Personalize Learning (#plearnchat)

"Competency education cannot be scaled unless policymakers address the barriers that make it challenging to transform teaching and learning. Barriers stem from federal laws that reinforce the traditional time-based elements and mandated statewide and federal testing systems.

In KnowledgeWorks’ first-ever e-book, authors address three policy areas to focus on in building an educational system that supports competency education. By focusing on these areas, states would be given the flexibility needed to innovate, evaluate and build systems that positively impact student achievement."

Join us in #plearnchat on April 20th when educators from around the country will be discussing these important questions about competency-based systems.

Here is some exciting news for those education advocates that have worked to change federal policy to include competency-based education. Take a few minutes to comment on Senator Alexander's draft to include new assessment options in the re-authorization of ESEA.

"Senator Alexander’s discussion draft proposes two policy changes that would advance the K-12 competency education movement. He is accepting comments on his discussion draft until February 2, 2015 at fixingNCLB@help.senate.gov.

• The draft proposes two assessment options. The first would maintain current law by requiring statewide testing annually in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school. The second would establish a state-defined option where states could develop an assessment system that may include any combination of annual statewide summative assessments, grade span assessments, and competency-based performance assessments.

• The draft proposes to let states use federal funding reserved for the design and implementation of state assessment instruments to build competency-based assessments."