Beyond Seat Time
What the "science of learning" can teach us about competency-based education
For over a century, American education has mostly organized itself around time. Students earn credits by sitting through a prescribed number of hours of instruction regardless of what they actually learn. This system was designed for administrative purposes, not as a way to measure learning. Educators and policymakers have made overtures about escaping this system for decades.
Competency-based education is the most promising alternative. Under this model, students only advance when they’ve mastered the material, not when the clock runs out. The logic is intuitive and the motivation is in the right place. But in practice, CBE has largely been confined to the margins, in things like credit recovery or alternative programs, where it often functions as a faster path to a passing grade or a credential rather than a more rigorous one to actual learning. Too often, the practical effect is to accelerate students through material quickly rather than ensure they have learned it deeply.
Moreover, the theory behind competency-based education doesn’t account for how students actually behave. Left to manage their own pace, most students won’t distribute their effort wisely. They’ll defer, delay, and then scramble. In my experience, teenagers are not exactly strong in the planning department, and without external structure, even motivated students will treat a flexible timeline as permission to procrastinate. A system that relies on students to self-regulate their way to mastery will mostly produce last-minute cramming with a competency label stamped on it.
"Grading for Equity" is based on a flawed theory of action
Joe Feldman’s “Grading for Equity” program has spread across the country. Yet it’s based on a flawed theory of action that’s likely to compound inequities rather than address them.
A well-designed competency-based system can get around this issue. It would have students retrieve, apply, and revisit knowledge continuously along the way. By the time students make their way through these types of gateways checks, any endpoint assessment would become a confirmation of learning that’s already happened, not a high-stakes gamble on whether cramming worked.
This structure builds on one of the most replicated findings in learning research. Frequent, low-stakes quizzes and check-ins don’t just measure learning; they help produce it. If those retrieval opportunities are spaced out over time, the benefits will compound into deeper learning. Competency-based models could help students build that type of durable knowledge, but only if they include frequent opportunities to monitor progress along the way.
Reading List
Bruno Manno: AI reinforces the case for strong disciplinary knowledge
Holly Korbey: When teachers ditch “productive struggle” for evidence, student performance improves
Harry Patrinos: Learning Pays More Than Schooling
Todd Truitt: Gratitude for (Virginia’s) standardized tests
Pamela Snow: “education has a fraught and not very pretty history when it comes to generating, critiquing, and applying rigorous evidence”
Kerry McDonald: The College Credit Opportunity Few People Know About
The international standard-bearer of what we call Competency-Based Education is the British system. If you take the assessments, you have taken the course, with most assessments being external exams (schools are generally not responsible for determining students' grades). Edexcel and the University of Cambridge offer grade-for-grade equivalent international versions of their UK-specific exams, which has made these organizations the mainstay of international homeschooling.
Only advancing when ready does not necessarily work in practice. In England, instead of attending a traditional high school, you can prepare for the assessments and take them as an independent candidate when ready (unlike with AP, there is no separate teacher-assessed grade). The reality is that most students are attending schools more structured than their American counterparts.
What such a system does provide is the opportunity to actually get to grips with the material before being tested on it. Constantly assessing students before they are ready is a major reason students in American-style systems underperform. The academic collapse of Dutch schools as they transitioned to American-style grading is one more clue that the neverending woes of American education might be a consequence of our high-frequency grading system.
You are correct that competency-based learning in alternative ed or credit recovery is vacuous. Students mindlessly do packets for hours on end. What I would call the standard model is like Robert Gagne's 9 steps to a lesson. He said coaches are good teachers; they practice and drill all week, then have the big game on Friday (test). This is a form of competency-based instruction that advocates for explicit instruction dream about. Engelmann and Carnine's direct instruction is competency-based: drill until mastery and constantly review mastered words. The problem is: how long do you keep reviewing to maintain competency?