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CHAPTER 1

Understanding the Components of an Effective Competency-Based Learning System

Think back to when you first learned to drive a car. Knowing what you know now as a more experienced driver, would you change anything about the way you first learned to drive? Brian’s experience with learning how to drive a car happened like this.

As a sixteen-year-old teenager in New Hampshire, Brian, along with his father, spent every day backing in and out of driveways while Brian delivered newspapers in the neighborhood. Brian’s father would take him to shopping malls after hours to practice parking. He eventually brought Brian to a point where he could drive on quiet streets in town as he started to learn the rules of the road.

Then, Brian started a formal driver education program. Like many programs, it consisted of both classroom instruction and actual driving on the road with an instructor. To this day, Brian doesn’t remember a single thing about the instruction he received in those thirty classroom hours, but he does know that the class culminated with him memorizing a lot of arbitrary facts and figures so that he would pass the written driving exam, an exam which would contain twenty-five multiple-choice questions based on information in the State of New Hampshire Driver’s Manual. This test never caused anxiety for Brian because he already knew how to “play that game of school” from other experiences. He was very good at cramming for multiple-choice tests, knowing what sorts of random facts and figures his teachers would likely quiz him on. The driver education manual made it easy; the real driving test would just be a subset of the one hundred–question practice test in the back of the book.

What did scare Brian as a young teen and soon-to-be driver was not the written test, but rather the time he would have to spend in a car with an instructor, and, even more so, the actual driving test with someone from the Department of Motor Vehicles. Brian knew his skills, or lack thereof, would be on full display during the driving instruction sessions and test. He had to perform. Knowing that one false move with a car could spell disaster, there was little, if any, room for error.

As Brian reflects back on his driver education experience, a few things stand out to him that are rarely seen in our schools, such as the following.

▶ In driver education, all students are working toward the same explicit and measurable learning goal of being able to safely and effectively drive a car in any condition or setting.

▶ To a certain extent, driver education allows students to move at their own pace. Students progress from skill to skill when they are ready through their driving practice. There is no set maximum amount of time students should spend learning a particular driving skill, and students are encouraged to practice with family members on their own time to become secure with their skills.

▶ Driver education can adapt to individual student needs. Those who need more practice with a skill like parking or highway driving can get differentiated support either from their driving instructor or others (in Brian’s case, his father).

▶ The true test of whether or not a student has mastered driver education is performance based; the student must drive a car while an outsider evaluates his or her performance against a specific set of driving standards.

▶ Driver education is not the final step toward mastery of the road; it is just the beginning. The longer you drive a car, the better you get at driving. Driver education serves as an initial base to help students apply their new driving skills and develop better habits and dispositions for a lifetime of effective driving.

Driver education is an excellent way to introduce the topic of competency-based learning for two reasons: (1) it is an education program that many Americans experience at one point in their lifetime, and (2) driver education has many of the hallmarks and characteristics of a competency-based learning model. The concept of competency-based learning is often interpreted differently from school to school and, in some cases, from state to state. This chapter provides the reader with a framework and a foundation for the rest of the book by outlining a five-part definition for competency-based learning.

A Definition of Competency-Based Learning

In a system of competency-based learning, a student’s ability to transfer knowledge and apply skills across content areas organizes his or her learning.

Competency-based learning has become a common term in education reform. The model is born from the notion that seat time and Carnegie units (credit hours) cannot confine elementary schools, secondary schools, and institutions of higher education when organizing how students will progress through learning. In a system of competency-based learning, a student’s ability to transfer knowledge and apply skills across content areas organizes his or her learning. Transfer means that students are able to take what they have learned (the skills and content within a course) and apply this skill and knowledge across other disciplines to solve unfamiliar problems. Students refine their skills based on the feedback they receive through formative assessment (assessment for learning) and, when they are ready, demonstrate their understanding through summative assessment (assessment of learning; Stiggins, 2005). Competency-based learning meets each learner where he or she is and allows the student to progress at his or her own speed along a developmental continuum. Chris Sturgis (2015) provides a clear and concise five-part working definition of competency-based learning:

› Students advance upon demonstrated mastery;

› Competencies include explicit, measurable, and transferable learning objectives that empower students;

› Assessment is meaningful and a positive learning experience for students;

› Students receive timely, differentiated support based on their individual learning needs; and

› Learning outcomes emphasize competencies that include application and creation of knowledge, along with the development of important skills and dispositions. (p. 8)

Organizations like the International Association for K–12 Online Learning (iNACOL; www.inacol.org/about) use Sturgis’s (2015) definition as a basis for much of their policy advocacy and learning systems transformation work. In the pages that follow, we expand on this definition and provide context for school leaders.

Students Advance Upon Demonstrated Mastery

Fred Bramante and Rose Colby (2012) write extensively about how educators should imagine a school without clocks, and think about what it would look like to move the standard measure of learning from seat time to mastery of learning objectives. Secondary schools and colleges have used time as the standard measure of learning since the American industrialist and steel mogul Andrew Carnegie first proposed the idea in the early 1900s. The Carnegie unit was introduced as a way to award academic credit based on the amount of time students spent in direct contact with a teacher or professor. The standard Carnegie unit has long since been defined as 120 hours of contact time with an instructor, an amount roughly equivalent to one hour of instruction a day, five days a week, for twenty-four weeks or 7,200 minutes of instructional time over the course of an academic year. At the time of its inception, the Carnegie unit helped bring a level of standardization that the American education system had never seen. It provided for the education model what the dollar first provided for our financial system: a common language and a common unit of measure that could be quantified, assessed, and traded (Silva, White, & Toch, 2015).

Education reformers like Bramante and Colby have challenged Carnegie’s industrialist model for measuring learning. They believe there are more effective ways to measure student learning, but it hasn’t been until the mid-2000s to present that these reformers had the opportunity to challenge the model at a systemic level through policy changes at the state level in states such as New Hampshire that have been early adopters of the model. Bramante and Colby (2012) write:

That opportunity to reimagine public education is before us today. At no other time in public education have we been so challenged by the constraints of the economy, the public outcry for changes in financing personnel and resources, and the demand for accountability through testing. (p. 2)

Bramante and Colby (2012) call for moving from a system that measures learning by the minutes a student sits in front of a teacher to one based on mastery of learning objectives. Their work challenges the organizational structure of most American schools. If schools no longer use seat time to measure student learning, how will that impact schools of the future?

Both school and education policy leaders use the following arguments to support why the Carnegie unit should not be removed from American schools. We add our own counterarguments that support the removal of the Carnegie unit to each argument as well.

▶ Argument: Without the Carnegie unit and a nationally defined and mandated curriculum, Americans will lose the level of standardization schools have to measure learning.

Counterargument: We argue that there are better ways to provide a standard measure for learning in schools. The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) Initiative (www.corestandards.org) and state and local standards provide the ruler sticks for which schools could and should measure student learning.

▶ Argument: If schools remove all time requirements, they run the risk that students will advance through grade levels at a pace that exceeds their social maturity.

Counterargument: If schools use a student mastery model, then they must develop quality instruction for each of the standards and student learning objectives they will measure. Good instruction takes time; it is unlikely that a student would advance through multiple grade levels too quickly, although the notion of students moving on when ready does highlight other considerations schools must balance, which leads to the next argument.

▶ Argument: Without time as the constant, schools will move away from grade levels, which will require a whole new organizational structure in schools, impacting everything from staffing and funding to the organization of grade levels and school calendars.

Counterargument: This is a very valid point; however, rather than use it as a reason not to move forward with competency-based learning, it should be seen as the rallying point that will define a brave new world of American schools that are flexible enough to grow and adapt with students, providing them with a level of personalization and differentiation that is unparalleled in traditional school systems.

In competency-based learning schools, standards are the true measure of learning. With carefully crafted assessments tied to standards and rubrics that can measure to what degree students have mastered a concept or skill, it is possible to create a structure whereby students can advance to mastery. The simplest way to imagine this model in action is to look at successful online schools. Unbound by the organizational structures of traditional calendars, bell schedules, and staffing patterns, many online schools have developed successful competency-based “move when ready” systems. Here are two examples.

The Virtual Learning Academy Charter School (VLACS; http://vlacs.org) is the largest charter school in New Hampshire. Each year, thousands of middle and high school students enroll in VLACS programming, either as full- or part-time students looking to supplement their regular education programming. Students can register for full courses or they can complete a smaller subset of the course that pertains to a specific competency. Each module in each VLACS course aligns with specific state or national competencies, standards, and frameworks, depending on the course. Students move at their own pace through academic work. VLACS teachers, many of whom also work in traditional schools, are assigned a cohort of students to follow through their course or courses. Since online modules deliver direct instruction, the role of a VLACS teacher is very different than in a traditional school. VLACS teachers spend much of their time monitoring student progress and providing students with the reteaching, intervention, and enrichment needed to personalize their academic experience. For the VLACS student, the experience is self-paced. Students are able to move on when ready. When they start a new course, they are assigned a teacher who monitors their progress, provides ongoing feedback and assessment of their work, and conducts regular virtual meetings with them and, in some cases, their parents, throughout the learning experience.

Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU; http://degrees.snhu.edu) in Manchester, New Hampshire, has a similar model for its College for America (http://collegeforamerica.org) program. Through its redesigned model, SNHU has managed to change the role of its teachers from classroom-based lecturers or instructors to professionals who are part instructor, part learning coach, and part curriculum and content developer. The notion of a learning coach—an individual who can help students set academic goals for themselves and put all of the pieces together when they are learning a new concept or skill—is a new idea for colleges or universities, much like it is for traditional K–12 schools.

Most traditional schools don’t have the luxury or the desire to use an online model to deliver all direct instruction. For these schools, developing a move-when-ready model includes the use of blended learning. Michael B. Horn and Heather Staker (2015) explain their (and the most widely used) definition for blended learning in education:

Blended learning is any formal education program in which a student learns at least part through online learning, with some element of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace. (p. 34)

Blended learning takes place at least in part in a supervised physical school location, often the student’s neighborhood school. It is an integrated experience that brings together in a seamless balance both face-to-face instruction and online coursework for individual students based on their learning needs.

Horn and Staker (2015) propose several blended learning strategies that schools can use to develop move-when-ready systems. There are rotational models in which students rotate on a fixed schedule between face-to-face and online learning modalities. There are flex models that rely on online modules as the foundation and then bring in face-to-face instruction when it is relevant or appropriate to do so. There are à la carte models that provide students with the option to take full courses either traditionally or online during the school day. Finally, there are enriched virtual models that require students to engage in a set number of face-to-face learning sessions but then allow students to customize the rest of their learning experience with online work. These blended learning strategies are the key to helping schools develop structures for students to advance upon demonstrated mastery, the first characteristic of a competency-based learning system.

Competencies Include Explicit, Measurable, and Transferable Learning Objectives That Empower Students

Typical competency-based learning schools organize their courses into a series of measureable learning objectives that provide the foundation for the courses and ultimately for the grades that a student receives. A common practice in competency-based learning schools is to require that students demonstrate mastery on each learning objective in order to receive credit for the course as a whole. This practice, many argue, encourages students to take responsibility for their learning, increasing both student engagement and motivation. To understand this organizational structure, it helps to examine some real-life examples.

In the Henry County Schools (n.d.a) in McDonough, Georgia, students in high school language arts classes work toward several graduation competencies. For example, “Read closely to analyze and evaluate all forms of (i.e. complex literary and informational) texts” (Henry County Schools, n.d.a, p. 10). From this overarching statement, each language arts course then has the following explicit, measurable, transferable learning objectives (called performance indicators in Henry County’s competency system):

› Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support an analysis of the text, including any applicable primary or High School sources, and determine both explicit and implicit meanings, such as inferences that can be drawn from the text and where the text leaves matters uncertain.

› Determine the central ideas of the text and provide an objective summary.

› Analyze a complex set of ideas or sequence of events and explain how specific individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop over the course of the text.

› Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone of a text or texts, including words with multiple meanings or language that is particularly effective for a desired purpose.

› Analyze how an author chose to structure a text and how that structure contributes to the text’s meaning and its aesthetic and rhetorical impact.

› Determine an author’s point of view, purpose, or rhetorical strategies in a text, analyzing how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness, or beauty of the text.

› Evaluate information from multiple sources presented in diverse media and formats (e.g., print, digital, visual, quantitative) to address a question or solve a problem.

› Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, assessing whether the reasoning is valid and the evidence is relevant and sufficient; identify false statements and fallacious reasoning.

› Integrate information from diverse sources into a coherent understanding of an idea or event, evaluating discrepancies among sources. (p. 10)

In the Rochester (New Hampshire) School Department (n.d.), the grade 3 mathematics curriculum is organized into the following learning objectives:

› Operations and Algebraic Thinking: Students will demonstrate the ability to compute accurately, make reasonable estimates, understand meanings of operations and use algebraic notation to represent and analyze patterns and relationships.

› Number and Numeration in Base Ten/Fractions: Students will demonstrate the ability to understand the meanings, uses, and representations of numbers as well as equivalent names for numbers.

› Measurement: Students will demonstrate the ability to understand the systems and processes of measurement, using appropriate techniques, tools, units, and formulas in making measurements.

› Data: Students will demonstrate the ability to represent and analyze data.

› Geometry: Students will demonstrate the ability to investigate characteristics and properties of two and three dimensional geometric shapes and apply transformations and symmetry in geometric situations.

› Fact Fluency: Students will demonstrate the ability to quickly and accurately verbalize and compute fact fluency, (p. 1)

There is nothing inherently unique about the learning objectives in the Henry County and Rochester schools. Many will recognize them as being based on English language arts and mathematics CCSS (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices [NGA] & Council of Chief State School Officers [CCSSO], 2010a, 2010b). What sets both of these school systems apart is not that they have developed these learning objectives, but rather that the objectives have been integrated into courses and are used to promote both student engagement and motivation at a level that most schools have not yet reached.

What sets both of these school systems apart is not that they have developed these learning objectives, but rather that the objectives have been integrated into courses and are used to promote both student engagement and motivation at a level that most schools have not yet reached.

Henry County and Rochester teachers, for example, do not organize the assessment systems for their courses around grading categories such as tests, quizzes, homework, classwork, and participation. The learning objectives themselves are the grading categories. It follows, then, that when a teacher gives a formative or summative assessment, he or she is able to link the assessment directly to the learning objective. Students follow their progression through the various learning objectives for each of their courses. At the high school level, when students reach the end of the course, they earn credit only if they have mastered each of the learning outcomes. If they have not, a plan is put in place to help them recover those outcomes. At Rochester’s Spaulding High School, competency recovery can take a variety of forms depending on what the student needs. Plans could include the completion of online courses or modules within courses that address specific competencies, the completion of a specific teacher-assigned performance task for a specific competency, or other similar demonstrations of learning. Once the student has demonstrated mastery of the course outcomes, he or she is awarded credit for the overall course.

The Henry County and Rochester models place student learning and mastery of learning objectives as the ultimate goal for all students. Both schools increase student engagement and motivation because at all times in the learning process, students know exactly what it is they need to know and be able to do to be successful. They take away the guessing games that many students play in traditional school models. In these traditional models, grades are simply a game of earning points. If a passing grade is a numerical score of 70, students simply have to complete enough work to earn the points necessary to reach the passing threshold. Oftentimes when students struggle in a traditional model, the feedback they receive is connected more to their behavior toward learning than to the actual learning itself. Teachers tell students to try harder, stay after school for help, raise their hands more during class, and do more homework. In contrast, if a student is struggling at a Henry County or Rochester school, he or she can tell the teacher exactly what skills or learning outcomes he or she needs help with, and teachers see when students are struggling with certain skills or learning outcomes, rather than finding out when a student doesn’t do well on a summative assessment. The teacher works with the student to develop academic plans to improve his or her learning in those areas.

Assessment Is Meaningful and a Positive Learning Experience for Students

Not all assessments are created equally. If you talk to any student at any grade level in a traditional school, he or she is likely to tell you that his or her teacher approaches assessment in a way that is very different from other teachers. To effectively implement a competency-based learning model, you have to change this mindset and standardize the assessment process. The Center for Collaborative Education (CCE; http://cce.org) in Boston laid much of the foundation for this in its Quality Performance Assessment (QPA) framework (see figure 1.1). CCE (2012) defines a performance assessment as “multistep assignments with clear criteria, expectations, and processes that measure how well a student transfers knowledge and applies complex skills to create or refine an original product” (p. vi). Performance assessments can be formative or summative.

Source: CCE, 2012. Used with permission.

Figure 1.1: Center for Collaborative Education QPA framework.

The QPA framework places student learning at the center of the cycle. Teachers focus on standards-aligned quality instruction and assessment practices, providing students with multiple opportunities to demonstrate mastery. Working collaboratively, teachers use quality task design strategies to develop an appropriate set of prompts and a common understanding of content and cognitive complexity for each grade level. Finally, using quality data analysis, teacher teams examine both teacher and student assessment data to ensure that assessments are reliable, valid, free of bias, and provide sufficient evidence of learning.

CCE Executive Director Dan French (CCE, 2012) writes, “Embedding high-quality performance assessments throughout the core academic curriculum will result in an increased use of curriculum aligned to the CCSS, robust assessment data, and enhanced student learning” (p. iv). The QPA framework focuses teachers on developing formative and summative performance assessments and using those assessment results to inform instruction and greater revisions of curriculum, which ultimately lead to high-stakes decisions related to graduation and promotion. In this book, we explore several effective strategies collaborative teams can use to implement a quality performance assessment system in their school. The work often starts, however, with schools and districts developing a vision for assessment and a common understanding of how assessment will inform instruction and ultimately impact student learning.

Educators cannot think about assessment without also looking at grading and how grading practices support or don’t support a school’s vision for assessment. In the following sections, we outline some key considerations for effective competency-based learning grading practices in the following sections. We expand on this topic in chapter 4 (page 69).

Grade to Communicate Student Learning

The purpose of grading should be to communicate student achievement. Grades should not be about what students earn; rather, grades should be about what students learn. Unfortunately, this is not the case in most traditional classrooms. Traditional grading practices are flawed, at best. One of the hardest hurdles to overcome for any school or community that wants to adopt a competency-based learning model is reaching consensus on the grading practices that each teacher must practice in each course. Students must see consistent practices from classroom to classroom and teacher to teacher, and those practices must support the competency-based learning model.

Use Both Formative and Summative Assessment

The grading system must separate and acknowledge the role of both formative and summative assessment. A formative assessment is an assessment for learning—a snapshot that captures or a dipstick that measures student progress through the learning process (Stiggins, 2005). It explains to what extent a student is learning a concept, skill, or knowledge set. Teachers use formative assessments to monitor the learning process and obtain feedback on their instruction. Formative assessments also provide students with feedback to help them improve their learning. A summative assessment is a comprehensive measure of a student’s ability to demonstrate the concepts, skills, and knowledge embedded within a course competency (Stiggins, 2005). An assessment of learning occurs at the end of an instructional unit with a teacher who evaluates the level and degree of a student’s learning by comparing his or her work to a rubric-defined standard or benchmark.

Stop Averaging Grades

The grading system must no longer include the practice of averaging averages to get more averages. Mathematics teachers know that you can never get reliable data when using averages to produce more averages; yet traditional schools average grades all the time. Teachers average category grades (tests, quizzes, homework, and so on) to get a quarter average. They average quarter averages to get a course-grade average. This makes no sense. A better approach would be to compute a final course grade as a single term over the entire length of a course (a grade that opens on the first day of class and closes on the last). The best grading systems have mechanisms in place to allow the most recent assignments to carry more weight than earlier ones. This practice promotes the idea that the most recent student work offers a more accurate representation of what a student has learned and is able to do at that particular moment in time. Not fully understanding content at the beginning of a unit should not negatively impact a student’s grade later on.

Separate Academics From Behaviors

The grading system must separate academics from behaviors. If educators are to trust grades and use them as a measure of learning, the grades must simply measure what a student knows and is able to do, and nothing more. The challenge for most school leaders is to find ways to maintain the academic purity of grades without losing the ability to motivate students to practice good behaviors.

Allow for Reassessment

If students are not proficient on a particular assignment, they must have the opportunity to be reassessed for a new grade. Doing this ensures that their final grade is a more accurate representation of what they know and are able to do. The trick to reassessment is developing a system that is manageable for teachers and the school. Reassessment should be an expectation, and the student must play an active part. Students must first complete a reassessment plan with their teacher. This plan may include an opportunity for the student to go back and redo formative tasks related to the assessment, the scheduling of specific intervention or reteaching time with the teacher, and a timeline to complete the plan. For younger students, teachers may need to take the lead in creating the plan in the beginning by scaffolding the conversation for students or providing them with a template of the action items in the plan that they must complete. Schools must not allow students to fail; so it should be understood that a student will continue to be assessed and retaught until he or she demonstrates proficiency.

Use Rubrics and Scales, Not Percentage Scores

The grading system must use rubrics and rubric scales, not percentage scores. Most U.S. high schools still use the same flawed one hundred–point scale they have for generations. With a traditional one hundred–point scale, all grades typically start at 100 percent and the teacher deducts for missing or incorrect components to arrive at a final percentage score. These deductions can vary from assignment to assignment and teacher to teacher, and they depend on the expectations the teacher sets for each assignment. Many students think they must accumulate a certain number of points over time to reach a passing grade in this system. With a rubric scale, a teacher determines a grade by first looking at the student work and then determining which rubric level is the most appropriate match for that work. Teachers generally develop rubrics specific to the course, competency, or skill they are assessing. Students receive the rubric along with the assignment or task so they have a clear expectation of what they need to do to complete the work at a proficient level or higher.

Students Receive Timely, Differentiated Support Based on Their Individual Learning Needs

As a school administrator, take a moment to consider how you respond when parents ask you what supports are in place to help their child be successful. If, when responding to the question, you have to hesitate—even for just a minute—to think about which teacher the student is assigned to before you can answer, then your school has a problem. If there is no consistency in how teachers approach differentiated support, your school is not going to be effective at responding to the individual learning needs of each student. In effective schools, it doesn’t matter which teacher a student is assigned to; all students receive differentiated support. Effective schools not only have consistent practices at the classroom level but also schoolwide. This is important for any school, but for schools that embrace competency-based learning, it is essential. Here are some examples of ways such schools ensure all students receive timely, differentiated support based on their individual learning needs.

Create Flexible Time for Differentiated Support

Effective schools build time into the school day for all students to access differentiated support, which often takes the form of intervention, extension, or enrichment.

▶ Intervention: Small groups of students work with the teacher on content support, remediation, or other kinds of proactive support in the area of study skills and other work-study practices.

▶ Extension: Whole-class groups work with the teacher, who extends the current curriculum beyond the learning objectives that students have already mastered.

▶ Enrichment: Students do activities beyond the work outlined in the curriculum to expand their experiences and also receive differentiated first instruction, particularly those students the teacher or education team has identified as benefiting from such support.

This time is as flexible as possible, meaning that students can attend different support sessions on different days based on their learning needs. Many schools that offer differentiated supports do so for thirty to sixty minutes at least two to three times per week and often daily. At the elementary and middle school levels, grade-level teacher teams often handle the scheduling for this flexible time. At the high school level, scheduling can be a mixture of teacher team input and student input. There are several software systems available that allow schools to schedule students efficiently for intervention, extension, and enrichment. In chapter 6 (page 129), we explore in more detail how schools can structure and maximize this time for student learning.

Group Teachers and Students in Collaborative Teams

DuFour et al. (2016) write extensively about the power of a PLC as a “group of people working together interdependently to achieve a common goal for which members are held mutually accountable” (p. 36). When teachers share students, they are mutually accountable to each other for meeting all of the learning needs of those students. In schools focused on competency-based learning, students often organize into smaller groups that share the same set of teachers who work collaboratively with those students. In these teams, teachers are able to become laser focused on the four essential questions that every team must answer (DuFour et al., 2016).

1. What knowledge, skills, and dispositions should every student acquire as a result of this unit, this course, or this grade level? The answer to this question becomes the course competencies and performance indicators that guide the team’s instructional planning. Teams work together to align their curriculum and instructional practices with these learning objectives.

2. How will we know when each student has acquired the essential knowledge and skills? Teams work together to develop quality performance assessments as the ultimate measure of student mastery. Since team members share students, they have a mutual interest in making sure all students demonstrate competency.

3. How will we respond when some students do not learn? The answer to this question defines how the team will approach intervention, both at the classroom level and beyond. Effective teams work together to use flexible time to support the needs of all learners. Some teachers on the team may offer reteaching sessions to students, while others may offer targeted intervention. Students recognize that it will be not just their own classroom teacher, but any teacher on the team who will work with them when they have not demonstrated mastery.

4. How will we extend the learning for students who are already proficient? Teams work together to develop opportunities for extensions and enrichment for students who have already mastered a skill or concept. Perhaps some will need a blended learning approach to allow them to extend their thinking in a new way or even move ahead. The team can also use flexible learning time to provide additional instruction and resources for students who already demonstrate mastery.

At many high schools, the concept of a freshman academy (or ninth-grade small learning community) is an example of an effective way a school focused on competency-based learning can use collaborative teacher teams to group students. Souhegan High School (n.d.) in Amherst, New Hampshire, uses such a concept. In its model, teams in one area of the building (part of an organizational structure it calls Division I) schedule students in grades 9 and 10. The teams are called 9A, 9B, 10Y, and 10Z and share common teaching areas separated by an accordion wall, which allows for flexible collaboration space. The team structure promotes a strong sense of community and encourages the development of meaningful relationships between adults and students, and between peers. Each team consists of a teacher from English, social studies, science, and mathematics, and a reading specialist. Teachers collaborate on all aspects of planning and preparation, curriculum and instruction, and assessment and grading. Each collaborative teacher team also has access to guidance counselors and special educators to assist in their efforts to differentiate instruction to meet the needs of each student on the team. There is also a support period known as saber support that allows teachers to provide personalized preteaching, reteaching, intervention, or enrichment options for students as needed.

Offer Recovery Options for Students Who Aren’t Successful the First Time

Schools that focus on competency-based learning believe that failure is not an option. All students can learn, and all students must reach competency. It is simply not good enough to allow a student to fail a course or an individual course competency and not provide him or her with recovery options. Failures represent gaps in student understanding, and if not addressed, these gaps will get wider and wider. In a perfect world, no student would ever reach the point of failure in a course. Helping a student recover a course after he or she has already failed is as effective as using an autopsy to determine what is wrong with someone in an effort to keep him or her alive. Once a student has failed, it is too late. It is far better to work with students who are failing while there is still time to recover the credit, much like it is easier for a medical professional to discover a potential life-threatening medical condition through preventative screening.

In a competency-based learning system there is always time because time is not the constant that dictates when learning can occur. This does not mean that schools need to move away from time-bound organizational structures such as school years, terms, or semesters. It is acceptable to assign students to a grade level or course for a set period of time. The question becomes, What will a school do for a student who has not reached competency by the end of the course? Schools must have recovery options for these students.

Elementary schools focused on competency-based learning can achieve recovery with additional targeted instruction during the summer or during the next school year. At middle and high schools, courses are tied to credit, so students receive credit for a course only when they have demonstrated mastery in each of the course competencies. If that doesn’t happen, students are placed in an appropriate competency-recovery program, which could take many forms—from summer work to online learning or a blended model that includes both. Oftentimes, students must reach mastery before they are allowed to continue to the next course of study.

Learning Outcomes Emphasize Competencies That Include Application and Creation of Knowledge, Along With the Development of Important Skills and Dispositions

All educators have had students who did well not because they mastered the material, but rather because they learned how to play “the game of school.” They may not be the best test-takers, but they come to class each day with the right attitude and their homework complete, and they make sure to raise their hands every day to ask important questions or contribute to a class discussion or activity. Subconsciously, teachers look out for these students. They exhibit the behaviors and dispositions that teachers want all students to exhibit. Teachers find ways to weave these behaviors into these students’ grades, sometimes without even realizing it. By doing this, teachers create grades that are no longer a pure representation of what it is the students know and are able to do.

In schools focused on competency-based learning, the fundamental purpose of grading is to communicate student achievement toward mastery of learning targets and standards. Grades represent what students learn, not what they earn.

In schools focused on competency-based learning, the fundamental purpose of grading is to communicate student achievement toward mastery of learning targets and standards. Grades represent what students learn, not what they earn. Academic grades must be separate from academic behaviors. These behaviors are critical to academic achievement, but commingling them with academic grades does not provide an accurate picture of the students’ achievement levels with their academic course competencies. For much of this chapter, we focused on the importance of learning outcomes that emphasize competencies, including the application and creation of knowledge.

Competencies That Address Important Skills and Dispositions

Now, we turn our attention to the importance of competencies that address the development of important skills and dispositions. The New Hampshire Department of Education (2014) provides a foundation for this work:

New Hampshire’s system of educator support should promote the capacity of educators to deeply engage students in learning rigorous and meaningful knowledge, skills, and Work-Study Practices for success in college, career, and citizenship…. Work-Study Practices [are] those behaviors that enhance learning achievement and promote a positive work ethic such as, but not limited to, listening and following directions, accepting responsibility, staying on task, completing work accurately, managing time wisely, showing initiative, and being cooperative. (p. 1)

From there, the department identifies four overarching work-study practices that could be embedded in any school, at any grade level, in any course of study (New Hampshire Department of Education, 2014):

1. Communication: I can use various media to interpret, question, and express knowledge, information, ideas, feelings, and reasoning to create mutual understanding.

2. Creativity: I can use original and flexible thinking to communicate my ideas or construct a unique product or solution.

3. Collaboration: I can work in diverse groups to achieve a common goal.

4. Self-Direction: I can initiate and manage my learning, and demonstrate a “growth” mindset, through self-awareness, self-motivation, self-control, self-advocacy and adaptability as a reflective learner. (p. 2)

Effective competency-based learning schools adapt these skills and dispositions into their competencies. They create rubrics for different grade levels and courses and develop assessment strategies so the competencies are regularly assessed, with progress reported to students and parents. Even more powerful, teachers are focusing instruction on how each student can individually develop further within specific work-study practices, and students are well aware of their own needs related to these important skills and dispositions. By embedding these work-study practices and dispositions into different aspects of a competency-based learning program, they take on more relevance for students. This ultimately helps students on the road to becoming college and career ready.

Reflection Questions

According to Sturgis (2015), competency-based learning models have five components. To start thinking about how to apply this model to your school’s current situation, consider the following five reflection questions with your team.

1. In schools focused on competency-based learning, students advance upon demonstrated mastery. Are there instances in your school where this happens? If so, what are they?

2. Competencies include explicit, measurable, transferable learning objectives that empower students. How will your school develop competencies? Will educators be required to develop them for each grade level or course or will the school provide them?

3. Assessment is meaningful and a positive learning experience for students. If you surveyed students, to what extent would they see assessment in this way? What about parents? What about teachers?

4. Students receive timely, differentiated support based on their individual learning needs. To what extent does this happen for students in your school? Are there barriers that limit this support?

5. Learning outcomes emphasize competencies that include application and creation of knowledge, along with the development of important skills and dispositions. In your school, do teachers always consider depth of knowledge when developing learning outcomes? How do you assess skills and dispositions?