Giving Compass' Take:

• Tom Vander Ark and Mary Ryerse argue that the shift to competency-based education can focus on equity to bring about educational improvements for all. 

• How can funders help to focus education reforms around equity? 

• Read about the landscape of competency-based education. 

Given how quickly talent development is changing and how it’s beginning to change postsecondary learning around the edges (e.g., military, career and technical education, online learning and alternative HigherEd), it seems likely that the shift will come to K-12 education.

We’ve been talking about the shift from time to learning for a long time, and there are signs of movement everywhere. Given the complexity and the gravity of the current system, the shift to competency education is likely to take a generation. The new opportunity for sector leaders and philanthropies is to make the shift happen better and more equitably.

Competency-based education (also called mastery-, performance-, or proficiency-based learning) holds the potential to improve career and life readiness for more young people.

The research has also sharpened our focus on the implications of CBE for educational equity. Putting equity at the forefront is essential, and ensuring that competencies do not become “checklists” of sub-skills that never bring students to an integrated mastery of essential skills and knowledge is a key risk. It’s also true that high-quality CBE depends on a level of personalization that will be very difficult to achieve in under-resourced schools, especially in the early days when CBE tools and resources for teachers are under-developed.

Putting equity at the forefront will challenge our collective powers of imagination and invention. It’s not hard to see how students who learn a concept quickly can accelerate their progress in a “show what you know and move on when ready” system. It’s also fairly easy to envision how schools might support students who need more time to master a concept.

Read the full article about competency-based education and equity by Tom Vander Ark and Mary Ryerse at Getting Smart.