Caitlin Reid, Katie Kilcoyne
Hetsko, Sarah Keiser, Russell Bradley-Cook, and Jane Kim
THE BRIDGE PROGRAM: CONNECTING PERFORMANCE-BASED REFORM WITH
POST-SECONDARY EDUCATION
The
Profile of Learning is a performance-based reform taking place in
The project began as a response to the need to assess students more fully and to create a more accountable program in the public schools. Rather than solely relying on standardized tests (also called Norm-Referenced testing) to determine if students are ready to graduate or progress to the next grade, the Profile stems from the movement calling for students to demonstrate their knowledge. This movement is commonly called the Out-Comes Based movement.
Norm-Referenced testing is used extensively across the country, and is a part of President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” education plan. This method is favored because of its history of reliability, its objectivity, the ease of administering it, and the cost-efficiency of scoring it (Burger and Burger 9). These reasons make it difficult for new kinds of assessment and accountability to be instituted.
The Profile is an attempt to create a system of assessment and school accountability through demonstration of knowledge. “The high standards define what students should know, understand, and be able to do to demonstrate a high level of achievement” (“High Standards for Minnesota’s Children”).
The Profile of Learning requires students to accomplish 24 “performance packages.” The packages are divided into categories: Read, Listen, & View; Write and Speak; Arts and Literature; Mathematical Concepts and Applications; Inquiry and Research; Scientific Concepts and Applications; Social Studies; Physical Education and Lifetime Fitness; Economic and Business; and World Languages.
In order to graduate, all students must complete nine required packages, and the other 15 are choices made by the students within each category. Their teacher assesses the students through the use of portfolios. These portfolios contain all of the student’s work pertaining to the packages. The student is then awarded a score of one to four.
The Profile of Learning’s ultimate goal is to reach all students in secondary public education and ensure that they graduate with deeper knowledge.
The existing Profile has several problems associated with it for students who are planning on attending colleges and universities. This is partly due to the lack of communication between secondary and post-secondary schools. Communication between these two bodies is difficult to achieve because they currently function independently of each other.
The lack of communication leads to confusion over the assessment of secondary work. A program that evaluates students based on portfolios is perceived to not prepare students as well as portfolio methods. However, the Profile prepares students through performance-based teaching methods that are equally valid. When students enter into these institutions, they are often faced with more traditional forms of teaching and learning, such as standardized multiple-choice tests and lectures (Bridge Project: About the Bridge Project, 2). The Profile, although not using these methods, teaches students the same material. Currently Universities do not recognize the validity of these differences and this is what needs to be addressed.
Students in secondary schools know that universities do not consider alternative forms of teaching and assessment as highly as norm-refrenced testing in their admissions decisions. Because of this, students would rather spend their time preparing for SATs, AP tests, and taking advanced classes. In order for the students to get what they are supposed to get from the Profile, they need to be assured that universities will recognize and value their non-traditional work in high school.
Programs, such as the Profile, create problems for students seeking post-secondary education. Post-secondary institutions assess students on skills and content that are independent of the education goals of the Profile. This is partly due to a lack of communication between secondary and post-secondary bodies.
In order to make high schools’ curricula more amenable to the demands of colleges and universities, it is necessary to include the perspectives of everyone involved, including students, school districts, parents, higher education institutions, educators, high schools, and researchers. The following proposals are some of the ways in which analysts have tried to reform the current system. In its place, they wish to institute high school policies that will balance a good education with the entrance requirements of places of higher learning.
Stanford University has proposed a Bridge Project that’s goal is to strengthen “the alignment between higher education admissions-related requirements and K-12 curriculum frameworks, standards, and assessments” (“Bridge Project”). Part of the university’s project will be to analyze some of the other reform initiatives occurring around this same issue, including Oregon’s Proficiency-Based Admission Standards System and the development of Pre-school to age 16 councils in Georgia and Maryland. The project will also examine affirmative action programs and their policy reactions in California and Texas (“Bridge Project”).
Dual credit programs, such as those studied by the Pew Charitable Trusts, offer high school students the opportunity to earn college credits, while also earning high school credits. Though the programs differ from school to school, students can earn dual credits by either completing a course and passing exams, or by obtaining credit that is then transcripted as a regular college course. Some programs offer high school students the chance to take courses at a nearby college, while others provide courses at the high school or at a technical school.
Richard Clark, of the Institute for Educational Inquiry, reported that the Pew study found that the positive aspects of these dual credit courses include: “saving money, increasing access to postsecondary education, helping students with the transition to postsecondary schooling, improving the high school curriculum, strengthening the coherence between high school and college curricula, improving the quality of technical training for workers and helping colleges recruit students” (Clark, “Dual Credit”). These results all seem to be excellent ways in which to increase the communication between high schools and colleges, and to match the standards of secondary schooling to those of higher learning institutions.
But, as Clark notes, some people find faults in dual credit programs. “For example, some doubt that the quality of high school courses really equals that of college courses, whereas others say that even though the course is identical, the quality of the experience is different. Some express concern about the impact on a high school of having some students college-level courses while others do not share classes with these students.” Other people claim that students from low-income cohorts are underrepresented in these programs (Clark, “Dual Credit.”). It is necessary to further evaluate dual credit programs and to examine who benefits and who is potentially harmed. This initiative provides one way of linking college curricula to that of high schools.
Another idea intended to support high school students in their transition to higher education was reported in an MSNBC article. The article stated that a Tennessee high school built a $7 million wing in order to “keep 12th-graders engaged in learning and to prepare them for college or work” (“Maryville High Builds Wing Just For Seniors”).
The National Commission on the High School Senior Year found that “roughly one-third of college freshmen [and women] take remedial courses. Some who don’t attend college end up in low-paying jobs because they lack reading and math skills” (“Maryville High Builds Wing Just For Seniors.”). It is clear from these estimates that many high school students are not well prepared to make the transition to college because the basic high school curriculum they took does not match up to the standards expected by colleges. In order to ameliorate this problem, Maryville High has begun offering “Senior Transitions classes” in which they perform community-service projects, engage in discussions regarding their independent studies, are encouraged to make connections to the world outside high school, and “shadow adults who work in careers of interest” (“Maryville High Builds Wing Just For Seniors”). The new wing provides such facilities as conference rooms, a lecture hall, and a new orchestra room.
What is good about this initiative is that all seniors all involved in the opportunities, rather than just the minority of students who would be taking dual credit courses. For these projects to succeed, every student’s education needs to be focused on achieving the standards desired by colleges and universities. Of course in each of these programs, it is essential that colleges be informed as to what students in these projects are being taught, in order for colleges to evaluate the students fairly.
In order to change the educational system into one continuous process and address the previously mentioned problems we propose an addition to Profile in the form of a Bridge Program. In this reform initiative, we are concerned about the college-bound students, for the new Profile graduation requirements are not perceived by college admissions officers to prepare them for their institutions.
High school is now seen as a means to an end. For some it is the finale of their educational process. For others, it is a way to further their goals of post-secondary education. Profile works to teach students not just the materials they will encounter for a few hours on a standardized test, but life-long skills that will be useful throughout college and beyond. The Bridge Program aids the Profile in accomplishing this goal by validating the Profile’s methods of teaching and assessment to post-secondary institutions.
The Bridge Program entails members from both high school and college communities coming and working together to create criteria for those students entering college. The Bridge Program will work to foster and further dialogue and discourse between high school and college; it is a way for both sides to come together to shape and mold the type of learner they desire and feel would be most successful in both environments.
The Bridge Program would essentially work to set up a system in which the Profile high schools could voice the type of student/learner they wish to develop during those years, while allowing the colleges to answer and address how that student would then fit into their learning environment. It would be turning the educational system into a continuous process that ends not after high school, but after all a student’s desired education is attained. The Bridge Program would strive to aide students throughout the journey by always preparing them for the next step, and also ensuring that the colleges are aware of what they are receiving.
A second aspect of the Bridge Program lies with the high school counselors. Some type of form or letter would be developed by the high school to be given to any colleges in conjunction with the standardized tests. This letter would outline how the school teaches its students, and what is expected of them upon graduation. It would outline what information and/or skills the students possess in place of norm-referenced testing assessment. It would also shed light on possible low standardized test scores, for a student whose high school is focused mainly on critical thinking may not score as high as a student whose high school focused solely on preparing the student for the test. This letter would resemble that required by colleges, such as Macalester, from home-schooled students; it would describe how the student learns as well as what they have learned.