We Are Not Alone

This past week the Adams 50 public school district just outside of Denver received attention from two national publications, Parade magazine and eClassroom news for their unique approach to organizing their students beginning in August. In this 10,000 student district, the students will not be assigned grade levels because of age. Students will move through ten levels according to their “level of proficiency.” They may even be in different levels depending on their proficiency in each subject. The “only allowable score for a student to move on to the next lesson is a “B” equivalent,” as written in eClassroom. The article also quoted advocates of this system as saying it flips “the traditional system around to focus on mastery of the material rather than seat time.”

Surprisingly a public school has bucked the traditional social promotion system which provides almost everyone with a grade of “A” to one that sets some kind of expectations for mastery.

Relationships and nonuniform mastery would be our significant differences as compared to the Adams 50 project. Because we are built around student’s mastery of material, each subject contains different expectations for mastery.

For example, in the subject of math, mastery is a score of 85% on daily work and 80% on weekly tests. In Spanish, 95- 100% is the mastery expectation on daily work with 95% set as passing for unit tests.

The difference in expectations should be obvious. When performing thirty math problems at one sitting, missing three or four problems on the assignment does not require much in the way of time to correct. Over the twenty plus years we have instructed with these expectations, most students who have a good understanding of their math will miss no more than three problems on an assignment, plus the students seem to work extra hard not to have to repeat a lesson, so they check their work closer. Consistently a passing score of 80-85% works well in math.

Spanish requires different standards. We work under the idea that only when words are learned and applied at close to 100% will someone be able to add to their language base. Memorizing vocabulary at 80% accuracy puts a student at a great disadvantage as compared to someone who learns all of the words.

In addition to nonuniform mastery, relationships developed between a teacher and parents plus teacher and students provide a significant difference between Adams 50 and us. We hire individuals which have a history of liking people and working well with them. Our primary and elementary multigrade classrooms are designed so that the parent and teachers develop a working relationship with each other during the three years they are together in the 1st-3rd or 4th-6th grades. Similarly, the 7th-12th grade students are scheduled to be with the same instructor for a particular subject for more than one year. While the relationships are very important throughout each student’s instructional time at Bios, those relationships in high school provide support for recommendations for life after Bios.

Mastery of concepts is a major change for the school of Adams 50. For me, it has been a way of life for over twenty-five years. With nonuniform mastery and relationships developed with parents and students coupled with our many years of experience making this work, these and other reasons are part of how Bios Christian Academy works to provide an exceptional education for our students.