Competency Based Education, coming to a New Hampshire School near you? - Granite Grok

Competency Based Education, coming to a New Hampshire School near you?

Competency Based Education, coming to a New Hampshire school near you?

Bedford started using Competency Based Education a few years ago after the grand opening of their new high school. One of the first things parents noticed was the number of students failing their competencies and then were required to take summer school.

I think parents support a rigorous academic education for their children. If that means students cannot advance to the next grade or must attend summer school that might be a needed consequence. The question is, does Competency Based Eduction provide that academic rigorous course of study?

First, let’s look at where Competency Based Ed. came from. Competency Based Education is Outcome Based Education. Outcome Based Education is yet another attempt to reform a failing public education system. Outcome Based Ed. focuses on “learning outcomes”. But what are learning outcomes? I would suspect parents would automatically assume outcomes meant their children would master the academic content presented in a lesson. The parents would be wrong to make that assumption.

Some of the most vocal opponents to OBE point to a reform method that shifts focus away from academic content to one that focuses on attitudes, behaviors and values. In other words, the outcome may not always be that a student master long division. The outcome may require a student to alter their value system.

Two of the ten competencies that New Hampshire school officials now want students to master, and which the teachers are supposed to promote and measure, are the “ability to get along with others” and “self-management.” Many New Hampshire students are entering college in need of remedial education and now teachers have to focus on non-academic skills. It’s no wonder that many teachers will tell you privately, this is a waste of time and effort.

While these skills may be worthwhile in some classes,…

…and may be a goal of the teacher, should the state be dictating all schools and teachers incorporate these skills in their classroom? Should this not be at the discretion of the teacher?

The best example of why New Hampshire should abandon Competency Based Ed would be the Personal Finance Competency requirements for the students in Bedford High School. Bedford requires all students to take Personal Finance in high school. Parents expect their children to learn basic finance skills such as: banking, finance, etc. However with Competency Based Education, Personal Finance turned into an indoctrination in Marxism.

In order to meet a “Competency” students were required to read the book: Nickel and Dimed not getting by in America. Barbara Ehrenreich a political activist with no Personal Finance experience, presented a staged demonstration on the difficulty of living on a minimum wage job in America. Not only does she use this situation to push her pro-Marxist political views, she fails to offer balanced information to the reader on the many failures of Marxism.

The Personal Finance class became the prime example of how Competency Based Education (aka Outcome Based Education) shifts focus from offering the students academic skills and content to a class where attitudes and values were to be shaped and molded.

Competency Based Education allows the “State” to become the avenue to which students will acquire values. But do these values reflect those of the community or the parents? Should the “State” reform education from one that focuses on academic knowledge to one that seeks to change the values, attitudes and behaviors in children?

I think for most parents they’d like to see schools reinforce good behavior, honesty, respect for self and others, etc. However I’m not sure parents want their schools to be used as a means to indoctrinate students in a new political value system that could conflict with the values taught by the parents.

I encourage parents to ask their children’s teachers for a copy of what “competency” has been set for their class. I would then advise looking at all materials that support those “competencies”.

Outcome Based Education may be new to New Hampshire, but this latest reform “fad” has been tried in tested in other states in the past. States like Virginia, after years of parental complaints eventually moved back to a academic content based education system.

Under Governor Lynch and the New Hampshire Department of Education, it appears as if the New Hampshire public school system will be taking the same failed path that so many other school districts have taken. This is not innovation, this is rehashing failed fads from the past and allowing our students to become guinea pigs in education reform that will guarantee plenty of work for outside tutoring companies as they attempt to fill in the gaps in our education system.

To get a good look at Competency Based Education in New Hampshire watch these videos on youtube:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

The Competency for the Bedford Personal Finance class stated: “evaluate the personal, local, and global impacts of various financial decisions.”

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