CompetencyWorks | January 2017

January 24, 2017


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From the Field

Reaching The Tipping Point

Pathways to New Accountability Through the Every Student Succeeds Act

Meeting the Every Student Succeeds Act's Promise: State Policy to Support Personalized Learning

Leadership for Learning

Chugach School District: A Personalized, Performance-Based System

Low-Stakes Completion-Based Funding

Promising State Policies for Personalized Learning




Dear Colleagues: 


CompetencyWorks is hosting a National Summit on K-12 Competency-Based Education in Denver, Colorado on June 21-23, 2017. The Summit is invitation-only and will convene 100 leading innovators to move the field of competency-based education through the next generation of ideas and actionable outcomes, with a specific focus on equity and diversity. The Summit will tackle 6 issues: equity, policy, quality, meeting kids where they are, identifying emerging issues and revising the working definition of competency education. Leading up to the Summit, CompetencyWorks is designing a participatory process to engage a wider network of experts and ensure we’re tapping into the collective knowledge of the field. We invite you to participate by joining a Technical Advisory Group (TAG).


We are creating a TAG for each of the following 4 key issues, where we will share a draft paper via google docs and ask the TAG members to share their insights at some point during a one-week virtual session. If you have at least one year of experience in competency education, we hope you’ll take the opportunity to sign up for at least one TAG here. You can use this opportunity to engage your organizations, schools, professional learning communities and networks in deep conversations around these issues and share your collective insights. The schedule for the TAG sessions are listed below:

  1. Designing for Equity: January 30 – February 3, 2017 – How should we frame equity and the strategies to improve equity within a personalized, competency-based system?
  2. Developing Policy for the Long-Term: February 6-10, 2017 – What are the long-term policies and structures needed to support personalized, competency-based districts and schools?
  3. Meeting Students Where They Are: February 27 – March 3, 2017 (managed by reDesign) – As we shift from the traditional system with its focus on delivery of grade-level curriculum within a time-based model designed to sort students, to one that uses a learner-centered approach to ensure every student is reaching proficiency, what do we need to do differently to ensure that we are meeting the needs of students based on where they are?
  4. The Systems and Structures Necessary for Quality Implementation: April 3-7, 2017 – How should we think about quality that can guide implementation while still allowing for variation of models and innovation?

A new blog series on CompetencyWorks highlights our most recent report, Reaching the Tipping Point: Insights on Advancing Competency Education in New England, which explores K-12 competency education policy and practice across 6 New England states. You can read the blogs here: 

  1. Reaching the Tipping Point: Insights on Advancing Competency Education in New England
  2. The Every Student Succeeds Act: A Catalyst for Competency Education at Scale?
  3. Five Drivers of Transformation in New England States
  4. The Trouble with Prescriptive Policies When Paradigms Are Shifting
  5. A Timeline of K-12 Competency-Based Education Across New England States
  6. Three Lessons Learned from New England States Transitioning to Competency-Based Education
  7. Seven Key Questions for States Looking to Transition to Competency Education


Chris Sturgis, MetisNet

Susan Patrick, iNACOL

Natalie Abel, iNACOL

CompetencyWorks