What’s New

Are you trying to get on top of the literature on competency education? iNACOL has put together a summer reading list. In addition, here are highlights about competency education and related topics that have been in the news recently:

K-12 Competency Education

• From ACHIEVE: Advancing Competency-Based Pathways to College and Career Readiness Series: The Imperative for State Leadership
• From Getting Smart:  Tom Vander Ark looks at how Education Achievement Authority Pioneers Flexible Blended Learning Spaces
• From RAND: Competency-Based Education in Three Pilot Programs: Examining Implementation and Outcomes, by Jennifer L. Steele, Matthew W. Lewis, Lucrecia Santibanez, Susannah Faxon-Mills, Mollie Rudnick, Brian M. Stecher, and Laura S. Hamilton.
• From Getting Smart: Teachers Deserve Better Tools for Tracking Subskills,Tom Vander Ark raises the tough issues in building the capacity to track student progress.
• From Edutopia: For anyone trying to better understand the value of formative assessment in the learning process, Dipsticks: Efficient Ways to Check for Understanding by Todd Finley includes a list of 53 techniques.

Competency Education in Higher Education

• From Mathematica: Developing Competency-based Program Models in Three Community Colleges
• From Christensen Institute: Hire Education: Mastery, Modularization, and the Workforce Revolution
• From New America Foundation: What’s in the Department’s Competency-based Experimental Site Notice?
• From Educause: Next Gen Tool: Competency Report highlights Northern Arizona University’s competency report that identifies specific skills and abilities of its graduates, giving employers a
  clearer picture of the academicprojects that prepare a student for the workplace.