Friday, October 3, 2014

Our SPUR Process Has Had an Update

Dear CRTC Students and Parent/Guardians:



The CRTC has led the way with regard to competency-based education for the past six years since the advent of our self-created SPUR process.  The SPUR process is the cornerstone of our organization’s focus  to build a system whereby our instructors and related mentors leverage their positive relations with students to provide them with the most impactful, discrete and actionable performance feedback possible. The CRTC’s overall mission is for students to realize their greatest potential and ultimately, be college and career successful.  

Various elements of the SPUR process are covered in our “Compass” Handbook.  At this point, we need to amend the “Compass” with a number of changes for the coming school year including:
  • How students earn credits:  This is a very significant change for us that will affect, based on historical data, a relatively small group of students.  Despite our advances in assessment, we still feel a number of students were passing the CRTC without demonstrating they were competent.  These students received detailed feedback to improve, but the system did not hold them accountable to show vital improvement.  Effective immediately, students will be expected to be rated a “3” (competent) out of “5” on ALL hard skill competencies to earn year-end credits.  This change comes with one major caveat: the student MUST have a personal performance target (PPT) of “5” on that competency.  Our PPT model allows teachers to set personalized goals for students.   The performance rating (1-5 scale) when combined with the goal (2-5 scale) determines the grade (as established by the CRTC Conversion Table).  In general when we introduce a concept, the target may be lower (“3”).  Likewise, depending on a student’s learning abilities, the goal may also be lower.  In many cases, the target will eventually reach a “5”; therefore, students receiving a competency performance rating of less than “3” MUST budget the time and energy to improve to earn credits.  This expectation does NOT apply to CRTC Soft Skills.  Of particular note is once a target goes up, the previous grade will be reduced; thus a “3” when the target is a “3” earns a 95; but if the target goes to a “5”, that “3” is now equivalent to a 75.  The 75 is what counts at year-end.  Our focus is not the middle, but the end with regard to college and career readiness.
  • Use of Rolling grades and Reassessments (or retakes):  This is another significant change for us.  This change opens the door for students to address areas in need of improvement and if successful in doing so, allows them to discount older (and weaker) grades that are no longer relevant due to performance gains.  Rolling grades basically means when we report grades every quarter, the reporting window will no longer reflect a two or so month stretch of time, but will include all performance data from the first day of the school year to that point in time.  Thus if three hard skill competencies were introduced and rated/graded in Quarter 1 (Q1); four in Q2, and two in Q3, the Q3 report card will cover nine competencies.  If a student earned a 2.5 on a hard skills in Q1 the grade will stick with him/her for the entire year; UNLESS he/she pursues reassessment (and the practice work associated).  If the student improves and raises his/her score to a “4” on the reassessment in Q3, the Q3 report card will count the “4” and not the “2.5”; thus the 2.5 “tells the story”, but is no longer included in the final grade.  In essence, every quarter grade reflects performance for the year.  Again, our focus is not the middle, but the end with regard to college and career readiness.
  • Modifications to Conversion Tables: Finally, we made some minor changes to our conversion tables this year.  The most significant is that a “3” in soft skills now converts to an 80.  After working with our industry partners, we adjusted our conversion to better reflect workplace expectations.

We believe these changes will enhance the CRTC and build an environment where students can best meet our motto, “Own Your Education at the CRTC”.  Please feel free to contact with me questions.

Sincerely,


Steve Rothenberg
Director
603-717-7654

No comments:

Post a Comment