"A child's learning is the function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher." James Coleman, 1972

Thursday, March 10, 2016

Competency-based education: No hard evidence


Sent to the Sunshine State News,  March 11.

Re:"Senate Green Lights Competency-Based Education Program"

Missing from the discussion of the Florida Senate bill supporting competency-based education (CBE) is the fact that there is no hard evidence supporting it.   The following statement about CBE is from a National Governor's Association report, a document that aggressively promotes CBE: "Although an emerging research base suggests that CBE is a promising model, it includes only a few rigorous evaluations and analyses of current and ongoing CBE pilots and similar programs" (p. 6).

Competency-based education is very expensive and time-consuming, and will change education drastically. Application without evidence that it will help our children is unacceptable.

Stephen Krashen

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