CompetencyWorks | June 2019

Dear Colleagues, 

In the past month, CompetencyWorks wrote about recent visits to district schools in Harrisburg, South Dakota and Farmington, Minnesota to see competency-based systems change in action.
 

In Harrisburg, shifts to competency-based, personalized learning are happening systemically across all grade levels, as described in this blog series about district-wide transformation, multi-age groupings at the elementary level, and habits of mind and structuring a competency-based elementary classroom.
 

Farmington is shifting toward deeply personalized learning, and their strong focus on teacher agency means that the transformation is taking many different forms:

• “Radical Trust” and Teacher Agency Drive Deeper Change in Farmington
• Shifting the English Department to Competency-Based Learning and Assessment
• Interstellar Time at Boeckman Middle School

CompetencyWorks also shared:

• A Snapshot of K-12 Competency Education State Policy Across the United States, the 2019 update of the national map that CompetencyWorks publishes annually. The map categorizes each state as “Advanced,” “Developing,” “Emerging,” or “No Policies in Competency Education,” and the blog describes policy changes for states whose level has increased.
• A series of simple photos that help translate the idea of proficiency-based grading for people who are only familiar with traditional forms of grading, from the Early Childhood Center of Kenowa Hills Public School District and KnowledgeWorks.
• What’s New In K-12 Competency-Based Education?, with brief reviews of new research, resources, and professional learning opportunities in the field.

 

Eliot Levine,Susan Patrick, Ashley Jones 
iNACOL CompetencyWorks