Virtual School Meanderings

April 5, 2023

REL Southeast Director’s Email—April 2023

Note that competency-based education or CBE is often used as a rationale for increase corporate ed tech involvement in schooling.  In fact, those of us who have been around for a while remember the transition that iNACOL/Aurora Institute went through when they reached what many of us saw as the near maximum level of expanding the corporate involvement directly in online and blended learning, and they transitioned more towards the personalized learning and CBE to open up new avenues for their corporate clients.

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Dr. Nicole Patton TerryREL Southeast

Director’s Email

April 2023

Greetings from the REL Southeast,

Competency-based education (CBE) is an approach to teaching and learning that focuses on mastery of specific skills and knowledge rather than traditional measures of academic progress such as time spent in a classroom or grades earned on tests. CBE can help support student achievement by providing a personalized, clear, and flexible approach that promotes real-world application. Social and emotional learning (SEL) helps students develop the necessary skills to succeed in a CBE environment by focusing on building social and emotional competencies including self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. These skills help students develop their ability to communicate effectively, manage their emotions, build positive relationships, and make responsible choices.1

This month, REL Southeast would like to encourage practitioners to learn more about CBE and SEL by exploring resources the Institute of Education Sciences has produced around these topics. We hope you find these materials informative and useful, and as always, thank you for helping to improve educational outcomes for every student in our region.

With gratitude,

Dr. Nicole Patton Terry
Director, REL Southeast


1 Kendziora, K., & Yoder, N. (2016). When Districts Support and Integrate Social and Emotional Learning (SEL): Findings from an Ongoing Evaluation of Districtwide Implementation of SEL. Education Policy Center at American Institutes for Research. http://educationpolicy.air.org/

North Carolina Competency-Based Education Partnership

This blog post from REL Southeast defines CBE as a personalized learning model and describes the work being conducted by the North Carolina Competency-Based Education Partnership around the topic.

Click here to read the blog.

Competency-Based Education Framework Series

 

CBE Defined

In this video, we share the North Carolina Research Alliance’s definition of Competency-Based Education (CBE) and an overview of the CBE Mastery Framework. The video also identifies the benefits of CBE over the traditional model, including increased flexibility, improved engagement of students, more authentic assessments and grades, and student ownership of the learning process. This video will appeal to anyone who is interested in getting a general understanding for what CBE is and the benefits of the model.

Click here to watch the video.

CBE Structure

This video highlights the role of administrators at the state, district, and school levels in putting elements in place that allow for CBE implementation. State, district, and school administrators tend to have the most control over the structure elements that cultivate and promote CBE, from employing an appropriate learning management system to creating a conducive school schedule. This video also features administrators who are implementing CBE.

Click here to watch the video.

CBE Culture

School leaders play a key role in setting the vision and creating the culture within a school. This video features school principals who have shifted their school’s grading practices from a traditional letter-grade system to a CBE mastery-based grading protocol to understand how key cultural elements were addressed.

Click here to watch the video.

CBE Learning

A foundational concept of CBE is a student-centered approach to learning. This video contains conversations with students at various grade levels who have taken ownership of their learning and begun to advocate for their learning within a CBE classroom.

Click here to watch the video.

CBE Teaching

Instruction in a CBE environment focuses on each student’s ability, learning style, and learning pace and shifts from teaching to facilitating. This video focuses on the elements contained within the teaching dimension, including teachers as facilitators or coaches, personalized learning, tools and resources for teaching, content expertise, curriculum design, and assessment design and use.

Click here to watch the video.

Competency-Based Education Mastery Framework

The CBE Mastery Framework defines key components within an authentic CBE environment across the dimensions of Structure, Culture, Teaching, and Learning.

Click here to explore the framework.

A Review of Instruments for Measuring Social and Emotional Learning Skills Among Secondary School Students

This resource, developed by the Regional Education Laboratory Northeast & Islands in collaboration with its Social and Emotional Learning Alliance, presents social and emotional learning instruments and the reliability and validity information available for those instruments. Specifically, this resource indicates whether psychometric information was available for reliability and seven components of validity–content, substantive, structural, external, generalizability, consequential, and fairness.

Click here to explore the tool.

A Review of the Literature on Social and Emotional Learning for Students Ages 3–8: Characteristics of Effective Social and Emotional Learning Programs

This four-part series of related reports examines what is known about social and emotional learning (SEL) programs for students ages 3-8. The report series addresses four issues raised by the REL Mid-Atlantic Early Childhood Education Research Alliance: characteristics of effective SEL programs (part 1), implementation strategies and state and district policies that support SEL programming (part 2), teacher and classroom strategies that contribute to social and emotional learning (part 3), and outcomes of social and emotional learning among different student populations and settings (part 4) and identifies key components of effective SEL programs and offers guidance on selecting programs.

Click here to explore the series.

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Our mailing address is:

REL Southeast at Florida State University

2010 Levy Avenue
Suite 100

Tallahassee, FL 32310

February 9, 2023

REL Southeast Director’s Email—February 2023

No K-12 distance, online, and/or blended learning items in this REL newsletter, but the webinars below may be of interest to some folks.

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Dr. Nicole Patton TerryREL Southeast

Director’s Email

February 2023

Greetings from the REL Southeast,

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights have established that racial and ethnic minorities, children from low-income backgrounds, and children who are not proficient in English, oftentimes do not have the same educational opportunities as their counterparts who are White, from higher income backgrounds, and are proficient in English. These contrasting opportunities and resulting experiences have contributed to significant racial, economic, and English language achievement gaps,1 which may have been worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic.2, 3

RELs play an important role in addressing disparities in student achievement, both by contributing to research on how experiences within the country’s education system differ by context and student group, thereby impacting outcomes, and by identifying potential solutions to prevent inequities and promote student success. This month, we’d like to share several resources that approach educational equity from a variety of stakeholder perspectives. We hope you find these materials informative and useful, and as always, thank you for helping to improve educational outcomes for every student in our region.

With gratitude,

Dr. Nicole Patton Terry
Director, REL Southeast


Hussar, B., Zhang, J., Hein, S., Wang, K., Roberts, A., Cui, J., Smith, M., Bullock Mann, F., Barmer, A., and Dilig, R. (2020). The Condition of education 2020 (NCES 2020-144). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2020144.

Dorn, E., Hancock, B., Sarakatsannis, J., & Viruleg, E. (2020). COVID-19 and learning loss – disparities grow and students need help. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/covid-19-and-learning-loss-disparities-grow-and-students-need-help.

Ibid.

Creating Culturally Affirming Spaces Webinar Series

In this two-part series, presenters and practitioners discussed the practical knowledge and leadership skills necessary to begin creating culturally affirming spaces to make schools more safe and supportive environments for culturally, linguistically, and gender-diverse students.

Webinar 1: Creating Culturally Affirming Spaces: School and Classroom Practices

The first webinar expanded knowledge and provided practical, evidence-based examples of systems, policies, and practices that are culturally affirming—what they are and what they are not—to inform instruction, school climate-related practices, and everyday decisions that shape the academic and social-emotional well-being of students and their families.

Click here to watch the archived webinar and explore resources.

Webinar 2: Creating Culturally Affirming Spaces: A Systems Orientation

The second webinar expanded on how culturally responsive strategies can be used to support academic and social and emotional development, and participants learned about evidence-based systemic leadership approaches and strategies for implementing culturally affirming environments.

Click here to watch the archived webinar and explore resources.

Career and Technical Education (CTE) Data in Oregon: Using CTE Data to Identify Equity Gaps in Oregon and Strategies for Closing Equity Gaps in CTE

In collaboration with the Oregon Graduation and Postsecondary Success Alliance, REL Northwest held a series of trainings to support district leaders and CTE instructors in Oregon by increasing their understanding of CTE participation, concentration, and persistence rates of students in their districts, with a focus on special populations of students as defined in the reauthorization of the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act (Perkins V).

Click here to watch the presentation and explore resources.

Advancing Equity: Five Districts Focus on Improving Outcomes of Black and Latinx Students

This blog post from REL West discusses the Equity in Action project, created to increase the safety, well-being, and engagement of Black and Latinx students and their families. The post details the project’s origins, outlines project activities, and notes positive takeaways.

Click here to read the blog post.

Culturally Responsive Assessment: Goals, Challenges, and Implications

This infographic outlines key components of a culturally responsive pedagogy, including cultural sensitivity, relevancy, responsiveness, and sustainability, and presents considerations for designing and selecting culturally responsive assessments.

Click here to explore the infographic.

Improving and Diversifying the Teacher Pipeline

This webinar highlighted research takeaways and actionable strategies to help states and teacher preparation programs to build stronger, more diverse teacher pipelines. REL Midwest shared key findings from the study Understanding the Teacher Pipeline for Indiana’s K–12 Public Schools. Presenters from state education agencies and teacher preparation programs reflected on the study findings, barriers to entering and completing educator preparation programs, strategies to improve equity, and strategies to support different affinity groups.

Click here to watch the presentation and explore resources.

Actionable district strategies to build a diverse teacher workforce and foster educational equity

This blog post from REL Midwest discusses their Racine Unified School District in Wisconsin partnership project aimed at promoting strategies that can improve a district’s capacity to hire and retain Black teachers. The post details the project’s coaching activities and describes three best practices for implementing a cycle of continuous improvement.

Click here to read the blog post.

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You are receiving this email because you opted in at our website or provided your information at a REL Southeast sponsored event.

Our mailing address is:

REL Southeast at Florida State University

2010 Levy Avenue
Suite 100

Tallahassee, FL 32310

February 2, 2023

The Latest News from REL Mid-Atlantic

An update from one of the RELs – with no specific K-12 distance, online, and/or blended learning items included.

January 4, 2023

REL Southeast Director’s Email—January 2023

No K-12 distance, online, and/or blended learning items in this REL newsletter.

View this email in your browser

Dr. Nicole Patton TerryREL Southeast

Director’s Email

January 2023

Greetings from the REL Southeast,

Today’s global information economy requires that students possess more advanced literacy skills than previous generations. However, improvements in the literacy development of older students have not kept pace with the increasing demands for literacy in the workplace or postsecondary educational settings. Data from the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in reading reports that only 31 percent of eighth-grade students were able to perform at or above the NAEP Proficient level on the reading assessment, 3 percentage points lower than 2019 scores. To improve reading ability, students must refine and build upon their reading skills, and teachers of adolescents who struggle with reading should help them acquire more advanced skills.

The REL Southeast has and continues to work with states, districts, and schools to support educators and help them achieve this goal. This month, we’d like to share resources regarding adolescent literacy that were designed specifically for classroom teachers, school leaders, and even parents and caregivers. We hope you find these materials informative and useful, and as always, thank you for helping to improve educational outcomes for every student in our region.

With gratitude,

Dr. Nicole Patton Terry
Director, REL Southeast

Improving Literacy in Mississippi –The Journey Continues 

The Mississippi success story of improving the literacy skills of students in the early grades is widely known and well-documented. The state continues to focus on strong literacy instruction in grades K-3 but is also turning their attention to the next leg of their journey to improve the skills of ALL students, which is to address instruction in grades 4 and up. In this recent blog post, you’ll learn about the REL Southeast’s Mississippi Adolescent Literacy Partnership and the work they’re doing around the state to improve adolescent literacy skills and provide training to literacy intervention teachers.

Click here to read the blog.

Explore the Practice Guides discussed in the blog

Teaching Secondary Students to Write Effectively

Improving Adolescent Literacy: Effective Classroom and Intervention Practices

Guide and Checklists for a School Leader’s Walkthrough during Literacy Instruction in Grades 4-12

This tool was developed to assist school leaders in observing specific research-based practices during literacy instruction in grade 4-12 classrooms and students’ independent use or application of those practices. The tool aims to help school leaders conduct brief and frequent walkthroughs throughout the school year.

Click here to explore the tool.

Literacy Tips for Parents of Adolescents

This infographic provides several evidence-informed activities that parents can initiate at home to help ensure successful literacy outcomes for their adolescent students.

Click here to explore the infographic.

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You are receiving this email because you opted in at our website or provided your information at a REL Southeast sponsored event.

Our mailing address is:

REL Southeast at Florida State University

2010 Levy Avenue
Suite 100

Tallahassee, FL 32310

December 22, 2022

Changing Schools | December newsletter

A newsletter from one of the RELs – no K-12 distance, online, and/or blended learning items in it.  But several items that readers might find useful all the same.

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