“The idea of a straight and narrow path is outdated,” says educator researcher Denise Pope in a recent interview. The multiple (and multiplying) facets, all-inclusivity, dynamism, and integration that is life in the 21st century means that two-dimensionality has less say or sway than it used to. An example of this is in the often linear, standardized ways we assess student competency and mastery of skills needed for college, work, and life modernity.
Joined together by the belief that systems, students, and society can benefit from authentic and holistic ways of assessing students, like student portfolios and capstone projects, the Learning Policy Institute (LPI) has partnered with Education Counsel and Education First on an initiative titled Reimagining College Access (RCA). Advancement of the initiative is being conducted by a diverse group of K-12 and higher education policy and practice leaders across the state. One specific and newly formed task force of the team, the Blue Ribbon Panel on Developing Criteria for Systems of Performance Assessment, is working to design, codify, and establish goals and a dissemination strategy for a set of research-based criteria to describe the system-level quality and rigor of performance assessments (e.g., quality of the processes used for task creation, rubric development, and calibration of scoring) used by individual k–12 schools, consortia of schools, and/or state and local k–12 school systems.
Appointed to the Blue Ribbon Panel last month is UC Santa Barbara professor, Dr. Tine Sloan. Dr. Sloan’s career has been devoted to understanding how to prepare and support teachers who can meet the diverse needs of California’s students, ensuring their well-being while preparing them for success in the 21st century. This commitment has displayed itself in her recent appointment as Chair for the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC), her current role as Director for the UC-wide research consortium, the California Teacher Education Research and Improvement Network (CTERIN), and her previous 12-year tenure as Director of the UCSB Teacher Education Program.
Dr. Sloan is joined on the panel by Roneeta Guha, Joan Herman, P. David Pearson, Ray Pecheone, James Pellegrino, Lee Shulman, Claire Sylvan, and Ruth Chung Wei. You can read about each member in RCA’s April 2019 newsletter and learn of the Linda Darling-Hammond-led Learning Policy Institute (LPI) and their partners in this endeavor, Education Counsel and Education First, via the links.