Corrected: This story has been updated to correct the number of districts participating in Washington state’s Mastery-Based Learning Collaborative.
Every state now allows schools to embrace competency-based learning—an education model that allows students to advance and graduate based on their mastery of academic concepts rather than the amount of time they spend in class.
Some states have taken it further, though, funding school transitions to competency-based learning through grants, changing graduation requirements to abandon traditional credit hours in favor of having students reach proficiency in the required subjects, and providing resources like handbooks and updated standards to help schools make the shift.
It’s all part of a growing push to make education more personalized rather than one-size-fits-all, giving each student the chance to have more of a say in what and how they learn—and how they show what they’ve learned. If schools shift wholesale in this direction, it means a transformation of the traditional education model into one in which students learn at different paces, complete more hands-on and self-designed projects, and even do much of their learning outside of classroom walls.
“For many, many years we have been driven by what I call the three B’s—bells, buses, and butt time, or seat time—to really drive how we think about education,” Utah State Superintendent Sydnee Dickson said. “Flipping into thinking about time as a variable and learning as the constant is really key.”
But widespread support for that model among state education leaders and reform advocates hasn’t necessarily translated into widespread adoption, and research on the effectiveness of competency-based learning is still limited. Despite state-level support for such a shift, implementation in many states has been slow, with only a handful of schools or districts fully embracing competency-based learning.
That is largely by design, however, according to Dickson and other state education leaders. They describe the transition to competency-based learning—which can also be called, among other labels, proficiency-based learning, mastery-based learning, or student-centered learning—as a change in mindset that takes time.
For many, many years we have been driven by what I call the three B's—bells, buses, and butt time, or seat time—to really drive how we think about education. Flipping into thinking about time as a variable and learning as the constant is really key.
Utah is among the states furthest along in the transition to competency-based learning, according to the Aurora Institute, a nonprofit that advocates for competency-based learning and supports states and districts in their adoption of the model. The institute classifies Utah as “advanced,” meaning it has a clear policy in support of competency-based education and is committed to building educator capacity for it.
Other states are not as far along but have still taken concrete steps to encourage schools to embrace competency-based learning. Washington state and Wyoming, for example, are labeled as “developing,” meaning they have schools piloting the model. And states including California, Texas, and New York are labeled as “emerging,” meaning they have enacted policies allowing for competency-based education but haven’t yet done much else.
Last year, Wyoming became the final state to allow the model in some capacity, when state education leaders agreed to start a pilot project. “It became more and more clear that the people of Wyoming wanted something different in their education system with this greater focus on job preparation and competency of skills,” state Superintendent Megan Defenfelder said at the time about what drove the change.
Competency-based education, proficiency-based learning, mastery-based learning, personalized learning, student-centered education, and standards-based education are all terms that refer to the same instructional model: one in which students make choices about how they learn and demonstrate their knowledge, learn at a pace that might differ from their classmates’, receive individualized support based on their needs, and progress based on their mastery of course material instead of seat time.
See the Aurora Institute’s definition of competency-based education for more details.
The key to successful implementation, state leaders said, is to invest in professional development for educators, avoid mandates, and give school systems time to adjust.
Every state has a different starting point for competency-based education
Each state has a unique approach to competency-based education—and that’s not a bad thing, said Laurie Gagnon, program director for CompetencyWorks , the Aurora Institute’s online hub for lessons and other information on competency-based learning.
“It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach,” Gagnon said. “That said, we’re starting to see what are good entry points to start working toward and get to a fully developed, coherent, student-centered, and competency-based system, which is a long-term endeavor.”
One of the most common entry points for states is crafting a portrait of a graduate—a high-level document developed by educators, parents, community members, and students that outlines the core competencies, or broad skills, every successful high school graduate should have.
In Utah, the portrait describes an ideal graduating student as someone who demonstrates academic mastery as well as a range of attributes that aren’t purely academic: self-awareness and self-advocacy; communication, critical-thinking, and problem-solving skills; and honesty, integrity, and responsibility.
So far, about half of Utah’s school districts have received grants to start the transition to competency based education through the state’s Personalized, Competency Based Learning program. Even more have adopted portraits, Dickson said.
Through developing those portraits, school districts “get that bigger concept of academic mastery, but also other durable skills that students need to have in order to be successful beyond K-12,” she said.
In some states, competency-based education accelerates with the help of changes to state law.
Vermont lawmakers, for example, passed a law in 2013 creating the Flexible Pathways Initiative, a statewide effort to support schools in expanding personalized learning as well as early college, career training, and work-based learning opportunities. Since then, the law has served as the foundation for local districts’ adoption of competency-based education by allowing and encouraging them to develop personalized learning plans for students and measuring them based on their mastery of concepts rather than credit hours completed.
The state’s board of education voted to update graduation standards the next year to require that students demonstrate proficiency in the required subject areas to earn a diploma rather than taking courses in each for a particular number of years.
All districts in the state are now refining their own graduation requirements based on those rules, which came with a goal of implementation by 2020.
Pilot programs show promise in helping districts adopt competency-based learning
For two decades, Washington state policy has allowed schools to request a waiver from the traditional, credit-based graduation requirements, said Alissa Muller, director of policy at the Washington State Board of Education.
But although a handful of districts took advantage of the waiver, that option wasn’t translating into significant movement toward competency-based education. So a work group formed under a 2019 law started devising ways of helping along the transition to mastery-based learning.
The group has since developed resources for districts to help them shift to mastery-based learning, including a handbook to help schools change grading policies; a profile of a graduate; and details on fulfilling a requirement that students, parents, and educators develop a plan for each student’s career or education following graduation.
But the most extensive effort to shift schools to competency-based instruction has been a pilot program involving 28 districts with at least one school each working to adopt the learning model.
Each school participating in the Mastery-Based Learning Collaborative has a coach, and their teachers are participating in state-funded professional development focused on understanding competency-based learning concepts and mastering related instructional and grading practices, said Seema Bahl, the collaborative’s associate director.
There’s also a focus on culturally responsive competency-based learning.
“The teacher makeup of Washington state is mostly white, and we have an increasing number of students of color to the extent that in a couple of years, it’s going to be a global majority student population,” Bahl said. “So what does it mean to really recognize that, honor that, and make sure that all cultures and all backgrounds are not only welcome in the classroom but seen really as assets?”
Where competency-based education has faltered
In 2012, Maine became the first state to require that all students show proficiency in eight core content areas to earn a high school diploma, rather than put in a requisite number of credit hours. The change effectively made proficiency-based education the law of the land.
It was meant to kickstart an overhaul of Maine’s education system, said Stephen Bowen, who was then the state’s education commissioner and now serves as the executive director of the Hoover Education Success Initiative at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. The idea was that a more personalized, competency-based system would improve student achievement.
A handful of districts had already tried competency-based learning and seen some success, Bowen said. The law was a way to get more schools on board by providing a clear deadline to change graduation requirements: Beginning with the 2018 graduating class, all students had to show proficiency in English, math, science, social studies, world languages, health and wellness, career and education development, and visual and performing arts. (The 2015 graduating class was to show proficiency in the core academic areas—English, math, science, social studies, and health and wellness.)
“At the time, the idea was, let’s take this piece of legislation that was already in the works, that already spoke to achieving these standards, and see if we can use it as a way to kind of nudge the districts along and say, ‘Look, at some point you do need to make sure that students are demonstrating that they’ve met these standards,’” Bowen said.
But the law quickly became a source of stress and tension.
There wasn’t a clear definition of “proficient,” so each district had a different approach. Parents were skeptical that universities would accept proficiency-based transcripts. And small, rural districts worried about their capacity to get students to proficiency in the eight subject areas.
“It was a big leap philosophically, organizationally,” Bowen said. The state was “sort of changing people’s perception of how schools even function.”
Ultimately, support faded and implementation faltered, with many districts working merely to comply with the law but not genuinely changing instruction. The 2018 deadline was first pushed back before Maine lawmakers repealed the 2012 law in 2018. Districts retained the option of awarding proficiency-based diplomas, and about a quarter of Maine superintendents said in a 2019 survey that their districts would stick with them.
Maine’s experience could serve as a lesson for other states, Bowen said.
The state should have taken more time to learn from the districts already implementing competency-based learning to understand what worked and what didn’t, he said.
“That would have been the roadmap to how to get everybody else to where they need to be,” Bowen said. “[Other] states are doing more of that. They’re doing it in phases. They’re doing it in cohorts. They’re moving districts along.”
However, that phased-in approach can only work for so long, Bowen added.
At some point, he said, state education agencies might have to require schools to make the shift if they want a statewide competency-based education system to become a reality.
