It takes skilled assessment practitioners to implement Competency-Based Education well. Teachers and students need just-in-time information for each individual student to know where they are in their learning, and where they are ready to grow. This calls for skilled use of performance assessment and of the formative assessment process, which includes such elements as self-assessment, peer assessment, and instructive teacher feedback. Educators also will need to think differently about grading student learning and advancing them along their learning pathway.
Researcher Kathrine Casey points to four assessment literacy capabilities educators need to be successful in C-BE environments:
Moving Toward Mastery: Growing, Developing and Sustaining Educators for Competency-Based Education (Casey, 2018)
Teacher Learning Progression: Assessment for Learning (2Revolutions)
Teacher Learning Progression: Performance Assessment (2Revolutions)
Competency-Based Education (C-BE) is a form of personalized learning that supports all students in achieving deep understanding and application of high academic expectations and personal success goals. Education leaders from across the Michigan (and the nation) endorse these primary components as a working definition of Competency-Based Education:
Harrison, C. A., & Heritage, M. (2019). The Power of Assessment for Learning: 20 years of research and practice in UK and US schools. Sage Publications. https://www.amazon.com/Power-Assessment-Learning-Research-Classrooms/dp/1544361
Formative assessment, as defined in the Michigan FAME program, is described in this Learning Point.
This Learning Point outlines how collaborative scoring is a means to assuring that student work is judged reliably and the training and act can be valuable professional learning and support more use of performance assessment.