Dive Brief:
- Georgia's Locust Grove Middle School is providing an example for other schools looking to utilize competency-based digital learning, which allows students to progress at their own pace based on their abilities with unique learning tactics.
- Locust Grove Principal Anthony Townsend tells eSchoolNews that standardized testing data proves that the method has been working in his school: students had a 2% higher pass rate in math, English, and reading, and a 9% higher rate for social studies and science than those who didn’t participate in the program.
- The school is now being held up as a model, with a subcommittee of the state’s Education Reform Commission considering a proposal for a larger-scale replication of the program and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donating over $4 million to advance it.
Dive Insight:
“The concept of competency-based learning has been around for decades, but was hard to pull off until the proliferation of two things: computers and universal educational standards,” eSchoolNews reports. Now, the largest barrier to expanded implementation seems to be cost.
Critics say that a classroom full of students moving at their own individual pace requires more sophisticated teacher trainings, and the technology that students use could also potentially be costly — both in terms of hardware and support. Yet Locust Grove’s Townsend claims that his school executed the program economically, by rotating kids through a single 70-station computer lab where they can work independently.
Although the results at Locust Grove seem positive, experts like Camille Farrington of the University of Chicago say that competency-based learning isn’t actually proven. Still, the idea of personalized learning is certainly catching on, and teachers from Locust Grove say that their students are more engaged and “blossom” when given choices about learning.