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FOREWORD

By Chris Sturgis, Cofounder, CompetencyWorks

The journey to competency-based education often starts when educators ask themselves a few powerful questions, such as, Are we doing what’s best for our students? and What is preventing us from doing better for them? Once educators begin asking these questions, it becomes easier to understand how the United States’s antiquated education system, now over 150 years old, can actually get in the way of learning. The next question they ask, of course, is What do we need to do differently? In Breaking With Tradition: The Shift to Competency-Based Learning in PLCs at Work, authors Brian M. Stack and Jonathan G. Vander Els serve up an in-depth exploration of how districts are redesigning their education systems to address those questions.

I became acquainted with Brian and Jon’s work at the Sanborn Regional School District in Kingston, New Hampshire, soon after the launch of CompetencyWorks. Brian and Jon were—and are—risk-takers. They were willing to dive headfirst into competency education at a time when there were few models and a sparse amount of literature on the topic. They also took a different kind of risk when they publicly shared their learning along their journey as contributing authors at CompetencyWorks. They shared when things seemed to be working and when things didn’t work out as well as they had hoped. In so doing, Brian and Jon embody the values of competency-based education, where learning is the ultimate goal and mistakes are simply opportunities to learn more.

Brian, Jon, and the Sanborn leadership team balanced their drive toward innovation with deep attention to execution. Before taking steps forward, they learned as much as they could. They sought to understand the activities or processes that made up the load-bearing walls of the new system and then ensured those activities and processes were fully resourced. They understood that in designing a new system, the pieces had to fit together. Designing the new system required attention to fidelity. With their commitment to innovation and execution, the authors will be the first to tell you that they never stopped learning.

Brian and Jon taught me that competency education is not just about focusing on student learning; it is equally about supporting the learning of the adults in the system. During my visit to Sanborn in 2014, Jon, then principal of its Memorial Elementary, showed me what the school called the “writing wall,” where teachers were collaboratively learning about helping students to write. Taped along the entire hallway were examples of student work for each performance level with stickers showing by grade level how many students were at each level. Teachers used the wall to build a shared understanding of what it really means to be proficient at a grade level and to exchange ideas about how to help students build their skills. What Brian and Jon showed me is that the trick to building a competency-based system is to begin with investing in strong professional learning communities (PLCs). Competency-based education requires investing in teachers and their learning.

Breaking With Tradition is written by educators for educators who want to learn about competency-based education. In this book, you will find an in-depth exploration of the five-part definition of competency-based education that one hundred innovators developed in 2011 at the first national Competency-Based Learning Summit. Brian and Jon describe how the PLC process is the foundation on which the five elements rest to form a new education system. They also tackle the issues that often befuddle districts converting to competency education, including assessment, grading, and identifying the necessary schoolwide support structures.

Breaking With Tradition is a powerful resource for educators who are learning about competency education if they take the time to use the reflection questions and rubrics to spark dialogue and challenge their assumptions. Competency-based education isn’t just a technical reform. It requires a cultural shift to the belief that everyone can learn if he or she receives the resources and time to do so. Find others to read Breaking With Tradition along with you, or create opportunities in your school for collaborative learning. Your first steps toward creating a system where every student is learning and progressing can start right now. Brian Stack and Jonathan Vander Els will be wonderful guides for your journey.