Craft Category: Artifacts

How Systems of Assessments Aligned with Competency-Based Education Can Support Equity

Competency-based education systems hold promise for maximizing high-quality teaching and learning for the growth of all students. Such systems, if well designed and implemented, can serve critical equity aims by ensuring that all students are supported in meeting key learning and development targets. Competency-based education systems, however, cannot fulfill these goals unless accompanied by high-quality assessments and assessment systems. School, district, and state leaders must work to develop balanced assessment systems that are coherent with the target competencies and learning progressions, that comprehensively provide a range of evidence for each student and to serve multiple stakeholders, and continuously monitor students’ progress over time. Balanced assessment systems are critical for providing information at multiple levels of the system to monitor, evaluate, and enhance quality for education and equity agendas. This is a necessary paradigm shift.

In this report, we address the following questions:

  • What are the opportunities and barriers in districts and in states to build and sustain systems of assessments that support competency-based education over the short- and long-term?
  • As district and state leaders transform educational models to support competency-based learning, what role could assessment play at each level to advance important equity goals?
  • How might a balanced assessment system support competency-based education, and what are the requirements for such an assessment system?
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January 14, 2020

Transforming Teaching: What University Presidents and Deans of Colleges of Education Need to Know about Modernizing the K-12 Educator Workforce

Higher education has immense power to support the transformation of K-12 teaching and learning because it incubates future educators and supplies opportunities for professional development. University presidents and deans of colleges of education can also use their influence to support systemic change to modernize the profession through a variety of tools and strategies that are at their unique disposal. This issue brief challenges institutions of higher learning to:

  • Diversify the educator workforce;
  • Modernize teacher preparation; and
  • Promote continuous professional learning and development.

Transforming Teaching: What University Presidents and Deans of Colleges of Education Need to Know about Modernizing the K-12 Educator Workforce comes on the heels of two other issue briefs that explore how federal and state policymakers can support systemic transformation of the profession. Together the three issue briefs expand on the seminal paper, Moving Toward Mastery, which described in vivid detail a new vision for modernizing the educator workforce. Like states, higher education leaders will approach this work from varying political, economic, and cultural contexts. This brief contains many entry points to initiate action. In addition, the brief contains case studies that illuminate how many institutions of higher education are already making great strides.

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December 12, 2019

What Is Competency-Based Education? An Updated Definition

This report updates the field’s 2011 working definition of competency-based education, which helped to build the field and create common understandings of key elements in competency-based systems among stakeholders. Competency-based education is being implemented at deeper levels in more schools every year. It is a major shift in school culture, structures, and pedagogy focused on ensuring that all students succeed and addressing the fundamental shortcomings of the traditional model.

Eight years after creating the original working definition, feedback from across the field indicated a need for an update to reflect a deeper understanding of key issues and new developments. This report presents the new definition, which was developed with extensive input from invited attendees at the second National Summit on K-12 Competency-Based Education and from a technical advisory group of more than 40 experts and leaders in the field. It also includes a set of belief statements, answers to frequently asked questions, and a brief discussion of common misconceptions about competency-based education. These provide essential context for understanding the definition and the field in which it is situated. Finally, resources are provided for additional exploration of competency-based education policies and practices.

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November 12, 2019

Aligning Education Policy with the Science of Learning and Development

This report analyzes recent learning sciences research and provides nine recommendations to address a critical need: how can education policy support and align with the science of learning and development?

Research on how students learn and develop is providing teachers, practitioners, and policymakers with insights on how to help students learn and grow academically and develop holistically to achieve successful outcomes in their education and in life.

This report intends to bridge a knowledge gap in the field and can be used by education leaders to create a vision and framework for how to best support student learning and development.

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October 22, 2019
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