What’s New in Competency Education in K12 and Higher Education

K12 Resources and Events

• Be sure to take a look at Student and Youth Voice: Asking, Listening, and Taking Action from What Kids Can Do (thanks to Students at the Center for highlighting this in your newsletter!)
• CAPPS is offering a one day meeting September 29th in Cromwell CT on Recapturing the Agenda: Superintendent’s Role in Creating a Personalized Learning System with Tom Rooney, Lindsay Unified; Virgel Hammonds, RSU #2 in Maine;  Dr. Susan Bell  and Sharon Cournoyer, Windsor Locks Public Schools; Dr. Kathleen Greider and Kimberly Wynne, Farmington Public Schools.

In the News

• How Are Competency-Based Education and Student-Centered Learning Changing Schools? highlights the discussion from “Deep Dive on Competency-Based Education and Student-Centered Learning” at EWA’s National Seminar in May.

• The Des Moines Register’s article Five Trends to Look for This School Year includes student-led conferences and student setting the pace. Shawn Cornally from Iowa Big is quoted, “”Some students move much faster, and some students move much slower, but they learn it a lot better.”

•  Did you see Michael Horn’s inteview with Ed Surge?  Here is what had to say about competency education:

I think competency-based education is one of the key lynch pins–maybe even more so than digital–in moving towards a student-centered system that we would hope for. It’s insane if you step back from it and realize that our system is a seat-time one in which you progress, regardless of what you master, and then we act surprised if students drop out…

Competency-based assessment and a growth mindset, that shows what you know and what you do, just makes all the sense in the world. Folks who are worried about that sort of an assessment being less than accountable are missing the point. If you have a fifth grade student doing trigonometry, the fifth grade test isn’t going to pick that up. In general, competency-based assessment that’s showing where people are is a much more transparent and truthful picture of what they are learning.

In another part of the interview he talks about the impact of competency education on innovation:

A competency-based learning world or mastery learning world, as Sal Khan would call it, can allow for different pathways and free us up from certain constraints, iterating really quickly and failing fast–but not failing in major, spectacular ways. It can help encourage innovation, but is fair to educators, entrepreneurs, and students involved.

Higher Education

• Educause released Innovations Designed for Deeper Learning in Higher Education
• University of Maryland University College has produced a video describing their personalized, online, competency-based approach.
• Michele Weiss at the Christensen Institute looks at Modularization: Breaking the Currency of Higher Education.
• ACE and Blackboard have created a document clarifying terms in competency-based education in higher education. It would have been a good opportunity to help strengthen both K12 and higher education if we had an opportunity to review the terms. The more we can use the same terms with the same meaning the better off we can be. However there are difference in what is being emphasized across the two sectors and we need to be careful about it.
• The Economist covers competency education in Got Skills?