Competency-based learning has educators thinking about
how classrooms are organized. For example, Arizona has an initiative,
called Move on When Ready, that allows high-achieving students to graduate
after their sophomore year if they demonstrate they can perform at a
college-ready level.
Jeff Livingston, senior vice president of college and
career readiness at McGraw-Hill, added to the conversation in an interview with GigaOM, where he suggested that educators will be rethinking organizing
K-12 classes by age.
“What does it mean to be a ninth grader or 10th grader
beyond a certain age?” Livingston said. “It doesn’t make sense that all the
15-year-olds are in this grade and all the 16-year-olds are in that grade. It
should be where your interests, your skills, and your mastery of certain
concepts take you.”
Mixed-aged classrooms have been around since one-room
schoolhouse days, while the Khan Academy and Western Governors University are
putting learning based on competency into practice. Massive open online courses
are also part of the picture, providing high school students the opportunity to
move ahead of their classroom coursework through college-level courses.
The technology is there to make it happen, or soon will
be. The question is whether teachers, school administrators, and parents are
ready for the change.
