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MASTERY OF KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS

...developing a deep understanding in and across academic disciplines

What is Mastery of Knowledge and Skills?

 

Most people in North America consider it the main function of our school system to help our students develop their "Mastery of Knowledge and Skills". At EL Education schools like REALMS however, this is just one dimension of student achievement, albeit a very important one. Mastery of Knowledge and Skills, at REALMS, means several things. The main facet of this dimension of achievement is mastery over a grade-level set of content knowledge and skills in each academic discipline. And while our current educational system has reduced the measurement of this dimension down to a student's scores on standardized math and reading tests, we know that it encompasses much more. For us, this "core set of grade-level content and skills" includes critical college and career skills including the ability to:

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  • Apply learning: transfer knowledge and skills to novel, meaningful tasks

  • Think critically: analyze, evaluate, and synthesize complex ideas and consider multiple perspectives

  • Communicate clearly: write, speak, and present ideas effectively in a variety of media within and across disciplines

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Each of the claims below shows, in different ways, how REALMS students have demonstrated exceptional Mastery of Knowledge and Skills. The first two claims focus primarily on data that describes our students' remarkable growth and achievement in this dimension. However, we believe that test score data does NOT tell the whole story. Our 3rd claim in this dimension highlights just some of the non-test score evidence of Mastery of Knowledge and Skills. Lastly, at REALMS we believe that each of the dimensions of student achievement (Mastery of Knowledge and Skills, Character and High Quality Work) influences the others, and that one of the key reasons our students DO score so well compared to their peers on standardized assessments is that we balance our efforts between all three dimensions. Our intentional focus on character and the elements of high quality work drive our students' Mastery of Knowledge and Skills.

 

Claim 1 - Performance:
Our unique student body composed of diverse, non-traditional learners show performance and growth rates above their state, district and comparison-school peers in math and literacy at all grades.
Claim 2 - ALL Students:
Our special education and economically disadvantaged sub groups demonstrate consistent and significant annual growth over time in their math and literacy skills and outperform their state, district and comparison schools peers.
Claim 3 - Literacy:
Our students' work demonstrates a well-developed ability to analyze, evaluate, and synthesize complex ideas.
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