{"id":2847,"date":"2013-09-25T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-09-25T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/blog\/cw_post\/five-connections-between-expanded-learning-opportunities-and-competency-education\/"},"modified":"2020-02-05T12:51:00","modified_gmt":"2020-02-05T17:51:00","slug":"five-connections-between-expanded-learning-opportunities-and-competency-education","status":"publish","type":"cw_post","link":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/cw_post\/five-connections-between-expanded-learning-opportunities-and-competency-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Connections Between Expanded Learning Opportunities and Competency Education"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Homepage<\/a>
Providence After School Alliance<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For more information see the American Youth Policy Forum’s \u00a0The Role of Expanded Learning in Competency-based Education Systems.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Yesterday I had the opportunity to participate in the American Youth Policy Forum\u2019<\/a>s meeting on The Role of Expanded Learning Opportunities in Competency-based Education Systems<\/em>.\u00a0 It was a fun meeting for me as I hadn\u2019t sat in a room with the nation\u2019s after-school leaders since I was a program officer at the Mott Foundation during the launching of the 21st<\/sup>\u00a0 Century Community Learning Centers.<\/p>\n

To open the meeting, I was asked to share some thoughts about the relationship between expanded learning opportunities (ELO) and competency education. \u00a0I like the term ELO as it is so inclusive — think after-school, youth program, badging, online learning, community service, sports, arts, career\/college exploration and of course jobs.\u00a0 As there are more and more people involved in ELO that are trying to make sense of where they fit into this expanding world of competency education, as well as educators trying to figure out how to effectively use ELOs, I\u2019m sharing my comments. The following explains what competency education is and five ways that ELOs can contribute to students progress toward college and career readiness. Please please use the comments section to add your thoughts and questions so we can build up our knowledge on this important topic!<\/p>\n

\u00a0—<\/p>\n

When Susan Patrick, Executive Director of iNACOL, and I met several years ago, competency education, under a variety of names such as proficiency-based, performance-based, and mastery-based, was starting to pop up in lots of different places in the country,\u00a0 but there wasn\u2019t any place you could learn about it. We started CompetencyWorks.org with its blog, issue briefs, and wiki<\/a> to make it easier for innovators to learn from each other all around the country.<\/p>\n

I first became interested in competency education when I visited a Diploma Plus<\/a> school nearly 20 years ago.\u00a0 Three elements jumped out to me as incredibly valuable for helping students that had fallen or been pushed off of the track to graduation:<\/p>\n

1)\u00a0 Transparency <\/b>about the learning targets and rubrics changed the power dynamics in the classroom and increased student agency;<\/p>\n

2)\u00a0 Clear learning progressions<\/b> allowed teachers and students to identify where gaps needed to be filled as well as enabled students to accelerate their learning; and,<\/p>\n

3)\u00a0 Teachers focused on<\/b> teaching students<\/b> not curriculum creating deep conversations on how to help students master specific standards.<\/p>\n

So what is competency education? An important thing to remember is that competency education starts where students are \u2013 not at what grade level they should be. Thus a student entering 9th<\/sup> grade with 7th<\/sup> grade reading skills will get help to build their reading skills, not become disengaged when the vocabulary soars beyond their knowledge base. It can be done in a variety of ways, but a competency-based teacher would not ignore those gaps.<\/p>\n

The phrase competency education is being used for a lot of things. But we think unless you can see the following five elements, it isn\u2019t competency education. It may be adaptive instructional software or letting students progress upon completion, but it isn\u2019t competency education.<\/p>\n