Competency education offers promise and peril for students

A performance-based education agenda in California has lifted student achievement, but even its backers worry it could be inequitable.

 If you drive around Lindsay, Calif., on a weekday evening, you’ll notice kids clustered together in what seem to be random locations — sitting under trees or on curbs — and typing away on laptops.

What brings these young people to those spots? Somewhere nearby, you’re sure to find a school. And while that school may not be open, its Wi-Fi signal is available 24/7 to any student who wants to log in and study.

Lindsay Unified School District in California’s fertile San Joaquin Valley exemplifies the promise of competency education (or performance-based education, as it is called locally). Since beginning its transition to the model in 2009, discipline problems have dropped sharply, the school climate has improved dramatically (as measured by the California Healthy Kids Survey), academic achievement has climbed slowly but steadily, and kids have grown accustomed to the idea that learning can happen just about anytime and anywhere — even on a Friday evening while sitting under a tree.

Lindsay also happens to be a high-poverty school district (100% of its students are eligible for free or reduced-price meals), which makes it especially interesting to proponents of competency education. Because the model being implemented in districts across the country is still so new, advocates stress that more research is needed to assess its effect in different school settings. Even boosters of competency education worry that, if poorly implemented, competency education could turn into yet another boon for the most advantaged students, leaving everyone else further behind.

Widening the achievement gap?

Competency education’s central tenet is that students should move ahead in the curriculum only if and when they can demonstrate that they’re ready to do so. That premise may seem innocuous, but it requires revolutionary changes to business as usual in K-12 education: If students are expected to advance at their own pace, then surely it makes better sense to group them according to what they know and can do rather than assigning them to classes based on their chronological age. Similarly, it follows that students should be awarded a high school diploma when they’ve mastered given skills and content, not because they’ve spent a certain amount of time in the classroom or passed a given number of courses.

Students should be awarded a high school diploma when they’ve mastered the given skills and content, not because they’ve spent a certain amount of time in the classroom or passed a given number of courses.

Advocates say competency education better prepares students for the next step — whether that is college, training programs, work, or the military — because it means students can no longer slide by on good behavior. Instead, the model insists that they actually master the content and skills that their schools, districts, and states have deemed crucial to their future success.

But could the model’s ostensible strengths turn into disadvantages for students from lower-income families? A recent report, Equity in Competency Education (Lewis et al., 2014), examines some of the ways competency-based education could “inadvertently increase inequity in opportunities and outcomes.” In particular, the report identifies three kinds of resources thought to be critical to the success of competency education that also may disproportionately benefit the most advantaged students:

• Digital technologies that can contribute to personalization and customization of learning and assessment;
• Certain kinds of background knowledge and skills that allow young people to direct their own academic progress; and
• Out-of-school experiences, such as workshops and camps offered by museums, universities, and others.

Such concerns about resource inequities are nothing new to school leaders at Lindsay High; they’ve been wrestling with them for six years already.

Bridging the digital divide

Not all competency-based schools rely on technology to deliver content and track student progress. However, many of them have come to rely heavily on tablets, laptops, and learning management systems to personalize instruction, empower students to learn at their own pace, and keep track of students’ progress. As the Lewis et al. report notes, this could put low-income students at a serious disadvantage since they are less likely than their more affluent peers to own such devices, live in homes with reliable Internet connections, and have parents who are digitally literate. Further, the report points out, recent research suggests that low-income students tend to be more likely to use technology for entertainment and social purposes rather than for educational reasons, such as to write papers, produce multimedia materials, or compile spreadsheets or databases. In sum, competency education might favor communities that have the best technology and the ways in which those communities are accustomed to using such tools.

However, district officials in Lindsay — where 91% of the students are Latino, and 40% come from migrant families — have made it a priority to bridge that digital divide. Every middle and high school student is given a school-issued laptop, for example, as well access to the schools’ Wi-Fi. Further, while most students don’t have an Internet connection at home, that will soon change, pending completion of a citywide Wi-Fi project, spearheaded and funded by the school district.

But local school leaders are adamant that the goal isn’t to provide technology for technology’s sake. “In a mastery-based system, it’s not about giving a kid a device and saying ‘now, go learn,’ ” said Lindsay superintendent Thomas Rooney. “It’s about determining what curriculum and instruction is best learned via technology — technology as enabler. The most important thing is still really good teaching.”

Further, in an effort to address parents’ lack of familiarity with technology, the district has hired staff — a group of people in their 20s and 30s, digital natives — to help create what superintendent Rooney calls a “technology-rich culture” in every school. And one of their responsibilities is providing training for parents in using technology and supporting their children’s efforts to use it for learning.

 Teaching metacognitive and self-regulation skills

Competency education requires that students become masters of their own learning in ways that traditional schools do not. Pacing is determined by the individual learner; student agency and “voice” are given special value, and students are constantly asked to identify gaps in their knowledge and to measure their own progress against their school’s learning standards. In essence, competency-based schools are designed to foster independence and self-regulation.

However, the Lewis et al. report points to research suggesting that students from low-income backgrounds tend to lag their wealthier peers in developing metacognitive skills — i.e., awareness of one’s own thinking processes — given that “higher-income parents tend to engage in more extensive questioning and discussion of psychological processes with their children” (p. 5). Further, the report adds, poverty tends to be associated with weaker capacity for self-regulation or the ability to “focus during academic activity, manage distractions, and set goals to sustain attention and achievement” (p. 6).

Recognizing just how valuable out-of-school learning can be, school leaders have made it a priority to apply for grants to support travel opportunities.

But research also shows that such capacities can be taught effectively regardless of a student’s background. At Lindsay High School, for example, explicit discussions of goal setting and self-monitoring are just as common as discussions about course content and assignments. It has taken some “pushing and prodding” to get everybody to talk openly about their own learning, said Principal Jaime Robles, but “we expect students to set a goal for every class and for how they’re going to acquire the knowledge and demonstrate proficiency. They do it for specific learning targets, for each unit of study, and for the week. We help them monitor their progress, but the goals are theirs. They own them. And over time, it’s become remarkable how well they can articulate what they’re learning.”

That capacity for self-reflection is also required to prepare for Lindsay High School’s senior exit interview, a formal presentation before a panel of educators, administrators, and community members, followed by a question-and-answer period. Beginning in 10th grade, students build a digital portfolio of the skills, knowledge, and experiences needed to succeed in life after high school. Preparing for the interview also involves doing research on career and college pathways, and no student graduates without successfully completing it.

“Whether they’re going to community college, four-year college, trade school, or into the workforce, they have to demonstrate that they have the necessary skills to have a legitimate shot at that next step,” Robles said.

Out-of-school experiences

The final concern of the Lewis et al. report is that less-affluent students may lack access to out-of-school learning experiences. In some competency-based systems, students whose parents can afford extras like art and science camps, tutoring, and trips overseas can earn credit for the skills they develop through such experiences. Further, by participating in such activities over the summer, they can minimize the summer learning loss that afflicts many young people.

To date, Lindsay Unified School District has lacked the funding needed to underwrite activities like summer camp or regular weekend programs. And because it is located in a rural, mainly agricultural part of California, its students lack easy access to the various kinds of cultural and scientific institutions that tend to be available in major metropolitan areas. However, recognizing just how valuable out-of-school learning can be, school leaders have made it a priority to apply for grants to support travel opportunities. For example, recently they were able to send 30 students — all from low-income, migrant families — to Washington, D.C., for a weeklong leadership-themed trip.

Competency education requires students to become masters of their own learning in ways that traditional schools do not.

In the past, the district has scraped together funds to send a couple of hundred students on a summer learning tour of California, where they visited museums, the Sequoia National Forest, and other cultural and natural treasures. Students who participate in Lindsay’s AVID program (Advancement Via Individual Determination) have regular opportunities to go on college tours, beginning in 9th grade.

Conclusion

As Lewis and colleagues point out in their report, competency education has great potential to help close the achievement gap, insofar as it creates the expectation that every student will master the curriculum rather than be passed automatically from grade to grade.  But, they argue, that could backfire by enabling relatively affluent young people to use their advantages — better access to technology, stronger grounding in metacognitive skills, more out-of-school opportunities — to move ahead even further and faster.

“In a personalized system like performance-based education, the inequities scream out at you,” said Lindsay superintendent Rooney. “It’s up to us, the school leaders, to fix them.”

Indeed, Rooney and his colleagues appear to be doing just that, by finding ways to make up for those resource gaps as best they can. For other schools and districts hoping to use competency education as a means of promoting greater equity, their efforts bear close watching.

Reference

Lewis, M.W., Eden, R., Garber, C., Rudnick, M., Santibañez, L., & Tsai, T. (2014). Equity in competency education: Realizing the potential, overcoming the obstacles. Students at the Center: Competency Education Research Series. Boston, MA: Jobs for the Future.

CITATION: Ritterband, V. & Heller, R. (2015). Competency education offers promise and peril for students. Phi Delta Kappan, 97 (2), 27-29.