When Krista Stalzer gave her class of fourth graders their first science assessment as part of a pilot program at her school in Epping, New Hampshire, she asked students to build a device that would transfer energy. Students had the materials they needed to make a solar cooker and demonstrate what they’d learned about heat transfer.
“What I heard then was this productive buzz,” Stalzer recalls, “as opposed to traditional testing on a piece of paper. It was a different feeling.”
That was almost a decade ago, when New Hampshire applied for a waiver from state-mandated standardized tests so it could administer performative assessments, in which students produce a project or do an activity to show what they’ve learned. The assessments were part of a competency-based approach that allows students to advance through subjects at their own pace.
What Is Competency-Based Education?
Competency-based education gained traction in 2000, when some states, including New Hampshire and Rhode Island, changed high school graduation requirements to include a mix of traditional and competency-based assessments. Today, nearly every state in the country implements CBE to some degree and more than a dozen have comprehensive policies in place to help districts put it into practice.
CBE, also sometimes known as mastery-based learning or education, allows students to move through grade-level standards at their own pace. And that changes what classroom instruction looks like: Teachers spend less time on whole-group instruction and students spend more time in groups, working on material at their skill level. Students work their way through content and move on to the next level when they’re ready.
At the end of the year, students may still take traditional standardized tests, but their progress along the way is evaluated with competency-based assessments. In some cases, as in Colorado’s Westminster Public Schools district, schools use performance levels, rather than grade-level standards, for each content area that students move through at their own pace. A student might be working above the traditional grade level in one area and below it in others.
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“We’re breaking down the model that says, ‘We’re going to deliver this instruction to you whether you’re ready for it or not,'” says William Furbush, superintendent of schools in Epping. In many classes, students in Epping schools can choose how and when they demonstrate mastery of a subject. “Whenever you give students choice, you see more engagement.”
How Competency-Based Education Works
At the core of CBE is the idea that not all students learn at the same pace or in the same way. When a teacher delivers instruction to a whole class, a third of the students may be behind where the teacher is and not understand. Another third might be bored because they already know it.
“This means you’re really teaching one-third of the students,” says Lisa DeLacey, elementary school curriculum director for the Manchester School District in New Hampshire. In Manchester, math teachers spend 20 minutes on “whole group” instruction. For the remainder of class students do different things depending on their understanding: working on a computer, playing a learning game with a classmate or completing pages in a workbook. “All kids have access to grade-level instruction and we’re also meeting each student where they are,” DeLacey says.
Implementing CBE well involves a new way of thinking about instruction. Experts talk about the need for a “growth mindset,” which encourages students to persist and become self-directed learners. CBE also changes the way students are assessed. Manchester schools use a 1 to 4 scale to grade work:
— 1 for beginning understanding
— 2 for partially proficient
— 3 for proficient
— 4 for exceeding proficiency
Under a traditional grading system, a student would get an A if they answer all the questions on an assessment correctly. In a CBE classroom, getting all answers right would earn a 3, for proficient. To get a 4, students must show higher-order thinking on an additional assessment.
For example, for English classes in the Epping district, teachers designed a vocabulary test with an additional question, asking students to use a vocabulary word in a sentence, to demonstrate “exceeding proficiency.” In another class, the teacher asked students to write a narrative. The teacher provided prompts, but students could choose the topic, audience and form.
“They weren’t limited to what she offered,” says Stalzer, who is now the district’s director of curriculum, data and assessment. “What’s the goal? To demonstrate narrative writing. But everybody doesn’t have to write the same narrative.”
Giving students choices about how to complete the assignment leads some students to challenge themselves, Stalzer says. In one class, a student who has trouble with handwriting chose to write the narrative by hand to practice that skill as well. Choice also helps students build self-awareness and independence.
In the Huntley Community School District, northeast of Chicago, high school students move freely between classes, spending more time in the ones where they need more help. Teachers work with students to develop the skills it takes to know how they learn best and how to organize their time.
“The pace is a negotiated pace,” says Marcus Belin, principal of Huntley High School. “They’re still learning to be in high school. We do goal setting and allow students to set some deadlines.”
Impact and Outcomes
Educators say that CBE boosts student engagement, but it’s hard to measure the impact that it has on things like academic performance and closing achievement gaps. Often, when CBE is implemented, a number of other educational reforms are also being tried, so it’s difficult to isolate the impact of one versus another, experts say.
Also, CBE isn’t implemented in exactly the same way everywhere, making it hard to compare results. So far, the research that exists on academic outcomes of CBE is mixed, showing both positive and negative impacts.
“In our gut we know that this is working and that it’s beneficial for kids, but everybody wants data,” says DeLacey of Manchester schools, where CBE was implemented in 2019. “Are all kids on grade level? Not yet. My goal is that we not make this a one or two and done. It’s a five-year process in my mind.”
Students in Epping and Manchester still take standardized tests at the end of the year. But DeLacey says that CBE offers teachers a more nuanced view as to where students need support.
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Those 1 to 4 scores on performative assessments are logged into a dashboard that both teachers and students can see. In a traditional class, if students get a 75 on a test, they have passed. They can move on, even though there are things that they didn’t get right.
If a student scores low on a performative assessment, the teacher takes the student back a couple of steps to identify the learning gaps. In this way, educators hope to prevent students from advancing forward in subjects before they really understand the material.
“A lot of this is about the habits of work, life and learning,” says Belin. “We want kids to be able to advocate for themselves and stick with something that becomes challenging.”
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Competency-Based Education: What It Is and How It Can Boost Student Engagement originally appeared on usnews.com
