Competency-based education and its partner, personalized learning, are expanding across the U.S as well as in pockets of innovation around the world.
Below are short case studies from schools in the U.S. and in Aotearoa New Zealand to give you a feel for what a personalized, competency-based approach to education can look like.
Here are four case studies based on site visits in 2019:
- Northern Cass School District, North Dakota
- Tilton School, New Hampshire
- Champlain Valley Union High School, Vermont
- Pathways High School, Wisconsin
Three other sets of case studies will give you insights into different ways of designing schools for personalized, competency-based education.
Maine
Casco Bay High School in Portland Public Schools provides a great model to understand how schools can design for proficiency-based learning:
Idaho
Idaho invested in a pilot strategy to launch mastery-based learning. These articles are based on site visits during the first year of implementation.
- Part 1 – Mastery-Based Learning in Idaho
- Part 2 – Finding Synergy at Kuna Middle School
- Part 3 – Moving Forward toward Mastery at Kuna School District
- Part 4 – Increasing Credits Earned at Initial Point High School
- Part 5 – Finding and Fixing the Missing Skills at Greenhurst Elementary School
- Part 6 – Columbia High School: How a Comprehensive High School Becomes Mastery-Based
- Part 7 – Gathering Insights on Mastery-Based Learning from Columbia High School
- Part 8 – Slaying the Dragon: A Conversation with Cory Woolstenhulme on Mastery-Based Learning
- Part 9 – Central Academy, West Ada School District
- Part 10 – The Sharp Ones: A Few Takeaways from Idaho
Aotearoa New Zealand
Aotearoa New Zealand has a substantially different set of policies that promote school autonomy. Some schools continue to be highly traditional while others are moving to highly personalized, competency-based models (although they use different language in different ways).
School Visits
Pt. England Primary
- Pt. England Primary: Making Sense of the New Zealand Curriculum
- Pt. England Primary: Creating a Culture of Respect, Belonging and Learning
- Pt. England Primary: Manaiakalani, The Hook from Heaven
- Pt. England Primary: Understanding Where Students Are
- Pt. England Primary: Gifting Language
- Pt. England Primary: The Cherry or the Orchard
Hobsonville Point Secondary School
- Challenging Convention at Hobsonville Point Secondary School
- Making Connections Across the Curriculum at Hobsonville Point
- Professional Learning….Every Day at Hobsonville Point
Swannanoa School
- Swannanoa School: Where People Are the Most Important Thing in the World
- Swannanoa Values: Finding Treasures Along the Greenstone Trail
- The Swannanoa School Design
Karori Normal School
- Karori Normal School: Becoming Student-Centered with UDL
- Learning to Use the National Curriculum at Karori Normal School
Understanding the Aotearoa New Zealand Education System
- A Primer on the NZ Education System
- Insights from Aotearoa New Zealand: Credentialing Learning
- Insights from Aotearoa New Zealand: Defining Lifelong Learning
- Insights from Aotearoa New Zealand: Key Competencies
- Diplomas or Certificates of Achievement? A Look at NZ’s NCEA
- How Competency-Based is New Zealand?
You can find more links to other case studies here.
