What’s New in Competency Education (September 26)
CompetencyWorks Blog
You’ll find updates about competency education in K12 and in higher education below.
K12
- Springdale Arkansas is moving ahead with their personalized, mastery-based approach. Here is an interview with Superintendent Jim D. Rollins in Ed Week and an article about Springdale from NWA Quarterly.
- Achieve has released a Student Assessment Inventory, a tool district leaders can use to take stock of their assessments and assessment strategy, and do so from a student perspective.
- Michele Cahill (Carnegie Corporation of New York) speaks with Sabrina Evans Ellis (Youth Development Institute) about youth development and its impact on school design. There are lots of incredibly valuable insights in the interview including offering students that are behind in their academics the chance to come for a summer youth leadership program that also offers them a chance to strengthen their academic skills. Carnegie Corporation’s Opportunity by Design initiative is opening up five high schools this year in NYC, Philly and Cleveland. See Springpoint for more information.
- Article on Colorado’s efforts in competency education featuring Adams 50 and Colorado Education Initiative.
- Archived webinar available at American Youth Policy Forum on District and State Considerations for Incorporating Expanded Learning into Competency-Based Systems
- Competency-based Education at Work: An Indepth Look by Digital Promise summarizes the research that is available on competency education. (We need to do much stronger evaluation that is designed around whole-school models). Or you can read the blog Schools See Results With Competency-Based Learning
Higher Education
- You can watch the recording of the Q&A session with Dave Musser & David Soo from the U.S. Department of Education for institutions in the Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN) and Breakthrough Models Incubator (BMI) consortium that intend to apply for one or more of the following experimental sites: Competency-Based Education, Limited Direct Assessment, and/or Prior Learning Assessment. The meeting was hosted and moderated by Public Agenda.
- In the report Mainstreaming Remedial Mathematics Students in Introductory Statistics, the City University of New York System describes a study comparing how students performed in traditional remedial mathematics, which is elementary algebra, versus college-level, credit-bearing introductory statistics. According to the results, the benefits of credit-bearing plus workshop are clear, students can progress more quickly to a degree while also avoiding the stigma of being placed into remediation.(Thanks to AYPF for bringing this to our attention. It’s always great to find evidence about how to structure accelerated studies well for students with academic or skill gaps.)
- A session called Competency-Based Education and the IT Organization will be offered at Educause’s Annual Conference. The session includes CIOs and leaders from several universities including Loren Brown, Capella University; Robert DeWitt, Antioch University; and Fred Hurst, Northern Arizona University.
- Inside Higher Education reports on the tension accreditation agencies have in assessing quality of innovative ideas.
- In Campus Technology’s Building on Competency-Based Education, Ruki Jayaraman, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at Argosy University explains their approach to competency-based education. Argosy U. has created the first WASC-accredited MBA in its region.
- PBS’ Rethinking College series includes an exploration of competency-based education.
- Community College Spotlight produced by the Hechinger Report has an article Competency Catches On (loved the graphic — What have you learned?)