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Writer's pictureJoanne Jacobs

Content doesn't matter in 'competency' class: K-pop, African foods, Ray Charles . . .


A boy wanted to study bees. Moonshot teachers got a grant to buy four apiaries for the experimental, competency-based program, which now offers a Bee Club.

Elementary schoolers learn Mandarin from a teacher, while a middle-schooler reads up on Ray Charles and another studies the Titanic. Gabby is researching African foods. Zayonna's topic is K-pop. Posters feature King Henry VIII's wives and tennis great Arthur Ashe.


A Pennsylvania school district's "Moonshot" program is an experiment with "competency-based" education, reports Alyson Klein in Education Week. Also known as proficiency-based learning, mastery-based learning, personalized learning, student-centered education and standards-based education, the model features student choice about how and what they learn, self-paced progress and a focus on "mastery of course material" rather than seat time.


Laura Jacobs, superintendent of the California Area school district in Coal Center, Pennsylvania, wants students to pursue their interests and become "critical, creative thinkers in the digital age," writes Klein.


Students who opt in to the "one-room schoolhouse" can study topics of their choice in place of conventional social studies, science, computer science and/or art classes. They receive written feedback, but not grades.


Moonshot's two teachers, Heather Nicholson and Susan Bitonti, talk to students and parents about their goals and interests, then "design individualized lessons around grade-appropriate state standards, using topics students are drawn to," writes Klein. "They focus on mastery of skills — researching, writing, communicating orally, thinking scientifically and critically — as opposed to imparting content."


Valuing mastery rather than "seat time" makes a lot of sense to me, but mastery of what? It's one thing to let students pursue their own idiosyncratic goals in art or even computer science, but understanding science and social studies require learning content knowledge. You have to learn things that you didn't know were there to learn.


One fourth-grader chose Moonshot for science, then sat in on Brieann Klima’s science class when the special program was closed for a day. "She was unsettled when she realized she didn’t know the material" on a quiz, writes Klein. “If you’re doing a project about Michael Jackson, you’re probably not going to know how to build a circuit," said Klima. "You’re not going to understand all the different forms of energy."


“They’re not ending up missing anything because we’re looking at the standards they have to meet,” responded Nicholson. “And we’re making the standards fit the kids instead of the kids trying to fit into those standards.”


Making the standards fit the students sounds a lot like lowering standards to me. I just don't see knowledge-lite kids thinking critically about . . . stuff. You have to know stuff. And not just the fun stuff.

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4 Comments


humphrey
Sep 18

The kids who are motivated and successful under the old system will be motivated and successful under the new system. The kids who just want to sit around and smoke weed and skip class and consume other people's media creations will continue to sit around and smoke weed and skip class and consume other people's media creations.

The eternal question is, what do we do with the kids who don't have any interests or passions or goals?

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Bruce Smith
Bruce Smith
Sep 18

These teachers are incompetent because they don't understand the relations between educational standards, learning outcomes, and the competencies that human resource managers identify when writing job descriptions (a position likely to be automated by the time these kids finish their basic education): these last are not content-neutral, but expect, especially in STEM fields, specific knowledge schemata that these teachers are clueless about.

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Bill Parker
Bill Parker
Sep 17

Reminds me of the line from "Dragon - The Bruce Lee Story"

Linda Cadwell - What will you do with a philosophy degree

Bruce Lee - Have deep thoughts about being unemployed?

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Darren Miller
Darren Miller
Sep 17

The very opposite of Core Knowledge.

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