Competency-Based Education: Moving Forward with Purpose

This post is part of our Aurora Institute Symposium 2024 series moving forward ideas from #Aurora24 sessions.

In the session Competency-Based Education: Looking Back, Looking Forward (See Part 1: The Field in Motion), discussions quickly evolved from past achievements to current and future challenges. As a community committed to progress, we’re always ready to face these challenges head-on, seeking solutions that drive sustainable change. There was a strong sense at the Symposium that we’re moving past the initial phase of simply uplifting innovators. Now, we’re tackling barriers and striving to build robust policy infrastructure to ensure the longevity of competency-based education (CBE). Here are key highlights of the topics we need to tackle:

Building Bridges and Understanding

Clarifying CBE as an Approach, Not Just an Instructional Strategy
CBE is a comprehensive framework centered on fostering student growth and success rather than sorting students by performance. It’s vital that districts and schools grasp that CBE isn’t a one-size-fits-all method; it draws on diverse, research-informed practices that enhance learning. How can we more effectively communicate what CBE is – and isn’t – to expedite the process of introducing CBE through the development of shared understanding, design, and implementation?

Collaborating with Special Education to Address Misalignments
While CBE advocates believe it can meet the needs of students with diverse abilities, IDEA proponents sometimes have reservations. How can we foster collaboration to thoroughly examine potential misalignments between CBE and IDEA, crafting solutions that honor both sets of priorities?

Pursuing Equity through Collaboration and Engagement
We can’t overlook the systemic inequalities that have shaped our educational landscape and still affect students today. CBE has the potential to spark a love for learning in every child, yet not everyone agrees on how to reach this goal. How can we build connections with advocates who have differing perspectives on equity and prepare collectively to address any challenges that might emerge?

Improving Implementation

Addressing Core Implementation Challenges
The Symposium raised numerous implementation issues – such as facilities, daily operations, and the use of time as a resource – that can hinder effective CBE approaches. How can the field build collective knowledge and recommend necessary policy changes? Additionally, how might AI be harnessed to support personalized learning and streamline CBE practices that empower students, parents, teachers, and administrators?

Investing in Collective Teacher Efficacy
Researcher John Hattie found that collective teacher efficacy – teachers working together with confidence in their collective impact – has a greater influence on student success than many other factors such as classroom management or socio-economic status. This requires fostering environments where teachers learn, plan, and reflect together. Schools need to be designed to support collaboration, co-teaching, and peer-to-peer mentoring that draws from everyone’s expertise. How can we embed collective teacher efficacy into the core understanding of CBE and design for it from the start?

Early Intervention in Teacher Preparation
New teachers often enter the field without a deep understanding of learning research or how CBE differs from traditional models. Retraining teachers in CBE practices is a major investment that drains financial resources, time, and leadership from districts and schools each year. How can we accelerate the integration of research-based instruction and the CBE model into teacher preparation, evaluation, and certification?

Ensuring Sustainability

Redesigning Assessment and Accountability Policies
The Measuring Forward Network (formerly the Student-Centered Assessment and Accountability Coalition (SCAAC)) is working to create meaningful assessment systems and advocating for federal policy advancements, funding, and a shared learning agenda. Their reports, Clearing the Path for Assessment Innovation and Measuring Forward: Emerging Trends in K-12 Assessment Innovation, are setting the policy direction. How can we strengthen our collective efforts to ensure the Measuring Forward Network’s initiatives gain traction at the state and federal levels?

Supporting Longitudinal Studies
With CBE, personalized learning, and social-emotional learning on the rise, research is expanding, though often in smaller studies due to funding limitations. Longitudinal studies co-designed with districts and schools could offer deeper insights. How can we partner with researchers to design longitudinal studies that focus on fully developed CBE practices and capture the comprehensive outcomes critical to student success?

Realigning Transitions to Higher Education
Conversations between K-12 and higher education are growing, thanks to initiatives from organizations like Big Picture Learning and the Mastery Transcript Consortium. However, there’s more work to align the high school-to-college transition with practices that support all learners. How can we increase higher education’s engagement as an advocate for equitable, high-quality education?

Fostering Innovation, Interventions, and Research-Aligned Policy
Momentum for innovation is building, but we must continue advancing policy at the state and federal levels to support a CBE approach that reflects the latest research on learning. How can we engage policymakers to update educational frameworks and programs to align with the research on learning and the principles of personalized CBE?

For those who couldn’t join the Symposium this year, these highlights capture the energy and conversations buzzing throughout the sessions and hallways. We’d love to hear from you! What do you see as the most pressing challenges and opportunities as we work together to advance competency-based education? Reach out with your thoughts or share on social media, and let’s continue to build a movement that does what’s best to help kids learn.

Learn More

• The Field of Competency-Based Education Is In Motion
• At the Aurora Institute Symposium 2024, A Call to Center Young People and Transform K-12 Systems
• Deeper Competency-Based Learning: Making Equitable, Student-Centered, Sustainable Shifts

Chris Sturgis has spent her professional life building national collaborative efforts to bring about improvements in the education system. She was one of the leaders in creating the policies for multiple pathways to graduation. As co-chair, she enabled the philanthropic members of the Youth Transition Funders Group to work together across the sectors of juvenile justice, foster care, education, and workforce development toward a vision of Connected by 25. Most recently, she co-founded CompetencyWorks, the go-to source about competency education. In 2018, she was awarded Outstanding Individual Contribution to Personalized Learning Award by iNACOL.