Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Competency Based Education

The state of Iowa is moving toward CBE (Competency Based Education) over the next ten years. I'm just interested to hear from other forum members their experiences with CBE and figured it an interesting discussion topic. Your thoughts and experiences?

it sounds like another name for the system where you either pass or fail but there is not much incentive to do more than the minimum required and the assessment is very rigid. We have it here and you literally have to repeat the words the teacher or text used because if the words they are looking for aren't there you have to repeat the assessment.

Yikes puffin - that sounds awful!

The little I know is aiming for something quite different - it's a term that's getting big in med school re-vamping. The idea IIRC seems to be to focus on key skills and how to get them, rather than checking boxes for spending time on each of a long list of topics. Over the last few decades, the list keeps getting longer, and training takes longer, but trainees are not necessarily better for all the extra hours (years).

CBE is trying to go the opposite direction (here's a sample: http://www.royalcollege.ca/portal/page/portal/rc/resources/cbme). In theory, such an approach ought to be glorious for gifties - it's individualized, and if you already know something, you can move on to something you don't. I hear med school directors speaking very positively of the idea, but I don't know if there's much real experience to judge yet.

And unfortunately, as horrible perversions of concepts like discovery or problem-based learning have well demonstrated, a little edu-speak can go a long and distorted way.

The first thing which comes to mind when I hear competency based education (CBE) is a policy of mastery, specifically a redo policy which is designed to work toward equivalent outcomes (related link here), essentially obscuring differences in speed and depth of learning. This may benefit lower performers.

Another thing which comes to mind when I hear CBE is a policy for granting credit for learning experiences outside of the classroom or specific institution, designed to avoid repetition. For example, colleges which grant credit for certain types of work experience, or high schools which accept outside coursework. This may benefit advanced performers.

The link upthread about the Royal College of medicine states, in part: "from residency through to retirement... more emphasis is placed on regular assessment of performance... after certification and throughout a physician's practice" which seems to echo the ACT workforce plan to "Assess your workforce... Validate your workforce... Certify your workforce... Reinvent your workforce", with assessments which evaluate a number of skills, including soft skills such as teamwork, fit, performance, talent. This benefits the testing companies, apparently. It may also provide HR departments (or overseeing governmental bodies and regulatory agencies) with cause for dismissal of an employee who otherwise seems to be contributing in meaningful ways.

The U.S. Department of Education defines Competency Based Learning or Personalized Learning. Wikipedia also discusses competency-based learning.

To gain a clearer picture of what Iowa plans to implement as CBE, I read the 43-page pdf, final version of the task force document found online, which says, in part, "allow students younger than ninth grade to earn credit in any curricular area toward graduation if they complete the requirements for the credit". The document does mention gifted students, specifically gifted students dropping out of high school. Sensitivity to this issue seems like a plus. The document refers to the Iowa Core.

Interestingly, the map of common core adoption by State shows that Iowa has adopted the Common Core, and refers to the Iowa Core... giving the impression that this is part of the implementation of the common core, presented as local control.

From all these things I gather that CBE describes itself as providing more freedom and flexibility (in the short term) while also imposing more assessments and gathering more data, which may impede personal liberty and self-determination (in the long run).

That is what we have. It is supposed to give employers a better idea but if it took 3 attempts to get an achieved it doesn't record that and it doesn't record failed subjects. It also makes no allowance for hard versus soft subjects. The strict wording issues I have struck have been post secondary.

In theory it is more flexible than our old system but in practice you have to go at the speed of your class. We have a final exam component to help standardise across schools nationally and the exams are only once a year so while in theory you could move quicker the system is not set up to allow it.

From my understanding of the purpose of CBE, at least in Iowa how they plan to use it, the only reason that you'd have to go at the speed of your class is if the teacher wasn't differentiating. The whole purpose of CBE as I understand it is to BE more flexible.

What I got out of what I've heard read as a summary is what GT educators have known and many practice, that teachers are no longer the keepers of knowledge, rather, they're directors of learning.....which can and should come from many resources with the majority of resources being from how each student learns best.

All of that sounds wonderful, my largest concern though isn't students quite honestly, it's teachers on average. In our experience, the vast majority of teachers haven't mastered teaching well enough to differentiate in their own classroom with the same curriculum, let alone bringing in many other experiences and resources outside of their classroom....and needing to evaluate that outside experience.

I believe the thought pattern on which CBE can happen, however, I think it's going to take more than one generation of teachers and a change in how teachers are taught in college to earn their teaching degree. I simply don't think most teachers can handle CBE how I understand it.

Prior to the great emphasis on standardization as an educational reform, many teachers did differentiate for their classroom students. But it was not called "differentiation", it was a matter of knowing their students and connecting with them. There were fewer measures and less research to dictate the "science" of teaching... but some may say there was more practice of the "art" of teaching.

Standardization has, in some cases, made classrooms into research labs, with stories from teachers about not being allowed to teach with different materials, curriculum, or pacing.

Some may say, in these circumstances, a type of censorship is occurring.

Local parental control of public school policies is being replaced with school boards influenced by nationalization efforts, in order to maximize receipt of tax dollars.

Like teachers of days gone by, today's involved parents (many without teaching credentials or certification) manage to ferret out meaningful resources for the education of their children, for enrichment, after-schooling, and homeschooling. They do this, in part, by knowing their children. School systems cannot know the children as well and strive to compensate for this with excessive data collection.

Those who value diversity of thought, freedom to learn from an uncensored variety of learning materials and curriculum, at an appropriate pacing for a student... and liberty from the veritable prison of excessive data collection... may wish to stay informed on legislation and strive to keep homeschooling legal and unrestricted.

I can see it working in med school where you want everyone to a high standard. When it is used in high school though it tends to become a get as many people as possible over a low bar.

it was sold here as giving more information to the employer about what the student can do. It doesn't show how many attempts it took them though or what subjects they didn't achieve a satisfactory level. It also gives the same amount of credits for a base level course as an advanced one.

It should be more flexible but so far here it doesn't seem to be. The most common complaint though is it doesn't reward hard work and high achievement.

The exact word things were post secondary teachers having to grade to an exact rubric.

This sounds a little like the "mastery-based" approach my son's private school takes. All kids are assessed at the beginning of the year and throughout the year with pretesting to determine what they have already mastered in language arts and math. Mastery = 80% or higher. A student that shows mastery can move on, so that my son was able to work 4-5 years ahead in spelling, vocabulary and grammar and 2 years ahead in math. The school is able to make this work by keeping class sizes small (10-12 students). It has worked beautifully for us.

I favor extensive data collection and (with the consent of the student) dissemination. It is my impression that employers of high school graduates never examine transcripts. You are either a high school graduate or a dropout. Therefore gifted students must graduate from colleges, especially those with good reputations, to distinguish themselves. I think school transcripts should be like credit reports, which are transmitted in a standardized way at low cost. The real "prison", if you are using that term, is the inability to get good jobs without going through a 16-year long sentence in school.