STRATEGIC PLANNING MEETING AND BREAKOUT SESSIONS Dr. Clara Lovett Report from Breakout Session on Competency-Measured Education For people who discuss education issues especially, since being arranged from K-12 to higher education—we were anything but disciplined; we were all over the map. However, we are also very serious about addressing the question, “What could be the Oquirrh Institute’s contribution to changing the way we think, and the way we do education in the United States?” Changing from an industrial model, which is based on credentialing students, not on the basis of what they know or can do, but on the basis of how many years they have been in school and how many examinations they took and how many credit hours they can count on their transcript. The Oquirrh Institute is, as far as we know, the only public policy institute in existence now that is championing the transition from the industrial age model of educating students to the new model that we believe is much more appropriate for the information age and it is competency-based education. We concluded that the Institute needs a crisper, more explicit, more understandable definition of what we mean when we talk about this type of issue. We need a crisp way of describing competency-based, or competency-measured education. (We use these two terms interchangeably.) It’s a crisp way of saying that students should be credentialed at all levels in the educational system. Should be certified, if you will, as being able to do some of these things, to perform certain tasks, to have certain kinds of knowledge. Not on the basis of how long they went to school or how many examinations and courses they took, but on the basis of assessments. The assessments need to be scientifically constructed and validated. In higher education, we have a model. A recent one, but a successful model of making this transition from an industrial age model and that is Western Governors University, the only accredited competency-based University in the United States. It’s a university whose students are assessed when they first apply to determine at what level they are in terms of their ability to pursue a course of study and to earn a degree and then assessed again and again as they progress. Then they are credentialed on the basis of having demonstrated competency in certain areas that were determined by a group of experts to be essential to earning a particular degree. That model has not been adopted in K12 education anywhere, as far as we can tell, although there are schools, particularly private schools, that use assessment instead of standard exams and that credential students on the basis of those assessments. Those are still fairly small, usually private schools or -----------charter schools that do that. The large educational establishment has not moved in that direction. The Oquirrh Institute therefore, could be, should be the pioneer, in moving the education system, at all levels, in that direction. How can we accomplish that? We believe that we need to combine policy advocacy and try to intervene at the policy level, where we can, with model projects that can demonstrate the benefits and merits of the new model. Working in the policy area, let me give you an example. If you are looking at higher education, there is one area but a very important area in which the Congress impacts the educational system and that is through financial aid. Changes in how we define at the congressional level, the federal level, eligibility for financial aid would make a huge difference in terms of how quickly we could move to competency-measured education. Right now, that whole system is essentially constrained by the definitions that rest on the credit hour, how many credits a student has earned in any given period of time. Other innovations on the policy level might happen at the state level and we’ve already, WGU, in fact, initiated one of these policy interventions by championing, vis-a-vis states and state governments, the credentialing of teachers based on competency rather than on grades and credit hours. And that’s been an interesting exercise because each of the 50 states does it somewhat differently, but all of the 50 states define not competencies for teachers as much as they define courses to be taken or hours of credit to be earned. We believe, however, that these models can not only work in these policy areas, but we also need model projects that demonstrate in real life and in real time how the new approach works. It’s one of our recommendations that the existing projects that the Institute has conducted be refocused and that it be clearer to the board of the Institute, as well as to potential supporters, that all the projects lead to a common outcome, a desired outcome, which is the transition to competency-measured criteria. In fact, before we can attract founders and support, that sharp of focus needs to be in place. Any future projects the Institute might sponsor in the area of competency-measured education, need ultimately to be clearly geared to achieving the transition of the system from, again, the industrial age to what is necessary today. In the course of the discussion, we all had several examples of how we could make the case to the public and to our supporters. The one I cited came from my own experience of reading the weekly newspaper in my profession, in higher education. The Chronicle of Higher Education had an interesting article in the last issue about a debate that’s going on now between graduate schools in the United States and European universities, some of which are sending students to this country for advanced study. The countries of the European community recently got together to rethink their degree structure. They need to bring together many different systems of higher education, of different national histories, of different cultures. The long and short of it is, they came up with the idea of having a first degree, which would be a course of study of three years and then a more advanced degree that would take two years to complete, which they call a master’s degree. American graduate schools are saying, we cannot accept those students who have that first degree because it is only a three-year degree. Graduate schools are not saying, show us what these students are prepared to do or hear whether they are prepared for advanced standing. They are just saying, if it’s a three-year degree, we can not accept it. That’s an example of how we must change in order to continue to work with other countries and frankly, to remain competitive. If we want students to come to this country to take advantage of our excellent advanced programs, we shouldn’t get into those kinds of discussions.