Scaling is All the Rage, but How Do You Make It Happen?

It’s fall 2017 in New Hampshire. The state’s Performance Assessment for Competency-based Education (PACE) system is entering its third year. Using this alternative state accountability system, 150 teachers in nine school districts have created 14 performance assessment tasks in mathematics, English language arts (ELA), and science. The tasks have been validated against standardized state tests with the ambition to bring performance assessments to all students in the state across all disciplines. A primary goal of PACE is to ensure that students demonstrate their content knowledge to gain academic credits and graduate.

The thing is, content knowledge just isn’t enough. Knowing stuff is great, but what can you do? Our students will face futures where essential skills like self-direction, collaboration, communication, and creativity will be critical to navigating college, career, and community life. This is why educators in New Hampshire are pushing beyond the content knowledge prioritized in PACE to build those skill sets we know are valuable to employers, colleges, and communities. New Hampshire calls these Work Study Practices (WSPs).

Drawing from a set of developmental frameworks published in 2015 by the Center for Innovation in Education (CIE) and the Education Policy Improvement Center, educators are working to embed the instruction and assessment of essential skills into specific performance tasks. Performance tasks require students to apply their knowledge and skills at defined levels to demonstrate their proficiency. Just like in the real world, these skills are integrated into content areas such that students learn to work and study in ways that support their success—not just as content experts, but as communicators, collaborators, and creators.

Building Will & Scaling Innovation

Scaling up these approaches across an entire state was no small task. It required innovative partnerships among organizations and leaders who were content to start small and move strategically and incrementally. For example, in the fall of 2017, none of the 14 PACE performance tasks included assessment of WSPs. Not one.

But in 2018, a partnership of educators and researchers—including JFF (Jobs for the Future), the New Hampshire Learning Initiative (NHLI), the Center for Innovation in Education, the New Hampshire Department of Education, and KnowledgeWorks, supported by a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation—recognized the tremendous potential to support kids to develop 21st-century skills by scaling and diffusing these work-study practices. They put a plan in play to do just that.

Through a combination of research, invitation, targeted supports, professional development, and technical assistance, they built the will for the innovation and the platforms and processes to execute it. By the fall of 2019, there were 112 performance tasks in the PACE system—an 800% growth rate. 51 of these tasks provided information on how proficient a student was in at least one WSP, and six tasks instructed students on the essential skill of self-direction.

Strategic & Individualized Supports

How did they do this? More pointedly, in a state like New Hampshire with its long history of strong local control and unfunded mandates, how did these partners get so much traction so quickly? Key mechanisms include strategic, timely, and individualized supports that encourage schools and educators to join the effort at a time and in a manner that matches their unique context.