Steve Singer, a teacher in Pennsylvania, writes here about the latest fad among entrepreneurs and politicians: competency-based education.
At long last, schools will get rid of the annual high-stakes testing that provoked parents to opt out.
In the new world of competency-based education, students will be assessed continuously, every day, as they work on their modules.
Here is how he begins:
Welcome to class, children.
Please put your hands down, and sit at your assigned seat in the computer lab.
Yes, your cubicle partitions should be firmly in place. You will be penalized if your eyes wander into your neighbors testing… I mean learning area.
Now log on to your Pearson Competency Based Education (CBE) platform.
Johnny, are you reading a book? Put that away!
Are we all logged on? Good.
Now complete your latest learning module. Some of you are on module three, others on module ten. Yes, Dara, I know you’re still on module one. You’ll all be happy to know each module is fully aligned with Common Core State Standards. In fact, each module is named after a specific standard. Once you’ve mastered say Module One “Citing Textual Evidence to Determine Analysis” you will move on to the next module, say “Determining Theme or Central Idea for Analysis.”
Johnny, didn’t I tell you to put away that book? There is no reading in school. You’re to read the passages provided by the good people at Pearson. No, you won’t get a whole story. Most of the passages are non-fiction. But I think there is a fun passage about a pineapple coming up in your module today. Isn’t that nice?…
Thanks to the good people at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Gates Foundation, and the Foundation for Excellence in Education, The state and federal government have mandated a much more efficient way of determining student learning. Back in the day, they forced schools to give one big standardized test in Reading and Math every year. Teachers would have to scramble with test prep material to make sure all learners could pass the test, because if students didn’t get passing marks, the teacher was out on her butt.
We’ve done away with such silliness now. Thankfully the government got rid of yearly high stakes standardized testing. What we do now is called Competency Based Education. That’s what this program is called. It’s kind of like high stakes standardized testing every day. So much more efficient, so much more data to use to prove you know this set of basic skills written by the testing companies with hardly any input from non-experts like classroom teachers.
I might be inclined to dismiss this scenario as a scare tactic, but I heard New York State Commissioner of Education MaryEllen Elia describe the coming shift to embedded assessment, which is the model of Questar, the new testing system for the state, beginning in 2016-17. Competency-based assessment occurs seamlessly, every day, without the students knowing that they are being tested as they answer questions about what they read.
If you love standardized testing as part of the daily life of the school, you will love CBE.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“There is no reading in school.” Good one.
My children, like many, used to finish the North Carolina End-of-Grade tests well before many other children finished. They then had to sit at their desks for 2 hours, but they were not allowed to read, although they wanted to. I’m still pissed off about that.
Eric Brandon: and we still get people visiting this blog that can’t get enough of that testing.
For OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN, of course. Apparently that’s not the norm for the schools to which the rheephormsters send THEIR OWN CHILDREN.
Thank you for your comment.
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Okay….a QUESTION. I keep hearing this word “seamless” popping up more and more lately when people talk about schools.
I see it mentioned in this particular blog:entry “Competency-based assessment occurs seamlessly, every day, without the students knowing that they are being tested as they answer questions about what they read.”
And, I just found it online: “Growth in competency-based education has been stymied by a lack of software support. The Technical Interoperability Pilot incorporates vendor engagement on finding solutions that work together seamlessly to support the scale and operational integrity required to sustain accreditors’ and regulators’ scrutiny of CBE programs.” http://er.educause.edu/articles/2015/10/competency-based-education-technology-challenges-and-opportunities
[BTW The article cited above is chock-full of all sorts of edu-techno jargon and one of those flow charts that makes my head hurt…..what the hell is “Evaluator Workflow Mgmt “?]
I remember many years ago…we had a “presenter” who came in on one of those teacher inservice days. She was a nice woman but I don’t think she had a handle on what she was really talking about….on reality in an actual classroom full of living, breathing students.. Every time she seemed at a loss for words, she’d throw in some sort of catchphrase or cliche strung together… “rubric” “benchmarks” “standards based”…… She kept saying the word “seamless” over and over again.
Oh no…she’s back!
I’m hearing people talk about “seamless” now just like they were all about “rigorous” a couple years ago. It reminds me of the word “iconic”. Everything is “iconic” these days.
What’s up with this?
It’s the sexy jargon of the moment, and it hurts my head, too. There will be new words flung about soon, I’m sure.
Didn’t teachers (actual, live, classroom teachers) always evaluate their students, every day? They asked questions about the material the students had read or been instructed in, and adjusted their teaching as necessary. No fancy words to describe what teachers did day in and day out. This was considered a normal part of good teaching. No elaborate software needed. No constant standardized testing, or constant teaching to the test.
Thanks so much for writing about my article, Diane. At my school we already have Study Island, IXL and iStation. It’s horrible. Plop the kids on a computer and the teacher is supposed to walk around the room making sure they do the work. Thankfully, I’ve been able to keep my own students off of it despite mandates from up above. But it gets harder every year . One day if things keep up I won’t be able to do it. This article was my attempt at both talking about Competency Based Education and try to make it funny. Otherwise, it would just be too grim. I’m so glad you like it, Diane, and I hope others will, too.
Thanks, Steven. It is thought-provoking.
I refer to all the cell phones, ipads, laptops, etc….etc… that I see in my classroom as “machines”. As in, “put that machine [cell phone] away or I’ll need to take it until the end of class” ie. school policy.
The students think it’s funny that I refer to their beloved smart phones as “machines” But I do it on purpose. Maybe it calls a bit of attention to the fact that all these devices are, in fact, machines. And as humankind’s relationship with technology becomes more and more complex, why not stop for a moment to think, hey, what is this machine that is dominating my life?. [Cue Talking Heads: “And you may ask yourself, where does that highway go?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98AJUj-qxHI ]
A guy was writing in last week’s Sunday Times about his relationship to technology, “Addicted to Distraction”. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/opinion/sunday/addicted-to-distraction.html?_r=0 My God, if this is an adult what are we doing to our kids, especially the youngest children who have been using this stuff almost since birth? If this adult can’t focus enough to read a book, what about our students?
Meanwhile, the Common Core nutcases want us to use “close reading” in our classrooms, staring at the Gettysburg Address, for example, for days on end. Yeah, sure, that will get our kids interested in reading. Talk about setting up schools for failure.
I’ve never been much of a believer in conspiracy theories. But this blog has made me a believer that there is, in fact, a vast conspiracy in the works. The plan is to replace teachers with machines and sell our schools off to the highest bidders and/or campaign supporters. Democracy and the public good be damned.
It reminds me of Gordon Gecko, the billionaire villain in the film “Wall Street”. Gecko gives that amazing speech as he balances a drink, pacing his huge office high above New York City: “Now you’re not naive enough to think we’re living in a democracy, are you, Buddy? It’s the free market and you’re part of it.” Indeed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lCpc_6nwuY
Students aren’t just working on their modules. They are being MADE INTO MODULES, into interchangeable parts. And, so are their teachers. Regina Roybal (below) is right to call it a Brave New World.
I love this, too, Steven, and I want to show it to my AP students who are finishing Brave New World and studying satire. A Brave New World of education, indeed.
The book by Selwyn on Distrusting Ed Tech fits in exactly with this idea! Rather than just argue tech’s limited benefit in some kind of learning, it looks at the basic neb-lib ideology that is at the heart of it. Tech is not opening doors or increasing democracy…it is limiting and further’s the status quo at the expense of the workers.
This was one of the reasons I stopped teaching summer school. After our students did nothing for the entire school year, the administration decided to sit them in front of computers for the six weeks of summer school. After about 2 weeks the kids realized they could game the system to make it seem like they were actually learning. Unfortunately they couldn’t game the Regents exam. Most of them failed it since they really didn’t learn anything.
These types of programs are designed by those that believe students learn in a lockstep behaviorist way. Children are treated like rats in a maze or chickens pecking to find the box with grain of corn. They fail to understand that at the heart of learning is connecting, forming relationships and deep understandings of big ideas. These experiments will bore and frustrate children to tears while denying them the opportunity to truly learn and express their learning in a coherent way. At the heart of all this reductionist thinking is the desire to promote computer assisted instruction (CAI) rather than allowing students to engage in divergent thinking, critical thinking, real reading and meaningful human exchanges. We will turn our students into robots if we continue to allow people like Gates, Zukerberg, Pearson International and other such corporate tyrants to prevail.
Yes. Exactly that, retired teacher.
But think of it this way. At least the increasing use of CAI is making money for the companies that produce such products. And that’s the important thing, right? (Yes, this is snark.)
Also interesting to me is that Gates and the others who are pushing this in the public schools, and pushing for more and more charter schools that teach this way, send their own kids to expensive private schools which absolutely do not use this model of instruction.
I wonder where Mark Zukerberg and his wife will send their daughter Max to school when she’s older?
Today’s teachers are so far evolved beyond a behaviorist notion of learning, which frankly, is from the 19th Century. The only reason this antiquated idea is being spruced up to sell to us is that it is computer friendly. Rather than starting with how students learn and what is needed for the 21st century, the marketeers are telling us we have to clear the way so every aspect of teaching and learning is in a format that is suitable to CAI because they want to sell products! The only reason this is gaining traction is that the people behind it have more money than everybody else, they continue to buy influence.
But to listen to them, they couch it in terms of personalized learning! Anything on a computer must be programmed to do that. In a real classroom, unexpected and productive things happen every day as the students ask interesting questions or make new observations. The learning happens spontaneously. With the tech, it must be programmed. How is that personalized?
Alice- You are right. They have managed to take the person out of personalized.
Instead of testing-on-computers-all-the-time, what if education reformers imagined innovation that looked like this:
http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/zurich-school-competition/gallery/innovative-learning-spaces-gallery?CMP=twt_gu#/?picture=422976006&index=9
Read Technocracy Rising to understand the frame of reference for the total plan being put into action by Zbigniew Bzrezinski (Obama’s former professor at Columbia and current adviser behind the scenes) and Trilateral Commission pals.
The data collection required by the Common Core is only part of the story. The talks going on right now in Paris about legally binding carbon emissions reductions to be enforced by an international body such as…. let’s just say for instance…the United Nations, since it already exists, is the next step toward the Brave New World.
That’s when they go for the kill. The total destruction of Western Civilization as we know it….the total shift of our tax dollars to third world nations. The shutting down of coal plants in the US which will not effect carbon very much but will crush our standard of living.
But most people are still buying the whole global warming/climate change charade so there is not much hope of a break through in thinking. (And NO, I don’t like the Koch Brothers and I don’t work for Exxon….I am a teacher…. and a voracious reader of history, biographies, and books and white papers by global leaders who love to write about what they are going to do….if only more people would read their work they would never get away with their dastardly plans.)
http://technocracy.news/index.php/2015/12/04/france-bows-obama-backing-climate-treaty/
The Embargo with Cuba is still on but the US has no Embargo on the standardized testing industry which is specifically mentioned in section 11 of travel rules. Vacations are still illegal, but not standardized tests.
Click to access cuba_faqs_new.pdf
That’s because standardized tests help spread democracy. We are going to save the world with our standardized tests.
Seriously, the lobbying arm of the testing industry is long indeed.
A laugh that might make you cry!
Sent from my iPad
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Perfectly written article: conversational, jargon free, informative. Impossible to add anything without ruining it.
It’s funny you share this article Diane, considering your position on the board of the Gordon Commission which promotes and develops competency-based testing. What’s that about?
Ann, the honest answer to your question is that I was not an active member of the Gordon Commission. I was too busy to go to meetings or participate in any way. My name should not be in the report. That said, I totally oppose online instruction with imbedded assessment. That clears the way for nonstop data mining of children and removes the need for teachers. As one of our commenters said earlier, this is a major step towards replacing teachers with technology, like replacing bank tellers with automation.it is not about better education but cost cutting.
I’ve argued for years for “competency based formative assessments”; it’s called “look at my grades in the gradebook; they are proof of learning”!!!!!!
If teachers collaborate and are allowed to develop and use best practices, then the learning activities that take place during a quarter will be as thorough, rigorous, relevant, etc. as any activities chosen by a district.
Experienced teachers, masters of their discipline, know what activities are efficacious and which are not. I challenge my district, or state, to come and observe me, look at my student products and realize that what and how I teach is way more challenging than any EOC multiple choice test.
But noooooo, the ex-spurts slander and malign me, saying that my quarter activities and grades are not proof of learning, and that my students must jump throw a “pearson hoop” (standard test) at the end of the year.
Ummm…didnt i state 6 years ago that this would happen in 10 yrs?
In case you cant find it in the multitude of posts i have made about this on the book:
Students will, come to school on a bus, eat breakfast, sit in a large room lined with computers, log in, work online with a program for about 3 hours, log off, eat lunch, run on a treadmill for 30-45 minutes, sit back in the room, log on, complete another 3 hours of computer program based work, log off, get on the bus, go home, rinse, and repeat.
These rooms will be monitored by a half dozen adults per 600 students or so (ratio of about 1 to 100), the wage will be minimum and the duty will be to fix technical difficulties, manage behavior, and escort between activities.
Teaching will be an obsolete profession.
Students will one day say: “can you believe that someone used to stand in a small room and actual teach to kids…weird”.
This will save, and most importantly MAKE, the government money, tax dollars will be spent elsewhere, monitor turnover will be that of a burger king, techies will get their wish, and politicians will succeed in the dehumanization of society byway of eliminating the current scapegoats for our country’s demise, as they (yearly) continue to develop and SELL new programs that will fix the errors in the programs that the “schools” purchased last year…contiually blaming the programs, and using that as a selling point for version 2.0 and beyond…