Cedar Rapids Community School District (CRCSD) interviewed a range of teachers and students to identify opportunities to improve teaching and learning. The team heard a clear and consistent theme that stakeholders felt many students are not engaged in their learning and don’t see the purpose or how it connects to their dreams for life beyond school. After reviewing themes from the interviews, the team summarized a key problem of practice: “How might we provide relevant, standards-aligned feedback to students so that every student reaches mastery?”

This problem statement challenged the team to find solutions that help each and every student deepen their learning through opportunities for ownership and personalized feedback (including feedback relevant to the student’s goals and aspirations). This problem statement also required the team to think about more individualized and flexible systems than traditional grading structures that apply a “one-size-fits-all” approach to assessing student learning at a single point in time; such traditional systems do not always include personalized feedback or give students additional opportunity to improve their mastery.

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