Measuring Student Growth
Education is the art of growing and developing minds. It allows individuals to expand their capacity, growing in confidence & competence as their comfort zone, understanding, and abilities expand. When parents come to us looking to partner in their students' education, we view it as the highest of honors.
We want to measure up to the trust parents place in us, and that looks like transparency and accountability by providing clear, accurate communication of where students' fall academically in regards to their education goals.
Student Assessments
Student assessments fulfill two goals at Collective Academy. First, the development of a lifelong learner. Second, accountability, partnership and transparency with parents.
Assessments teach our students the skills, tools, and processes that will help them become life-long learners. Instead of typical tests that teach students to cram information the night before and then promptly forget everything they studied, assessments help our students get a clearer understanding of their abilities and growth. As students grow in passion and curiosity, they are often eager to learn as fast as they can. Assessments help us give them a personalized path towards mastery that can adjust for each student’s individual pacing and growth.
Internal assessments bring accountability & unite parents and teachers by providing clear, accurate communication of where students' fall academically and their path forward towards accomplishing their academic goals.
While we do not administer any official Utah State testing, we do have our own internal student assessments. Our assessments allow us to clearly and accurately determine which skills and topics a student has mastered in a subject, and which skills and topics they are still developing.
Our initial assessments done at the beginning of the school year are our most in-depth assessment by design, starting with the most basic skills and concepts of a subject & building to the most advanced. Our goal is to ensure that we have the most accurate picture of the student's capabilities, including any gaps they may have missed.
How Assessments Look in the Classroom
Assessments are introduced by the teacher, letting the student know the goal is not perfection, but investigation. We are curious as educators to know what a student has already learned so that they are not bored in the classroom, and what they don’t yet know so they can continue to grow. Students are not to feel any undue judgment or pressure to reach unrealistic expectations, as their assessments are motivated & informed by a student’s individual academic goals, not a school’s official grade level goals.
Regarding our initial assessments, students will be given one core academic assessment a day for the first two weeks of school. 90 min are blocked out for each assessment out of an abundance of caution, but it is expected that individual students will end at various times. Upon completion of their assessments, students leave the classroom and participate in one of our fun Assessment Days traditions.
As we progress throughout the school year, we continue to have periodic evaluations to make sure our instruction is keeping pace with the student's learning.
Academic Interventions
Sometimes, after an assessment, it becomes clear that a student requires additional academic support. These cases are rare at Collective Academy, particularly because our learning POD system allows us to easily accommodate students two levels above or below their traditional grade level. When these situations do come up, we have various ways of addressing the gap:
Students Ahead More than Two Grade Levels:
Students who are far ahead of the curriculum traditionally given at their grade level or age generally require tutoring, individualized curriculum, or both.
If a student is beyond the levels of curriculum offered at Collective Academy, we are willing to provide the student with an advanced curriculum we've reviewed and approved for student use alongside a tutor for individualized instruction. Generally, however, this type of action is only necessary for students in high school. If a student in elementary or middle school is ready for more advanced levels of curriculum, we will not hold them back unless otherwise informed by parental insight.
Sometimes, a student requires a curriculum that is not already written. This can happen in cases where a student may be advanced but has unusual gaps in a subject that need to be filled while still progressing. It also most often arises with young elementary students whose reading ability far outpaces every other subject or skill. Just because a young student can intellectually grasp dialogue, nuance, and imagery at a traditional seventh-grade level does not mean that the student is mentally or emotionally prepared for seventh-grade level content. In both these cases, Collective Academy is willing to write the student their own personalized curriculum. It does come with an additional cost to tuition (generally a couple of hundred dollars per book we write), but we are willing to do so if needed.
In all situations where a student is excelling, we rely on parental input to know how best to help the student achieve their academic goals. Most often, whether or not we should continue at a student's breakneck learning pace is determined by parental insight: is the student progressing according to their love and passion for a subject, or is it due to other pressures such as anxiety or perfectionist, black-and-white thinking? Counseling with parents allows us to best understand our students' progress holistically, not just from the traditional viewpoint of academic performance.
Students Behind More than Two Grade Levels
If a student is behind the curriculum typically administered at their grade level or age, that is a conversation we want to have early on with parents. The traditional curriculum pace has a rather consistent slope, and if a student comes in far below the anticipated pace of learning, they are in for a difficult journey. If a teacher who intervenes can get a student learning at two times their original learning rate, they are generally just running parallel with the original slope of the curriculum. To actually "catch up" with the traditional curriculum, we need a student to be learning at four times the rate in a subject they are already struggling to learn. This is an incredible ask of students, and we want to make sure we are approaching the situation by honoring the effort, commitment, and work we are asking the students to complete.
We have many tools at our disposal to help close the gap (tutoring, longer summers, additional coursework, etc.); however, which path we take will be heavily influenced by parental input. If a student is behind, but making steady progress at a reasonable pace, a parent may choose to let them continue at that rate rather than pushing them to catch up. If a student is about to enter middle or high school, graduate, or transfer to another school, the goal may be to help the student catch up as quickly as possible.
In order to help our students succeed, we require intimate partnership and clear communication with parents. Part of this partnership is the sharing of information from experiences at school and home, which determines which path would be best for students academically.