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What's wrong with the modern view of objective-oriented, competency-based education?

The tremendous amount of progress toward an improved educational system in the U.S. over the past few years is amazing. A movement is now in place to define education based on valued outcomes or objectives. Objectives, of course, are not new to the 21st century. They've been around in public education for many decades. What's new is the increased accountability and ownership that has begun to spread very quickly into all K-12 public institutions. The result is increased awareness of what should be taught, and what kids should be learning. However, there is still a big missing piece. Educational content production is objective-focused---meaning content is created in alignment with a specific objective, or set of objectives. This is good for educational practitioners who need to assess student ability at a given level of expected competency, but not helpful for a student who does not have the prerequisite knowledge or skill for content aligned to a given objective to be meaningful or digestible. The next step toward an improved educational experience is to start creating content that is developed on a foundation of connected learning progress pathways that specify not only competencies at a given point, but describe the complete sequence of progressive attainments necessary to ascend the path.

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