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Aurora Institute

How States Are Advancing Competency Education

CompetencyWorks Blog

Author(s): Chris Sturgis

Issue(s): State Policy, Create Enabling Conditions for Competency-Based Education


map2Do you have questions about how other states are transforming their education systems to competency-based schools?

Here is your chance to hear directly from two state leaders and ask all of your questions. Join us for a CompetencyWorks webinar on May 17th at 3 pm ET on How State Educational Leaders are Advancing Competency Education based on Necessary for Success: Building Mastery of World-Class Skills — A State Policymakers Guide to Competency Education.  Join Susan Patrick, iNACOL; Jason Glass, Iowa Department of Education; and Don Siviski, Maine Department of Education for what promises to be a great conversation. And if you haven’t joined one of our webinars before,  you should expect two great conversations because the chat room is always spinning with exchanges, ideas, and new relationships. You can register here for the webinar.

If you want to get up to speed on state policy issues we have a few resources you might find interesting:

1)    A Snapshot of Competency Education Across the United States

2)    Strengthening High School Teaching and Learning in New Hampshire’s Competency-Based System by Alliance for Excellence Education.

3)    Listen to Paul Leather about New Hampshire’s journey at the resources from the American Youth Policy Forum’s event Moving to Mastery. He starts about 30 minutes into the video.

4)   National Governors Association has produced a report State Strategies for Awarding Credit to Support Student Learning as well as a Competency-based Learning Policy Audit Tool to frame your initial conversations.

5)   The Competency-Based wiki is serving a depository of information that we are collecting on state policies. If you have anything we should add, please use the comment section below.

6)   Two CompetencyWorks issue briefs Cracking the Code: Synchronizing Policy and Practice for Performance-Based Learning and Necessary for Success: Building Mastery of World-Class Skills — A State Policymakers Guide to Competency Education

You can also join us at the Virtual Schools Symposium where Sandra Dop (Iowa), Diane Smith (Oregon), and Rose Colby (New Hampshire) will be sharing the different approaches across three states.