What is Performance Based Education?
Standards-based Education defines exactly what students should know and be able to do from one level to the next in all subjects. This proven approach helps teachers, students and families know when students need extra help, and when they need more challenging work and a faster pace.

What will be different?
Students, in partnership with teachers, will know what they are expected to learn. Under their teacher's careful guidance, students can track their own progress and will move at their own pace. Students will get the extra help and time they need to achieve the standards. As soon as they master the standards at one level, they advance to the next.

Beginning with one subject in the elementary school - math - teachers will group students by performance instead of age. Middle school and high school students will group for language arts, math, and science. With their teacher's help, small groups of students will learn with others, who have mastered a set of skills, and are now working at the same skill level.

Expectations will be consistent from class to class. Every teacher will use a scoring guide to make sure students are learning what they need to in each subject. Performance standards will be clearly defined so teachers know exactly what they are expected to teach and students are expected to learn. Students may use multiple ways to demonstrate what they know and can do.

Will our students be at a disadvantage for college scholarships?
Our students will not be at a disadvantage in being admitted to colleges or universities. Along with the transcript, this includes GPA and class rank, students typically also:

* write entrance essays,
* complete standardized tests, such as the ACT or SAT (past experience indicates that students from a standards-based system perform equally as well as any other student taking these types of tests),
* and submit a review of extra-curricular or outside community activities.

Most admissions officers take all of these factors into account, not just grade point average or class rank.

* Students graduating from Susan B. English School in a Performance-Based System will have demonstrated the skills and knowledge that meet the rigorous graduation requirements recommended by the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District.
* Performance level scores will be translated into letter grades and placed on transcripts. Proficient translates as a B an Advanced as an A.

Based on experiences from school districts already implementing Performance Based System, students from these districts are not having difficulty being admitted to colleges or universities around the country. In fact, these districts have had a higher number of students entering college than they had in the past.

Want more information?
We know parents will have lots of questions, and we will keep you well informed. Watch school newsletters this year. In the coming months, we'll invite you to see for yourself how performance-based education will work in classrooms.