Competency-based Education: Hope vs Authenticity
Competency-based education (CBE) has been in the news a lot lately, especially with Michael Horn’s new book being published about CBE’s potential as a post-pandemic solution to change our education system. Several articles have also been published about new schools and districts implementing mastery-based approaches to learning.
While I strongly believe that competency/mastery-based learning is where we should be heading in our education systems, I believe we are far from seeing CBE achieve scale. In addition, the lack of consistent acknowledgement of the gap between goals and reality is likely holding back wider adoption.
The Aurora Institute’s CompetencyWorks organization defines seven key components of competency-based education as
students are empowered daily to make decisions about their learning,
assessment is meaningful and positive,
students receive timely and differentiated support,
students advance based on mastery,
students learn actively through a variety of pathways and pacing,
strategies to ensure equity for all students are embedded in the culture, structure, and pedagogy of the schools, and
expectations for learning are explicit, transparent, measurable, and transferable
CompetencyWorks has published several blogs and reports highlighting a variety of programs. These are valuable, but a cursory review of these sources might lead you to think that CBE is widespread across the US. The reality if you dig deeper is that CBE is only being implemented (at the level of their definition) in a very small number of districts and schools in the country. While these schools are implementing all aspects of the definition, what we are seeing more commonly is more of a move at your own pace, click-through model of competency-based learning.
The risk I see is what we saw with blended learning, which is now nothing more than implementing technology in your classroom. A lot of schools, both in person and online, say they are doing “mastery-based learning”, when it is really more of a click-through online course or letting kids move through the textbook/online course/lessons at their own pace. When talking to educators and school and district leaders, it becomes clear that the majority of them are adopting one or two parts of the definition, mainly allowing students to move at their own pace and “testing out” of different areas. While a student can pass a multiple choice test to “demonstrate” their learning/mastery of a specific competency, that is not always the best way to show that they understand and can apply that specific skill.
While pace is important in CBE models, it is one piece of the definition. How do we do this right and scale it?
A lot of systems need to change (grading, attendance, mindsets, etc.) As shown by the iNACOL Blended Learning Teacher Competency Framework, a lot of these skills and competencies are essential for educators moving to CBE as well.
Policies need to change; however policy change is necessary but insufficient. We have seen, in states like NH and NV, policies changed five to over 10 years ago, and yet there is still very little widespread CBE activity across the states. Competency-based learning is complex and will make everyone in the field of education rethink what they currently know about K-12 education–which is both the promise of CBE, and the biggest challenge. When implementing, we will need to go through a change management process. All stakeholders will need to buy in and understand that it is going to take years, if not decades, to get there. Leadership and educators change, along with their priorities, but if we are to genuinely move to a competency-based approach to education, everyone (from policy makers to parents to students) need to buy in and commit to going through the good, the bad, and the ugly to make it happen. As long as we aren’t hurting kids, and know how valuable the end goal is, we can get there, but need the flexibility to experiment and fail without shutting down the work that is being done.
Again, this is not a matter of we don’t believe this is right for kids, but we need to do it right and get to a place where it is scalable. We want all students to achieve mastery and ensure that they are properly supported in the learning process, with schools implementing all five aspects of the CompetencyWorks definition.
