Great Schools Start with Great Teachers

Research shows that both teachers and their leaders are broadly dissatisfied with traditional methods of professional development. BloomBoard has created a comprehensive system of educator competencies (micro-credentials) based on existing / widely accepted instructional standards such as InTASC and PSEL. Implementing micro-credentials is a scalable way to improve instructional practice that is aligned to educators’ career goals.

Why Micro-credentials Matter

Each micro-credential earned signifies that an educator has met the profession’s highest standards for demonstrated practice of a specific competency. Together, with our state, district, and training development partners, we are advancing the next generation of professional learning by bringing a cohesive system of skills-based training to educators, that can help them achieve authentic growth and career advancement.

What’s in a Micro-credential

A micro-credential is a form of micro-certification earned by proving competence in one specific skill at a time, via a portfolio of evidence, created through classroom practice.

Micro-credentials on BloomBoard follow the ADDIE instructional design framework. Each micro-credential is based on a robust, standardized blueprint, grounded in instructional design best practices.

Shifting From “PD” to Authentic Growth and Career Advancement

Teachers want more opportunities to grow and lead, but they are often limited by the lack of transparency around growth and advancement opportunities made available in their organizations. BloomBoard’s purpose-driven approach provides schools and districts with more coherence and alignment around educator career pathways via micro-credentials. Teachers can clearly see what competencies are required to advance to different roles. By providing purpose-based professional learning that is linked to broader growth and advancement opportunities, schools and districts can better recruit, develop, and retain effective educators.

Career Pathways – Coherence and Alignment

Define Roles

Organizations first map out the specific roles available within an educator’s career path (e.g. induction teacher, classroom teacher, department chair, mentor teacher, content leader, etc.)

Determine Role Competencies

Each role is then defined by a specific set of competencies, represented by micro-credentials, that are required to be proficient in that role.

Develop Role Cards

To create coherence, role cards are developed that outline the required micro-credentials, how they align to evaluation frameworks, and the incentives offered for completion.  

Teachers

Explore micro-credentials available to your organization through BloomBoard and learn how you can engage in purpose-based professional learning to advance your instructional practice.

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School Administrators

Learn how micro-credentials can be implemented to help your school and district solve organization-wide challenges such as instructional improvement, teacher retention, and recruitment.

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Micro-credentials Address School and District Challenges

Schools and districts face many challenges currently, perhaps the most significant of which relate to classroom teachers. Recruiting, retaining, certifying and measurably improving instructional practice for teachers continues to present challenges to the education community. Micro-credentials can have a meaningful impact on this set of challenges by providing the supports and opportunities for authentic growth and career advancement that educators need to be successful in their profession.

Challenge: Instructional Improvement

Current research shows that traditional seat-time based professional development has very little impact on change in instructional practice or student outcomes. Additionally, research shows low levels of teacher satisfaction with many current forms of professional development as well.

Micro-credentials, a competency-based form of professional learning, focus on the application of professional learning in the classroom. Educators work on one skill at a time, and demonstrate improvement in their practice via a portfolio of evidence from their classroom practice.

Challenge: Teacher Retention

Current research indicates that when students return to school each fall, many will enter one of the more than 100,000 classrooms across the country staffed by an educator who is not fully qualified to teach. This is because districts across the country face severe and ongoing staffing shortages, thus creating a need to hire unqualified or under qualified candidates to fill need. Further, the ability of schools and districts to meaningfully train and certify these educators is severely lacking.

While many may perceive this to be primarily a recruiting challenge, research shows that the vast majority of the vacancies are created by teachers prematurely leaving the profession, many within the first five years of their practice. Further, research indicates that teacher attrition is at least twice as high as it is in other high-performing countries across the globe.

Micro-credentials present schools and districts with the immediate ability to support their educators with meaningful growth in their classroom practice, augmented by authentic collaboration with their peers, and coaching provided by instructional experts. Micro-credentials further enable schools and districts to support their educators by enabling them to create links to compensation and career advancement opportunities using micro-credentials as the building blocks of growth.

Challenge: Compensation & Advancement

In the majority of schools and districts across the country, educator compensation advancement is tied to non-meaningful measures in terms of educator growth, and career advancement is opaque at best. Research shows that these are significant factors affecting the system-wide problem of educator attrition in the country today. Further, many states are repealing previous salary advancement mandates related to these non-meaningful measures, leaving individual schools and districts with no means to enable educator advancement.

Having established equivalency with both recertification and traditional salary advancement measures, micro-credentials are quickly becoming the new currency of educator advancement across the country. Because each micro-credential earned represents proven improvement in classroom practice, many schools and districts are quickly adopting micro-credentials as the new means for salary advancement, which is more closely aligned with school, district and educator growth goals.

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