Once you know roughly what you want to measure, you need a system for grouping those competencies so your review tool doesn’t turn into a random list. There are three common ways to do this, and they’re not mutually exclusive — most centers lean on one as the primary structure and borrow from another where it’s useful.

Scheme 1: Maryland Core Knowledge Area (CKA) Alignment

Group competencies under the state’s own knowledge areas: Child Development, Curriculum, Assessment, Family/Community, Health/Safety/Nutrition, Professionalism, and Special Needs. This is the easiest scheme to defend during licensing or EXCELS review, since it maps directly onto language MSDE already uses.

Example: under Health/Safety/Nutrition, you might place “Active Supervision During Outdoor Play” alongside “Handwashing and Diapering Procedures” and “Allergy Protocol Compliance.”

Scheme 2: Functional Categories

Group competencies by the kind of work they represent: Regulatory (health/safety, ratios, COMAR compliance), Instructional (lesson implementation, classroom environment, child interactions), and Relational & Professional (team collaboration, family communication, self-directed growth). This scheme is useful when you want the review conversation itself organized around “types” of performance rather than state terminology.

Example: the same “Active Supervision During Outdoor Play” competency sits under Regulatory here, next to “Ratio Compliance During Transitions” — both are about meeting a hard safety standard, not about instructional quality.

Scheme 3: Role-Appropriate Categories

Group competencies by job role, with each role carrying its own competency cluster and its own expected level of autonomy — Lead Teachers, Assistant Teachers, Aides, and Support Staff. This scheme is most useful when your job descriptions already vary significantly in responsibility and you want the review tool to reflect that directly, rather than applying one universal list to every position.

Example: for a Lead Teacher, “Active Supervision During Outdoor Play” includes the added expectation of positioning assistant staff and directing coverage; for an Aide, the same competency is scoped to following the positioning plan the Lead Teacher sets.

Comparing the three schemes

Scheme	Organizes around	Best fit if…
Maryland CKA Alignment	The state’s seven knowledge areas	You want the review to map directly onto EXCELS/MSDE language
Functional Categories	Regulatory / Instructional / Relational & Professional	You want the review conversation organized by type of work, not state terminology
Role-Appropriate Categories	Job role and level of autonomy	Responsibilities vary a lot by role and you want that reflected directly in the tool

None of these is the “correct” answer — pick whichever one makes the review easiest to explain to your own staff, or blend two if that fits your organization better. What matters for the rest of this lesson is that you’ve picked one, because Steps 3 and 4 both build on top of it.