Competency-Based Education

Is Competency-Based Education the Answer?

It is no secret that the United States is currently facing a literacy crisis. It is estimated that 21 percent of adults in the United States are reading below a 5th grade level and 19 percent of high school graduates cannot read. In Mike Rose’s book Literacy: A Critical Sourcebook, he states “the government requires that one be able to read and write at a sixth-grade level to be functionally literate: that is, to be able to meet-to a minimal degree- society 's reading and writing demands.” This means that an estimated 21 percent of adults in the United States are not even functionally literate, lacking the basic skills needed to survive in a tough American economy. This issue of leaving school
This differs greatly from a normative system in which students are graded based on their level of performance in reference to the “norm” or average performance levels of other students. In a competency- based system, student’s ability is determined independently from other students at that particular institution. Proponents for a competency-based system claim that it will help to clearly define graduation requirements and expectations, which will lead to increased accountability for teachers, parents and students in working towards these goals. It will also insure that students leaving these institutions have reached these pre-specified competencies and have at least the basic minimal skills necessary to function in society. However, opponents to competency-based education claim that there are still many flaws to the system that have been completely overlooked, or that those who have already attempted to implement a competency-based system have failed to address, and for these reasons a competency-based system cannot work. In this seminar paper,
Spady titled Competency Based Education: A Bandwagon in Search of a Definition, he begins by laying out what in theory seem to be the advantages of implementing a competency-based education system, the first of these being clear outcomes. In a normative system, the decision as to whether or not you have met a course’s instructional goals and should therefore pass the course is left to the discretion of the teacher or instructor. For example, in a typical high school, freshman students are required to take English 9 or a class equivalent to it. One of the standards for that class states that, “students will be able to identify parts of speech”. The problem with this is that it is not specific enough. It doesn’t tell you things like what parts of speech or how many parts of speech one should know before passing the class. These decisions are left up to the teacher and for that reason students who all took the same class will come out with varying degrees of ability. Spady writes, “CBE takes the surprises out of the instructional-certification process by encouraging collaborative decision making regarding goals, by placing these goals “up front” as guides for both teachers and learners, and by attaching those goals to explicit and reasonably concrete behavioral referents.” (Spady 10) Ideally, students would have multiple opportunities for assessment to determine whether or not they are meeting their goals and remediation classes if