ourselves, or don’t, in in those fields. We will look at ELP’s HQPA principles (1: Eliciting evidence of learning that matters & 2: Tight on its criteria for success) as a means to address healing and thriving in the design of STEM assessments that matter. As 2 educators of color, we will create a learning environment that is safe especially for the most marginalized communities to have a voice, and use our expertise as STEM leaders to begin to change the narrative within our school structures. Participants will: have dialogue opportunities in pairs, and small groups, journaling time, creation of personal STEAM projects to help process their trauma, and leave with a plan created to address how the will disrupt STEM trauma in their lives/workplace.
This is an interactive hands-on workshop where participants will prototype a high quality performance assessment (HQPA) aligned to deeper learning competencies. Through learning stations, participants will explore the what and why of performance assessments and use quality criteria tools to analyze for rigor, learner agency, and authenticity. Then participants will prototype their ideal HQPA, and reflect on their own learning and leadership.
This learning experience is organized around the principle that learning happens when learners’ own ideas are an active focus of the sense-making process. This is true for students who are presented with problems in their math class and being challenged to make sense of the problem, rather than being told an algorithm. This is also true for educators who are being asked to structure learning environments in new ways. This session discusses how one district has redefined what math class is, and how that new definition is framing the ways that students, teachers, and administrators are engaging in learning, including professional learning.This example serves as a focal point for experiencing what a modernized math classroom looks like, sounds like, and feels like. The session begins with a series of questions that encourage participants to reflect on their experiences as mathematicians. Many educators have not experienced learning environments that promote deep learning, therefore, it is important to create safe spaces where participants honestly reflect on how this discrepancy may impact their professional stance. We will explore what matters most in mathematics classrooms and we model how to prioritize deep and robust mathematical understanding. Modern math classrooms seek to both heal the traumas incurred from experiencing systems — math education — designed to sort learners, and establish new routines and practices that center deep and diverse problem-solving. There are a multitude of ways that one could approach the task of healing through teaching and learning, for this session we look closely at mathematics learning environments that allow student ideas to fuel the teaching and learning. We will highlight the ways that this environment supports learners to make their thinking visible, how learners revise their thinking in an iterative sense-making process, and how students use formal and informal mathematical language to communicate their ideas.
Funders have felt that PBL + DL is not worth funding when trying to close achievement gaps for majority BIPOC learners. Others feel that BIPOC students MUST demonstrate that they have the basics they know (usually via standardized tests) before they engage in projects. What we have observed is that educators in the system need to know DL from the inside out. So how do we, as Black leaders, create the conditions for our educators (who are often not Black) to engage in deeper learning themselves? What does it mean to build or talk about a DL school system that dismantles racist + oppressive idealogy?
This workshop will explore the often problematic relationship many students and educators have with STEM education emerging from traumatic experiences we simply never address. This workshop particularly focuses on the roots of STEM as it relates to white supremacy culture and STEM education, and how that bleeds into the way we see ourselves, or don’t, in in those fields. We will look at ELP’s HQPA principles (1: Eliciting evidence of learning that matters & 2: Tight on its criteria for success) as a means to address healing and thriving in the design of STEM assessments that matter. As 2 educators of color, we will create a learning environment that is safe especially for the most marginalized communities to have a voice, and use our expertise as STEM leaders to begin to change the narrative within our school structures. Participants will: have dialogue opportunities in pairs, and small groups, journaling time, creation of personal STEAM projects to help process their trauma, and leave with a plan created to address how the will disrupt STEM trauma in their lives/workplace.
This learning experience is organized around the principle that learning happens when learners’ own ideas are an active focus of the sense-making process. This is true for students who are presented with problems in their math class and being challenged to make sense of the problem, rather than being told an algorithm. This is also true for educators who are being asked to structure learning environments in new ways. This session discusses how one district has redefined what math class is, and how that new definition is framing the ways that students, teachers, and administrators are engaging in learning, including professional learning.This example serves as a focal point for experiencing what a modernized math classroom looks like, sounds like, and feels like. The session begins with a series of questions that encourage participants to reflect on their experiences as mathematicians. Many educators have not experienced learning environments that promote deep learning, therefore, it is important to create safe spaces where participants honestly reflect on how this discrepancy may impact their professional stance. We will explore what matters most in mathematics classrooms and we model how to prioritize deep and robust mathematical understanding. Modern math classrooms seek to both heal the traumas incurred from experiencing systems — math education — designed to sort learners, and establish new routines and practices that center deep and diverse problem-solving. There are a multitude of ways that one could approach the task of healing through teaching and learning, for this session we look closely at mathematics learning environments that allow student ideas to fuel the teaching and learning. We will highlight the ways that this environment supports learners to make their thinking visible, how learners revise their thinking in an iterative sense-making process, and how students use formal and informal mathematical language to communicate their ideas.
We look forward to learning with you!
Designing a Common “Record of College Readiness Evidence” for Integrating Performance Assessment Evidence into College Applications: A Partnership of Reimagining College Access and Envision Learning Partners
The Reimagining College Access initiative is a national effort, led by the Learning Policy Institute and EducationCounsel, to advance the use of high-quality performance assessments completed by secondary students for higher education admissions, placement, and advising decisions. The ultimate goal driving this initiative is to increase college access to underrepresented students by expanding and diversifying the types of information taken into consideration in college admissions, while also reinforcing the efforts of high schools to provide meaningful and rigorous assessment experiences for students.
Over the last two years of the global COVID-19 pandemic, many higher education institutions discontinued their use of standardized college admission test scores (SAT/ACT) due to the logistical challenges of conducting secure testing and a growing awareness of the equity concerns associated with admissions criteria that largely depended on test scores and grades. California’s public universities, including the UC and Cal State systems, have completely ended the practice of including these test scores in their admissions formulae, and some private universities, including Harvard University, paused the use of these test scores in their admissions criteria for several years. This policy change has created an opportune opening for the consideration of other types of evidence, such as performance assessments and authentic demonstrations. However, the challenge of this opportunity is getting this evidence into a standard form that colleges will see as valid, trustworthy, a “value add” to the evidence they already solicit, and can be processed efficiently and equitably.
Over the last academic year (2021-22), ELP (represented by Justin Wells and Ruth Wei) has been working together with LPI (Dr. Monica Martinez and Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond) to tackle this challenge – to develop a common and easily interpreted “Record of College Readiness Evidence” that represents students’ authentic demonstrations of their learning and accomplishments in a standardized way that is simultaneously accessible and useful to college admissions reviewers and allows students to present evidence of their unique intellectual, personal, cultural experiences/contexts, learning dispositions, and college readiness skills.
To accomplish this purpose, ELP and LPI convened a nationally representative Advisory Panel that included higher education admissions representatives and college counseling / secondary school networks that engage students in authentic demonstrations of learning. Advisory Panel members provided input into a blueprint – a set of design specifications – to guide the development of a common “Record of College Readiness Evidence”, and provided feedback on initial drafts of the blueprint and the elements of evidence that would be solicited from student applicants. Simultaneously, ELP conducted a national scan of performance assessment by conducting a survey of school networks using performance assessments as part of their assessment systems to determine the most common learning outcomes and means of demonstrating those outcomes, with the goal of creating an inclusive menu of learning outcomes and genres/types of performance assessments for the “Record”.
In the next academic year (2022-23), ELP will again be partnering with LPI to create an online representation of the “Record of College Readiness Evidence”, with the goal of spurring interest and commitment from higher education institutions and secondary school networks to participate in a pilot of the Record in the 2023-24 admissions year. The ultimate goal is to create a common online platform that can be used by students to submit authentic evidence of their learning and accomplishments while also meeting the needs of college admissions reviewers to seamlessly integrate new evidence into their data and review systems, and use this evidence efficiently, systematically, and equitably. There is growing interest among higher education admissions leaders in learning more deeply about student capacities that are difficult to capture in existing application materials (e.g., Harvard University’s “Making Caring Common” project) – such as students’ intellectual, civic, and moral character, personal drive, specific cultural and personal contexts/experiences, resilience and adaptability in new situations, and innovative thinking. Reimagining College Access and ELP hope to make a convincing case that authentic demonstrations of learning and accomplishments, and students’ reflections on the significance of that evidence, are robust, direct sources of evidence of these hard-to-measure traits.
The Reimagining College Access initiative recently released a guidance document, authored by Aneesha Badrinarayan, aimed at colleges interested in integrating performance assessments into their college admission systems: Performance Assessment in College Admission: Designing an Effective and Equitable Process. Although the tool is designed for admission officers, it can also be used by K–12 educators to gain a better understanding of the considerations that colleges must take into account in the use of performance assessments in admissions. The tool defines performance assessment and then provides concrete guidance on how admission officers can incorporate information about students’ K–12 performance assessments into their application and review processes.
We encourage K-12 school networks interested in potentially partnering with LPI and ELP in a 2023-24 pilot of the online “Record of College Readiness Evidence” platform to reach out to us! Please contact Ruth Wei (ruth@envisionlearning.org) or Justin Wells (justin@envisionlearning.org) to learn more!
The Reimagining College Access initiative recently released a guidance document, authored by Aneesha Badrinarayan, aimed at colleges interested in integrating performance assessments into their college admission systems: Performance Assessment in College Admission: Designing an Effective and Equitable Process.
Although the tool is designed for admission officers, it can also be used by K–12 educators to gain a better understanding of the considerations that colleges must take into account in the use of performance assessments in admissions. The tool defines performance assessment and then provides concrete guidance on how admission officers can incorporate information about students’ K–12 performance assessments into their application and review processes.
Click the image below to download this tool.
Envision Education has long been proud that we not only serve students directly through our Bay Area schools but also commit to serving public school students everywhere through our consulting division, Envision Learning Partners. Our understanding of our past and potential future is even clearer now, thanks to A Pragmatic Playbook for Impact: Direct, Widespread, and Systemic, which offers an illuminating framework for analyzing how mission-driven ed organizations work to spread the change they seek.
To help illustrate the framework, Bellwether Education Partners, in partnership with New Profit, conducted a case study on Envision Education, based on a series of interviews with longtime Envision teacher and now ELP leader, Justin Wells. For us at Envision, the case study was a chance not only to reflect but also to learn. We came out of the experience with a better sense of who we are and where we are headed as an organization, and we are grateful to Bellwether and New Profit for the opportunity.
On August 11th, Bellwether is hosting a webinar where you can hear ELP and other educational organizations discuss their various approaches to scaling impact.
Summer, while certainly not a vacation for most educators, can make possible more time for reflection and goal-setting. ELP is appreciative of two recent opportunities to reflect on the bigger picture of our work and to share those reflections with you.
Add to your podcast queue my recent discussion with Dr. Greg Goins on his excellent Reimagine Schools podcast. Mixing educational history and philosophy, Dr. Goins and I reflect on how performance assessment is situated within the larger movement known as deeper learning.
For the many of you actively working to broaden the adoption of good ideas, I recommend A Pragmatic Playbook for Impact, published by Bellwether Education Partners, which includes a case study on Envision Education and an upcoming August webinar that features ELP’s story. See below for more on this.
After another very challenging year for educators, we hope that summer has afforded you some time to look up to the horizons of your work. Please reach out to ELP for support as you consider your next move in the project of building a performance assessment system. Our talented team stands ready to help you train your teachers in HQPA, design a portfolio-defense system, or make your graduate profile a reality.
In community,
Justin Wells, ELP Executive Director
This resource comes from the 2022 Deeper Learning Conference and is a conversation about modernizing mathematics: perspectives from the classroom and beyond. This panel discussion explores the topic of mathematics teaching and learning in the current age and for the future. ELP Director of STEM Learning, Vinci Daro, is one of the four amazing panelists.
In schools all over the country, May is a month when many students share their learning—through project exhibitions, capstone presentations, defenses of learning, and other culminating experiences. Here’s to all the students and teachers out there, even in this difficult year, who are working to culminate learning in ways that are challenging, meaningful, and memorable. Learning is always a journey. It runs deeper when it is designed to feel like one.As you look to the 22–23 school year, please reach out to ELP for thought partnership and support. How will your students be sharing their learning in May of 2023? Now is the right time to ask. And summer is the best time to design those deep learning journeys for students.Speaking of memorable journeys, we’re in the midst of an important transition for Envision Education, ELP’s parent organization. After a remarkable tenure as our CEO for most of the past 10 years, Gia Truong is moving on. Many of you know Gia as a passionate leader for equity, deeper learning, and performance assessment. Her support for ELP’s mission has been unwavering, and her legacy includes theDeeper Learning Leadership Forum. Gia—from the entire ELP team, it’s been an honor and joy to travel with you.Going forward, we are excited to be partnering with our new Envision CEO Jillian Juman. Jillian introduces herself in this newsletter’s guest blog; read on to hear from her directly.In community,Justin Wells, ELP Executive Director
Part A: Doing Too Much: Disrupting the Transference of STEM Trauma
This workshop will explore the often problematic relationship many students and teachers have with STEM education emerging from traumatic experiences we simply never address. This workshop particularly focuses on the roots of science as it relates to white supremacy culture and science education, and how that bleeds into the way we see ourselves, or don’t, in science. We will look at ELP’s HQPA principles as a means to address healing and thriving in the design of STEM assessments that matter.
Part B: Don’t Do Too Much: Centering HQPA in STEM Assessments
This workshop will dive into the importance of incorporating culturally responsive practices and DEI authentically in order to thrive in your classrooms! Going beyond adding a trendy handshake or latest song into a presentation, we will be looking into how we use these definitions and ELP’s HQPA principles to create STEM assessments that are engaging to all demographics, particularly targeting your most disengaged students.
Join us for June’s ELP Lounge!
We’re excited to announce that in June, we’ll have incoming Envision Education CEO, Jillian Juman, as our ELP Lounge Special Guest!
Stop by to slow down. Connect, share, learn & heal. We can’t wait to see you!
Thursday, June 16th, 4:00-5:00pm PT (7:00-8:00pm ET)
Click here to grab your free ticket and let us know you’re coming!
The DLLF application deadline has been extended to May 31st!
The Deeper Learning Leadership Forum (DLLF) is a cohort-based leadership experience that aims to develop, strengthen, and support a group of educational leaders to work at the intersection of equity and design thinking. DLLF seeks to address issues of inequity in our school systems by bringing together leaders to define and unpack these challenges. On this journey, leaders will explore deeper learning practices; develop the skills to identify and disrupt oppressive ideologies, systems, and structures within education; and practice employing an equity-centered design thinking approach. Learn more about the program here.
From a professional standpoint, I was the Principal of the first International Baccalaureate French dual language public school in the country. I have seen how a graduate le arner profile empowers a community of diverse learners and how performance assessments make room for self-discovery. The work of Envision is aligned to my values as an educator and leader.
To be deeply understood and valued for who we really are is a basic human need. It is also unmistakably a privilege. It is a privilege because not everyone can trust that their whole selves will be tolerated in all spaces. It is a cultural loss. The impact is a ripple effect; we stop bringing the best of ourselves into spaces where difference is not well received. It is a missed opportunity to learn from one another and to consider the solutions created from divergent ways of thinking.
Growing up, I watched my black father from the south navigate different spaces. He fought his way through college with no plan and no support. Fumbling through life, he hid who he was to survive. He hid his childhood, the poverty, the abuse, the foster care, and the pain that lingers when mental health goes untreated and leads to starvation and death. He was a brilliant man and I am not sure how many people knew that. He was a shadow.
I think a lot about what it means to be a black woman, an educator, a leader, a good sister and daughter. I think about what experiences our young people and families deserve to ensure that they are both seen and heard. I think about what it means to be a disrupter of cultural norms and practices that have historically oppressed groups of people who have not experienced being deeply understood and cared for.
As the incoming CEO of Envision Education, I have a deep sense of pride in the work of Envision Learning Partners (ELP) and the number of students who are impacted by thoughtful collaboration with smart educators across the country. ELP is about establishing learning opportunities for young people to be deeply understood and appreciated for how they learn and share with the world. The development and execution of performance assessments is equity based learning because it requires expansion of knowledge and exploration with people who carry different perspectives and experiences. It provides opportunities for young people to be seen, heard, and celebrated. It empowers independent thought and dismantles practice where authenticity is for some not all.
I believe in our collective work as educators and the power of unity. Together we can move students from the shadows and into the light where all students can and will thrive.
Get to know Jillian more in the June ELP Lounge, RSVP here.
By Trevor Gardner
The tension between urgency and patience is a constant for educators. On one end we hold high expectations, pushing students to do more than they think they are capable of; we demand their best. On the other end we nurture; we meet them where they are; we remain steadfastly compassionate and understanding.
Paulo Freire first helped me understand this tension when I read what I believe is his most essential texts for school educators: Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to those Who Dare to Teach. In his “Fourth Letter: On the indispensable qualities of progressive educators for their better performance,” he frames the tension in this way:
[The progressive educator] must exercise wisdom in experiencing the tension between patience and impatience. Neither patience nor impatience alone is what is called for. Patience alone may bring the educator to a position of resignation, or permissiveness; that denies the educator’s democratic dream. Unaccompanied patience may lead to immobility, to inactivity… Untempered impatience threatens the success of one’s practice, which becomes lost in the arrogance of judging oneself the owner of history. Patience alone consumes itself in mere prattle; impatience alone consumes itself in irresponsible activism. Virtue, then, does not lie in experience either without the other but, rather, in living the permanent tension between the two. The educator must live and work impatiently patiently, never surrendering entirely to either (pg. 211).
If you have spent any amount of time with young people in schools – but especially as a classroom teacher – you have felt the weight of this tension and you have struggled with the layers of complexity that pull you in either direction. And if you currently work with young people in schools, as we emerge slowly from the global pandemic that forced students to endure nearly a year and a half of online “school”, isolated in their homes, their bedrooms, and their computer screens; I imagine you are experiencing the antagonism of this polarity in a way that is heavier, more messy, and more emotionally fraught than ever before.
Ukiah Camping with Students
Moving into my 23rd year as an educator, both as a classroom teacher and a school leader, I find myself struggling more than ever, as I look out at the 28 students in my 11th grade US History class, or when I sit in coaching meetings with my incredible teachers, with the wisdom to locate the equilibrium in this tension.
Belief in the possibilities of education feels like it is at an all time low. Engagement in the classroom feels more challenging to sustain. Desire to struggle through difficult work seems more short-lived.
When attempting to capture the feeling of this dynamic, I have been using the analogy of an athlete whose muscles have atrophied due to being sidelined for a long time due to injury. From March 2020 until August 2021, students (at least those in Bay Area public schools) did not step foot into a school building. They did not engage in small group discussion with their classmates. They did not get up in front of the class to model how to work out a math problem. They did not rotate around the room on a gallery walk, writing their thoughts on small posters and reading the ideas of their peers. They did not rush out the door to find their best friends for lunch.
Of course, after such a hiatus, they are less good at doing school. In this sense, yes, they have atrophied, at least as students in the classroom. But they have also built different muscles. They have learned to navigate the world in a pandemic, a world more complex than we have known before. They have learned to be closer to their families, to care for younger siblings doing online schooling and for elders facing health conditions. They have built muscles of resilience, awareness, and empathy.
Ukiah Camping with Students
What I am realizing more and more is that, if we are exercising the wisdom of our experience, as Freire asks us to do, then we must find ways to turn this incredibly challenging moment into an opportunity. Our urgency must be marshaled not only in support of our students, but also in questioning, transforming, and reimagining how schools (or at least our own classrooms) function.
Do we want our students to build back muscles that help them comply and fit into a box, an institution, a system that can feel disconnected, uninspiring, and even harmful? Do we want them to be better at enduring boredom and passivity? What are the muscles we want to rebuild as we take this long journey together back to an education that truly serves our students and our communities?
What if we add a third point to Freire’s tension between patience and impatience and we call it HOPE – and we allow ourselves to pull equally in the direction of what else is possible? What if we add an element in our lesson plans labeled hope? What if we ask ourselves every day how we are cultivating hope – in our classrooms, in our discipline policies, in our communication with families and caregivers, and in our interactions with our colleagues? Hope that a different way is possible. Hope that what I learn today matters. Hope that we will learn through this difficult moment together.
I know it is not simple. My students will certainly tell you that there have been more than a few US History lessons that have bored them to sleepiness or that did not inspire them to suck out all the marrow of life and use their knowledge of history to transform the world. I have work to do. At times I have let my urgency run over students and lose sight of the myriad struggles they continue to cope with. At other times my patience has left me mired in acceptance of the status quo. I too have atrophied and have questioned my purpose as a teacher and school leader.
But what if I, what if WE, collectively, placed the cultivation of hope as our primary objective? What if we met the challenges with what the incredible Shawn Ginwright calls “radical imagination… the collective dreaming about how things should be.” Imagine what schools could become.
Trevor Gardner has been an educator in the Bay Area for 20 years. He has taught high school English and history and has worked at multiple levels of school leadership and is currently the Director of Teaching and Learning at ARISE High School in East Oakland. Trevor is the author of Discipline Over Punishment: Successes and Struggles with Restorative Justice in Schools and also an alumni of ELP’s Deeper Learning Leadership Forum. Connect with Trevor on Twitter and LinkedIn.
March 15th and 16th, 2022 was ELP’s first in-person Deeper Learning Leadership Forum (DLLF) Cohort 5 convening since Covid began and it was a success! These amazing folks have been working together virtually since June 2021 but it’s hard to believe based on the amazing community and connections they’ve built in that time. We can’t wait to continue this life-changing experience with them!
Below are some photos from our time together, beautifully captured by long-time ELP friend, Thai Chu of Alive by Shooting.
Learn more about the Deeper Learning Leadership Forum here.
Cautiously, things are opening up. ELP has a growing number of dates on the calendar for in-person service. We are about to attend our first conference since the pandemic began. We look forward to seeing many of you at Deeper Learning 2022 in San Diego next week. (Read below to learn about ELP’s offerings at the conference.)It’s a good moment to be reminded that performance assessment system building is both big-picture and fine-grained. It’s the highly visible work of establishing a district-wide graduate profile; it’s also the more subtle work of ensuring that science tasks are as standards aligned and culturally responsive as possible. Depending on where there is energy and opportunity, a learning community can toggle between levels and still be making progress.Whatever level of the system you are ready to work on, we’re working to ensure that relevant ELP support is right around the corner. If you don’t see it on the calendar, reach out to us anyway. It’s likely we can meet your needs on short notice.In community,
Back by popular demand! Teachers know that the best assessments not only capture our students’ brilliance but also enable learners to see their progress. In this three-part workshop, you will learn the principles of high-quality assessment and apply them to the design of a task that aligns to your desired outcomes and provides evidence of your students’ learning. By the end of the workshop you will have an assessment that is ready to implement in your classroom.This workshop series is facilitated by ELP Assessment Design Partner, Soraya Ramos and ELP Executive Director, Justin Wells.
Click here for more details and to get your team registered.
We’re excited to announce our first ever ELP Lounge Guest:Trevor Gardner! Trevor is an educator, consultant, author, and anELP Deeper Learning Leadership ForumAlumni.This special event will include time to connect with each other and feel free to come with wonderings about Trevor’s Guest Blog: Urgency, Patience, and the Cultivation of Hope. Plan to stop in and slow down to connect, share, learn, & heal. We can’t wait to see you.
Thursday, April 21st, 4:00-5:00pm PT (7:00-8:00pm ET)
Click here to grab your free ticket and let us know you’re coming!
We’re looking forward to seeing many of you virtually and in-person next week! Here is the official line up of ELP’s sessions:
Don’t Do Too Much with Josette Neal-De-Stanton: How to make culturally responsive practice and DEI authentically enhance your science assessments.
This workshop will dive into the importance of incorporating culturally responsive practice and DEI authentically into your classroom! Going beyond adding a trendy handshake or latest song into a presentation, we will be looking into how we use these definitions and principles to create science assessments that are engaging to all demographics, particularly targeting your most disengaged students. Far too often we overthink how to incorporate culture into science, but it is easier than you think, and doesn’t have to involve embarrassment as you fumble to remember the lyrics to a Top 20 song to make a “cultural connection.”
Designed to Thrive with Alcine Mumby & Abby Benedetto: Creating High Quality Performance Assessments That Enable Marginalized Learners to Thrive.
Participants will explore the different features of high-quality performance assessment (HQPA) and design a prototype of a performance assessment experience that provides evidence of student learning/thinking in essential competencies. The session concludes with participants iterating on that prototype after centering the lived experience of a marginalized student your system may serve and reflecting on the changes needed to ensure that ALL students thrive in their performance assessment system.
Making Good On Our Promises with Justin Wells & Soraya Ramos: Designing A High Quality Performance Assessment System.
This is an interactive, hands-on workshop where participants will prototype a high-quality performance assessment (HQPA) aligned to deeper learning competencies. Learn the principles of high-quality assessment and apply them to the design of a task that aligns to your desired outcomes and provides evidence of your students’ learning.
Virtual Den Talk with Vinci Daro: A conversation about modernizing mathematics: perspectives from the classroom and beyond.
Like many educators not currently teaching, I’ve had multiple opportunities through this pandemic to be back in the classroom, serving as a substitute teacher. It’s helped me see how stressful things have been for teachers, students, and school leaders.
In the midst of another chaotic year, the idea of performance assessment system building might seem luxurious. Most schools are struggling to staff campus tomorrow. Those big plans for rolling out the district’s new graduate profile or developing your school’s performance outcomes? Maybe next year.
Still, when I’ve been subbing, looking over the shoulders of students communicating with their teachers on Google Classroom, I am reminded that the essence of teaching and learning remains: Students learn content and skills by working through the challenges that their teachers assign and guide them through.
What’s the student work? What kind of assignments? Such questions are always relevant, and whenever we raise and discuss them in dialogue with colleagues, we are engaged in the work of performance assessment system building, even in a year like this. Every assignment that a teacher sets up to advance student learning is an opportunity to apply the principles of High Quality Performance Assessment (HQPA).
ELP’s newest virtual workshop, debuting in February, is called “Building a Great Performance Assessment.” Designed for classroom teachers, it’s a place to revise or create a standards-aligned task that is ready to embed in instruction. It’s hands-on, small-scale, and, we hope, won’t require a sub.
Justin Wells, ELP Executive Director
The best assessments not only capture our students’ brilliance but also enable them to see and feel their progress. In this three-part workshop, you will learn the principles of high-quality performance assessment (HQPA) and apply them to the design of a task that aligns to your outcomes and provides evidence of your students’ learning. You’ll come out of the workshop with an assessment that is ready to implement in your classroom.
This workshop series is facilitated by ELP Assessment Design Partner, Soraya Ramos and ELP Executive Director, Justin Wells.
Session #1: Wednesday, February 16th, 1:00pm-3:00pm PT (4:00-6:00pm ET)
Session #2: Wednesday, February 23rd, 1:00pm-3:00pm PT (4:00-6:00pm ET)
Session #3: Wednesday, March 2nd, 1:00pm-3:00pm PT (4:00-6:00pm ET)
The ELP Lounge will offer time to share stories, thought partnership with peers, or just the chance to throw up your hands and say, am I the only one experiencing this??? Plan to stop in and slow down to connect, share, learn, & heal. We can’t wait to see you.
Thursday, February 17th, 4:00-5:00pm PT (7:00-8:00pm ET)
Click here to grab your free ticket!
Share space with change-makers like you who are in search of a collective experience to highlight current triumphs and challenges, leverage student voice, and move from aspiration to action.
ELP will be facilitating sessions both, in-person and virtually! Keep an eye out for more details.
Happening March 29th-31st, 2022. Learn more about the event and register here.
We are honored to introduce Michelle Molitor, Executive Director of The Equity Lab. Their equity work began as a response to the urgent need for culturally responsive systemic change for our most vulnerable students. Ms. Molitor has partnered with and led work alongside several national and regional education agencies and works directly with organizations across the education ecosystem, including the Department of Education, philanthropic groups, district offices, schools, and education-facing nonprofits. Michelle wrote this piece in partnership with Nicole Young.
The Kids Are Not Alright… Michelle Molitor and Nicole Young
Even the kids are feeling it.
You can see it in the weary, glazed-over looks of your friends’ children on Instagram. Or in the hilarious quotes parents post about homeschooling on Twitter. Children, too, are tired of sitting in the house each day looking at their siblings, learning from their parents and their disembodied electronic teachers, and being unable to see their friends.
A friend recently posted about her four-year-old’s utter meltdown when she bombed their house for ants. He was devastated that she’d destroyed the only friends who had come to visit in weeks.
We’ve talked a lot about mental health during this pandemic, but we are often talking about adults. Kids, we assume, are resilient and much more adaptable than ourselves; we’ve decided they will be just fine. But children are feeling the same immeasurable strain adults are.
We are communal mammals, and our brains are not designed for social isolation. It’s difficult to parse the cascading grief we’re feeling at the loss of loved ones, time with friends, activities we enjoy, or income — even as adults. How much more onerous must it be for children, who face the same realities with less insight into what is causing them?
Some of the most accessible and cost effective mental health options for children in America are delivered through our schools. And when schools shut down, a lifeline for children in desperate need of counseling and support all but collapses.
In the COVID-19 world, we need to think differently about how we provide for the whole child. As traditional schooling changes, it is imperative that we consider how to support children with trauma, kids whose homes may not be safe, and queer and trans kids navigating their identities in hostile environments.
When we assume children are fine, that they are in less need of mental or spiritual support than ourselves, we are tacitly asking them to sublimate a portion of who they are. In doing so, we limit their complexity, ignore their needs, and most alarmingly, ask them to flatten themselves so that we can believe they are all right.
Grounding in History
There is a violent legacy of assimilation in American schooling. Throughout our nation’s history, the most vulnerable students have been rounded up, tracked, beaten, and punished for being who they are.
In 1824, then Secretary of War John C. Calhoun created the Bureau of Indian Affairs, an office in the U.S. Department of the Interior that was tasked with “civilizing” and controlling Indigenous and Native American tribes across the country.
In addition to forced displacement and brutal subjugation, the Bureau of Indian Affairs also oversaw the creation of “Indian boarding schools.” These schools, which operated for more than 100 years (from 1860 to 1978), were specifically designed to force the assimilation of Indian children to white culture and the English language.
Indigenous children were taken from their homes, often without their parents’ consent, and sent to live in these boarding schools. Their hair was cut and their clothes were burned, they were beaten for using their native languages, they were often abused by their caretakers, they were forced to practice Christianity, and their cultural and familial ties were severed.
In 1892, Richard H. Pratt, the man who established the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, famously delivered his “Kill the Indian, and Save the Man” speech. Indians were, in Pratt’s opinion, only worth saving if they could be Americanized. Every part of their Indian identity and culture was savagery that must be stripped away. His was the prevailing thought driving American policy and law through the turn of the 20th century and until the Indian Child Welfare Act was passed into federal law in 1978.
Even as John Dewey’s research was leading a national discussion about educating the whole child, Indigenous and Native American children were enduring an educational system that viewed their cultural identity as a scourge to be erased.
Listening to Those Most Impacted
By 1978, generations of Indigenous children had been forcibly assimilated through schools. In their own chilling accounts, survivors of this trauma recount the voicelessness that permeated their experience; they were unable to speak their own native tongues and unable to voice dissent in the language that was forced upon them.
Are we listening to our students when they tell us what they need today? As children fight to stay engaged on laptops all day or dissolve into tears over dead ants, do we hear them?
A global pandemic, we’re learning, affects everyone — in ways large and small. And instead of insisting children put on a bright face in the midst of such global uncertainty, it is incumbent upon us as educators, parents, and community members to ask them what they need to feel supported.
For children who are struggling in homes where their identities are under attack, this is even more important. How do we make room in our thinking, and eventually in our policy making, to prioritize the voices of LGTBQ students, students facing abuse, or those struggling with trauma and depression?
COVID-19 has cracked wide open the deficiencies in our education system. But as we reconfigure the system to support adult needs, are we listening to young people?
Advocate for Radical Change
We see echoes of the Indian boarding schools’ philosophies in our classrooms and schools today. Students are asked to leave their identities at the school door. Black, Latinx, poor, and immigrant parents are seen as nuisances rather than co-designers in their children’s education.
However, students do not come to school as empty vessels waiting to be filled. Instead, they come full of incredible strengths and their own individual stories. To make radical change in this area would be to create an education system that encourages children to lean into their identities and genius, rather than stifling them for adult comfort.
We will only see a radical shift in American education when we begin to devalue compliance and assimilation. As much as children need structure, they also deserve an education that is compassionate and treats them as the whole people they are.
If we reimagine an educational system that serves the whole child, parents, families, students, and educators must be equal partners in defining its purpose and leading its design. For vulnerable students, those facing abuse or those whose families would punish them for being LGBTQ, a holistic model must address the realities they face when they get home.
Ultimately, radical change means investing in the whole child being able to heal and thrive.
Build and Iterate
Assimilation is a tool, wielded by a racist, homophobic, sexist, and capitalist society to quell difference. Its dominance in our education system means that we are stifling children and actively ignoring their needs as physical, mental, and spiritual beings. But if such an oppressive system is designed, it can be redesigned.
This requires recreating an education system with the needs of the most marginalized children at the center. This necessitates adults mobilizing in support of children — not on their behalf. And it demands a different orientation to the many facets of childhood in a rapidly changing world.
Want to Learn More?
Watch Unseen Tears: The Native American Boarding School Experience in Western New York
OR
Read Moving Equity Work Toward Action in the Age of Covid-19
A Parent’s Reflection on the Driver’s Test Analogy
Here at Envision, we frequently use the Driver’s License Test analogy to talk about Performance Assessment: it is a clear and familiar example of showing you are ready for a momentous next step by demonstrating what you are able to do (drive) with what you know (driving rules and regulations).
As a mom, I recently had a chance to consider this analogy from a distinct vantage point: the passenger seat. Helping my daughter learn to drive has given me the opportunity to expand on this beloved Envision metaphor with some key observations related to Performance Assessment.
First, it can be abjectly terrifying to drive with an “emerging” driver. In Lola’s first few forays on the road, I had several white-knuckle experiences that will be familiar to any parent of teens. I had multiple visions of catastrophe. I may have screamed a couple of times. And I realized it was the loss of control that really unsettled me. It is daunting to realize there is NO OTHER WAY for your child to learn how to drive except by LETTING GO OF CONTROL. It dawned on me that it must also be hard for teachers to let go of control in the classroom. Of course, classroom performance assessment does not pose the threat of bodily harm the way hurtling over the Bay Bridge on my daughter’s maiden voyage did. But I found it interesting that I struggled to give up control even though I knew she was ready for this important step. I struggled in safer situations too—complete with pressing on the non-existent, passenger side brake—and sometimes found it hard to articulate instructions. It made me curious about how teachers confront and manage this struggle.
Secondly, teacher-student relationships really do make a difference in student success. Lola took the test twice: she failed the first time. The first instructor was dour, unfriendly, and impatient. According to Lola, she gave the directions (turn left, turn right) with very little time between instruction and execution. She wasn’t receptive to clarifying questions. She did not smile. Two weeks later and the difference could not have been more stark: the second instructor was friendly and engaging, immediately introducing herself to both of us. After the successful test, Lola was effusive about how different this second experience was. This instructor took the time to give Lola a friendly overview of what the test would be like. When she noticed Lola was nervous, she offered suggestions for how to relax a little bit. For Lola, having the instructor see and acknowledge her anxiety helped enormously. Out on the road, when Lola made some small mistakes, the instructor said things like “this is a mistake I make sometimes too, so just keep in mind xyz…”. She also gave directions clearly, with time for Lola to execute on them, and was patient with questions. With that kind of assessor in the seat next to her, Lola was able to drive the way she knew how, and of course she passed.
In the days since Lola has been whizzing around the Bay Area on her own, I have thought often about this woman, her skill at her job, and the way she helped my daughter. It strikes me that performance assessment, at its best, is about not only challenging the learner but also creating conditions for her success. And I’m once again grateful for teachers who are practiced in the art of both supporting students and letting them truly show what they know and are capable of.
For more of Monica’s “parent perspective,” check out this 2018 post in EdWeek: The Gift of Portfolio Defense.
ELP and Alliance kicked off our partnership in the 2018-19 school year. In our first year we worked together to deeply engage around building a graduate profile. In 2019-20, we have been engaged with the Alliance team to develop a vertical articulation of the graduate profile with the intention of using that vertical articulation as a tool for a few things:
ELP Executive Director, Justin Wells, with the Alliance team.
ELP looks forward to our continued partnership with Alliance!
For more information about Alliance, click here to see their Partner Profile.
Why did you apply for the Deeper Learning Leadership Forum (DLLF)?
[ELP’s Deeper Learning Coach] Alcine had worked with our district for a year, helping us develop our Graduate Profile. During one of our training sessions, she informed me of the DLLF geographic plan to include our area. That year I was also assuming a new role of Director of Pupil Personnel/Equity Officer and felt that the forum would greatly benefit my professional growth as well as the direction of my district.
What are the benefits of being a part of the DLLF?
Learning from a group of diverse educators has been the greatest reward. There are members from large and small districts who are willing to go on the deeper learning/equity journey that will take our school systems to the next level.
How has it helped you with your professional work?
The DLLF experience has provided me with a network of educators that will serve as a professional learning community for 18 months and beyond. The structured and unstructured collaboration has allowed me to introduce ideas in my district that “disrupt” the typical processes of education.
What is your individual project?
Introducing equity systems across my district. Building the concept of equity in our district is definitely in its infancy stages. To complete my project, I used Kotter’s 8 Stages of Change to introduce and implement equitable practices in my district.Robert is the Director of Pupil Personnel and Equity Officer for the Mason County School District in Kentucky.
Learn more about the Deeper Learning Leadership Forum experience by clicking here.
I have two daughters – ages 12 and 9. Both attend our neighborhood K-8 public school, an easy five-minute walk from our home. Like many working parents with school-age children, my spouse and I juggled our work and parenting responsibilities in pre-COVID times to make sure we spent quality time with our children, provide support with math homework and longer-term projects, and support their participation in enrichment and extracurricular activities. Sometimes math homework sessions ended in tearful or rage-filled meltdowns, and at other times, perfectly decent drafts of writing projects ended up as torn or crumpled pages thrown across the room. On the flip side, one of my daughters exuberantly and proudly shares her creations in a game simulation, and the other eagerly accepted swim lessons after years of rejecting them so she could keep up with her friends at pool parties. If any of this sounds familiar, you are in good company. Based on my experiences as a parent, educator, and researcher, I have come to understand a singular truth about learning – that ALL learning is social-emotional learning.
Recall a time when you struggled to learn something new at some point in your life. What emotions did you feel in your struggle? What factors helped you persist in the learning process? I recall shedding tears over long division in third grade, lacking confidence to contribute to class discussions, and anxiety over a lifetime of failed swim lessons. Sometimes, all I needed was a friend to show me how they worked a problem, an invitation from a teacher to share my ideas, or an opportunity to practice the skill again and again. Thinking about those times, it is clear to me that there is a social-emotional component to all aspects of learning. Over the last two decades, researchers have documented the critical role that social-emotional factors play in student outcomes such as grades, school persistence, and test scores (Durlak, et.al., 2011; Greenberg, et.al., 2003; Sklad, et.al., 2012; Taylor, et., al, 2017). Encouragingly, in recent years, there has also been a growing awareness of the importance and value of students’ well-being (the Stanford Prevention Research Center (2019) defines well-being as “a holistic synthesis of a person’s biological, psychological, and spiritual experiences, resulting from interplay between individuals and their social, economic, and physical environments that promotes living a fulfilling life.”) and “whole-child development” (see Turnaround for Children’s Building Blocks for Learning for another whole-child framework) as a valued goal in and of itself.
From 2016-19, I had the opportunity to direct a research study with a team at the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, & Equity (SCALE) and ELP called “Measures of Social-Emotional Learning,” a project supported by the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Stuart Foundation, to explore the possibility of developing credible, instructionally-embedded sources of evidence about students’ SEL development that can be used to inform students’ and teachers’ next steps. We wanted to go beyond traditional pupil survey instruments that, in many cases, do not provide timely and immediately actionable information about specific students (there are a couple exceptions: the Co-Pilot/Elevate program developed by PERTS (Project for Education Research that Scales) engages students in multiple short-cycle administrations of a brief survey that provides targeted, disaggregated information to teachers and can be used to inform immediate next steps; Project Co-Vitality allows for tracking individual pupil responses over time. Both instruments are proprietary and require registration with their programs), to explore authentic sources of evidence in contexts where students actually apply social-emotional practices in the course of engaging with academic content. This study was completed in partnership with teachers in student-centered learning contexts where students were engaged in project-based learning and exhibitions/defenses of learning. The Executive Summary provides an overview of our findings.
The findings from that study have strongly influenced my understanding of the importance of whole-child development, the integration of social-emotional learning in all aspects of learning in school, and the learning environments that are necessary for students to develop as self-directed learners with ownership of their learning and agency over their lives. Teachers, families, and other adults in the school community play a critical role in shaping the learning environments and conditions that nurture students’ SEL development. These learning environments shape whether students feel empowered to make choices in their learning and whether student voices are honored and heard. A culture of mutual respect, support, and safety among students is needed to empower student voice and choice. If students are to have ownership and agency in their learning, they need a low-stakes “trial and error” culture where they feel safe not getting things right on their first, second, or even third attempt, where academic and creative risk-taking is applauded, and grading policies value growth and effort over initial success. A culture that values growth also provides regular opportunities to receive constructive feedback from peers and teachers, and supports students to act on that feedback. Through the study, our team came to understand that all teachers, not just counselors and advisory teachers, need to be equipped to understand the social-emotional well-being of their students and the role that all teachers play in creating the learning environments that support students’ SEL.
During the research project, based on evidence of how well teacher-developed measures of SEL worked for students, the research team authored a framework that describes opportunities for developing and demonstrating social-emotional learning in the context of PBL and Exhibitions of Learning. The framework proposes a set of design principles for credible and valid measures of SEL:
One key learning from the study was that students need an authentic purpose and audience for engaging with measures of SEL – this is similar to the way authentic performance assessments can spark and sustain student motivation and more validly measure a complex skill. For example, when students reflect on their own and their peers’ “team mindset” skills in the context of completing a joint project, the feedback they give each other and their own reflections on how they contributed to the project are more meaningful, honest, and valid than completing survey items on their collaboration skills without a specific context. Another key learning is that measures that engage students in socially constructed or peer-mediated sense-making (e.g., those in which students have opportunities to share learning goals with a buddy, discuss evidence of their progress on those goals, set new goals, and hold each other accountable) were seen as the most authentic and valid SEL measures by students and teachers. This is the “social” in social-emotional learning. Most students learn and perform best when they have opportunities to engage with others (whether peers, teachers, or mentors) in authentic discussions, collaborative projects, or when receiving feedback and coaching. This allows them to process complex ideas through conversation, build and validate their understandings, make meaning of common experiences, and refine their own ideas. The interactions students have with others in the process of learning something new is not just a “nice to have” – it is an essential component of the learning process.
The need for teachers to become better equipped to nurture their students’ SEL (and by extension, attend to their own social-emotional well-being) has been amplified by a range of crises and challenges over the last two decades — a rise in school shootings, growing awareness of the harms of in-person and cyberbullying, unnecessary use of police force in schools and disproportionate over-application of disciplinary action and criminalization of Black and brown students, increasing poverty and homelessness, children in foster care, a national opioid epidemic, the plight of undocumented immigrants living in constant fear of ICE, and the marginalization of LGBTQIA+ students, to name a few challenges to well-being that children in American schools currently face.
During the global COVID-19 pandemic crisis, it has become even clearer that we need to attend to the social-emotional needs of children as well as the adults that mentor them to create safe learning conditions that shape how students will be able to cope with the health crisis and a world where threats to their very existence feel more real than ever. The pandemic crisis and distance learning pulled back the curtains on deep systemic inequities in the ways students from Black, brown, and other marginalized communities have been left behind. Schools mobilized to provide for the needs of millions of children across the U.S. whose only steady meals came from the school lunch program, and did their best to overcome the deep gaps in access to the computing technology and Internet service needed to participate in online learning. Even with the heroic efforts of their schools, many of these students fell through the cracks and existing inequities widened. In addition, many public school students suffer from homelessness (114,000 in New York City and 17,000 in Los Angeles alone), lack of access to healthcare, worries for parents who must risk becoming infected everyday because they are essential workers, and sometimes abuse in the home. On top of these extraordinary stressors, Black and brown children suffer immensely from seeing the violent murders of people who look like them by the police and other individuals, with almost no consequences for perpetrators and no justice for the victims. And children of Asian American Pacific Islander descent are increasingly becoming witness to or victims of overt racist attacks by individuals blaming them for “bringing the Coronavirus”. In the face of these immense sources of stress, fear, and trauma, what should schools and teachers be doing to prepare for the next academic year, which begins in less than a month in some districts?
Rather than preparing to be instructors of content, teachers must be prepared to be instructors, coaches, and mentors of children. This juxtaposition of these two teaching dispositions is not a new idea; nor is it intended to be mutually exclusive. It is entirely achievable to be a teacher of children and a teacher of content. And in an equitable classroom that prepares students to cope with the current challenges in their lives and the world they will face as adults, teachers must fulfill both roles. However, it is imperative now more than ever that teachers attend to the needs of the whole child, not just their academic needs. In this moment, when there is so much healing and recovery that students, families, and teachers need to do in the face of a pandemic that continues to rob people of their health, jobs, homes, and basic sense of security, and heightened anger about the racial disparities in our justice system and basic civil rights, we will cause more harm than good if we simply return to the past patterns of policies, practices, and priorities of “normal” school, as argued by Adelric McCain (Network for College Success, UChicago) and Hugh Vasquez (National Equity Project). Indeed, we should remember that “normal” school has not worked well for vast numbers of school children, especially Black and brown children, English learners, and children with special needs. In many cases, students have been traumatized by their experiences with “normal” school. Dr. Pedro Noguera suggests constructive ways for reopening schools in a way that puts equity at the center.
This is a time to prioritize the well-being and social-emotional needs of students, their families, and their teachers. Before we can demand that teachers teach their content effectively (in-person or via distance learning) or expect that students catch up on all the academic learning that did not happen in the Spring, we have to ask whether members of the school community, but especially children, feel safe, seen and heard, and supported. The well known Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (1995-97) found that certain traumatic experiences in childhood are major risk factors for the leading causes of illness and death as well as poor quality of life in the U.S. However, the same study also found that the effects of these traumatic experiences can be offset by the presence of one dependable and caring adult in a child’s life. Sometimes, that adult is a mother, father, or a relative. More frequently, that stable, caring adult is a teacher or mentor (Paper Tiger film; Resilience: The Biology of Stress & the Science of Hope film). There are not enough school counselors, social workers, and mental health providers to meet the explosion in need, especially with anticipated school budget cuts (S. Kohli, Los Angeles Times, 5/7/20). Teachers and other caring adults in children’s lives will need to step up and work together to help children recover from the traumas experienced during the pandemic school closures and even before that.
Implications for pedagogy and practice. When teachers are instructors, coaches, and mentors of children, teachers begin not by testing students about their reading and math knowledge, but by prioritizing learning about their students – who they are as persons – their strengths, interests, and lived experiences, their families, their communities, and their cultural/language backgrounds. Teachers begin also by establishing classroom norms, routines, and a culture of safety, mutual respect, risk-taking, personal and social responsibility, personal and social awareness, peer support, and low-stakes learning through “trial and error”. They endeavor to build trusting relationships with their students and their families through ongoing communication and inviting families to be a partner in their students’ learning. They check in regularly with their students and invite them to share their successes, struggles, and needs. They create opportunities for students to build relationships with their peers, which provides a powerful authentic context for students to experience healing and support – something we learned from our research study on measures of SEL. Relationship building is an ongoing process that will be challenged by events in and outside the classroom across the year. When incidents of racial injustice and intolerance occur in school and outside of it, teachers do not gloss over these events or pretend they didn’t happen. Teachers who care for students’ social-emotional well-being confront these issues head-on, centering the voices of marginalized students as they process these issues and encourage students to respond in appropriate ways. Teachers are prepared to respond to instances of racism, disrespect, or conflict within the classroom as a mediator, rather than as a punisher, to repair relationships and restore a culture of mutual respect, as well as respond to crises or traumatic experiences (with the support of families, counselors, and social workers) that affect students’ social-emotional well-being.
Some teachers may have an intuitive ability to build relationships with students, create and maintain a classroom culture of safety, support, and mutual respect, and respond appropriately to the effects of trauma in students’ lives. However, this is a skill set that many teachers will need to learn and practice. Thankfully, there are resources and an established knowledge base to draw upon from counseling psychology, social work, and the mental health field. Below are some organizations and resources that can support your school staff as they consider beginning the journey to becoming instructors, coaches, and mentors of children, prioritizing the well-being of the whole child. Our team of ELP coaches has expertise and direct experience with these student-centered, whole-child pedagogies and practices; we have also created research-based tools and design frameworks for designing measures that elicit instructionally-embedded evidence of social-emotional practices that can help teachers better understand their students’ social-emotional strengths and needs and create learning environments that nurture their SEL development. We invite you to reach out to us to learn more about how we support districts and schools.
ChildTrends/Child Trauma Training Center (UMass)
Culturally Responsive Education Hub
National Child Traumatic Stress Network
Trauma Sensitive Schools (National Association of School Psychologists)
Forbes, H.T. (2012). Help for Billy. Boulder, CO: Beyond Consequences Institute.
Harris, N.B. (2018) The Deepest Well. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Kaiser Permanente & CDC (1998). Adverse Childhood Experiences Study
Menakem, R. (2017). My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. Central Recovery Press
Minahan, J. (2019, Oct). Trauma Informed Teaching Strategies. Educational Leadership, 77 (2), 30-35.
Newhouse, C. (2020, April 6). Four Core Priorities for Trauma-Informed Distance Learning. KQED Mind/Shift.
Porges, S. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company
Resilient Educator (2020). Essential Trauma-Informed Teaching Strategies for Managing Stress in the Classroom.
Teaching Tolerance (2020, March 23). A Trauma-Informed Approach to Teaching Through Coronavirus.
van der Kolk, B. (2015). The Body Keeps the Score. New York, NY: Penguin Random House.
Yusem, D. (2019, May 31). Restorative Justice in Schools: SEL in Action. Mindful Schools.
Emotional Well-Being and Coping During COVID-19 (UCSF)
That Discomfort You are Feeling is Grief (Harvard Business Review)
Self-Care for Teachers of Traumatized Students (Resilient Educator)
4 Self-Care Resources When the World is Terrible (Colorlines)
Durlak, J.A., Weissberg, R.P., Dymnicki, A.B., Taylor, R.D, and K.B. Schellinger (2011). The impact of enhancing students’ social and emotional learning: A meta-analysis of school-based universal interventions. Child Development, 82, (1), 405–432. https://www.cpr.org/sites/default/files/durlak_et_al-2011-child_development.pdf
Greenberg, M.T., Weissberg, R.P., O’Brien, M.U., Zins, J.E., Fredericks, L., Resnik, H., & Elias, M.J. (2003). Enhancing school-based prevention and youth development through coordinated social, emotional, and academic learning. American Psychologist, 58, 466-474.
Sklad, M., Diekstra, R., De Ritter, M., Ben, H., Gravestein, C. (2012), Effectiveness of school‐based universal social, emotional, and behavioral programs: Do they enhance students’ development in the area of skill, behavior, and adjustment? Psychology in the Schools, 49(9), 892-909. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.21641
Taylor, R.D., Oberle, E., Durlak, J.A., Weissberg, R.P. (2017). Promoting positive youth development through school‐based social and emotional learning interventions: A meta‐analysis of follow‐up effects. Child Development, 88(4), 1156-1171
What’s next? Enforcing “time served” is for prison guards, not stewards of genius.
Vinci Daro and Theresa Morris are two razor-sharp colleagues of mine. Among other qualities, they are math curriculum and assessment designers; they also help teachers shift the focus of learning to center students. The teacher works to guide, encourage, and create conditions for unfettering the growth of all students as full human beings, as problem solvers, thinkers, learners, and doers. That’s how I understand it, anyway. It is the opposite of my experience with high school math in particular, and I literally love them for it.
Once I heard Theresa very quickly answer a question about her mission and purpose: “Recovering lost potential.” Another time I saw Vinci’s response to a question about the values and principles she proposes when she is coaching or facilitating, and I think it was the only thing she wrote: “Students are brilliant.”
Think about that. What is happening in a course built on those directives? Let’s explore.
A few years back I heard from two high school students from different schools who designed and prototyped shoes with batteries built into the soles, which recharge via kinetic and solar energy from being used like shoes – walking around, and it helps if it’s sunny. Both students researched previous attempts at such a design. Both devised and revised proposals, plans, designs. Both went into the world to share their inquiries and challenges with professionals, mainly scientists and engineers. One used design thinking and the other used the engineering design process to get to a working prototype, and they did not solve the design challenges in the same way. One of these innovators was acquiring a patent in hopes of a licensing deal and navigating all of that, while the other had a batch of shoes manufactured and shipped to families in Ethiopia so they can be less impacted by rolling blackouts. He raised the money for that, too! They both spoke publicly about their process, challenges, and learning and expertly Both answered a barrage of questions from adults. One shared her story through a professional presentation in a giant auditorium and the other stood by a digital display of his project and walked groups of people through as they approached and investigated his station.
How do we design for that? One answer may strike you as suspiciously familiar.
Schools have found themselves bogged down by inflexible structures at a time when we need flexibility most. Some educators worry about students completing work too quickly and then not having anything to do with the remaining class time.
Rooting conditions for school success in things like seat time ultimately dilutes the data that actually measures student learning. Here are some things we will miss: what students can do now, their strengths and needs, how to support them, and what’s next for them. Pretty important stuff! Once you have them in front of you, how will you use that time to answer those other questions, and teach things that can be learned? Relationships, home visits, personalized interventions, bus passes, carpools, and other creative community support are more effective ways to address the high crimes of absence and tardiness!
Education shouldn’t be like serving a sentence. Let’s instead refocus our approach on what matters most and prepare ourselves to cultivate some genius. Model those transferable skills, bring all students relevant learning experiences, assist them in gaining useful strategies, expressing themselves, creating real things, taking initiative, and generally developing their powers! Let the reality of student brilliance and the high stakes of lost potential set the terms, not “time served.”
In other words, your students are not done yet. They’ve got way more to offer and more to learn. So what’s next for each of them and how will you let them do it?
ELPers, Alcine Mumby and Aragon Burlingham speak on camera about their experiences being part of the first Nexus Fellowship. The Nexus Fellowship was developed by the Equity Lab in response to the overwhelming need for race, equity, diversity, and inclusion (REDI) in the learning profession. The Fellowship helps leaders to create long-term organizational change around race and equity.
What experiences brought you into coaching?
I had the incredible experience to be on the team that founded Envision Learning Partners. I was half-way into my teaching career at that point and was offered the opportunity to design and create a way in which we could share some of what makes Envision special with others around the country who were interested. I spent 2 years feeling like I had gone back to grad school as we built ELP, as I was learning so much in the process! Wanting to put into practice for myself all of the rich growth I had experienced, I went back into the classroom at Envision for 5 more years. It was a natural and wonderful return to coaching in 2016 when I was able to re-join the team on this side of the organization.
What do you most enjoy about being a coach?
I feel so inspired by the brilliant educators with whom I get to cross paths and sit shoulder to shoulder while on my coaching journey. I was worried that I would miss the beautiful chaos of teenagers on a daily basis when I left teaching, but coaching provides similarly vibrant relationships with the folks I get to partner with. Coaching offers a bit of a different cognitive challenge as I get to think about units of change larger than my own classroom. This is invigorating and often makes my brain hurt in really cool ways.
What do you like to do when you are not coaching?
When not on a plane or sitting in an airport, you can find me running the trails of the incredible hills and redwood forests in the east bay, talking to every dog I pass on the sidewalk, enjoying the incredible food and wine that we have at our fingertips, traveling to far off magical lands as often as possible, cooking dinner for former students, and stepping out on a dance floor when the music is right.
Hear why our newest Deeper Learning Coach, Morgan Vien, joined ELP and is excited about her new role working with our partners across the country.
What experiences brought you into coaching?
As a student, I loved learning but found school more stifling than unleashing of my love of learning. As a high school teacher, I loved learning from my students and helping them discover themselves and the world around them. As a lead teacher, I always wanted more time to design amazing learning experiences, think about school-wide systems, and learn more about what other great schools are working on.
What do you most enjoy about being a coach?
As a coach, while I miss crazy teenager energy, I love the increased impact my work has on many other people’s students; I love the nitty-gritty of it too: learning, collaborating, and co-designing learning experiences and systems that help schools and districts in their process of transforming teaching and learning from the systems we all inherited.
What do you like to do when you are not coaching?
I am an activist, an artist, and an introvert! A big contradiction of things. I try to maintain space for calm, for creating and appreciating art in many forms, for reflection, and for just existing outside as part of the natural world, as well as fighting the fights that must be fought to make the world a better place.
During the 2019 calendar year, ELP’s Alcine Mumby and Aragon Burlingham participated in the first Nexus Fellowship, a program from the Equity Lab. Nexus was designed in response to the overwhelming need for race, equity, diversity, and inclusion (REDI) in the learning profession.
This was a transformative experience for us and the other 14 Nexus Fellows! Michelle and her talented team curated a deep and personal experience for our new community of equity leaders. Nexus took us into a deep personalized leadership journey based on our identities around three specific design challenges: challenges with people, challenges with processes, and challenges with programs.
Watch the video to hear about the experiences of the Nexus Fellows and Equity Lab’s ED, Michelle Molitor.
Thank you Michelle and your exceptional team for creating this incredible program!
Describe what you do at ELP?
I lead the operations side of Envision Learning Partners. This primarily involves behinds the scenes work to ensure our infrastructure and systems are running smoothly so our coaches can deliver high-quality professional development. ELP’s start-up culture has built our service and systems through many years of relationship building, prototyping, and refining.
What experiences brought you to ELP?
I began my work with Envision as an English teacher at City Arts and Tech [our school in San Francisco]. After stepping out of the classroom, I worked closely with all of our schools in a highly successful reading intervention program. In 2010, I became a founding member of the Envision Learning Partners team. We spent the first several years of ELP figuring out the most high leverage work we could do with our external partners. The journey has been amazing – we’ve grown our service from 3 team members serving 1 partner to 11 team members serving over 60 partners.
What do you enjoy most about working for ELP?
I am driven by the mission of ELP and expanding positive educational impact to all students. I believe deeply in providing access and high-quality learning experiences to all students. At ELP we primarily work with adult learners to refine their teaching practices and educational systems, but my motivation still comes from impacting students’ lives by shifting adult teaching and learning.
What do you like to do when you’re not working?
I spend most of my time on outdoor adventures with my wonderful husband and two children. We like to hike, rock climb, backpack, ski, and camp whenever we have the opportunity. Almost every morning before the sun is up you can find me at a barre class and I always sneak in time to read several novels per month.
I serve as the Director of Research and Innovation. My main role is to document the impact that designing and implementing high quality performance assessment systems has on outcomes for K-12 students, the learning environments that student experience, and systems and cultures that support student success. The “innovation” part of my work has to do with developing new tools, frameworks, and methodologies for the work we do with the latest evidence from research and practice. What that really means is that I support our coaches as a thought partner as they develop new products with their district and school partners, and codify tools, products, and practices into a unique ELP-branded suite of resources. I also spend a lot of time writing, reviewing, and explaining rubrics!
That’s a long story, but I’ll give it a try! I started my career in 1997 as a history teacher in New York City, at a Queens high school that was part of the small schools movement in the city, and regularly assigned projects and performance assessments to my students, even before I knew what PBL and performance assessments were. During my graduate studies at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, I studied the impact of a teaching performance assessment (Performance Assessment for California Teachers) on the learning of preservice teachers, having been inspired by teachers reporting that the NBPTS portfolio assessment had a tremendously positive impact on their professional learning. During my graduate studies, I also began supporting the work of the School Redesign Network at Stanford which was supporting the Bay Area Performance Assessment Consortium (BayPAC), and that’s how I met Bob Lenz, one of the founders of Envision Schools and my current colleagues, Justin, Alcine, Rachel, and Abby, among other founding teachers. Bob requested technical support from the School Redesign Network team. That’s how I ended up facilitating teams of Envision Schools educators as they developed their suite of disciplinary performance outcomes, rubrics, and the portfolio defense, and as teachers got calibrated on the portfolio rubrics. When Envision had its first graduating classes, I conducted a couple of small studies to evaluate the impact of the portfolio and defense on students’ learning experiences and then a follow-up study to learn how graduates who had been out of high school for one or two years were doing. Later, I also participated in collecting data for another set of studies that included Impact Academy and City Arts & Tech HS called the Study of Student Centered Schools (completed by the Stanford SCOPE Center). Between 2008 and 2020, I worked as the Director of Assessment Research and Development at SCALE – the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity, which evolved from the School Redesign Network. SCALE’s primary mission is to support districts, states, and higher ed institutions as they develop and implement balanced, credible, and reliable assessment systems that include performance assessments. I started working at ELP part-time in January 2018, when SCALE staff merged with ELP. I started working full-time at ELP in January of 2020. In many ways, it felt like coming back home, to a school organization with an assessment system that I was part of building. I am so proud of what Envision Schools have become and that we are a national and international leader in the performance assessment movement.
I love working at ELP because I feel so much at home here. I truly feel that my colleagues are like-minded people with the “same heart.” At ELP, I know my colleagues hold very similar beliefs about the potential of all students and a similar drive to do work that makes a difference in students’ lives. We rejoice and celebrate the same small victories, and we mourn and weep for the same systemic sources of injustice in our world. We geek out over backwards planning and all believe in the power of student work as a key lever for teacher learning. We support and care for each other, and know that even when we push back on one another, it is out of love. That’s what makes it feel like home.
I wish I had more time for all my non-work interests – but these days, when I’m able to come up for air, I enjoy making a delicious meal for my family, going for long walks, tinkering on my mandolin, piano, or violin (not all at once!), and shelter-in-place Karaoke nights with my family. Also, I enjoy cuddling with our long-haired Chihuahua-Papillon mixed pup and our aging tabby cat while catching up on the latest sci-fi or historical fiction drama on Netflix.
Describe what you do at ELP.
I am the Director of STEM Learning at ELP. I get to work with colleagues in many different roles — teachers, coaches, administrators, curriculum developers, assessment developers, and professional learning providers — to design learning experiences and assessment tools that help students become better problem-solvers, and better communicators about their problem-solving strategies. A big part of my work is figuring out how to set students up to use their own everyday language and the disciplinary language of mathematics and science to express and clarify their own ideas, and to build on each other’s ideas (for example, the Math Language Routines). Another big part of my work is developing tools to help educators sharpen their lens for analyzing student work to get better at identifying and describing evidence of learning, and to get better at planning instruction and assessment based on that evidence (for example, Collaborative Analysis of Student Work Protocol). I also get to collaborate on tools for observing classrooms, and for using observation data to plan instruction (for example Observation + Planning Tool); developing and adapting tools like these for distance learning contexts has kept me very busy this year. I am always on the lookout for projects in which the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics and the Next Generation Science Standards are used to optimize student curiosity and student agency.
What experiences brought you to ELP?
My journey to ELP was a happy and unplanned confluence of opportunities and relationships. I joined ELP in early 2018 as part of a team of colleagues from Stanford (Understanding Language/Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning & Equity), and one of the primary magnets that drew us to ELP was a clear commitment to both equity in education and anti-racism broadly. In that merging of people and projects, ELP gained STEM content expertise and I gained a bit more freedom to pursue projects that align with my interests in making school a place where students not only grow their competence in solving problems, but are recognized for their competence. Prior to joining ELP, I was the Director of Math Learning at UL/SCALE, and before that worked for many years with Ann Shannon and Associates, using the Shell Center Formative Assessment Lessons, which transformed my understanding of the importance of attending closely to the variety of ways students generate evidence their learning. I’ve had many opportunities to integrate my training as a cultural anthropologist and ethnographer into my work in math education, but often only secretly; ELP is a place where I get to be my whole self.
Part of the ELP team prototyping at a 2019 retreat.
What do you enjoy most about working for ELP?
Colleagues. The people. (ELP has the best people). The deep expertise and wisdom about working with schools and districts to shift mindsets, to re-align educational systems for equity and learning that matters, and to build tools collaboratively that make these shifts and re-alignments sustainable. Being able to draw on what ELP colleagues are doing at the scale of systems, and in relation to other content areas, provides a much more holistic perspective than is possible in professional settings narrowly bounded by content area.
I also enjoy all of the opportunities to collaborate with the incredible staff at Envision Schools. Partnering with STEM leaders at Envision Schools has been an ongoing source of energy and an actively experimental space for professional learning design and assessment design.
What do you like to do when you’re not working?
Anything that does not involve a screen: being and moving outside (walking, running, hiking, biking, kayaking); touching and reading printed pages; playing cards, Pentago, chess, Codenames, Just One, and other games with my 14 year old daughter and 11 year old son; playing with our accidental pet, Philmore the fabulous rat. And — when all goes well — living car-free until our summer cross-country road trip to Carrboro, NC, visiting family and friends along the way.
A Note from the Designers: Just so you know- we hear you and we are answering your call!
“Yes – we want to lean in and invite students to tell the journey of their learning in a Virtual Defense… but where do we start?”
We are thrilled that you are digging deeper into the Virtual Defense Toolkit! Each part of this Toolkit is being built with our own main design principle in mind: Tight on criteria, loose on path. Thus the Path Pace is intended to be a guide as you look at where you are currently, and how you might move as a system toward virtual student defenses and beyond.This tool includes suggested tasks and timelines for each of the primary stakeholder groups – students, advisors/mentors, and Admin. We then break down those tasks into week-long chunks. We invite you to explore this tool and then reflect on your context, your capacity, and what feels right for your community. Adopt what resonates, adapt what you want to modify, and hopefully this gives you a place to start. We will be offering resources for several of these tasks as the days go on, and are excited to continue to build what you may need as you take this on.
“This is awesome… but how do we support students to hold parts of this process?”
Yes! We are so glad you asked. Any student-centered assessment supports students to be co- designers of the experience and invites them to activate their agency in the process. This planning tool is built to help them set goals, track key information, manage workload and consider important factors as they prepare to defend their learning.In this new landscape, we know that circumstances and home learning contexts are unique to each student. As you engage in building towards a culminating event with your students, we invite you to question assumptions and let students lead where possible. They are the experts in their home contexts and can make choices about how and when to complete work, the best space in their home environments for hosting the event and of course- how to best be their authentic selves in this process.As always, these tools are an offering and we are excited to see how you use them and what other needs emerge. We are actively designing and releasing this package as needs become clear.Onward!We held a couple of sessions to answer questions and dream with you all. We were excited to learn more about the complexities you’re working through and to imagine how we can support.
Virtual Portfolio Defense Webinar: Tuesday, April 14th
Virtual Defense: Ask Me Anything Session: Thursday, April 16th
Join the conversation on Twitter by tagging us @EnvisionSchools and using the hashtag #ELPVirtualDefense.
Stay Well,
Morgan Vien & Abby Benedetto, ELP Deeper Learning Coaches
We are delighted to announce the education leaders that have been selected to join the newest cohort of our Deeper Learning Leadership Forum. The Deeper Learning Leadership Forum (DLLF) is a cohort-based leadership experience that aims to develop, strengthen, and support a group of educational leaders to work at the intersection of equity and design thinking. As DLLF members cultivate relationships and learn across their diverse contexts, they will become more adept and strategic at leading reform efforts in their local systems, thus producing more equitable deeper learning outcomes across the country.
Meet our fourth cohort leaders here. Click the link and scroll down to Cohort 4!
Envision Education is seeking a dynamic, experienced educator and leader to build on the successes of our three high schools and two middle schools and establish Envision Schools as exemplar schools of equity and excellence for our students and for Envision Learning Partners. The Chief Academic Officer (CAO) will do this by providing vision, management experience, educational expertise, and operational oversight. Click here for the official position description.
Questions? Contact David Edwards, Director of Talent and Human Resources – dedwards@envisionschools.org – 510.451.2415 x 107
ELP has been selected as an approved learning partner by IL-EMPOWER for Illinois schools. IL-EMPOWER is the statewide system of support that empowers schools with greater choice in determining their path to improved student outcomes. Schools are informed through a continuous school improvement process which includes analysis of academic and school quality indicators, a system needs assessment, and selecting an approved learning partner like ELP.
To learn more about our partnership, click here.
ELP spends much of its time delivering PD to our partners from coast to coast. Many partners don’t realize that we also turn our PD chops inwards to refine our practices, learn from each other’s work in the field and have some fun along the way! At our last retreat, we focused our efforts on refining our definition of High Quality Performance Assessments. We believe a High Quality Performance Assessment…
We’ll expand on this suite of definitions in the coming weeks – stay tuned!
Happy Holidays from the ELP team!
The Assessment for Learning Conference is next month! Below is a sneak peak at the ELP-lead sessions!
Join ELP for the following sessions at the Deeper Learning Conference on March 25-27, 2020 in San Diego, CA!
Observe an entire Portfolio Defense, learn how the model works, and reflect on how you can apply the concepts in your own context.The Portfolio Defense is the capstone activity of a whole-school performance assessment system. It is the culmination of a student’s 4-year journey. Similar to a masters defense, students stand before a panel of peers, educators, and mentors to demonstrate — to the panel and to themselves — that they are ready to graduate and ready for a successful future.A Defense Design Studio consists of two parts:
Join ELP at our partner school’s DDS:
Bay Area Envision Education DDS dates TBD.
Grad Profile Workshop Series: Jan 28, Feb 5 & Feb 10 (Sold out but more dates to come!)
In this three-part workshop series, led by Deeper Learning Coach, Abby Benedetto, participants will explore the value of having a Graduate Profile, develop and define a draft, and then learn how to implement and measure it once they take it back to their school, district, etc.
Given the surprisingly high demand for this workshop, we have sold out! We are currently scheduling another set of dates, as soon as late February. Please use this Google Form to join the interest list and be the first to know as soon as new dates/times have been confirmed.
Session A: Intro to the Graduate Profile
This workshop is designed for folks who are learning about the concept of a Graduate Profile (aka Vision of a Graduate, Portrait of a Graduate). We will explore what a Graduate Profile is and why it is an important shift for schools, districts, systems, etc., as well as what it means to situate the Graduate Profile as your organizing principle. Participants will brainstorm the skills they believe would be ideal for their graduates, then have an opportunity to check that brainstorm against quality criteria, ideate and revise again. Participants will leave with a draft prototype of a graduate profile as well as a plan to engage stakeholders in a vital input/feedback process in order to move toward a more finalized draft.
Session A TLDR: You have heard about this thing called a Graduate Profile and want to take your first leap into learning more.
Session B: Defining Your Graduate Profile
Once participants have a draft of a Graduate Profile (aka Vision of a Graduate, Portrait of a Graduate) that includes larger skill categories, the next step is to define what you actually mean by those categories in the form of Performance Outcomes. During this session, we will clarify what Performance Outcomes are, determine the scope of the Outcomes that you are drafting (individual school, district-wide, etc.), and practice creating high quality Performance Outcomes for your Graduate Profile. This language will then be used to design shared assessment tools and much, much more. Participants will leave with a more fully defined set of skills for their Graduate Profile, as well as a plan to engage stakeholders in a vital input/feedback process in order to move toward a more finalized draft.
Session B TLDR: You have a list of amazing skills/competencies that you want for your graduates, and you are ready to get more specific about what that really means.
Session C: Select & Design Your Culminating Performance Assessment
Once you have your Graduate Profile designed and defined, you need to create a system that actually measures it. If you don’t, it remains a pretty poster on the wall. One component of that measurement system is a culminating assessment that gives you and your students concrete evidence of how they are able to demonstrate the skills of your Graduate Profile. In various groups, participants will explore different types of exhibitions (student-led conferences, capstones, portfolio defenses, etc.) and design a prototype of a culminating exhibition that provides evidence of student learning/thinking of essential competencies.
Session C TLDR: You want to design a culminating performance assessment that will measure your Graduate Profile.
Assessment for Learning Conference- Winter Launch: February 3rd
ELP is pleased to partner for a second year with the Center for Innovation in Education and Next Generation Learning Challenges on the Assessment for Learning Conference!
Assessment for Learning is a continuing process based in learner goals, relationships, complex tasks, reflection and exhibitions of learning. The Winter Launch is about setting goals and building relationships before the spring conference on May 6th & 7th, 2021.
The focus of the Winter Launch is on connection and inquiry, and we won’t be introducing new content through traditional conference sessions like panels and presentations at this event.
You’ll spend most of your time during the Winter Launch in small group conversations on big questions about assessment. We’ll use a new guided reflection process to help make sense of this moment and envision a more just and student-centered future.
You’ll finish the event with learning intentions for the rest of this year, new ways to connect with AFL peers, and the charge to invite more people into this community.
This is an event for people who are passionate about building the movement to make assessment for learning the norm in our education systems. We expect that most participants will be people who support assessment in schools, districts and networks; people who implement and advocate for assessment-related policies; and teacher leaders.
The ELP team had a full and exciting year in 2018-19:
ELP added 20 cities to it’s operational reach this fiscal year, totaling 56 cities in the US and one in Beijing. ELP also quadrupled its support of State Departments, working with Virginia last year, and serving Ohio, Kentucky, and Colorado this year.
ELP is relaunching our blog – keep up with past newsletter content, including more in-depth articles and shared resources! Click on any of the section titles in the newsletter for a quick link to that blog post.
ELP was recently highlighted in an EdWeek article, thanks to a partnership between two of our team members, Ruth Chung Wei & Vinci Daro, and a charter school in Washington DC. Two Rivers Public Charter School started offering a 12-month program for teachers focused on better defining, teaching, and assessing critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Ruth and Vinci provided feedback to the cohort members on their assessment task designs.
ELP was in 44 cities across the country last year, take a look at the updated map on our new website homepage to see where we’ve been.
At the beginning of the current health crisis, ELP developed some resources for those pursuing virtual portfolio defenses. Now, we have an entire webpage dedicated to those tools, examples, and more.
ELP was proud to partner with the Learning Policy Institute and the Linked Learning Alliance to launch the “Defending Learning at a Distance” series, which presented opportunities to observe students’ virtual defenses of learning and engage in conversations with the inspiring students and educators who have remained committed to performance assessment despite school closures. There is still time to share your students’ stories, click here to find out more.
Did your school pilot virtual defenses this year? If so, we’d love to hear from you! Click here to let us know how it went and what you would do differently next time.
ELP is proud to announce that we have received funding for three more years, which allows for two more cohorts of the Deeper Learning Leadership Forum! This generous grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation will allow ELP to continue addressing issues of inequity in our school systems by bringing together leaders to define and unpack these challenges. For more information about the program and to meet our cohort members, click here.
It is with heavy hearts that we say goodbye to two ELPers, Director of Partnerships, Aragon Burlingham, and Alternative Assessments Coordinator and Coach, Theresa Morris.
ELP is excited to share our Den Talk for this year’s Deeper Learning Conference- Listening to Black Women: What Conditions Enable Black Women Deeper Learning Leaders to Thrive?
Deeper Learning Coach, Alcine Mumby, will be hosting and spotlighting the wisdom of 3 Black women leaders: LaShawnna Harris, Sabrina Moore, and Kai Mathews. All three are alumni of ELP’s Deeper Learning Leadership Forum.
This will be a Kiva panel where Black women systems leaders from various levels of the deeper learning movement with embodied knowledge and expertise will share their wisdom on creating conditions for Black women and Black learners to thrive in this community. Participants will take notes as they listen deeply, scribing exact words and phrases that resonate with them, then reflect on the shifts and new learning created when they listened to understand to Black women. This promises to be a transformative den experience for participants as they seek to practice the foundational equity skill of listening to disrupt/dismantle their own beliefs about deeper learning, leadership, and equity for liberation.
Kai Mathews
Dr. Kai Mathews is the MTSS (Multi-tiered System of Support) Director at UCLA’s Center for the Transformation of Schools. In this position, she co-leads a statewide pilot aimed at improving school climate and conditions. Dr. Kai (as her students call her) has dedicated her life to creating innovative and equitable learning environments for underrepresented populations. She is an educator, researcher, and creative strategist who is passionate about innovative reforms and practices in K-12 and higher education. With over 10 years of practical work and research experience with students, teachers, and administrators in various school districts around the country, her areas of expertise and passions include educational equity; culturally responsive, inclusive, sustaining education; Project-Based Learning (PBL); Universal Design for Learning (UDL); Blended Learning (BL); and Design Thinking.
As a former 8th grade teacher at High Tech Middle, Chula Vista, Dr. Kai prides herself in creating immersive, project-based learning environments that push, uplift, and teach the whole child and allows students to engage in critical inquiry, social advocacy, and divergent dialogue.
She has a Ph.D. in Leadership Studies with a specialization in K-12 education from the University of San Diego, an M.A. in Communication from Ellis University, and a B.A. in English with a minor in Creative Writing from Spelman College.
Sabrina Moore
Sabrina “Bri” Moore, is an Oakland native. She has been a student, teacher, and is now an administrator in service of students and families in Oakland.
Sabrina “Bri” came to education as a career changer. She remembers the day she made the decision to leave a 15 year career with AT&T Telecommunications for teaching. She was in the midst of obtaining a masters degree and remembered her high school teacher telling her “if you get a masters degree you can be a teacher.” She quit a few months later to do just that and has been pushing for Oakland students ever since.
Her orientation towards school leadership began during her time with Teach Tomorrow in Oakland as a facilitator of professional development and providing mentoring and coaching support to new teachers. “I was encouraged as a new teacher to take risks, to try new approaches and to share my successes and failures with my colleagues,” recalls Moore. “If offered an opportunity to learn something new as a teacher, or as a teacher leader, I never said no- I took all opportunities offered to me to continue to learn and grow.” The same has been true of her in administration. Seeking every opportunity to learn, grow and improve for kids.
She is currently pursuing a doctorate of education in social justice from California State University East Bay in hopes to become the future superintendent of Oakland Unified School district.
When asked to describe her leadership style, Bri says she sees herself as “an anti-racist liberatory leader who is unapologetically Black, Proud and pushing for kids that look like me, come from where I come from and deserve way more than we get”, she is also dedicated to speaking truth to racism so we can see a change to systems, practices and policies that stay perpetuating hate and marginalizing folk.
Bri currently serves as the principal at MPA Primary, facilitates diversity, equity and inclusion professional learning for several organizations, provides adjunct professional learning for new principals and is a new principal mentor for OUSD. She works from one core value, “Kids First” and believes everything else is secondary. She loves what she does so much, even on the worst day she’s SMILING!
Sabrina believes that teaching and leading changes lives and with the best team possible strives for excellence in education. She is driven by the dream of seeing, “kids like me be whatever they want – no excuses and every opportunity to Live their best Lives.”
LaShawnna Harris
LaShawnna Harris is the Founder and President of Creative Station LLC a NYC based education consulting firm. She received a B.S. in Management from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, M.S. in teaching from the Fordham University and a M.S. in school building leadership from Mercy College.
LaShawnna previously worked as an elementary school teacher, math staff developer, assistant principal, founding principal, new principal coach and most recently as the Senior Director of School Improvement for the New York City Department of Education.
As the founding principal of PS 330Q, it was her vision that all students would learn in a supportive environment that focused on their academic and social-emotional development, so they could pursue and achieve their dreams. LaShawnna was noted in the Huffington Post article, “Why School Culture Matters, and How to Improve it” by Michael Haberman that showcased her work with Morrison Healthcare through the school’s PENCIL partnership to improve school culture.
She has a passion and commitment to supporting school leaders with school improvement. Her strengths are facilitating small group professional learning community sessions on managing complex change, strategic planning, collaborative problem solving and improved systems and Operations.
Register for the session using this link: https://sched.co/i5i4
For more information about the Deeper Learning Conference and to register, click here.
Learn more about Deeper Learning Coach, Alcine Mumby, in her “I am ELP” highlight.
The AfL Conference was a powerful experience for me in many ways. A huge part of my job is curating learning experiences that shake up “business as usual.” In a conference design role, it was interesting to design an experience for 400 people that felt personal, reflective and inclusive. That being said, I think we did that. I am stoked to continue to build out this muscle and imagine what is possible for this gathering. One shift I would make for the future is to support presenters to design even more hands on learning experiences for participants. As leaders who believe in learner-centered processes, we have to practice what we preach and this conference experience is a great place to prototype that work across contexts.
Stay tuned for AfL Conference 2021, as well as resources from this year’s conference!
In light of the current health climate, the difficult decision to cancel Deeper Learning 2020 was made. The event will not be rescheduled to later on this year, instead all efforts will be put toward making DL2021 an epic event, set for March 23-25, 2021! The Envision Learning Partners look forward to connecting with everyone in San Diego next year!
Registration will open in September. For more information, click here.
Join us for the next round of our three-part workshop series, led by Deeper Learning Coach, Abby Benedetto. Participants will explore the value of having a Graduate Profile, develop and define a draft, and then learn how to implement and measure it once they take it back to their school, district, etc.
Session A: Intro to the Graduate Profile
Tuesday, April 6th, 2021⋅9-12pm PT / 12-3pm ET
You have heard about this thing called a Graduate Profile and want to take your first leap into learning more.
Session B: Defining Your Graduate Profile
Tuesday, April 13th, 2021⋅9-12pm PT / 12-3pm ET
You have a list of amazing skills/competencies that you want for your graduates, and you are ready to get more specific about what that really means.
Session C: Select & Design Your Culminating Performance Assessment
Tuesday, April 20th, 2021⋅9-12pm PT / 12-3pm ET
You want to design a culminating performance assessment that will measure your Graduate Profile.
For a description of the sessions, FAQs, and to register- click here.
The 2021 Assessment for Learning Conference is a two-day virtual learning experience. Sessions will be ‘flipped’ so that we can spend our live time together in smaller group discussions of content, questions of practice, and design. The Conference will be a chance to build the collective knowledge and shared vision of the Assessment for Learning community.
The AFL2021 Call for Submissions is open and stipends are available! Propose a session today to share your work with a community of educators and policymakers who are committed to fundamentally #RethinkAssessment. How has assessment for learning helped us navigate the crises of the past year? And what must we learn from from this in order to build a more just and student-centered future of public education? Proposals are due March 29th.
Visit the AFL2021 website to learn more!
ELP is excited to share our Den Talk at this year’s conference: Listening to Black Women: What Conditions Enable Black Women Deeper Learning Leaders to Thrive?
Deeper Learning Coach, Alcine Mumby, will be hosting and spotlighting the wisdom of 3 Black women leaders: LaShawnna Harris, Sabrina Moore, and Kai Mathews.
Click here for more details about this session and bios of the three women being highlighted.
ELP is pleased to announce that applications and nominations for the 5th cohort of The Deeper Learning Leadership Forum (DLLF) are now open!
The DLLF is a cohort-based leadership experience that aims to develop, strengthen, and support a group of educational leaders to work at the intersection of equity and design thinking.
We are seeking diverse applicants and nominees for our fifth Cohort who are interested in working with other education leaders to address the single biggest challenge facing public education today: inequity.
Click here for more details, links to apply or nominate someone, and a list of FAQs.
Applications due Monday, March 29th.
ELP will be moving our annual Defense Design Studio energy to sharing stories in the hopes of inspiring others to take on the powerful practice of student defenses of learning. We have partnered up with the Learning Policy Institute and the Linked Learning Alliance as part of the California Performance Assessment Collaborative to bring you an online series of virtual defenses and behind-the-scene interviews.
Take a look at the first video in the series, Envision senior, Dani Martin, who vlogs about preparing for her virtual defense.
Click here for more information, including how you can get involved!!
This podcast situates where Assessment, Deeper Learning, Equity and Systems Change meet. Transforming schools is not light work. We illuminate complexities, lift up what’s working and imagine a path forward. With our equity lens we seek to learn from marginalized identities AND intentionally lift up their expertise.
Use this link to check out the first three episodes.
ELP just held our second Twitter Chat earlier this month and the focus was all about students defending their learning in math. The online conversation was held by our Director of STEM, Vinci Daro and previous Deeper Learning Coach & math enthusiast, Jim Malamut.
Keep an eye out for our next Twitter Chat by following ELP on Twitter at @EnvisionSchools and using the hashtag #ELPCoachChat!
Click here to see the resources from our first chat, held in March, which focused on Developing & Measuring your Grad Profile with Deeper Learning Coaches, Abby Benedetto & Suzanne Malek.
Summer Graduate Profile Workshops
Join us for one of the consecutive 3-day workshops to build community with other educators, and to imagine the possibilities when we center systems of education around the skills that young people need in order to thrive.
Participants will explore the value of having a Graduate Profile, develop and define a draft, and then learn how to implement and measure it once they take it back to their school, district, etc. These workshops will be led by Deeper Learning Coach, Abby Benedetto.
We are also offering an additional option for a direct consultation with Abby after the session of your choice. This would be a great time to get your team’s questions answered and customized suggestions
August 24-26th, 2021 ‣ 9am-12pm PT/12-3pm ET
Designed to Thrive Workshop Series
This three-part workshop series asks, “What kind of performance assessment experiences would we create to ensure that learners, especially those farthest from opportunity, thrive when we operationalize our current vision/profile of a graduate?”
Participants will explore the different features of high quality performance assessment (HQPA) and design a prototype of a performance assessment experience that provides evidence of student learning/thinking of essential competencies. The series concludes with participants iterating on that prototype after centering the lived experience of a marginalized student your system may serve, and reflecting on the changes needed to ensure that ALL students thrive in their performance assessment system.
This workshop series is facilitated by Deeper Learning Coaches, Alcine Mumby and Abby Benedetto.
Aug 4th, 11th & 18th ‣ 9:30am-12:30pm PT / 12:30-3:30pm ET
CuriOdyssey STEMCorps
Are you a teacher interested in developing your early science teaching skills? CuriOdyssey is offering grant-funded professional development for the 2021-22 school year. This PD focuses on building comfort, competence and capacity to deliver science ed, aligned with NGSS. Learn more here.
There is statewide support for Deeper Learning in Colorado, and Envision Learning Partners is playing a key role.
In 2007, the state of Colorado asked districts to choose the ways their students will demonstrate college and career readiness, and therefore readiness to graduate from high school.
This Graduation Guidelines menu lists the options. In the mix of more traditional tests, two options provide a clear pathway for students to graduate by demonstrating their skills through an individualized product or presentation: Capstone Projects and Collaboratively Developed Standards-Based Performance Assessment.
Since April 2018, Envision Learning Partners has been honored and energized to work in an accelerated way with educators at every level of the Colorado educational system, to design meaningful and sustainable assessment systems worthy of and accessible to every student in Colorado, strongly aligned to the demands of a wide variety of 21st century college and career options.
This June marks the close of two incredible first-year partnerships between ELP and the Colorado Department of Education, as well as the Colorado Education Initiative; both projects involve educators from every corner of the state to transform education statewide.
In a recent conversation with fellow advocates of performance assessment, a colleague made the point that our job as educators is not to teach standards but to teach students.
Of course, standards play an important role in guiding teachers’ work. But given the structures and incentives of our system, it’s easy for standards to slip into the position of ends rather than means. Tragically, covering standards—“I taught it; some got it.”—feeds inequities that plague education. When we truly reorient to “teaching students,” we stay focused on those whole human beings in our classrooms. What do our students need to achieve, how will we know they have achieved it, and how do we support their getting there? This is performance assessment system design.
The graduate profile movement is a boon, pushing students into the focal point of our energies. Social-emotional learning (SEL) is trending, reminding us to attend to the whole child. But none of these ideas will translate into lived learning experiences until students are regularly tackling rigorous and real-world challenges that elicit the skills they need to practice and master. Our kids need high-quality performance assessments.
Join us on twitter for more conversation about the importance of teaching students over standards, using the hashtag #TeachStudentsNotStandards
Sincerely,
Justin Wells, ELP Executive Director
During his keynote at last fall’s EdLeader21 Conference, educational thought leader, Tony Wagner, did not mince words. “A graduate portrait without an assessment,” he said, “is useless.”
The audience members—mainly district leaders from around the country—audibly shifted in their seats. Although it’s hard to disagree, it’s also hard to pull off. How can school districts assess skills that are as complex as the ones we see on a typical graduate profile?
Tony followed up his challenge with two recommendations:
He’s right. Portfolio assessment and presentations of learning (which come in many forms, including defenses and student-led conferences) are two effective, customizable, scalable, and actionable ways to move from “poster to practice.”
ELP cheers the graduate profile movement because of its potential to change our society’s conception of education’s purpose. But we also worry for the movement. If we don’t see graduate profiles made visible in the actual work of our students—“show don’t tell,” says this old English teacher—then we’re destined to look back on this as another edu-trend that came to nothing. That’s why Tony Wagner’s admonition is so urgent.
The challenge of assessing graduate profiles is one of the major themes of next month’s Assessment for Learning Conference. I know I will see many of you there, and I am excited for the opportunity to work on this together.
Justin Wells,
ELP Executive Director
ELP is thrilled to welcome Morgan Vien to our team of Deeper Learning Coaches. Fabulously talented and exploding with ideas, Morgan complements our team with her experience in K-8 school leadership (most recently, serving as principal at ASCEND School in Oakland) and facilitating design thinking (as a School Retool Coach for Stanford’s d.school). We, and our client partners, are going to learn so much from her. Please welcome Morgan when you see her out in the field.
In other ELP news, we recently hatched a new strategic plan, our first since joining forces with the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity (SCALE) over a year and a half ago. ELP’s vision—every student in America is learning within a high-quality performance assessment system—is ambitious in scale and generational in scope, so we know we need to set ourselves up for the long haul. In the coming three years, our strategic priorities are:
As always, we welcome your thought partnership. Let us know what you think about our plan, or ask any one of us to elaborate when our paths cross in the field.
Sincerely,
Justin Wells, ELP Executive Director
The COVID crisis deepens. All of us engaged in the endeavor of learning—students and teachers—now gather ourselves for what we know will be a strange, trying, and unpredictable school year ahead.
As your learning community makes its mad design dash to the start of the school year, with all your contingency plans and spreadsheets and multiple scenarios, don’t forget to keep your graduate profile, or whatever serves as your overarching set of desired learning outcomes, close at hand. Refer often to that list, and keep asking, How are we designing ways for our students to practice these skills?
This pandemic is driving home the pre-pandemic truth that learning is not about seat time or content delivery or testing, all of which crumbled with startling quickness last spring. Learning has always been and will always be about improving one’s skills through practice, guided by coaching. Conceived as such, learning is remarkably flexible. Practice, guided by coaching, can happen at home independently, or on a video call, or in a sparsely desked classroom with children in masks. Establish practice routines for the key skills of your course. Introduce them as early as possible in the school year. Design those routines to be portable, and demonstrate that portability to your students by simulating at-home practice when you have them in your classrooms, and in-classroom practice when you have them on a video call.
I have more to say about elevating the “practice question” in a blog I recently contributed to our friends at Future Focused Education.
We can rise to this challenge, especially if we apply the principles of High-Quality Performance Assessment, and we can make school better than it was before.
In solidarity with educators everywhere,
Justin Wells, ELP Executive Director
Have you had a chance to read Jal Mehta’s piece in Ed Week, “Why Equity Has Been a Conservative Force in American Education—And How That Could Change”? If you haven’t, you should.
Mehta argues that “the effort to close achievement gaps has in practice doubled down on the century-old industrial model of schooling, leaving in place all of the essential elements of its grammar: teaching as transmission, batch processing of students, conventional assessments, tracking and leveling, and all of the rest. Anything that moves away from those assumptions—like project-based learning, problem-based learning, interdisciplinary learning, authentic assessment, or constructivist pedagogy—is seen as ‘risky;’ something that is ‘OK for the privileged kids’ but somehow distracts from the real work of closing achievement gaps on state-sponsored tests.”
We at Envision Learning Partners see deeper learning not as a risk but as a moral imperative, not only because all children deserve it, but also because it’s the right way to make change. I agree with Mehta’s notion of “liberatory design,” which “assumes that teachers and students would like to develop engaging, meaningful learning experiences, and that the problem is not them but the institutional structures and culture of schools that constrains them.” I am fortunate to witness proof of this regularly in my work when, for example, I see the excitement among students and teachers who have designed and implemented a portfolio-defense system.
The teachers and leaders who reach out to partner with ELP have drawn similar conclusions about deeper learning. We are proud to serve their schools and districts, and we are always inspired by their courage to do this work.
Sincerely,
Justin Wells, ELP Executive Director
As you work furiously and heroically to serve your students through the COVID-19 crisis, ELP offers this advice: Don’t forget about your graduate profile. Now’s the time to lean into it.
It doesn’t matter whether your performance assessment system is well established or just getting off the ground, whether you’re currently reaching your students through Zoom or printed worksheet packets. If your learning community has a graduate profile or similar set of learner outcomes, you should use that language to remind your students of their assets and to challenge them to grow. Most graduate profiles were designed to focus us on the skills students need to navigate a fast-changing world with an unpredictable future. Now we get to put them to the test.
Many graduate or learner profiles, for example, target a competency that has to do with being a “self-directed learner.” Let’s admit that it’s a concept more aspirational than operational. In most of our highly-structured learning environments, young people have very little opportunity to practice being self-directed. Guess what? Now they need it. And we need to teach it. So invoke the skill, express high expectations for students to develop the skill during this time, give them ideas for how to practice and demonstrate it, structure opportunities for them to reflect on it, and challenge them to document evidence of their growth. This goes for any skill that’s on your graduate profile.
Stay tuned. In coming weeks, ELP will continue to share suggestions for ways to leverage or advance the elements of your performance assessment system: the use of portfolios, running defenses of learning virtually, building a culture of revision and reflection. There are enormous opportunities in this crisis for students to practice and be assessed on the skills we say are important.
Sincerely,
Justin Wells, ELP Executive Director
The Practice Question
Across education, I see the development of a healthy habit, and the performance assessment movement deserves plenty of credit for it. Educators everywhere, when considering a desired learning outcome, are reflexively asking, “How would we measure that?”
This is good. Asking the measurement question holds us accountable to our goals; answering it points us to actions.
But there’s another question that is just as focusing, should be just as reflexive, and would not hurt to come first: “How will our students practice that skill?”
Answer the practice question, and the measurement answer comes easily. It’s not so easy the other way around.
As a young teacher, I too often measured things that my students didn’t get to practice. I whipped out a public speaking rubric when students presented at the front of the room. I assessed them on their volume and eye contact. But we hadn’t practiced those skills in class.
Collaboration shows up on most graduate profiles. How will our students practice that skill? Answer it honestly. Assigning some group work is not the same thing as practicing collaboration.
Another grad profile meme—critical thinking—is not any kind of thinking. It’s grappling with “How might I be wrong?” How do students practice that skill? If a student has gone through a school year without consciously changing her mind on anything, then I doubt she has really practiced critical thinking.
I applaud what I see announced on graduate profiles all over the country—really important skills that schools can help kids get better at: inquiry, citizenship, creativity, persistence, problem solving, cultural competence, and so on. But it’s not fair to measure things that students haven’t had an opportunity to practice.
A high-quality performance assessment system knows its desired outcomes and its measurements; it also takes responsibility for scheduling practice.
Please share with us one of your favorite ways to help your students practice a key skill!
Sincerely,
Justin Wells, ELP Executive Director
Here at Envision Learning Partners, we believe that every student deserves to learn within a high-quality performance assessment system. That means every student goes to a school where:
If a school does not have these conditions in place, or isn’t actively working toward them, then I hesitate to call it a good school, no matter how high its test scores, shiny its hallways, or champion-like its teachers.
We in the performance assessment movement must clamor for focus on the quality of our students’ work—not proxies for their work, like test scores or classroom observations, but the work itself. How are you focusing on and highlighting your students’ work? Drop us a line to let us know!
I invite you to read more of my thoughts on the subject in “What Is a Good School?,” a short piece I wrote for EdWeek’s Learning Deeply blog.
Sincerely,
Justin Wells, ELP Executive Director
The “yes buts”—the common objections to performance assessment—keep dropping away.
The latest comes with the revolutionary announcement from the UC Board of Regents last week: Going forward, the SAT or ACT test is not required for admission to a UC campus. The requirement will be phased out completely by 2025.
And just like that, there goes the “yes but the SAT” counterargument to performance assessment system building. An institutional practice that had seemed entrenched is now revealed by the pandemic to be fragile.
We can add the SAT to a growing list that includes “Yes but instructional minutes,” “Yes but the end-of-year standardized tests,” and “Yes but the course grade.”
Meanwhile, the concept of a defense of learning has proven resilient in this crisis. ELP is proud to partner with the Learning Policy Institute and the Linked Learning Alliance to launch the “Defending Learning at a Distance” series, which in coming weeks presents multiple opportunities to observe students’ virtual defenses of learning and engage in conversations with the inspiring students and educators who have remained committed to performance assessment despite school closures. (For those of you wondering about ELP’s long running practice of Defense Design Studios, this series is where we are putting that energy this year.)
Watch this web page closely for upcoming dates associated with the “Defending Learning at a Distance” series. There are some events happening later this week. And more will be added as plans get solidified. Students and schools are moving fast. Don’t take it from us: Watch Envision student Dani Martin vlog about preparing for her virtual defense. I can’t wait to witness what students have to say about their learning in the next couple weeks, and to discuss the implications of this with all of you in the months to come.
Stay safe,
Justin Wells, ELP Executive Director
I am excited about the upcoming Assessment for Learning Conference and encourage everyone in the performance assessment movement to join us in San Diego this February (11–13th).
For the past three years, the educators and system leaders of the Assessment for Learning Project have been designing, learning, and innovating together to reimagine what’s possible for assessment. Having learned much from being part of this community, ELP has been hungry to see it grow. So we’re thrilled that the Assessment for Learning Project is stepping up to host its first-ever conference. The event will be populated with some of the most innovative, thoughtful, equity-minded, and visionary educators and system leaders when it comes to assessment.
ELP is proud to be a co-designer of the conference, and it’s shaping up to be a cutting-edge learning experience for attendees, who will be challenged to apply innovative assessment principles to their own 3-day learning journey. This is a conference designed for practicing, not preaching.
There are so many educators around the country who are doing incredible work to transform assessment, and this conference is a chance for us to learn with each other and build on the momentum to create an Assessment FOR Learning movement. I hope you will join us!
For more info and to register, go to www.assessmentforlearningconference.org.
Sincerely,
Justin Wells, ELP Executive Director
Sometimes it’s important, in our jargon-loving profession, to put things as plainly we can. That’s certainly true for a concept such as performance assessment.
A word that comes in handy is the word challenge. I use it for two key questions:
The first is, How are we challenging our students?
Schools and districts that are consciously building a performance assessment system tend to have crisp answers to that question: “We challenge our students to do a year-long research project.” “Our 3rd graders plan and facilitate their own conferences.” “11th graders must design and implement a statistical analysis with help from an outside expert.” “Our kids have to defend their learning every two years.”
The second question is then, How are we challenging ourselves and our system to prepare our students for their challenges?
Again, I am encouraged by crisp answers: “We look at student work and calibrate on our rubrics once per month.” “Our grade level teams meet in the summer to design two multi-disciplinary projects per year.” “The science department will be using a Next-Gen-aligned rubric for assessing inquiry projects next year.” “We’re investing in PD so that our teachers can teach public speaking across the curriculum.”
Try it. As you build your performance assessment system, keep asking, “How are we challenging our students?” and “How are we challenging ourselves?” Tighten up your answers. Then live them.
Sincerely,
Justin Wells, ELP Executive Director
One widespread way that schools have adapted to the pandemic, particularly at the secondary level, is a dramatic restructuring of the “bell schedule.” In the virtual and hybrid contexts we’re now operating in, many students are taking, and teachers are teaching, fewer classes at one time, typically made possible by shortening the length of courses or chunking them into alternating modules (which is what we are doing here at Envision Schools).
The challenges are obvious: These new schedules are born of compromise. They are harder to manage for some disciplines than others. Abrupt change is exhausting. But they do present an opportunity for advancing a key element of your performance assessment system—the culture of reflection and revision among teachers.
In a functioning performance assessment system, students’ work (their response to assignments) informs teachers’ work (their design of assignments) in a process that is collaborative and continual. With courses on faster cycles, there are more opportunities to iterate. A semester-long course, if offered twice during the year, doubles the pace of iteration.
Let’s acknowledge that making time for collaborative revision of courses is not easy. Right now, the brute logistics of delivering instruction in the midst of a pandemic are monopolizing our energies. But as we get deeper into the fall, ELP urges educators to dedicate some of your precious PD time, in whatever form it comes, to sharing assessments and analyzing student work, building your system’s muscles for reflection and revision.
Shorter courses demand even crisper answers to the questions that never go away: What do students need to learn, and how will we know they have learned it?
When teachers do have opportunities to share their work with each other, we encourage you to use ELP’s principles of High Quality Performance Assessment (HQPA) as a common language for exchanging feedback. We offer both a set of look-fors and single-point rubrics for each of the five principles. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us with questions on how to use these tools in your learning community.
with respect and gratitude for the work of educators everywhere.
ELP continues to have a strong presence at conferences all over the US in 19-20:
Upcoming conferences:
NEW ELP PARTNERS FOR 19-20
Each school year, ELP welcomes new education partners from across the country. Please join us in welcoming:
GATES FOUNDATION PROFESSIONAL LEARNING PARTNERSHIP GRANT
We are delighted to share that ConnectED and Envision Learning Partners are partnering with the San Diego Unified School District to enhance the integrated sequence of the Illustrative Mathematics high school curriculum. This work is funded by a grant from the Gates Foundation. In collaboration with our partners, we will leverage existing curriculum-embedded instructional resources and parent engagement approaches, elevating strategies that close achievement gaps for English Learners.
The Assessment for Learning Conference 2021
ELP is pleased to partner again with the Center for Innovation in Education and Next Generation Learning Challenges on the 2021 Assessment for Learning Conference!
The guiding question for AFL 2021 is: How will the assessment for learning movement lead us through the crises of the moment to a more just, equitable and student-centered future of learning?
AFL 2021 blurs the line between conference and community of practice. Think of it as a series of missions to escape the gravitational pull of our assumptions and to-do lists, so that we can find space for sharing, reflecting, connecting and imagining.
Get a head start on AFL 2021 right now! Join one of the free 75-minute virtual sessions to cut through the space junk, surface challenges and opportunities, share resources, and help us set the priorities for AFL 2021!
The National Geographic Society
ELP had the pleasure of leading the National Geographic Society and members of their global community through a Design Sprint. In facilitating a Liberatory Design Process, the team was able to develop a set of design principles that will be the foundation for future work and a lens with which to understand and refine past work.
DLLF: Where are they now?
We’re highlighting some of the DLLF alumni who are making moves- achieving goals, serving their communities, and impacting the future of education. Click here to read more about some of their achievements.
ELP has worked with 58 educational leaders from all over the United States since 2016 and we’re excited to open applications for our fifth cohort early next year!
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