Innovations

• Performance Assessment: Assessing Know-How As Well As Know-What

  Our basic premise is that the current assessment system disadvantages many young people who can demonstrate what they know by performing in authentic and challenging contexts.

• Developing Certifications for Work Readiness

  We wish to develop innovative approaches to designing and using new forms of certificates beginning in high schools and continuing into postsecondary learning and work. At a time when we need much broader and insightful assessments of student competence, testing and assessment have dangerously narrowed the definition of success on at best a limited set of skills and at worst knowledge that is both narrow and at times false.

• Rebranding Vocational Education: Developing Innovations in Career and Technical Education

  “The high schools [Big Picture] has created are wildly different from what teens in America have come to expect…but there’s nothing wild about it; children learn best by doing meaningful work that engages them.”
  - Edutopia; March 2006

• Association for High School Innovation (AHSI)

  “Diploma Plus has increasingly benefited from collaborative work among our organizations. The AHSI network has evolved from a loose affiliation to a rich collaboration.” – Bill Diehl, Diploma Plus

• Big Picture School Network Peer Review Process

  Data will be collected both quantitatively and qualitatively, allowing schools to make decisions about how to adjust structures and designs to improve opportunities for students. The peer review process will provide some suggestions for formulating these adjustments, while also providing access to network support, coaching, and an outside eye for review.

• The National College Transition Network

  The mission of the National College Transition Network is to support Big Picture schools as they assist students and their families’ access to post secondary education opportunities. We are committed to developing multiple postsecondary pathways and transition and retention support systems for all Big Picture students and alumni.

• College Unbound: Big Picture College

  We believe the positive experiences for communities, educators, industry, and students and their families in this model will impact post-secondary policy, and not only open the doors of higher education to students increasingly blocked out of college, it will ensure that students graduate with a degree and experience in hand, prepared to successfully participate in our New Economy.

• A Longitudinal Study of Big Picture School Graduates

  The Big Picture school design is unconventional, and we define success as a wider array of quantitative and qualitative information beyond typical NCLB, state, or district requirements. For this reason, Big Picture is using a longitudinal study in order to document student outcomes, understand the conditions for successful transitions to college and careers, inform school improvement, and support the continued personal and professional development of alumni.

• Training and Support for Principals and School Staffs

  We provide a variety of experiences to train our principals and teachers, utilizing the knowledge of our network, combined with trained coaches and content consultants. Like our schools, our training is personalized for the individual needs of the school and models the culture we are trying to teach. We expect principals and teachers to learn new ways of educating students, while at the same time un-learning the methods that have not proven successful in traditional schools.

• Strengthening Mathematics/Quantitative Reasoning

  Mathematics and quantitative reasoning are challenging areas for many alternative schools, and Big Picture Learning (BPL) currently is undertaking an extended redesign of our curriculum and teaching practices in this area. Our approach is to bring strengthened academics to what is relevant to the student as distinct from prevailing designs that attempt to bring relevance to academics. Ultimately, we believe our work can meld these two approaches.