{"id":2426,"date":"2018-04-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-04-05T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/blog\/competencyworks-releases-equity-report-for-ensuring-all-students-succeed-in-personalized-competency-based-education\/"},"modified":"2019-12-16T12:56:13","modified_gmt":"2019-12-16T17:56:13","slug":"competencyworks-releases-equity-report-for-ensuring-all-students-succeed-in-personalized-competency-based-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/blog\/competencyworks-releases-equity-report-for-ensuring-all-students-succeed-in-personalized-competency-based-education\/","title":{"rendered":"CompetencyWorks Releases Equity Report for Ensuring All Students Succeed in Personalized, Competency-Based Education"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The role of public education has never been more important \u2013 it is the bedrock of democracy. Competency-based education holds promise as a uniquely powerful model for fostering equity, but only if equity is an intentional design feature embedded in the culture, structure and pedagogy. <\/span><\/p>\n

Despite dramatic improvements in education over the last century, the one-size-fits-all, delivery-of-curriculum, time-based system simply does not work as well as needed. In fact, the traditional system was designed to rank and sort students through a combination of practices: curriculum based on age regardless of students\u2019 previous experiences, grading policies that inflated or reduced grades based on behavior, educational pathways that set different expectations for students and passing students on to the next level with Cs and Ds at the end of each year despite the fact that they had not learned what they needed for more advanced courses. <\/span><\/p>\n

With the idea that intelligence was immutable underpinning the traditional K-12 system, children were either labeled smart or not so smart, good students or not, and nothing could change that. Different expectations were set for students. Teachers played a powerful role in determining students\u2019 futures based on whether or not they were deemed college material. Furthermore, if intelligence was unalterable, there was not much an educator could do to change the educational trajectory of students. Efficacy and accountability of the teaching profession and schools were diminished.<\/span><\/p>\n

The students who have been most harmed by the traditional system are those born into families without a college education and\/or that struggle to make ends meet, children of color, children with disabilities who require some type of accommodation and children who are new to our country or were raised in homes speaking a primary language other than English. We wrap these children together under the label \u201chistorically underserved.\u201d The students who benefited the most were middle and upper income, white, and until the last twenty years, males. <\/span><\/p>\n

Across the country, educators and policymakers are coming to the same conclusion: the structure of the traditional system is a barrier. The premise of competency education is that the culture, structure and pedagogy of the traditional education system, designed to sort students, can be replaced with one that is designed for every student to succeed. <\/span><\/p>\n

Still, the question remains: How should we think about equity in a personalized, competency-based system to ensure that every student is indeed successful? <\/span>Competency<\/span><\/i>Works released a new report, <\/span>Designing for Equity: Leveraging Competency-Based Education to Ensure All Students Succeed<\/span><\/i><\/a>, which offers equity strategies for personalized, competency-based education to ensure a more equitable K-12 education system. Districts and schools can use the equity principles within this report to develop an equity agenda within their personalized, competency-based systems.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This paper explores the potential pitfalls and strategies to ensure a more equitable education system. The driving questions include:<\/span><\/p>\n