Rural Schools Unite America with Dr. Jon Turner
Exploring issues that impact rural schools with Dr. Jon Turner from Missouri State University.
Rural Schools Unite America with Dr. Jon Turner
Competency Based Assessment With Dr. Amber Howard-Interview with Dr. Jon Turner
In this episode, Dr. Amber Howard, Assistant Professor and Dean's Fellow for Competency-Based Education at Missouri State University, discusses her unique role in implementing competency-based education (CBE) initiatives across Missouri. She elaborates on the pilot programs designed to replace traditional MAP testing with more holistic assessments tailored to individual district needs. Dr. Howard explains how competency-based assessments focus on real-world applications and essential skills, particularly benefiting rural schooling systems by fostering collaborative ecosystems. This discussion highlights the challenges and benefits of transitioning to CBE and offers practical advice for educators interested in adopting this innovative approach.
00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:11 Understanding Competency-Based Education
00:50 Replacing the MAP Test: A New Approach
03:41 Impact on Rural Schools
08:00 Challenges and Support for Teachers
10:10 Personal Experiences and Insights
14:32 Place-Based Learning in Rural Education
16:44 Conclusion and Contact Information
Great to have Dr. Amber Howard here from Missouri State University. She's an assistant professor in the College of Education. Amber, describe a little bit about what your unique position is currently.
Amber Howard:I am the Dean's Fellow for Competency-Based Education which means that I get to work with school districts across the state as they implement competency-based education initiatives. In an effort to eventually replace the MAP test is the big picture goal. So I get to be part of that work, which is really exciting.
Jon Turner:Now Amber, tell me a little bit again and understanding that this is relatively new for old timers like me. Okay? Yep. And the concept of eliminating the MAP test is mind blowing to some of us. Can you talk us a little bit through that process? Again, I know that's something that's down the road, but can you give me the pathway that would get you to that point statewide?
Amber Howard:Yeah. Yeah. It, it is down the road in that it's happening next month. Which is pretty shocking. There's a couple districts in the state that are actually taking the lead on being the pilots to replace the map tests with an alternative. And so they have a waiver from the state to have an alternative to the standardized test. And what that looks is different for each. Each district, but they are creating a dashboard that shows that students are meeting the standards and the competencies for each course without having to show that through a standard space test. So for some districts, that looks a profile of a graduate where they as a district has decided. In our community, we want our graduates to show X, Y, and Z. And the graduates show that in a profile way or a portfolio in other districts. They have a. Dashboard that still uses the district assessments like iReady or NWEA or assessments like that, that they're already taking to show that they're meeting standards in that way. And then they're not having to double test like most districts are already doing. So districts are just approaching it in a way that shows. We are already showing we're meeting these standards. Why are we double testing students? The, there's a lot of work happening towards that and a whole working group that's making it happen. And they're doing a lot of hard work to try to make it. Go across the states. But there's just a few districts that really have the waiver right now to try to take the lead on that.
Jon Turner:Okay. Talk me through this again, this isn't just as simple as a school district saying, contacting DESE and saying, we're not gonna do the MAP.
Amber Howard:No. Although parents do have the power to say, my student will not take the MAP test. So that is a parent choice thing that you can say, but no districts do not have that authority. There is a long process that takes. Place and districts can join the Success Ready Student Network and work their way through that process. And like I said I think it's just four districts right now that kind of have the official waiver. And we're working like DESE and this working group with the SRS and the Success Ready Student Network are working on getting a federal waiver so that we can continue innovating our. Assessment and accountability system, just like across the entire state. But it is a long process and it has been, we've been working on it since 2021, really intentionally four years of really hard work. And we're just now at the point where we're a couple districts are starting to be like, okay, we're ready to not take this assessment.
Jon Turner:Amber, you know that my passion is rural education and so I know that so many times when it. I don't mean to be ornery about this, but a lot of districts have assistant superintendents of curriculum and instruction and things like, but when you're a small rural school district, you're the principal and you're about it in many cases. As far as support networks, can you talk to me a little bit again about how this is impacting rural schools or what challenges rural schools might have in looking at this new way to test.
Amber Howard:Yeah, that's a great question, Jon. The great thing is like when you go to the SRSN website it's just SRSNmo.org, you can see who is participating in this work and there's over a hundred districts now I can't. Keep up with how many districts there are.'cause they're adding them constantly. And there are probably 50 or more rural districts including like Thayer and Oak Grove and like small, I think Cabools on there. District
Jon Turner:I was on, I was on Cabools website yesterday and I saw it come up on the website.
Amber Howard:Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of really small districts on here and they are working to create, these ecosystems around the state to where those rural districts can collaborate to work together, to have more connections so they can make these kind of real world ecosystems. So like for example, in Springfield, there's all these great programs for students to like. The Health Services Academy and the Wolf School and the Academy of Fine and Performing Arts, those are great'cause it's a huge district. But what is Cabool gonna do? They don't have access to that. But if Cabool collaborates with other districts around there, then maybe collectively they can create kind of an ecosystem. And so there are they're called conveners. That's a funny word to me. But there are conveners all across the state that are con connecting these rural districts to create those groups so that they can work towards competency-based learning in rural areas across the state. Rural schools have not been ignored in this process of competency-based work, and they've actually been really intentional about trying to bring them into this and support them along the way.
Jon Turner:I and thank you to you and whoever else has been involved in that process because I can't remember. Amber where did you teach at when you were in the public schools?
Amber Howard:I taught mostly in Springfield public schools. Okay. See. So I was lucky to be in a big district. Yes. The largest school district in the state,
Jon Turner:And I, I could just remember, and again, so many of the people that are taking this class, they're gonna be first year teachers here in a couple of years. And many of'em are gonna be in small rural school districts. And I wanna make sure that people understand that, one of the blessings of going to a Willard or Republic or a Springfield or that they have the administrative infrastructure to really lead these initiatives. But when you're in a small rural school district, as a classroom teacher, you may be the one going to the meetings, surprisingly. And, and so knowing that there, that is, that network that's there, that is being intentional about understanding the unique challenges of rural schools, that's fantastic. So I appreciate that. For sure.
Amber Howard:And we've also brought on the Rural School Collaborative and the Center for Rural Education at Missouri State. So they, they're being really intentional about making sure that those rural schools get support.
Jon Turner:Great. And one of the blessings that Amber, I know you both, you and I both are, have reaped this harvest before, is that teachers, it's just not in their vocabulary. When people ask for help for them to say no. And so many times that you hear about things going on in other school districts, but you don't even know. You are interested, but you don't even know how to start that. And my, my motto, I don't have any tattoos, but if I had one it would be steal great ideas ruthlessly. And sometimes we just forget to, to just ask for help, and your background is Springfield Public Schools. I can remember years ago when I was a. Administrator at Cabool, I cannot tell you how many times Springfield Public Schools was so generous to us in providing support on grant writing, or even if we were, initiating a new a curriculum that if it was a part of Springfield Public Schools, they would even let us come up to their training in Springfield Public Schools. So sometimes we're just not, the bravest thing we could do is ask for help, but. It is, it's a great thing about our career that when you ask for help almost every time, they're willing to help. So that's good. Know you're talking about competency based assessment. Now let dig a little bit more into that, and I'm just gonna play devil's advocate here. Okay. Tell me why this isn't just an easy way out. Why is, why, we all understand how standardized testing and if I, we all give that standardized test, I'll be able to compare whether Willard and Republic, which one's doing a better job of teaching kids. But on this competency based thing, how am I gonna go through and measure if I'm better doing a good job?
Amber Howard:Yeah. Yeah. It's a good question. So I think the. The thing that competency-based assessment does really well is it brings in locality and like a place-based approach that standardized test missed. So one part of, like I mentioned earlier a profile of a graduate a Cabool is gonna look for different skills than Springfield is gonna look for in their graduates just because of where they are. And they want different things from their graduates. So why are we assessing the same things? And the thing that I always tell my students is standardized test measure, standardized students. What classroom has standardized students? None. Like we teach them differentiated instruction and how to do. How to teach every student and how every student is different. And yet then we're told that we have to give a standardized test, and it just doesn't make sense. It doesn't fit the teaching philosophy that we're trying to build in them. And so it just feels so inauthentic to say, yeah, we have to do standardized testing and also standardized testing. It doesn't match anything that we're doing, but competency-based assessment, at least. Takes a step towards, okay, in this area, competency looks like this. And we're gonna bring in like we know that the skills that we need in Springfield are X, Y, and Z, but we know the skills that we need in Grain Valley include something totally different. And we can assess that differently because we are empowered to do so through this competency-based process.
Jon Turner:I know at some time in your career, this whole idea of concept of competency-based was new to you. What was the, what? Coming from a, maybe a more traditional training, going to a more competency base, what was the part that finally at some point, something shifted in your mind where you got it right? And tell me your aha moment.
Amber Howard:So funny enough I fell into this role of competent, like the Dean's fellow in general without fully understanding that I was doing Compentency based assessment when I was teaching. And I'll talk about this later when I compared traditional grading and everything, when I was teaching elementary school, I was doing. Competency-based learning without really knowing that's what it was called. And I think Dr. Tinkler, the Dean of the College of Education recognized that and she came to me and was like, Hey, I have this fellowship. Do you wanna do it? And I was like, I have no idea what competency-based learning is. So Dean Tinkler said, do. I think you would be well suited for this position. And I was like, I don't know what in me, but I'll try. And it turns out like it, it was exactly what I was doing without really fully understanding that's what I was doing. And then I started reading and researching and I was like, oh yeah, I know this. I was doing it. And from there I just was like, oh yeah, this was the aha moment. It was like applying the learning post. Applying it basically like reading about it was like, oh, that's what I was doing back when I was in the classroom. So I think I was maybe born to have a non-traditional. Approach to education.
Jon Turner:Okay. Amber, tell me this, as far as when you work with people that are trying to learn more about competency based instruction, what do you think is the biggest it may be a mental hurdle, it may be a skill hurdle. What is the biggest hurdle that teachers, when they're first starting out with competency-based learning struggle with?
Amber Howard:Yeah. So the, that's an easy answer. I'm part of the master teacher cadre right now, which is part of the Success Ready Student Network. And the teachers that are part of that are brand new to competency-based education. So the reason it's an easy answer is because I was just in a room with teachers that are like, what is this? And they were all like, I have no idea what this is, and I'm scared. And it feels overwhelming at first, but then when you start digging in and getting into the nitty gritty of it, teachers were like, oh, I'm already doing part of this. It's just that mind shift of getting away from the traditional grading system and what they get stuck on is okay to do this, we've gotta redo the whole system, but how do I redo the whole system? And that's where they just were like I guess I can't, and then they don't try. So they, they get stuck on the whole systemic part of it. But there's so many things that they can do outside of. Blowing up the system.
Jon Turner:So talk me through that, so your advice to someone that, in that position is it to do a little bit and see, or how, what's your advice as far as moving forward into the next steps?
Amber Howard:Ultimately changing the system is good. But there's so many things you can do in your classroom, like start doing proficiency scales, start bringing in real world learning like. What, like that shift from a standard to a competency is an easy shift. Like instead of teaching just the standard, what is the skill that actually you're trying to measure? What's something that they can apply that to in the actual world? I think when you make that shift, then it makes learning so much more meaningful in your classroom and then people start taking notice. That's what happened when I was teaching, when we started doing PBL. Then all of a sudden we got the attention of the district and then people outside the district, and then everybody's coming to our classroom, which was fine. And it was great to have people seeing all the great work that we were doing and seeing the cool stuff our students were creating. But when people start taking notice, then it's that's how we changed the system, right? From the inside is good teachers doing good work and it's hard, but. If you want to change the system from the inside, that's kinda what you gotta do.
Jon Turner:This doesn't fit exactly with but you mentioned earlier the concept of place-based learning, which those of us in rural ed have been advocates about for years. Yeah. As far as what is unique about. Resources that you have in your community that we don't have in a big city. And I'll use for example, we don't have to bring all of our rural kids to Wonders of Wildlife, to learn about outdoor life in rural parts of Missouri. Yes. We have our own streams, we have our own animals that we could observe rather than coming in. To the zoo at Dickerson Park, at Springfield or Wonders of Wildlife. And I can remember years ago, and I was principal at Cabool for nine years and I remember a teacher came in one day and said it was, this was a math teacher by the way, came into class and said, what process would I have to go through to get a bus to take us out to the cemetery, which was on the other end of town. And I was sitting there thinking, what is a math teacher want to go to the cemetery for? But it was. Part of his place-based learning concept was they were going to go out and establish a data set of birth dates and death dates, and they were going to go through and use that to calculate average death by generation. And but I remember that was an eye-opening because immediately the students were engaged and I was not, and by the way, historically, I'm not a person that likes math, but that would've interested me. That would've engaged me. And I remember I said, I'm going with you. I could drive a bus. I had a bus driving certificate, so it was easy. We just had to go get a bus and the principal drive you over. So I drove them over and to see those kids, many of which had no interest in math at all, but they were interested in just starting out, simply going tombstone into tombstone, documenting birth dates, death dates, and then coming back. After we've established our data set, we can come back to the classroom, start working on. A math concept, but the connection was made by the experience in that community, and exactly. And so I think of that all the time is that, that even when to go to art music, not that we don't take kids into these things, but just saying that sometimes we, we forget that our own local context should also play a part in the assessment. And that's what I love about this. Like you said, we're gonna test something a little different in Cabool than they're in Springfield.
Amber Howard:Absolutely. Absolutely.
Jon Turner:Yeah. Okay. I appreciate you Dr. Amber Howard here at Missouri State University and I'll put her contact information on here.