Transforming Learning and Assessment for the 21st Century

Narrator: Brooklyn Prospect Charter School in Brooklyn, New York, was founded by Luyen Chou and Dan Rubenstein. The school opened its doors just weeks before we visited them. Part of their vision: a commitment to developing 21st century skills in its diverse student population.

Luyen Chou: The director of Brooklyn Prospect Charter School, Dan Rubenstein, and I were classmates at Teachers College together in a master's program.

Dan Rubenstein: We were working—both of us were working in independent schools.

Luyen: Both Dan and I were increasingly convinced that what independent schools were actually particularly good at doing was addressing collaboration, creativity, enterprise, vision.

Rubenstein: We felt that there was a need to really think beyond New York State curriculum and start thinking about 21st century skills.

Luyen: We began to get more and more intrigued at the idea of charter schools as a way to create an alloy, or an amalgam, of the very best things about public school education in America and the very best things about private, independent school education.

Narrator: Brooklyn Prospect is seeking to redefine the meaning of instruction and assessment in the 21st century, including an emphasis on assessing what is valued.

Rubenstein: Anything you value, you have to schedule it and pay for it and really commit to it.

Luyen: And how we measure the fact that those things are being learned is critically important.

Craig Cetrulo [language arts teacher]: As a team, we pinpointed several 21st century skills that we wished to focus on as a community to help our students grow. Things like creativity and innovation, productivity and perseverance, communication and collaboration.

Cetrulo: Our students will graduate from college in 2020, and they will be working in jobs that don't exist, solving problems that we are only beginning to imagine exist right now. They need these skills. They need to be able to work as members of a team. They need to be able to listen and collaborate with others who bring very different perspectives to the task at hand.

Lanolia Ufondu [principal]: In our faculty meetings, we're talking about the students' learning styles, their strengths, their weaknesses, and we're tailoring the instruction so that we're actually assessing each and every individual student according to where they were and where we want them to be.

Rubenstein: They took a standardized assessment, and that was purely diagnostic to try to see where the students are.

Cetrulo: Really focusing on helping students understand what it takes to be successful in school gives them a foothold to start being aware of their own strengths and weaknesses.

Source: From Assessment for 21st Century Learning (Program 1): The Case for 21st Century Learning and Assessment, 2010, Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

ASCD Express, Vol. 5, No. 17. Copyright 2010 by ASCD. All rights reserved. Visit www.ascd.org/ascdexpress.