October 30, 2025

Dear Educator,

I just got home from the FullScale Symposium in New Orleans, and my heart is full. Across four days, I connected with long-time friends and colleagues whom I deeply admire, engaged in new collaborations that pushed my thinking, and felt a general sense of optimism about the growing movement to redesign schools and practices to create learner-centered ecosystems where all learners know who they are, thrive in community, and actively engage in the world as their best selves. 

For this week's Bright Spot, I want to highlight one of the main events FullScale hosts each year: the youth panel.

With Gratitude,

Let's Build Them Up, Not Tell Them They're Failing

No surprise, the youth panel was amazing. I love hearing the perspectives of young people and the clarity with which they communicate their needs. Joshua Candeo from Desert View High School shared that early in high school, he failed some classes. It was demotivating, and he felt stuck. He asked us to think about what it really means to fail and urged educators to “not just tell me I’m failing but help me understand why and show me how to improve.”

FullScale Symposium Youth Panel participants

Candeo's message is at the heart of competency-based assessment and what we want for all learners (yes, that includes adults, too)—to believe they can improve and have the support to do so throughout their learning journeys. Shifting our assessment lens doesn’t require a new program or set of technology tools (although they can help). It starts with prioritizing learning and learners. Then, it's about creating systems, structures, and relationships to set clear expectations, align goals, design meaningful learning experiences, and provide timely feedback, guidance, and support.

Are you looking to create a competency-based assessment system in your school or district? Competency-based learning and assessment is core to Learner-Centered Collaborative's Ecosystem Framework. When working with partners on their learner-centered visions and implementation strategies, we support them with things like redesigning report cards, reimagining rubrics, and creating schoolwide scorecards that measure what matters most. If you want to bring competency-based reporting to life in your learning community, connect with us here to see how we can help.

At Learner-Centered Collaborative, we've been working with schools across the country to redesign their learning environments. Now, we're bringing our lessons learned and real-world stories to you with our newly published School Redesign Playbook! Access it here.

Resources to advance your learner-centered practice

📖 A Community-Owned Narrative is Making Learner-Centered Change Real in Colorado Springs. "Perhaps the clearest evidence of a shared responsibility for change is the way West is rewriting its story. For years, the school carried a challenging reputation in the neighborhood. Changing that narrative couldn’t come from a press release or a single leader’s speech. It had to come from the community itself." Dive into their story.

👀 Durable Skills for the Intelligence Age. "Asking kids to do multiple choice questions in the age of AI, at a time when those sorts of questions can be answered quite efficiently, may be an indication that we need to reimagine how we think about assessing success." Hear more from Devin Vodicka.

🎥 How Districts Are Making Big Moves to Create Learner-Centered Systems. "Districts across the country are reimagining education through Big Moves: bold, systemic shifts that align policy, practice, and purpose to center learners. Join us for an engaging one-hour webinar as we explore how systems can embrace meaningful change grounded in agency and real-world learning." Register here.