Competency-based education has been getting attention in the mainstream media. First the Wall Street Journal did an indepth look at the growing interest in CBE and spoke with several leading schools/districts in How Schools Are Rewriting the Rules on Class Time for Students—and Even Ditching Grade Levels. The Washington Post also covered the topic in Emerging from the pandemic, districts look to expand personalized competency-based education.
It’s a great thing to have CBE getting mainstream attention….but there are also risks. We still don’t have the type of evidence that can help us judge high quality CBE models and implementation…thus anyone can claim they are doing CBE. This is a risk that as a field we need to deal with sooner than later. Either by building the research-base or by agreeing on the core pieces that need to be in place for CBE. That’s not an easy task…but not one that we can put off very long.
