REL Midwest and Public Television Present Competency-Based Education

At 10 p.m. on Monday, September 2, at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, September 3, and at 11 a.m. on Sunday, September 8, 2013 (all Central Time), Illinois public television viewers can watch Implementing Competency-Based Education Practices in the Midwest, a REL Midwest Making Connections event produced with WTTW in Chicago and taped with a studio audience. The program archive will be available online later in September.

Competency-based education (CBE) is becoming a more widely discussed topic in education research, policy, and practice conversations at the local, state, and national levels. Many current policies and practices center on the “Carnegie Unit” system where student progress between grade levels is measured in part based on “seat time” instead of their mastery of the content. In a competency-based setting, progress is intended to become a function of demonstrated mastery or proficiency, measured against a set of explicit, measureable, and transferable learning objectives, rather than a function of seat time.

The one-hour program on WTTW Prime will feature Elizabeth A. Jones, Ph.D., professor of education at Holy Family University, and an author of the National Center for Education Statistics report Defining and Assessing Learning: Exploring Competency-Based Initiatives. A discussion among Dr. Jones, Sandra Dop, Ph.D. (Iowa Department of Education), Pat Trotter (Kentucky Department of Education), Jeffrey Lewis, Ed.D. (Dayton STEM School in Ohio), and Roberta Selleck, Ph.D. (Freeport School District 145 in Illinois), will be moderated by AIR Senior Policy Analyst Sara Wraight.

Viewers will hear about emerging research in the field and examples of how CBE practices are being implemented in schools and districts, including how CBE can contribute to a collaborative learning environment in which students are expected to become active owners of their individual learning.

REL Midwest is part of a network of ten regional educational laboratories funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES).