Proficiency-Based Learning: Focused on Skills While Missing the Big Picture

Proficiency-Based Learning: Focused on Skills While Missing the Big Picture:

Proficiency-Based Learning: Focused on Skills While Missing the Big Picture

…tests are now broken down into specific sets of skills so teachers can identify how well students understand each task. When students get less than a proficient score, they must go back and study the skill they missed. They are then given a chance to retake the relevant portions of the test until they earn a satisfactory score.

English department head Elizabeth Vigue was quick to point to the biggest change her team had to make: giving up nearly every novel on their syllabus.

~Lillian Mongeau, “Maine schools blaze a trail in new approach to education.”

Teaching skills isn’t a new phenomenon.

Proficiency-based learning is sweeping schools in the State of Maine and the rest of the country. Blazing a trail? Teachers have always taught skills—even on the computer.

Years ago, I periodically took my high school students to the Plato lab to work on skills. Before computers, teachers reviewed skills with worksheets. Remember dittos and the old mimeograph machines?

In his 1999 The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Proficiency-Based Learning: Focused on Skills While Missing the Big Picture: