Now that the staff has had a year to work with PBL are there plans to support better self-paced learning so that students can move at an appropriately challenging pace?

This is a great question and it relates to one of our overarching goals for school improvement - differentiating instruction to meet the needs of all our students.  It is important to note that our transition to "PBL" did not somehow make it more difficult to differentiate.  In fact, the transition work will actually help to facilitate differentiation because we will have a much better sense of where students are in their learning and what they need to continue to grow.

One fundamental shift that teachers must make to challenge students at an appropriate level is to use assessments differently than they had in the past.  A good assessment should provide the teacher and the student with important data about where the student is in relation to a learning target or standard.  The teacher must then provide the student with actionable feedback that the student can use to continue to grow.

The work teachers assign should be challenging enough so that students struggle, receive descriptive feedback, and then revise and improve their work.  When we have evidence (gathered through assessments that may come before or during an instructional unit) that a student has met a learning target or mastered a concept, we must help students to exceed those learning targets (when appropriate) and/or introduce additional learning targets so that students continue to be challenged and progress in their learning.