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Special Report

Competency-Based Education: What It Is and How to Pull It Off

September 16, 2024
Collage illustration of the backs of two students wearing bookbags and walking over a large computer keyboard with collage pieces like sky, numbers, checkmarks, letters, lines, and shapes.
Nadia Radic for °ÄÃÅÅܹ·ÂÛ̳
Schools in every state can now embrace competency-based education—awarding credit and diplomas based on students’ mastery of skills rather than seat time, recognizing learning that takes place outside the classroom, and incorporating more student-led projects into everyday instruction. But the shift to a model that can represent a radical departure from more than a century of tradition in K-12 schools is complicated and slow-going.

This special report offers a look inside a competency-based classroom, explores how schools have revamped grading for a system in which proficiency is the expectation for everyone, examines the successes and pitfalls schools encounter as they shift to competency-based education, and spotlights professional development to help teachers teach in a way they likely never experienced as students.