The vital componenent is the Progress section which addresses the Instruction aspects of curriculum.

COMENCE was developed after years of experience and conferring with educators and experts in the field. COMENCE seeks to resolve issues that have negatively impacted student achievement for years — the gaps between curriculum, delivery of instruction, and assessment. The primary goal of Dezmon Educational Strategies is to provide a solution that schools and school districts can afford to benefit as many children as possible.  

With equity as a major concern, COMENCE is dedicated to  advance achievement among minority students and others.  Most important, based on the program’s focus on articulation, mastery, and competency, COMENCE is geared to increase learning and achievement among ALL students regardless of backgrounds.

COMENCE is readily adapted to schools or districts with digitized enrollment/scheduling systems.

Important information can be obtained from tests.  But tests must always be considered in light of what they bring to instruction and student learning.  Both summative and formative tests have respective places in assessing student performance.  Although national standardized tests contribute to the assessment of student achievement, the role of locally developed and teacher created formative and summative assessments is most important. These tests help teachers frame instruction daily.  COMENCE provides districts, schools, and teachers tools to develop, organize and administer tests.  It also helps teachers to address students’ needs individually and in groups.  

No one knows students more academically than their teachers. COMENCE makes full use of teacher input. Rather than being based on tests only, teachers enter the progress of students based on several aspects — from classroom observation to projects. Since teachers have direct access to multiple data sources related to student learning, they are best equipped to record student progress.

Progress reporting in COMENCE focuses on key learning objectives and students’ performance over the course of their entire elementary and secondary school careers. Monitoring student progress related to knowledge and skill accomplishment gives multiple teachers multiple opportunities to address students’ needs, gaps in learning, and competencies over time throughout their entire school career..

The feature in COMENCE is about monitoring students’ progress in gaining specified learning outcomes. COMENCE was one of the first programs to focus on this intense type of progress reporting.  Now, there is a growing trend toward progress reports.  Increasingly, educators have been finding that grades alone are not sufficient to measure and report  student achievement.  Some of the factors that are often included in grading are extraneous to actual student performance. The progress reporting in COMENCE emphasizes “mastery” learning based on demonstrated student performance in academic content areas.  That said, progress reporting can correspond with grades, but grades that reflect students’ actual academic achievement and levels of mastery.  

The only required component is Curriculum.  It can be used independently to support instruction or also as a foundation for student progress reporting and testing components.

COMENCE is a powerful and comprehensive vehicle for developing, organizing, implementing, and assessing curriculum.  This versatile program provides tools that can be used at the district or classroom levels. A key function of COMENCE is coordinating the curricular and instructional materials and providing educators with rapid access to these and other resources.