ACHIEVE Releases State Policy Framework

The expansion of competency education is being driven by school innovators, district leaders and courageous state leadership. As we continue to expand, there will be a second set of states, districts and schools joining on that believe that competency education is the right thing to do for their students but may not be fully ready to take on the hard work of innovation on their own.  So it’s important that we have the full cast of education organizations — advocacy organizations and specific stakeholder associations – fully understanding and engaged in advancing competency education.

ACHIEVE is one of the organizations to dive in early into this work by setting up a Working Group in 2012 that includes representatives from Colorado, Hawaii, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Rhode Island, Washington and Wisconsin. The Work Group also engaged organizations such as Advance Illinois, Alliance for Excellent Education, Business Education Compact, Carpe Diem, CCSSO, Data Quality Campaign, Digital Learning Now, the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Nellie Mae Education Foundation and Western Governors University. Both Susan Patrick from iNACOL and I participated as well.

They’ve just released a State Policy Framework Advancing Competency-Based Pathways to College and Career Readiness to provide guidance to the next set of states that are planning to take a step towards competency education.  Stay tuned – there is more coming. In a few weeks, ACHIEVE will release more resources including a school-level report card and policy brief that focuses on how to implement equity within a competency education system.