Mooresville District Adopts Competency Based Assessment Platform
The Mooresville
Graded School District will
use a cloud-based platform to evaluate the academic progress of
all of its 6,100 students in seven schools.
The
district has selected MasteryConnect's platform to help teachers identify
a student's level of understanding of core academic concepts, allowing
them to
then personalize instruction for each student and each classroom.
MasteryConnect representatives said that its platform can improve instruction
by
giving immediate feedback, assessments, results and data that can lead
to quick
revision of teaching strategies.
MGSD
Superintendent Mark Edwards said he was
particularly happy because MasteryConnect's assessments can be accessed
by any
student's electronic device. Eight years ago, the district began the
process of
providing every student with devices. At this point, kindergarteners
and
first-graders have iPads for their use at school. Second- and
third-graders
have laptops for use at school and all students in the fourth grade and
above
have MacBooks that they can both use at school and at home.
In
the classroom, teachers can use MasteryConnect
to measure each student's mastery of concepts, but also identify trends
and
outliers on a classroom scale. District administrators can use it to
gauge
academic performance across all grade levels.
"Teachers
can issue assessments and know quickly
which students are grasping teaching concepts and which need
remediation,"
Edwards said. "The platform takes it one step further by giving
students a
glimpse into how they are scoring and what they need to work on."
MGSD
is one of 73 district members of the League
of Innovative Schools, a network of district leaders who are leveraging
technology to improve student outcomes.
"Incorporating
competency-based tools into
teaching is precisely the type of action we want our schools to take,"
said
League Director Sara Shapiro.
About the Author
Michael Hart is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and the former executive editor of THE Journal.