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.
INTRODUCTION
Now is the most exciting time to be an educator in the United States because competency-based learning has the potential to provide students with opportunities that have never before existed in American schools. In this model, learning is a true measure of what a student knows and is able to do, and teachers work collaboratively in an environment that is both personalized and student centered, two of the defining characteristics of this model. With competency-based learning, educators can effect tremendous change and leverage opportunities for students to have choice and voice in their learning in new and exciting ways.
The federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), signed into law by President Obama in 2015, is impacting policy changes at the state level that are allowing competency-based learning models to take hold in schools across the United States, as educators have come to recognize that the American education system is broken. This trend is also apparent internationally. There are currently sixty-five countries making use of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to answer the fundamental question, What is important for citizens to know and be able to do? The highest achieving countries on this exam share many qualities with the competency-based learning model. They integrate curriculum, instruction, and assessment and use performance tasks to measure mastery of learning and the development of critical work study practices. We have spent too much time and too many resources testing students in an effort to prove whether our schools are effective. We have endlessly debated how we should change the way we evaluate teachers and school administrators. We have introduced countless programs and initiatives that we believed would provide students with better opportunities in school and beyond. Prior to the advent of competency-based learning, our shortfall was that we spent too much time focused on system-centered, not learning-centered approaches to education. Somewhere in our efforts to hold people accountable and uphold the ideals of a free and appropriate education for all, we lost sight of what the real purpose of schools should be: learning for all, whatever it takes (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, Many, & Mattos, 2016). Competency-based learning focuses on that goal.
Building-level school leaders, administrators, and teacher leaders—those who are in the trenches leading their schools from traditional to competency-based learning models and those who are looking to support schools through the change process—will find this book useful. Breaking With Tradition makes a strong correlation between the professional learning community (PLC) framework and competency-based learning, but note that this book will not only help practicing PLCs but also schools that need to further develop or begin implementation of their collaborative structures. Regardless of where a school is on its PLC journey, this book assists the reader in finding growth areas in his or her school.
Each chapter will help school leaders understand how to sustain the change process in their schools; how to support educators in their efforts to develop the curriculum, instruction, and assessment processes that will guide them on their competency-based learning journey; and how the PLC model supports the overall work of a competency-based learning school. A summary of each chapter follows.
▶ Chapter 1 provides a foundation by outlining a five-part definition for competency-based learning.
▶ Chapter 2 focuses on the role of the PLC framework in schools implementing competency-based learning. Readers learn the components of successful PLCs and how to leverage the PLC framework to support competency-based learning design principles in schools.
▶ Chapter 3 focuses on the first critical question of a PLC in the context of a competency-based learning model: What knowledge, skills, and dispositions should every student acquire as a result of this unit, this course, or this grade level (DuFour et al., 2016)? Educators answer this question through the development of effective competency statements. Readers learn how to develop schoolwide and course-specific competencies that include explicit, measurable, transferable learning objectives to empower all students.
▶ Chapter 4 looks at changing traditional grading practices. Readers learn how teams within a PLC support competency-friendly grading practices for both academic skills and academic behaviors.
▶ Chapter 5 looks at assessment development, specifically in the context of the second critical question of a PLC: How will we know when each student has acquired the essential knowledge and skills (DuFour et al., 2016)? Readers learn how teams within a PLC develop systems of comprehensive assessment to formatively and summatively assess students’ competency and growth.
▶ Chapter 6 focuses on schoolwide support structures as they relate to the third and fourth critical questions of a PLC: How will we respond when some students do not learn and how will we extend the learning for students who are already proficient? (DuFour et al., 2016)? Readers learn how in a competency-based school, individual teachers, teams, and the school as a whole respond when students need interventions or extensions.
▶ Chapter 7 focuses on change management in the school setting. Readers learn how to sustain the change process in their schools as they begin to evolve from a traditional to a competency-based learning philosophy.
Embedded throughout the book are real-world examples of competency-based learning from schools and districts throughout the United States. These stories offer a practitioner perspective on how to turn theory into practice. Although not specifically highlighted as practitioner perspectives in this book, readers may also learn from several international examples of competency-based learning. Countries that score high on the PISA and that have made a commitment to a competency-based approach include Finland, Sweden, Canada, and New Zealand (Bristow & Patrick, 2014).
As you undertake the work of implementing a competency-based learning model, you may find it to be some of the hardest work of your career; however, you will also find it to be some of the most rewarding because your school will truly become laser focused on student learning. Student engagement, ownership of learning, and career and college readiness will be the ultimate, tangible outcomes of this work.
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.