I must respond--Competencies

Much to say this week. Here is the first commentary on Competencies. There was an episode of Laura Knoy's The Exchange on NHPR. Here is the link so you can listen for yourself.

Very old. 2009. Could turn into something. 

http://www.nhpr.org/node/27325

One comment:
Competency Based Ed is a new name for Outcome Based Ed. Google Peg Luksik/ you tube/ and she will explain what OBE is all about. It's snake oil folks.

No, wrong. Outcome based education was an excellent idea that we implemented in a poor way. Outcomes were excellent ideas. Measuring how students get to outcomes was not done well. In the outcome based education model a student was told that they met the outcome if they answered a certain %age of questions correctly. This is not understanding.

Competencies are an advancement of outcomes because it means that students must prove that they know a certain amount of material.

In the program Knoy asked if there would be 22 students requesting to do civics a different way. This is NOT what is going on.

Brennan makes sense.

Alignment and Frequency of Assessment of Competency Understanding

Competencies at their basis come down to a goal, an assessment and a plan to get to the goal. A lot of work has been done in recent years on the first step--establishing the goal. Different groups will be ready at different times but the logical next step is to examine assessments. If your group is ready to examine assessments these are 2 simple activities that could help.

Inspired by the work of Larry Ainsworth.

If you look at the link above and scroll to page 70 and 71 you will see two activities that check common assessments for alignment to Power Standards (our word is competencies and I will use it from here forward) and for frequency of assessment of competencies.

Activity 1 Alignment
This is a check for whether or not current assessments align to the competencies. Teachers could bring some assessments and go through this activity. I would suggest that the groups would be small and used to working with one another. This is not a "gotcha" activity. The idea is to see where we are now and what we might want to do to improve.

1. How many of our assessment items align to the competencies? Which ones?
2. How many of our assessment items do not align to the competencies? Which ones?
3. Do our assessment items directly match the "unwrapped" concepts and skills of the competencies?
4. Do our assessment items math the level of rigor required by particular "unwrapped" competency skills, such as evaluate or analyze?
5. Do our assessment items use the same terms that appear in the standards as opposed to more student-friendly wording (i.e., identify rather than label)?
6. Do our assessment items align with or resemble the formatting of our district and state assessments so the such formats will be familiar to students?
7. What does this tell us? Are our assessment items matched to our intended instructional purposes (the targeted competencies)?
8. What do we need to do next in this regard? Which items do we keep? Which items do we need to replace or modify so that they do align with our competencies?

Activity 2 Frequency
Again teachers could look at the assessments that they currently give and go through these questions.

1. How many of our assessment items match each competency?
2. Are certain competencies underrepresented? Which ones?
3. Are certain competencies overrepresented? Which ones?
4. Are we trying to address too many competencies in this one assessment?
5. What does this tell us? Do we need to redistribute our assessment items so that the appropriate number of competencies are more equally represented?
6. What do we need to do next in this regard? Which items do we keep as they are? Which items do we need to replace or modify so that there is a better balance between the actual number of items and each of the targeted competencies?
   

Competencies Thought

I have recently been listening to the podcast, What you missed in High School, from How Stuff Works.

The podcasts are each about 15-20 minutes long and they are fascinating. One detailed exactly how Blackbeard worked. How he grew up, came to fame and eventually died. Another talked about the childhood of Queen Elizabeth--the daughter of Henry the VIII. One of the very best was the story of Gettysburg. They detailed in under 1/2 an hour how the South won that battle. And they were able to describe complex battle conditions in audio, without the help of maps or visuals.

Students should absolutely know the details in these podcasts. The should wallow in the details and become lost in the amazingness of history. But along with these details they should understand the context. This is where competencies come in. The details about Blackbeard are incredible and the fight that eventually leads to his death is incredible. BUT students need to also understand the context of why all of this was happening. The fact that Blackbeard was an outgrowth of the privateer system in England and how the ending of that system lead to an explosion of pirates.

Many have argued that there are no details to be learned in a competnecy based system. That is not the case. The fact is that the same details can be learned but we must explain to students the context in which they fit.