 Good morning or good afternoon depending on where you are. I want to welcome you to this one-hour webinar hosted by the Learning Policy Institute. We'd like to let the audience know that this webinar is open to the public and is being recorded. A video recording will be emailed to you in a few days and available at the link just shared in the chat. We'd also like to announce that the next webinar in this series, How It's Done with School Networks can teach us about scaling up deeper learning practices, will be announced in a few weeks. Please sign up for our mailing list to receive a notification or check our website's upcoming events page. You can also view previous webinars from this series from the link shared in the chat box. Okay, I'll begin with an introduction of the Reimagining College Access Initiative, a national effort to bring high-quality K-12 performance assessments into college admissions placement and success. We'll then have a discussion with four key leaders in this national effort, David Hawkins, Executive Director for Educational Content and Policy at the National Association for College and Mission Counseling, Paul Leather, Director for State and Local Partnerships, Center for Innovation and Education, Michael Riley, Executive Director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrar and Admissions Officers, and David Roof, Executive Director of the Great Schools Partnership. And finally, we'll have a few minutes to respond to questions from the audience. We encourage you to submit your questions throughout today's presentation in the chat box at the lower right of your screen. Again, please choose all participants from the drop-down to ensure we can see your questions. Reimagining College Access Initiative grew out of conversations with K-12 and higher education leaders who were seeking to promote deeper learning and advance student diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education through more robust information about students' deeper learning competencies and readiness for college. To that end, we sought to leverage high-quality K-12 performance assessments that assessed students' mastery of academic content standards as well as skills needed for college work and life in the 21st century in more authentic and holistic ways than traditional standardized tests. There are, of course, many types of performance assessments, but just to give you an example to ground this work. Rather than multiple-choice end-of-semester biology tests, students instead develop a research hypothesis based on the content they have learned, design an experiment to test that hypothesis, conduct that experiment, write a report on the experiment and findings, and present the findings to a panel. This type of rich work is happening in schools across the nation, including in schools that serve high percentages of students of color, students from families with lower incomes, and students who are English learners. And at the local, state, and national levels, we've seen increasing momentum and movement towards building in these types of performance assessments as a part of a balanced system of assessments. How we could use this type of high-quality performance assessment work more systematically to inform higher education admissions, placement, and success. Learning Policy Institute, along with our partners at the Education Council, convened a diverse national group of K-12 and higher ed leaders to explore three questions. How can college admissions, placement, and advising better account for students' development of 21st century skills, and encourage the kinds of learning experiences that students need to develop in K-12? How can we learn from existing and emerging K-12 and higher ed partnerships that include performance assessments, and include those as part of admissions placement and advising, and how can such a system of support develop a more diverse pool of qualified applicants, as well as their enrollment and persistence in higher education? What actors within these systems should be involved to make this happen? National Task Forces spent nearly a year exploring these questions, and came up with a set of recommendations. The recommendations are around developing a set of research-based criteria to assess the level of quality and rigor of performance assessments, and this is to ensure that higher education has confidence in the rigor and quality of the work that's coming out of these performance assessment systems. Another recommendation was around adapting and leveraging existing platforms, technological platforms that could be used to transmit performance assessment information between K-12 and higher education, to pilot with institutions that are ready, between K-12 and higher education institutions, that are ready to pilot some of these recommendations, conduct research on the use of performance assessments in admissions, as well as beyond looking at student outcomes, develop a communications plan to share these learnings, and explore ways to include this type of performance assessment in higher education placement and advising. The initiative is now moving into early implementation of these recommendations. LPI, along with Education Council, will be working to develop a National Advisory Board. We will also be developing regional and local partnerships with K-12 and higher education to pilot some of these recommendations, and that work will be supported by capacity-building and innovation efforts to set criteria for quality work, to adapt admissions materials and transcripts to include performance assessments, and to generate the secure flow of performance assessment data across institutions, and we envision that folks outside of the partnerships will be participating in various ways to stay informed about our work as we move forward. To learn more about the resources that we have, you can go to our website. We have a report that we wrote on the promise of performance assessments, innovations in high school learning and college admissions, which discusses opportunities in K-12 and higher education to promote this type of work. So with that, I'd like to briefly introduce our panelists so we can have a discussion about some of these ideas. We'll start with David Hawkins. He is the Executive Director for Educational Content and Policy at the National Association for College Admission and Counseling, which is based in Arlington, Virginia. NACAC is a non-profit membership association that represents more than 15,000 high school counselors and college admissions officers throughout the U.S. and around the world. The organization is devoted to making the transition between high school and post-secondary education equitable, transparent, and fair. Paul Leather is the Director of State and Local Partnerships from the Center for Innovation and Education. He previously served as the Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Education in New Hampshire for eight years and for 18 years as the Department's Director of the Division of Career Technology and Adult Learning. He, in 1997, as part of New Hampshire School to Career Efforts, began the journey to create a state model for a competency-based student transcript, which resulted in the New Hampshire competency-based assessment system, and ultimately to the student mastery model now in place in New Hampshire. And he led the first in the nation, next generation educational accountability model called Performance Assessment of Competency Education, or PACE, which was approved as a pilot program with four New Hampshire districts in March 2015. Michael Riley is the Executive Director on the American Association of Collegiate Registrar and Admissions Officers, a position he has held since 2012. Prior to coming to ACRO, he was Executive Director for the Council of Presidents, an association of the Sixth Public Baccalaureate Degree Granting Institutions in the State of Washington. He has served on numerous higher education boards and is a frequent writer and speaker on public policy matters impacting higher education. And finally, we have David Roof, Executive Director of the Great Schools Partnership, which is a founding member and a director of the New England Secondary School Consortium, a six-state partnership working to promote forward-thinking innovations in secondary education. And he has led the organization from an initial focus on efforts in Maine to expansion across New England and the country, focusing on implementation of proficiency-based learning. So with that, I'd like to ask our panelists a few questions and they can each answer in turn or add to what others have said. And first question for you all is why is the work that the RCA has embarked upon so important? Ronita, this is David Hawkins, I suppose, since I'm first on the list there. I'll go ahead and kick it off. I would say that there are two reasons in my view from the from the College Admission Counseling Perspective why this work is important. Number one is a practical reason. Performance-based assessments are happening. They're being used in K-12 and even in higher ed to a degree. So from the Admission Counseling Perspective, it's very important that the people who work in college admission offices understand what they are and how they can be incorporated into a student's academic record and interpreted, particularly within the context of the college application. So it's very important that this effort connect with admission officers and school counselors as well so that we can promote a broad understanding of what this phenomenon is and ensure that everyone involved knows how to interpret what students are accumulating as they go through the educational process. The second reason that I think this is important is that it's a mission driven effort to try to stir the pot to a degree. We know from the college admission perspective that the factors that college admission officers consider in the admission process tend to be pretty static and they're predictable in that they don't entirely predict student success in higher education and they yield pretty consistent results in terms of the student body year over year. So to a degree the factors that are currently in use have not moved the needle all that much on access and equity. We see the, we regularly hear actually calls for greater contextual information about students as a way of trying to explore different abilities that fall outside of the existing factors and in our view the performance based assessments stand to do just that and that's why we believe from an ACACS perspective that this is an important thing to discuss and have admission officers engaged in. So I'll stop there and we can go to the next next panelist. René, if I could just follow up a little bit from the higher ed perspective and amplify what David said. There's two practice areas I think that are right for some new information to drive in. One is David said the admissions criteria and you see a lot of discussion about schools moving to test optional approaches. They are really looking for a broader range of factors to make decisions about students success in college and not just at the highly selective level where they're trying to differentiate a series of highly qualified students but also assessing whether students who are prepared to be successful at a college or institution. The other area is placement which has also been in transition particularly at community colleges where they're looking for things beyond simply a one-time placement test which they've approved not to be very accurate and predictable about student success and are looking at ways better place students into into courses. So I think these these assessments have the opportunity to have positive impacts on both of those sets of practices. Great thank you Mike. Paul or David Roof are you going to jump in? Yeah Renita I was just going to say that you know when we look to see what higher educators as well as folks in the community businesses and otherwise what kinds of skills and knowledge are they looking for from students in terms of being able to succeed both in college and on beyond we see that they're looking for a greater and deeper understanding of poor content but also those success skills like the ability to work with others like the ability to communicate well like the ability to be flexible and be able to be created in a variety of different circumstances. When you look at the admissions assessments and tests that are available they're really not so strong in those areas but complex performance tasks and assessment really gives you a deep look at that information and we want to be able to find a way in which we can share that information that we're developing at the K-12 level with admissions officers in a way that will be efficient and allow them to make decisions that would really bring forward students who can be successful in college and university and can be successful in the business community once they're completed. Great thanks Paul. David Roof anything else you want to add? Yeah I would actually I would build upon where Paul was headed on that. There's a couple things I share. First off for me it's about a basic equity and fairness issue that's there and we know this is actually not a K-12 or a higher ed stance or insight by itself but actually shared across both of those that a lot of the measures that are used right now to make decisions about kids getting admissions into college are unfairly advantage certain populations of students and so moving towards this actually starts to open up additional information about kids that they can share and understand. So as Paul has noted there that there are many many characteristics of students who will be successful in higher ed they're actually not captured by the strategies we have today. They're not captured by standardized test scores and not captured by just looking at class grades and not captured by class rank. They don't give us the information that would be really helpful to know if kids are going to be successful and if it's the right placement for them and so at its core I think it's a basic equity and fairness issue. The other piece that I would add on this though is that I see it in our work here across New England and increasingly across the country it's an incredible leverage point that's there because we know that because students and parents are concerned about kids getting into colleges that that impacts the way that high schools think about the programs they're going to offer and what they're going to emphasize and what they're going to put an increased stress upon that if we can bring in performance assessments into this which are richer more thoughtful get it a broader skill set that we want for kids to have there because it is used as a part of the college admissions process it will leverage that change in the K-12 system and so and some by moving this direction we get better equity it's fairer for everybody involved and presents a more complete picture and it leverages practices all around that including in the high school level including admissions process to be to move in a better direction. Great thank you David and I think I appreciate you actually articulating our theory of change for this work which is that if higher education demands this type of authentic holistic assessment of student learning that more K-12 schools will actually engage in these types of practices I appreciate that. David I'm actually wondering if you could share a little David Roof I'm wondering if you could share a little bit about sort of emerging efforts in New England to connect some of your K-12 school districts with with higher ed institutions around competency-based education and mastery transcripts. Sure so I guess just to give you a sense of some some numbers in in in New England if about 100 kids 109th graders who are socioeconomically disadvantaged enter our high schools and this is true across and combining all the data across New England only about 17 of those students will actually get a four-year degree 12 years later and so we're talking about giving them six years for high school and six years to get the four-year degree 17 of them will get that and so certainly there's a little variation there from school to school and state to state but but those numbers aren't very high and when we look and we just aggregate that by race it's a little better in terms of students of color than 17 percent but it's still incredibly low and so there's no doubt that we've got to figure out a way to not have these huge leakages in the pipeline that is happening for kids and so our big effort and Paul has been a big part of this of really pushing forward with a proficiency or competency-based learning system gets at the core of saying let's make sure that all kids are gaining these skills and knowledge and these habits of mind let's hold them accountable to that let's hold schools accountable to that and then they can actually be ready to be successful in higher ed and we've done a lot of work with admissions officers in higher ed to get them to understand the process understand the transcripts they're going to start seeing from this and start being able to decipher and understand that I mean the great news is we're really not getting any pushback from higher ed I think it's pretty obvious that we want the same thing of making sure that the kids we have a good match between the college's kids go to and who and the kids skill set that's there but it's able we're able to get more information for that and quite honestly the only way we get that deeper richer information is through better assessment systems that include performance assessments that actually measure these things that are so crucial to the eventual success I don't know Paul you may want to jump in there too you've been involved in a lot of that work from the you know the state perspective in New Hampshire really ensuring that smooth transition yes and and as we've seen more and more high schools across our state in New Hampshire but also in Maine and Vermont and Massachusetts Rhode Island and Connecticut move to a proficiency-based or competency-based learning model with a deep performance assessment work as well as a demonstration of portfolios one of the things that occurred is that parents still you know have the belief that the only thing that colleges and universities are are interested in is you know that SAT or that ACT score and so they'll keep asking well you know you're doing all this work but how's this going to affect my students ultimate success and so when we talk to the admissions folks and and the colleges and universities in in New England they say no we're looking at how students are able to do in their work and we're very interested in this deeper work that they're doing in high school and think that it's highly predictive of their success so how can we provide how can we get that information on on our transcripts and how can we signal if you will to our parents and to the larger community that that is what we're looking for and that it's meaningful to for students in their success in college and university so I think that signaling aspect Ronita is is a very important one now as we see so many of our high schools moving in this direction absolutely thank you um David Hawkins and Michael Riley I'd love to hear from your perspective from your higher ed perspective you know folks on the phone may want to know well you know if you're if you're a college admissions officer how can you trust the information that's coming from these types of performance assessment systems how do you you know and how do you place what kind of value do you place on this type of information that's coming from schools and districts well maybe I'll send this to Mike I think we there are always challenges around terms so in a lot of elements of admissions right now in terms of essays and you know who wrote those things do think I mean from what I have seen the examples where these are in place at high school districts where teachers are conducting assessments students doing videos etc I think those have the same element of trust of many other the components of the attributes that we look at at admissions certainly I think to to ramp up the flat option curve there is going to be a point where we're going to have to do some assessments some some post-enrollment evaluation of students to see how they do through you know advancing through the coursework how well they replace the success rates etc but I think these are just as valid as others and you know right now we do I think there's you know David the two David's have been working on a process to try and make this information consumable for admissions officers because some might say well who's going to read this entire portfolio but you know within the admissions process now particularly holistic admissions approaches there are a number of labor intensive processes reading essays conducting interviews etc so I think there you know with some work to refine this into you know continual information that admissions officers will relish this as part of a you know holistic review of their applicant pool and will really gain things beyond simply the grades and test scores to make their conclusions about admissions and and Mike I would add I agree with everything you said absolutely there needs to be the kind of track record that is evident particularly to leaders in college admission offices on a slightly different note one of the one of the pieces of this puzzle that that we feel is important to put into place is to ensure that any college admission officer who comes into contact with performance-based assessments in a school or a district has a way of understanding what this is because there are you know tens of thousands of schools out there and and in general college admission officers look at things like the school profile to determine the kind of curriculum a school might have if the college isn't already familiar with it so to a degree there will be as I said in the opening a vigorous education campaign that we'll be you know certainly glad to contribute to to help admission officers understand across the board what these what these are and what to expect when you're looking at a school uh who says they they use performance assessments so that's a that's a I think that's again one of the one of the primary values of this project is to make sure everybody understands and and to have a sort of a common understanding of of of what these are when they see them that's great as we start moving towards piloting um but you know piloting some of the some of the recommendations between k-12 school districts and and higher ed partners um what are you all excited about what what are some of the things before to uh seeing happen through these pilots well this is mike I mean I certainly would you know am excited to see examples of where local schools the districts in in partnership with their post-secondary institutions can use some of the things like the digital transcript or the or the online admissions application to include this information embedded in that application so that uh you know we can actually see it in practice um you know one of the things that I'm excited about this this really does align with a movement that's taking place at the post-secondary level where one of the challenges we've had is that students have a wide variety of learning that takes place in their college experience and yet the only thing we provide is documentation of that the hands of an employer is a transcript that shows their grades and test scores and everybody would say well that's an incomplete picture the same dynamic is taking place coming out of high schools where students are doing this rich work and yet it's not being considered as part of this process so that that it's really exciting to be able to capture the full range of learning and see how that can impact students because I you know I firmly believe that it will increase access and opportunity it will increase success for students and that it will build confidence in students particularly students for whom you know higher education may be not part of their family experience to make them more confident to go to a more selective institution or get a little bit out of their comfort zone so that's what excites me about this process great thank you and Ronita Ronita I'd like to add that just on top of what Michael was saying you know as you pointed out when you introduced me I've been at this for a few few years and you know as early as the early 2000s we are hearing that you know it's great great that students are generating this material and this work that they're doing but you know how can we efficiently review this at an admissions office that's looking at potentially thousands of applicants meanwhile we have we've had the digital revolution where transcripts are now digital many of the materials that are coming forward are are electronic and common and so so there is now a new opportunity to take a look at student work and if we're if we're able to actually dialogue between K-12 and and higher ed admissions offices about you know what what is it that you really want to see and what will help you in terms of making a decision we're going to be able to provide better information more efficient information I think we can make a system that's going to be much more usable for for everyone concerned and I'm just excited after these many years that we're going to be able to work together and and make this happen you know Ronita I'd add that there's a bunch of things that really I've got us thinking and excited about this and really wanting to be a part of this building on what Mike and Paul have talked about here I fully expect it we'll start to see different transcripts that are more descriptive and accurate and what kids no one are able to do and are not based upon you know I think grading systems that we don't really know there's a lack of consistency there so we can get more consistent more accurate more detailed about that I think that will enable there to be a better placements in higher ed and so that I think that sometimes you know every college is good for some kids but part of the dilemma here is which college is right for which kid and this will enable more information to be there for both students and parents and higher ed to make better decisions about what is that alignment of that placement that's there which I would hope would decrease the dropout rate in higher ed which I would hope would change some of the demographics of what we're seeing for our college population of students that are there leveraging all that and then I would be remiss not to note back at the high school level you know almost all states have in their state standards have noted things that you know 21st century skills or transferable skills or guiding principles that you know they're you know they're these skills and knowledge across content areas they don't reside just within a single content area and performance assessment is the way to actually start getting at that measuring and that encouraging that that's there and I think that we'll start to see conversations between students teachers and parents that are about student acquisition of those skills rather than a focus on is it an A, a B or a C and it's not that I don't want conversations to be there about the quality of the work I actually do want there to be conversation about the quality of the work but the simply focusing on did I get an A is the wrong conversation as opposed to what are the qualities of my work that enable this to be an A and is it really focusing in on those key important things around the 21st century skills or transferable skills that are there absolutely. David, did you jump in? Yeah I'm sorry I had one additional aspect of this that excites me and that and Mike alluded to this earlier and that is that if college admission offices start understanding using the information that's available to them through these assessments it provides them with a larger number of data points that they can use to evaluate what predicts student success at their institution and again I think what excites me overall about the project is that with this research we could see a shift in the the hegemony of the current factors in the admission process because it seems that with this added context we could discover more about what what leads to student success in post-secondary education. Before I ask my next question I do want to remind the audience that if you want to ask questions or engage in discussion please do use the chat box in the right of your screen and select all participants from the drop down and enter in your question or your message. So I do want to make sure you know that we talk about some of the potential challenges in this work and some things that might be worrying you about moving this initiative forward and I want to specifically ask David Hawkins and Michael Riley how do we get faculty from colleges on board? We know that in a lot of particularly public institutions like in private as well the admissions offices are not independent from from faculty boards who oversee some of those requirements so curious how how do we move that forward? Yeah this is Mike at most institutions faculty certainly set the admission standards for the institution and they are they are evidence-based creatures and you know as new approaches have taken place I mean there was probably a time when you know advanced placement was not considered for placement in the courses and to advance standing in institutions when it first came on board and through again follow-up studies and research and analysis I think people can be engaged in this. I think they're they're also you know as we we are going to have to do a research agenda to develop you know they'll need to see a pretty robust set of criteria there has to be evidence-based has to be rooted in a in factors that have demonstrated success I think you know right now I think faculty are actually looking for different attributes as well I think they see the shortcomings of you know relying too much on standardized tests they can see the evidence about that they see these arguments and if we can bring to them alternatives to that for them to consider I think it'll get a lot of traction. Thanks Michael. Yeah and I think the Mike is right on point of course the challenge that I fear of course is inertia and I think that in a number of ways inertia works against us because in the admission office things tend to move pretty quickly and there there is a limited amount of time that that college admission officers have to learn about new aspects of the educational system to implement any sort of new factors into their application review process and I expect the same would go for the the process that that Mike described with the faculty the relationship with with faculty on campus but as Mike said I've certainly picked up a distinct weariness among faculty which is which runs parallel to the weariness that that admission officers feel with the current factors in the admission decision and of course we all are familiar with with the research on the large numbers of students needing remediation once they arrive in higher education so I think the environment is is ripe for this sort of new approach and and as Mike said I think there's just going to need to be a fairly extensive process where we can educate both the admission offices and the and the faculty as to what this is and how it relates to student success. Thank you. Paul or David Ruth do you want to say anything about potential challenges or concerns that you're worried about as we move forward? I can jump in here there's always a lot of worries that are there but a couple I would highlight two of them and really I know David and Mike would know more about this but it's just you know overwhelming the system I mean I think there's all kinds of information we'd like to share with in the college admissions process but it's we just have to remember and acknowledge that they've got a job and they've got a lot of applicants in front of them we've got to figure out a way to streamline that while still getting solid information there but the the second piece that I would put in here is that I think we have to be cautious about working too much to replace standardized testing and as a result as a consequence of trying to replace standardized testing we try to impose assessment criteria on to performance assessment that are extremely difficult to to attain and as a result cut out the thoughtful engagement and process that is only attainable through performance assessment and so we end up with a system where we say we can reliably measure this but we don't actually put a whole lot of trust and faith in what we're actually reliably measuring and so I think we've got to make sure that we place us in a way that doesn't try to meet assessment standards that it can't meet but that it is still high quality I'm not arguing at all against high quality thoughtful trustworthy information but I just don't want to put it up to a standard that they can't reach and it forces us to to to really make fundamental changes in the performance assessment that remove richness there and Reneet I agree with David you know the richness and the depth of the work in performance assessment is really the high value that that is gained but at the same time one of the concerns and challenges I think as we scale performance assessment work across states and that's some of the work that I've been very much involved in the last few years is that we have we have folks who are very skilled at this work there are any number of websites now that you could go on and see very high quality performance assessment work and and see students who I dare say are you know there might be a competition to to admit those students to colleges and universities at the same time other other high schools are are just starting this process and so there there's sophistication in both presentation and then the actual work that the deeper work may not be as as as a high quality as we might see in another school and that'll become pretty evident through this process and so I I want to make sure that as we start to scale this work that that we we're able to raise the performance of our of our high schools our high school educators and thus our students to a level that will meet the expectations of both admissions and higher educators I think that's going to be a big challenge for k-12 but it's a challenge we we need to face no matter what no matter what kind of evidence we're providing and runita I can certainly appreciate that some places might be feeling a little bit of reform fatigue as we've you know navigated you know federal mandates about no child left behind now we have the ESSA exams people are you know teachers are challenged by new approaches to evaluation david's members the counselors certainly have you know incredible workloads so I can imagine as another concept gets brought forward people will just say well there's going to get a traction or is this something I'm going to spend a lot of time on and the next reformer is going to going to take over but I really do think this this has traction and it's it's not rooted in a particular you know federal mandate about assessments I mean it's an opportunity for school districts and and to build some some systems that work well for them then and it's it's not a it's not a specific type of assessment these can vary from school to school they can include portfolios or more integrated senior level feces there's just a lot of ways to do it so I would hope people don't view this as a you know a mandate from on high but really an opportunity to kind of organically build something that that captures the strength of your student learning in places I'm in a better position for college and career success Mike and I actually have a follow-on question to that and we started you know this conversation by saying one of the goals of this initiative is advanced diversity equity and inclusion in higher ed I'm kind of curious what you think this this initiative and and how performance assessments can be used in different types of higher ed institutions whether you're talking about and you mentioned community college you know big public state universities versus you know your selective universities how could you envision this this type of authentic student work being used in different ways in different institutions because you know obviously they have different missions different student bodies different you know all of that so love you love for you to do that well I would say again we often think about the use of these at highly selective institutions and there's certainly a place for that I could see them using these to differentiate you know highly qualified candidates and also maybe make decisions about scholarships and other things but I also think at a less selective level one of the challenges is to ensure that the students you enroll will be successful and many of them may be coming from lower resource school districts may not have done as well on standardized tests or the standardized measures but you really want to make a decision about their likelihood of success there and this can be a a piece of information that can help you draw better conclusions about the student success and again as I mentioned earlier at the community college level they really are migrating now from from an access to a success model if they've been open enrollment they've always had challenges about accurately placing students in the courses and we're seeing a reduction in the number of you know placement examination tools that are out there so they're looking for more creative ways to do this so I think community colleges really could benefit from partnerships with their local schools to use these assessments as tools to more accurately place students in the programs it could be a nice transition into the pathway work that's taking place at a lot of community colleges right now in the country it'd be a great onboarding transition into a pathway project so I think I think it has multifaceted opportunities for a wide range of institutions and I hope we don't focus too much on the highly selective institutions where you see you know the national debates and the lawsuits etc that this has opportunities for a variety of types of institutions great thank you David Hawkins do you want to add anything else I would just add that from a competitive angle you know there are an awful lot of institutions out there that specialize in in one field or another you know sort of build themselves as wanting to attract a certain type of student and I think that and and when I say a certain type of student I mean students who present certain skills interests specializations etc so I think in addition to the evaluative component of performance assessments they could also even offer colleges a more insightful look at the types of students they might be very deliberate in pursuing so so I think as we look at it through a college's own self-interest this this could have benefits that go beyond even just the benefits we've we've already discussed great thank you um you know we we've talked about sort of the challenges that this work might present for admissions offices you know in looking at you know lots of student work I'm actually wondering you know for students and families you know who are already stressed by the admissions process what would you say to them to families who feel like this you know add to you know add on another challenge and already stressful admissions process I would I would probably jump in and say that uh something that that our members have told us countless times in the 18 years that I've that I've worked here and that is that wouldn't it be great if you just told students and families that what you did in high school was going to be the thing that mattered in college admission uh and so in an ideal scenario with if if these assessments performance assessment model is implemented in the school and it turns out to be a useful and helpful part of the admission process then really it in theory at least should ease that mindset for students and families that you know this is you're you're more than a you're you're more than than you know a test score or than a single numeric grade or you know any any other of the of the factors that we tend to fixate on so so I would hope that this would actually reduce stress great thank you um we do have a question in the chat that I want to make sure we get to it's from folks uh at public advocates uh says it was mentioned this work is happening in high schools but has this model been implemented pre-high school with k8 schools and I'll say yes um there are a lot of um this type of performance assessment work is happening in k8 schools uh paul do you want to maybe talk about new ham sure as an example of where this work is happening k12 paul did we lose you sorry I keep shooting myself uh so uh yes ronita I um in new ham sure uh we found out pretty quickly that uh just focusing on on this deeper kind of teaching and learning at the high school level uh ultimately didn't make a lot of sense if students were coming uh in uh from their experience from k through eight from a very traditional model uh essentially they had to learn how to how to how to learn again and and uh teachers had to approach things in a in a wholly new way uh so what we've done is we've moved to a uh a k through 12 of kind of a model where we're involved in performance assessment uh from from uh the very earliest grades right on through middle school on into high school and it's a part of our accountability system for those schools and districts that have chosen to make that a part of their work as well as their you know deeply in in scottston and how they do teaching and learning and uh what we look across the the country and I'm sure david uh could can attest to this those those schools and districts that are really moving to proficiency based or competency based learning are finding this to be true and and so uh yes this is an effort that maybe started at the high school level um but uh we're seeing it k through 12 and and a big movement actually uh across the country in this regard thank you paul you know I I would I would just jump into I think paul is absolutely right on target um you know we we have seen a lot of policy that has been around uh the graduation requirements and trying to promote competency or proficiency through that um policy lever but I think the more successful places we're seeing implementation we're seeing uh the while it's a graduation decision it's being attended to k 12 and so again the the assessment strategies and practices that are using in people using in high schools are using k8 and we're seeing a lot of places implement some like knee joint uh assessments kids getting out of third grade or fifth grade or eighth grade so they can really um pull together their learning in ways that are really meaningful for them that are insightful for them that help parents and students understand those pieces and so it's um it's pretty I would say it's flourishing performance assessment is flourishing k 12 it's uh it's it's universal there absolutely and you know just a question for you know paul and david rufina and for the other folks as well what are some of the policy implications for this emerging work and I'm thinking about policy implications about the local and state level but also higher ed policy well uh from a policy standpoint uh there are multiple levels of summative assessment uh you know in k 12 you know there's the there's the state and federal summative assessments and then there are assessments that students are involved in when they move from one grade to another grade uh and as they move forward and then and then you have those decisions that are summative that that um relate to uh college uh access uh so from the policy standpoint there's been a lot of attention in k 12 around um moving away from large-scale state assessments that don't provide a lot of great information if you will uh to the learning process at the local level and there's been a lot of attention recently to how could performance assessments be used as a part of the accountability process and and provide much deeper much richer information for students as they move through their their schooling as well as for educators and uh so there's a there's a high interest in a number of states now and how can they start to apply a a more balanced system of assessments both at the state and federal level as well as at the at the local level so so part of this effort it is happening and it is growing but it's it's it's uh affecting many different facets of the system and and that's all going on as we speak and and uh i'm very much involved in that david and i was very much involved in and a number of others are nationally i know uh uh the learning policy institute and at ed council have been very much involved in that level of the work as well but as i mentioned earlier ronita signaling that um uh that colleges and universities see the importance of this work uh is going to help move it along faster and really create a better public education system uh for in our country uh in a at a faster pace you know ronita i'd build on i'd build on paul too to um put a couple buckets out there i mean i think there's a you know policy question always brings up you know what what barriers are being created by current policy and a second bucket of what support or enticements could be built through uh change policy that's there and both of those play out both of the state and it's a district level and i and i think there's a lot of district policies that impact some of this uh that often it's overlooked but particularly in some of our larger districts we've got policies that um i don't think people intend them to be problematic in this way but end up uh kind of coming at it from a side coming at it from the side that caused some problems and shifts there but i do think we've got to look at issues around um school or your state level state accountability regulations for schools and districts because if they emphasize certain practices over others um you'll actually start to see those pieces i know that's a leverage point and so we've got a leverage performance assessment into that it gets down to the student level when you have things like gpa and ranking class and how those pieces are used in there um it gets into potentially policies around course structures particularly if we want assessments performance assessments that operate outside of the normal um content structures we have for courses that are there it can get into the whole issue of state data collection and one of the data points that states are collecting that are there and it can even get into the whole issue of state teacher licensure that um enables you know which teachers can actually um pass official judgment on how kids are doing uh on these assessments and is it is there other licensure issues that curtail that or support that so there's a bunch of things and I think it's like a lot that we've seen in moving from state to state that um each state has some interesting and unique pieces that can promote that and some interesting and unique pieces that can be barriers to that and renita certainly at the post-secondary level there are differences between an independent institution whose faculty can make decisions about admissions and placement and say a cal state university system where there's 23 institutions working as a system to make these kinds of changes so the policy implications can vary greatly yep absolutely um we have about two more minutes I want to make sure uh participants or that uh folks on the phone have an opportunity to ask any questions um so if you have any burning questions please put them into the chat box we probably have time for about one and I'll wait about 30 seconds in case anybody wants to type something in seeing no additional questions coming in I do want to thank our panelists for a fantastic discussion I'd like to remind the audience that we uh are recording this webinar and we will email you in a few days when it's available online we'd also like to remind you to sign up for our email list to be notified of our next webinar in this series again it's how it's done what school networks can teach us about 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