The following story was published in the 2024 Excellence Newsletter.
WHAT IS COMPETENCY-BASED LEARNING (CBL)?
Think back to your school days. You likely sat in a classroom, listened to a teacher deliver lectures or lessons on a given subject, and then demonstrated your understanding of the material by successfully completing homework, quizzes, and tests. Everyone in the class moved at the same pace and learned in the same way. A tried-and-true approach to teaching, yes, but the best means to educate students in today’s fast-paced, technology-driven world?
What if there were another way, a system that was more student-centered—one that prioritized skills over content, provided descriptive feedback as well as grades, and focused on experiences along with discrete lessons? And what if this method of “doing school” measured student learning by their performance on complex tasks, as well as time-based assessments? There is: Competency-Based Learning (CBL).
CBL is a methodology that focuses on developing students’ transferable skills and outfitting them with the knowledge and experience necessary to become lifelong learners, as well as adaptable, capable leaders.
“Competency-Based Learning rests on a tripod composed of three pillars: Equity, Agency, and Transfer,” explains RCDS Dean of Faculty and Employees Dr. Jessica Flaxman. “It’s a student-centered approach to learning built upon the premise that all students can achieve proficiency in a subject (Equity). It engages students in the learning experience by allowing them to determine how they demonstrate their knowledge and skills (Agency). And finally, it encourages students to apply that knowledge and skills to real-world situations (Transfer).”
CBL AND RIGOR: A CLEAR CONNECTION
“As a learner, one of the most rigorous things one can do is transfer classroom knowledge to real-world situations,” notes Dr. Flaxman. “In order to do this, students must have a mastery of knowledge and skills.” Such mastery is the hallmark of an independent learner—someone who can apply knowledge and skills in a new context. “Some more traditional approaches to education focus on such things as knowing facts, following steps, and reciting the importance of historic events, which may give you breadth of knowledge but not necessarily depth,” Dr. Flaxman explains. “For example, you might know important historic dates, but not necessarily understand their significance.” Competency-Based Learning aims to address this disconnect by giving one’s breadth of knowledge more depth. It also helps students better understand how to transfer learning from one setting to another.
Dr. Flaxman is quick to clarify that CBL represents an enhancement of Rye Country Day’s existing—and highly regarded—approach to education rather than a retooling. “There are elements of traditional education that serve RCDS students very well and those should not shift to CBL,” she says. Instead, Dr. Flaxman explains, Rye Country Day views CBL as a teaching approach that meets the changing needs of today’s post-pandemic students who live in a world that is teeming with technology and changing constantly. “This teaching methodology is part of a general trend that’s happening across the independent school landscape,” Dr. Flaxman observes.
“Judiciously combining a current learning approach with our excellent traditional techniques gives us a unique position of academic strength."
Colleges appreciate students who can demonstrate an ability to leverage their unique skills across their learning, continues Dr. Flaxman. “Students applying to college need to be able to distinguish themselves, so anything we can do to assist them in developing a clearer voice and demonstrating their expertise is something we’re excited to embrace,” she observes. “Students engaged in CBL often experience deep, personally relevant, and impactful learning that positions them well for college and future work where adaptability, collaboration, creativity, and presentation skills, among others, are essential.”
Rye Country Day’s hallmark of balancing tradition and innovation is also preserved through CBL. “By introducing CBL into appropriate places in our program and developing new units of inquiry, experiences, and even courses, we will amplify our commitment to excellence and student-centered learning by providing students with the knowledge and skills to thrive in any number of real-world situations,” notes Dr. Flaxman. “Rye Country Day has an established record of preparing students for college, and it will continue to do so, but the professional landscape is changing and one’s ability to adapt to new circumstances is key. Our students must be able to leverage and direct technology rather than be directed by it.”
Competency-Based Learning is also a valuable benefit to teachers and interdisciplinary work. “This learning method invites teachers to collaborate across seemingly disparate disciplines, which by extension teaches students to synthesize information to make important connections. This skill is critical in a globally connected context and highly sought after by colleges and employers,” says Dr. Flaxman. A number of RCDS teachers have been incorporating aspects of CBL into their courses for quite some time, she notes, so this initiative represents a recommitment to—and deepening of the focus on—the learning outcomes articulated in the Portrait of a Graduate: character, knowledge, skills, and citizenship.
Assistant Head of School for Academics Meredith deChabert agrees. “The foundation for CBL at RCDS was laid back in 2018 when we developed our Portrait of a Graduate, which outlines the skills and competencies we want RCDS graduates to master,” she explains. “CBL is a clearer articulation of what students are actually learning today, beyond basic content. Dramatic shifts in technology have made content mastery only one part of the educational equation.”
“Think about the difference between being able to access information (now at our fingertips) and being able to analyze that information, its validity, and how it fits into a larger context. The latter is more sophisticated, more nuanced, more intellectually demanding. That’s RCDS. Our students have intellectual agility, curiosity, agency, and purpose. The CBL framework is very much in line with what we consider excellent teaching and learning, and it is work that many RCDS teachers already have been doing for years.”
— Assistant Head of School for Academics, Dr. Meredith deChabert
Head of School Randall Dunn also believes the timing is right; many other independent schools of Rye Country Day’s caliber started moving toward the CBL pedagogical framework four or five years ago, he observes, and to remain competitive, RCDS must keep pace. “This work is not new at RCDS, but now we need to move forward with a sense of urgency and make sure that the entire community—parents, faculty, and staff—are on board and that our graduates exhibit the competencies that will position them for personal, academic, and professional success,” he says.
“A key pillar in our Portrait of a Graduate is skill development, so this approach to education was already on our radar, but we must commit to fostering this kind of learning environment across the institution, in every classroom, discipline, and unit. CBL is a way of teaching and learning that brings Pre-K through 12 educational practices more in line with preparing our children for their futures. It requires that students engage with the material in a much more proactive way, in a sense becoming more in command of their intellectualism.”
— Head of School Randall Dunn
WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE?
For Upper School English teacher and Grade 9 Dean Tatum Bell, the shift to CBL is as sensible as it is exhilarating. “As an educator, the thing that excites me about teaching is creating lifelong learners, and Competency-Based Learning does just that. We’re asking students to transfer their knowledge and skills the way they will in their personal and professional lives, and the challenge is exciting for them.”
To support the School’s embrace of a deeper, more rigorous mode of teaching and learning, Ms. Bell has joined forces with Upper School Science teacher and Grade 9 Dean Jennifer Doran to lead the Competency-Based Learning Professional Learning Cohort (PLC), a group of faculty committed to guiding the School in refining its practices and curriculum design through the lens of CBL.
In many respects, the shift is already well underway, Ms. Bell asserts, echoing Mr. Dunn and Dr. Flaxman. “This has been a real point of pride in our work. The principles of CBL are currently being applied in many of Rye Country Day’s elective and extracurricular programs; it was not a surprise per se given the strength of our program but wonderful to see this best practice affirmed at our school,” she observes. “In areas such as arts, music and drama, the Science Research Program, and the Public Purpose Program, for example, CBL practices have long allowed students to become active and engaged; students have agency and we see very positive results in terms of leadership, confidence, and skill development.”
The goal now is to incorporate CBL skills and experiences into the core curricula of math, science and the liberal arts, Ms. Bell says. The shift will not happen overnight, she concedes, but she is confident of success. “At its core, Rye Country Day is committed to delivering a rigorous education, and we have a history of pushing boundaries to achieve that goal,” observes Ms. Bell. “As faculty, we’re deeply committed to providing our students with the agency to learn and grow and preparing them to transfer their knowledge to real-world situations. And we will do so by meeting best practices in education today.”
CBL IN ACTION
While plans are underway to increase the integration of CBL into the School’s curricula, students are already realizing the benefits of this approach in a number of courses. In Jen Doran and Michael Hirsch’s Upper School biology course, for example, ninth graders create models integrating the four major biology themes they have learned throughout the year. “Building models allows the students to visualize the systems and see how they connect—for instance the way an individual organism connects to the ecosystem, to reproduction, and to evolution,” says Ms. Doran. “And explaining these connections to their peers helps to enhance that understanding.”
In Ms. Bell’s American Identities English course, which she co-teaches with Andrés Cerpa, students demonstrated their mastery of the materials by completing an identity project. “Students could do a photo essay, write and perform a story like those done on NPR’s The Moth Radio Hour, develop a podcast, that sort of thing,” she explains. “One student made a cookbook composed of recipes and stories from both the Jewish and Mexican sides of the family. In short, we challenged students to create an artistic expression of who they are, which gave them an engaging opportunity to hone their ability to parse and articulate complex topics.”
Students in Anna Meechan’s Upper School Math class were offered the opportunity to demonstrate their command of the material through a host of projects including a Math Mistake Memes Project in which they employed the popular social media vehicle to demonstrate their understanding of a mathematical concept. And participants in Holly Hutcheson’s Middle School science class displayed their ability to transfer their newly obtained science skills to new contexts by engaging in end-of-semester projects focused on engineering and entrepreneurship.
WHAT THE STUDENTS THINK: ENTHUSIASM MEETS EXCELLENCE
Student responses to CBL have been overwhelmingly positive shares Ms. Bell. “Students get really excited about these projects. They represent a refreshing departure from the ‘right answer’ model to the most sophisticated critical thinking model. With CBL, students learn to get comfortable with trial and error, take ownership of their learning, and think creatively. Instead of just assigning a grade, we’re emphasizing feedback and encouraging them to learn from it. The sense of agency the students gain will empower them to become lifelong, bold, and independent learners, attributes that will carry them well beyond the college admissions process and into their lives.”
WHY NOW?
“As a teacher, parent, and someone who values education, the CBL approach to education excites me,” enthuses science teacher Jen Doran. “This methodology better prepares students for their future by allowing them to collaborate and co-design their learning experiences with their teachers and each other. It gets them involved in their education by stoking their curiosity and helping them develop skills they will use throughout their lives. It’s a student-centered approach to learning that’s quite powerful.”
For those concerned that CBL represents a move away from Rye Country Day’s notoriously rigorous curriculum, Dean Flaxman offers reassurance. “This CBL initiative is simply another example of RCDS delivering the best possible education to our students in their current moment,” she asserts. “CBL is not a trend, it’s an approach to education that will skill up our students for success. We’re building on an incredibly solid foundation and we’re doubling down on what distinguishes us. We are being responsive to the world our students are now living in. We are giving our students the best possible education, complete with the cross-disciplinary skills that grow from content knowledge.”
For Assistant Head of School Meredith deChabert, the move to embrace CBL reflects a natural progression of Rye Country Day’s unwavering commitment to delivering a first-rate learning experience. “Excellence has always been a hallmark of the education that RCDS provides. That excellence, however, no longer fits in a box marked ‘traditional education’; it is far more complex, and I’m not really sure that ‘traditional’ education exists anymore, not in the sense that the generations of current parents have experienced it,” she observes. “Rather than thinking of education as a linear progression in a given discipline, we need to think about it as a nexus of many different spirals that overlap and intersect. Affective, behavioral, and cognitive skills are all important, and the big question before us now is how we assess them.”
“One of the many excellent recommendations to come out of our re-accreditation process was to align our curriculum, instruction, and assessment, and a framework like CBL can help us to do that,” Dr. deChabert continues. “Perhaps even more critically, it can help us to balance the traditional and the innovative, those hallmark approaches to excellent education in our mission statement. RCDS has always taken research and best practice and adapted them, over time, for our unique learning context, and the process of incorporating more CBL will be the same. RCDS’s version of CBL will be unique to RCDS, a blend of best practices that we already use and that we can adapt across the divisions in developmentally-appropriate ways. Educators know that learning
that is deep and personally relevant is learning that endures. That’s what we want, and CBL helps to get us there.”
“Competency-Based Learning teaches students how to live their lives in the most impactful way possible; it gets to the heart of true critical thinking, leadership, and adaptability–essential qualities in our day and age,” he asserts. “It’s education that is contextualized and that readies our students to transition seamlessly into college and then into their professional lives."
— Head of School Randall Dunn
For Mr. Dunn, CBL is about keeping RCDS’s mission-level promise of providing students an excellent education that is relevant in their ever-changing world. “As change continues at its rapid pace, developing adaptable leaders who are comfortable applying big concepts to a variety of complex and evolving contexts and technologies is the way schools remain excellent. RCDS has always done that.”