Competency-Based Education, Put to the Test

• Published in: Education next 2017-10, Vol.17 (4)
• Main Author: Marcus, Jon
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Classrooms; Competency Based Education; Core competencies; Cost control; Distance learning; Educational evaluation; Grade 4; Higher education; Learning; Online instruction; School districts; Science education; Science Teachers
• ISSN: 1539-9664; 1539-9672

Competency-based education needs to earn external validation if it is to endure, pronounced a landmark paper from the Center on Higher Education Reform at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute. In the Gallup poll of business leaders done for Lumina, only a third agreed that “higher education institutions in this country are graduating students with the skills and competencies my business needs,” compared to 96 percent of chief academic officers who thought so. (A years-long audit is underway by the U.S. Department of Education’s inspector general over whether the Western Governors teaching faculty spend enough time with their students, though the question is principally a technical one over whether WGU is a distance-education program or a correspondence school for purposes of eligibility for federal financial aid.) Having some faculty teach and others test “helps our faculty think really clearly about outcomes of their work,” says Holtschneider. Few teachers have been trained to work in settings tailored to individualized learning, says Neal Kingston, a professor of educational psychology and director of the Achievement and Assessment Institute at the University of Kansas, who is in the midst of a three-year project studying these issues.