| Washington--
Competency-Based Admissions |
An explicit hope of the reform in Washington is that it will create a pathway to college for students taking nontraditional courses. |
Washington is developing a competency-based admissions system very similar to Oregon's PASS project. In 1993, the Washington legislature passed the Basic Education Act. This bill established the Commission on Student Learning, which was charged with identifying content standards for what all public school students should know and be able to do. The Commission was directed to develop a performance-based education system along with a functional student assessment and accountability system. As part of the new assessment system, students would be required to demonstrate mastery of set content by the 10th grade, leading to a Certificate of Mastery (CoM)--a new graduation requirement. In addition, the Commission was expected to recommend college entrance requirements which would be consistent with newly developed high school content standards under consideration by the Higher Education Coordinating Board (HECB). The HECB, in turn, would act upon these recommendations by translating traditional admissions standards into competency-based admissions standards. Pilot testing of the new admissions standards will take place in three high schools by the year 2000. As of 2006, all graduating public high school seniors applying for admission at a Washington public university will be required to fulfill competency-based standards.
The HECB hosted a statewide conference in the spring of 1998 at which teachers from three pilot high schools convened to discuss competency standards approved by the HECB in math and English. Building on the success and feedback from their first conference, a second conference was held in the fall of 1998 to refine the competencies previously defined for math and English and to begin developing assessment mechanisms. Conference participants included math and English teachers from three high schools and five public universities. These faculties were to have teachers focus on two topics: (1) What should three years of college-preparatory math and English look like in terms of expected competency? and (2) How should these competencies be assessed?
Math and English teachers split into separate groups in order to discuss each subject's set of competency standards, which had been tentatively approved by the HECB. To help refine the standards further, college teachers provided examples of student work in math and English that they considered representative of entry-level work. In the math group, these "anchors" led to animated discussions between high school and college teachers about expectations for student work at each level. High school teachers pointed out a potential for misalignment between college admissions standards and high school level standards. The high school standards emphasize "process skills"--general strategies of problem solving and reasoning--while the college standards may be emphasizing specific content that may or may not have been covered in the high school curricula. Such concerns were even more dramatic among the groups of high school and college English teachers. Discussion of anchor papers exposed overarching concerns about how to evaluate the numerous factors involved in good writing. As these concerns were discussed, some of the English teachers lamented that the developing admissions standards seemed absolute and inflexible. Ultimately, Washington teachers refining the math and English competency standards were able to reach consensus and create an apparent alignment between the expectations for high school graduation and college admission, though this consensus was more difficult for the English group in which standards were harder to quantify.
High school math and English teachers have been asked to use the newly refined competency standards to create six student assignments. These assignments are to be scored and assessed by the teachers according to the developed standards for college admission. Based on the assignments, they are to sort their students into three groups of achievement: (1) below standard, (2) standard, and (3) exceeds standard. To reinforce the connection between assigned tasks and their assessment, it was suggested that teachers allow their students to design and even help score specific assessment rubrics. Teachers are scheduled to meet again in June 1999, to compare and calibrate their assessments of student performance.
Washington's progression toward a competency-based system of admissions bodes well for strengthening nontraditional, career-based curriculum throughout the state. According to the policy associate at HECB who leads the competency-based admissions project, the intent of Washington's competency-based reform is to ensure that college readiness will no longer be measured solely by letter grades and the time spent in a particular type of class. As long as students can demonstrate mastery of a defined set of skills, the exact courses they took to develop those skills will be inconsequential. An explicit hope of this reform is that it will create a pathway to college for students taking nontraditional courses, keeping them from being prematurely tracked into a career on the basis of their high school curriculum.
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The key question is whether and how students can gain greater access to, and achieve greater success in postsecondary education when they are prepared in programs that combine an integrated academic-vocational curriculum with work-based learning. |
The start of the 21st century will signal the beginning of wide-scale consideration of competency- or proficiency-based assessment systems in education. While new initiatives have been debated in the policy arena for the past decade, these types of assessments continue to gather support for many reasons. First, proficiency-based assessments are more in alignment with constructivist approaches to learning which are growing in popularity at the high school level. Second, the general public, employers, and college admissions officers continue to express distress at the lack of knowledge and skills that high school graduates demonstrate based on national and international measures of learning and achievement. The global economy has shifted the dialogue from concern about students' performance on norm-referenced, conventional paper-and-pencil assessments to criterion-referenced measures of a set of "new basics" that include students' use of technologies and soft skills such as problem solving, teamwork, and effective interpersonal communications. Finally, the widespread acceptance of student learning outcomes as the core measures of educational quality suggests that proficiency-oriented assessment will be central to policy and program improvement efforts.
As states move toward competency- or proficiency-based assessments, alignment issues are fundamentally important yet highly problematic. Educational standards or com-petencies must be both vertically and horizontally aligned. The central concern of the curriculum articulation dimension (vertical integration) is the degree to which standards and performance benchmarks for graduation from high school are similar to admission requirements for college. There is widespread agreement that high schools need to prepare all students for some form of postsecondary education, yet the extent to which high school diplomas and college admissions portfolios should portray similar or dissimilar competencies and/or performance benchmarks remains an open question. In Oregon and Washington, where new assessments are required for high school graduation, considerable time and effort has been focused on that alignment. In Wisconsin, where the CBA pilot project has produced positive results, an interest in aligning these standards with the recently developed core academic learning standards is now emerging.
The horizontal or crosscurricular alignment issues challenge conventional wisdom about where and how students can obtain knowledge and competence. New college admissions standards in all four states combine, and to varying degrees, differentiate between disciplinary knowledge (i.e., core academic learning in mathematics, science, English, social studies, and languages) and procedural knowledge and proficiency (e.g., the Oregon PASS process areas which include reading, writing, communication competence, problem solving, analytical thinking, integrative thinking, technology as a learning tool, teamwork, and quality work). These core knowledge and process skills can be acquired in various combinations of courses: academic, vocational-technical, fine arts, foreign language, or integrated courses, or through new forms of schooling (e.g., career academies, work-based and community service learning). As assessment rubrics evolve, and as proficiency and learning outcomes are identified, practitioners can develop broader empirical analyses of how students succeed in both college and the world of work. Since many configurations of secondary school reform may not include career-related learning standards or pedagogy, it is important to identify and study those that do. The key question is whether and how students can gain greater access to, and achieve greater success in postsecondary education when they are prepared in programs that combine an integrated academic-vocational curriculum with work-based learning.
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The expanded use of alternative assessments will eventually support new ways to document students' knowledge, dispositions, and performance capabilities in both high school and beyond. |
Experience and research in these four states suggest several preliminary lessons for policymakers, as well as for state, K-12, and university leaders:
* Considerable time and resources are needed to develop new admissions assessment strategies, proficiency and competency lists, and scoring rubrics. Most often, these efforts have been undertaken jointly by work groups composed of high school and university faculty from specific academic areas. The development of these initiatives has taken considerably longer than originally estimated; however, the collaborative develop-ment of such assessment plans, new transcripts or profiles, and scoring rubrics will generate a better understanding of new curriculum standards, improved teaching methods, and examples of high-quality student work.
* In the four states included in this review, vocational-technical educators have seldom participated in these developmental efforts. State higher education boards or universities moving toward developing new college admissions standards might consider broader models of collaboration. Such efforts would help to examine the potential effects of career-related learning in high school in the admissions assessments, as well as in examining how such learning affects success in college and beyond.
* The use of multilevel committees and work groups builds important political, pro-fessional, and institutional support for K-12 standards-based education reform and for new connections between schools and postsecondary institutions.
* Sooner or later, states recognize the need to align new university admissions procedures with K-12 learning standards. While caution must be exercised to ensure that university-based expectations do not unduly dominate the high school curriculum, the core elements of learning must be congruent to some degree with those identified for success in postsecondary education. Through the level of proficiency and performance they demand, particular learning standards should signal clearly what level of work is required for college admission.
* The impact of these new initiatives on educators should not be underestimated. These professionals are being asked to reconceptualize the way students learn and how they should be assessed. Their involvement in the development, planning, and implementation of new initiatives is key to the initiative's success and will require considerable time, resources, and professional development.
Many national groups are researching and discussing the implications of alternative admissions procedures on the K-16 educational system. Both SHEEO (e.g., see Conley, 1998) and the American Association of Universities Task Force on K-16 Education (e.g., see Association of American Universities, 1998) will continue to lead the discussions and debate about this important topic. NCRVE's research will inform the dialogue by documenting the extent to which career-related learning experiences in high school contribute to successful outcomes on competency-based assessments for university admission. In this context, developing assessment rubrics for complex school-based projects and new curricula will help to gauge the value of these learning experiences. Assessing student learning in new venues and formats will help high school and college instructors to integrate more project-based or work-based learning experiences in their courses. The expanded use of alternative assessments will eventually support new ways to document students' knowledge, dispositions, and performance capabilities in both high school and beyond.