Competency-Based Instruction: What is it?

What are the goals of school? Why are children required to attend until at least the age of 16 across America? Before you keep reading, spend a minute or two and genuinely answer this. Really. Pull out a sheet of paper or open the Notes app on your phone and answer: Why do schools exist?

The cynics will tell us, kids need to attend school simply so they are out of the house and cared for while parents work, but if that were the case, why would teachers need to be certified and asked to hold advanced degrees?

Others will say, kids have to learn the foundations, the basics, to help prepare them for the workforce and the unknown world in their futures. If that is the case, do all kids need to take Physics, Algebra 2, read works from Shakespeare, and memorize the Periodic Table?

So I ask again, what is the purpose of school?

My belief is that schools exist to eliminate as many barriers as possible, to equip students with skills, knowledge, and dispositions that will allow for greater opportunities for success. I believe schools exist to provide equitable opportunities, to enhance community and national values, to further advance individual and collective citizenship, to propel the economy, and to enrich the lives of all who enter. I believe all of this, yet also fully believe, because I have seen it, that for many of us, in our schools, in our districts, in our classrooms, we spend more time creating hurdles, developing hoops to jump through, and sorting and selecting than we do getting to the heart of our purpose. But I also believe we can make the shifts that matter most when we learn how to focus on the focus.

In my world, Focus on the Focus© means putting forth an intentional effort toward the things that matter most. It means eliminating things that are distractions. It means looking for efficiency and effectiveness. It means embracing leverage, endurance, and depth at the expense of the status quo, and what was. It means embracing competence over compliance. It means embracing process over labels. It means eliminating the hoops and embracing the growth.

This is what competency-based instruction is all about. In a CBI classroom, we understand that all students come to us with knowledge and experience, yet nobody comes with the same knowledge or experience. We understand that we have to have clear expectations for intended outcomes, yet we also understand that every child may take a different amount of time to get there as a result of where they entered the process. In a CBI classroom, we understand that explicit and timely feedback is a key factor in growth and that using isolated, binary “got it -don’t got it” labels limit students.

During the last decade, I have had the opportunity to work with schools all across America as they embrace a variety of CBI elements, such as Standards-Based Grading, Aligned Assessment, Retakes and Redos, Focused Feedback, etc… This is what it means to focus on the focus. When we focus on the areas that matter most, we see the growth and gains we have been searching for. We see decreases in student behavior concerns as students are now receiving the instruction and support they need without arbitrary hoops, deadlines, and expectations. We see student confidence levels rise as they receive feedback and communication that is focused on what they do know and not just what they got wrong. We see teachers who are able to be more efficient with their time as they target standards that carry greater weight. We see parents who are better informed as they receive communication on growth and not just comparisons to “norms”.

In education, we often search for the secret sauce and often create a swinging pendulum, but as we unpack what school is all about and what we are really hoping to achieve, putting a renewed emphasis on what matters most, competence and confidence, we are able to narrow our focus and find the success we have been looking for.