What’s New in K-12 Competency-Based Education?

The Case for Personalized Learning

• This article explains how the traditional K-12 education system is perfectly designed for no one.
• This Hechinger Report article looks at three different school districts and their unique paths towards personalized learning.

Micro-Credentials and Professional Learning

• EdSurge provided three ways to bridge the gap between educators and learning sciences.
• This article shows how micro-credentials are transforming professional learning.
• Digital Promise released a new report, Continuing the Educator Micro-credential Movement, which explores the current K-12 micro-credential landscape to uncover insights and opportunities to help grow the effectiveness of micro-credentials in supporting educator and student learning.

Student Agency

• What is agentic learning? Getting Smart explores this topic and explains why it is important.
• Education Dive looks at how schools are creating new structures to enable and encourage student voice.

Competency-Based Physical Education

• This article looks at how a physical education class works in a competency-based system.
• Teacher Brian Kampper explains how personalized learning is breaking the “gym class” stereotype.

Teachers in CBE Systems

• Vermont teacher Jonah Ibson writes about shifts in teaching in competency-based systems.
• How can teachers make competency-based education their new normal? This Education Week article provides insights.
• This eSchool News article looks at ways to make a classroom curriculum more competency-based.

Competency-Based Education in Higher Education

• The new issue of the Journal of Competency-Based Education focusing on competency-based education in institutions of higher education was released last month. Articles include: Ensuring Faculty Success In Online Competency-Based Education Programs and Deconstructing Competency-Based Education: An Assessment Of Institutional Activity, Goals, And Challenges In Higher Education.
• The Massachusetts Board of Higher Education approved the Woodrow Wilson Academy of Teaching and Learning’s application to become a degree-granting graduate institution. The academy will be competency-based and will grant master’s degrees in education, enrolling 25 aspiring teachers in fall 2018.

Grading

It appears that competency-based education may be packaged as a grading reform in some communities. Although district and school choices about grading policy can help reinforce the emphasis on learning, neither student achievement or instruction will improve by changing grading. Here are a collection of articles about grading:

• This District Administration article explains how ‘no-fail’ grading methods are designed to better reflect students’ knowledge and abilities.
• This Burlington Free Press article looks at Vermont’s proficiency-based grading system. Here is a second article exploring their grading system.

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