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Professional Learning
Personalized Competency-Based Education

Ensure all students master essential content

  • Lead the shift to competency-based education.
  • Adopt a learner-centered approach to teaching.
  • Identify and overcome common challenges during the transition.
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On-Site & Virtual Professional Learning for Personalized Competency-Based Education

The shift from a traditional system to personalized competency-based education might seem intimidating. Rely on the knowledge and experience of our world-renowned experts to guide you forward. No matter where you are on your transition, we have a professional learning service that fits your needs.

Where are you on your professional learning journey?

Your team is ready to gain understanding, inspiration, and strategies to transition to a personalized competency-based system. See one-day services

You need more intensive sessions to deepen understanding and further your progress. See two-to-four-day services

You want to embed key processes, practices, and procedures designed to significantly improve staff performance and student achievement. See multi-day services

Your Goal

Building Your Skills

One‑Day Services

Keynote

In a customizable presentation, an associate will guide you forward on your path to implementing competency-based education.

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Personalized Competency-Based Education Overview

Learn about the key differences between time-based and performance-based systems of learning, and explore the benefits of a student-centered approach to teaching and learning that allows students to move through levels of content at their appropriate pace. This training provides an overview of key terms, concepts, and approaches for personalized learning and competency-based education, with a focus on the Marzano Resources Reinventing Schools approach.

  • Discover an approach for designing and implementing personalized competency-based education in classrooms and schools.
  • Learn about implementation from concrete examples in schools.
  • Examine practical strategies for addressing the following key design questions:
    • What content will be addressed within the system?
    • How will the learning environment support student agency?
    • How will instruction support student learning?
    • How will student proficiency be measured?
    • How will scheduling accommodate student learning?
    • How will reporting facilitate student learning?
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The Marzano Academies Model Overview

Transition from a traditional school to a high reliability organization, and lead your school to mastery. Rooted in decades of research, this training outlines how leaders and educators can implement an effective competency-based education system.

  • Understand the benefits of competency-based education.
  • Discover how to shift from traditional practices to a high reliability, competency-based system.
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Competency-Based Education: High Reliability Schools Level 5 Overview

Reach unprecedented levels of academic excellence. The Marzano High Reliability Schools (HRS) framework serves as a strategic planning model to help schools focus on specific, research-based conditions for continuous school improvement.

Develop students’ confidence that they have the skill set and mindset necessary to control their lives. In this training, you’ll learn specific aspects of competency-based education and review strategic initiatives schools should consider during implementation.

  • Explore the benefits of proficiency scales.
  • Discover how to effectively gather evidence and provide feedback to learners on their progress.
  • Acquire routines and processes to give learners voice and choice, such as SOPs, codes of conduct, and shared visions.
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Your Goal

Deepening Your Skills

Two‑to‑Four‑Day Services

Content and Proficiency Scales for Personalized Competency-Based Education

This interactive training introduces the concepts of learning target, measurement topic, learning progression, and proficiency scales. Learn how to address cognitive and metacognitive skills across levels and subject areas. Use your local standards to practice creating or adapting proficiency scales, and explore the importance of proficiency scales in learning and instruction, assessment, and measurement in a personalized competency-based system.

  • Discover how to integrate academic content, cognitive skills, and metacognitive skills into your curriculum.
  • Learn strategies for prioritizing and unpacking standards.
  • Identify measurement topics, and customize proficiency scales for your standards and students.
  • Create a plan for developing proficiency scales across grade/performance levels and subject areas.
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Learning Environments and Student Agency for Personalized Competency-Based Education

Learn how to integrate student voice and choice in classroom instruction and assessment. In this interactive training, you’ll gain strategies for providing effective feedback and working with students to develop methods for setting goals, monitoring their own progress, and celebrating successes.

  • Establish a system for setting and monitoring classroom goals through a code of cooperation.
  • Discover how to develop independent learners using standard operating procedures (SOPs).
  • Gain specific strategies for integrating student voice and choice into the teaching and learning process.
  • Examine approaches for creating a more flexible learning environment to support student independence.
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Instruction for Personalized Competency-Based Education

Explore how to plan and implement organized, well-paced units of instruction that take into account the needs, learning pace, and current status of each student. In this training, you’ll discuss planning at the unit, weekly, and daily level, as well as that can be used to monitor and adjust the flow of instruction for each student.

  • Understand how to plan and implement personalized instruction using proficiency scales.
  • Learn how to leverage and organize different types of instruction (whole group, small group, etc.) in a standards-based or competency-based system.
  • Study a model of instructional planning that prioritizes student agency and inquiry.
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Assessment for Personalized Competency-Based Education

You’ve taken the plunge into the deep end of competency-based learning. Now how will you measure student proficiency? Learn about common assessment issues in competency-based systems, how the use of proficiency scales helps to avoid these issues, and strategies for assessing learning, recording scores, and arriving at summative scores.

  • Learn about common pitfalls of assessment systems, including violating the principle of unidimensionality, over-relying on summative assessments, and over-testing.
  • Discover how to use proficiency scales as the basis for a classroom assessment system.
  • Understand the variety of assessments available to teachers in a personalized competency-based system, and learn an effective approach for recording scores.
  • Study a process for using multiple assessments administered over time on the same topic to determine a student’s score at any point in time.
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Scheduling for Personalized Competency-Based Education

A challenge at the heart of personalized competency-based education is grouping and scheduling students according to their learning needs rather than their age. During this interactive training, you’ll take a deep dive into the why and how of these foundational components. Gain clear guidance for gathering standards-based data and then using the results to create schedules that promote student proficiency.

  • Explore the benefits of a well-organized personalized competency-based education system.
  • Understand how to use student data and learning-focused school scheduling techniques to overcome common challenges faced during the transition to personalized competency-based education.
  • Receive helpful example class schedules from schools that have successfully implemented personalized competency-based education processes.
  • Learn how teachers can incorporate flexibility within individual classrooms for personalized learning.
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Reporting and Tracking Progress for Personalized Competency-Based Education

Reporting in a personalized competency-based system can look very different from current practices. This training will help you work within your current system by making tweaks to the schedule or completely rethinking the traditional schedule. You’ll examine various approaches for reporting student progress using performance levels or traditional courses and grade levels.

  • Learn strategies for making initial placements for students in a personalized competency-based classroom.
  • Discuss common questions that arise when implementing new scheduling practices.
  • Explore various strategies for working within the current system, including small-group instruction, focused instructional time and advisory, and team teaching.
  • Examine the concept of “appropriate pace” and the importance of reporting on pace.
  • Review options for facilitating transitions between buildings.
  • Study approaches for nontraditional scheduling and for using performance levels instead of grade levels for reporting.
  • Consider standards-referenced reporting as a stepping stone to a competency-based system.
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Leading the Transition to Personalized Competency-Based Education

Transitioning from a traditional, time-based system to a competency-based model is a complex endeavor. Our experts can help you examine issues related to policy, curriculum, instruction, assessment, scheduling, and more that can impact your transition. You’ll learn how to design a plan for piloting competency-based education, discover ways to support schools in creating unique models while maintaining coherence at the district level, and explore the types of professional development principals and teachers will need and how to provide it.

  • Examine key design questions and their implications for your local context.
  • Create a design and action plan for implementing personalized competency-based education in your school that addresses issues related to content, learning environment, instruction, assessment and measurement, scheduling, and reporting.
  • Consider and discuss options for transitioning within and across schools.
  • Learn about a set of recommended steps for ramping up over two years before rolling out across a set of schools or an entire district.
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Mindsets and Skill Sets for Learning

Cultivate confident thinkers who have a strong sense of agency over their lives. In this training, you’ll learn what student agency looks and sounds like in the classroom and gain strategies for developing a learner-centered culture, establishing well-defined learning targets, deliberately planning and structuring lessons, and more.

  • Explore the Mindsets and Skill Sets framework for building agency, and understand the importance of developing self-agency in students.
  • Receive detailed explanations of each component of the framework and guidance for putting it into practice in your classroom.
  • Utilize an agency unit planner to design student-centered learning experiences that develop learner agency and skills.
  • Hear perspectives from teachers and students who have transformed learning and increased student engagement using the framework.
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The Marzano Academies Model

Lead the transition from a traditional school model to an effective competency-based system in your school or district. You’ll employ 16 leading indicators to measure your school’s high reliability status and discover a process to create and address lagging indicators based on collected data.

  • Gain a deeper understanding of competency-based education.
  • Learn how to successfully shift to a high reliability, competency-based education system.
  • Review 16 school-level indicators implemented by Marzano Academies schools.
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Your Goal

Sustaining Your Skills

Multi‑Day Services

Embedded Coaching

A Marzano Resources associate will work side by side with you to ensure your staff has the knowledge and skills to move toward personalized learning and competency-based education. This transition requires an intentional approach and a commitment to new ways of thinking. Your expert coach will help you create and implement the necessary systemic changes documented in your school’s individualized learning plan.

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Global PD Teams

Unlock unlimited access to professional learning videos and book chapters that delve into the what, why, and how of personalized learning and competency-based education. The resources you will have at your fingertips with your PD library will help you make the transition from traditional time-based learning to a more effective way of ensuring students master the knowledge and skills they need to succeed. Designed in collaboration with leading experts like Robert J. Marzano and Philip B. Warrick, Tammy Heflebower, and Tina H. Boogren, Global PD Teams provides meaningful web-based learning in an on-demand format that accommodates educators’ busy schedules.

  • Gain essential knowledge from 43 curated videos in The New Art and Science of Teaching PD playlist.
  • Benefit from just-in-time learning you can access anytime, anywhere, and on any device.
  • Organize playlists around your chosen topics and share among your group to increase engagement and learning.
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