In broad terms, competency-based education (CBE) refers to an educational philosophy that prioritizes students learning "competencies" over purely academic content. Academic standards are still met, but the teaching and learning of those standards takes place through the lens of the competencies.
The competencies are often described in different terms:
Transferable skills
Real-world skills
Soft skills
Future-ready skills
21st century skills
College/career readiness skills
That important stuff you didn't learn in high school, but wish you had
Each of these terms accurately describes what competencies are, but each also carries with it associations that may not align with the concept of a competency. There is no perfect term, so we often find ourselves using different descriptors depending on our audience.
Competency-based education and other related education movements (such as mastery-based learning) are rooted in efforts to address weaknesses in the traditional school system.
In November of 2019, a summary of meeting notes of the G4TT (planning group for ILHS) included, "We must recognize the current challenge of education, which is that the structure of our current education system no longer serves to help students navigate through a world that is no longer based on a 'knowledge economy'. Knowledge is free and accessible via the world wide web and other sources. Rather than prepare students for a 'knowledge economy', we must prepare students to engage in a world where the future is about being able to think critically, collaborate, communicate, and be creative."
We are sending our students into a world that is unlike that which many of us experienced as we left high school. Memorized facts are of little value since inception of the internet and the proliferation of smartphones. Suddenly, it became far more important to be able to communicate, collaborate, be creative, and think critically. In the 20+ years between widespread adoption of the internet and the opening of ILHS, that landscape continued to shift even farther toward a need for these flexible skills. To prepare our students well, we need to provide them with knowledge and skills, not just knowledge.
Traditional academic credits are awarded based on the number of hours students spend in a class ("seat time"). If they meet a minimum standard (typically, a D), they are awarded the credit. The goal of different structures is to instead measure students' actual abilities.
School is part of the real world, yet the world of academics seems to reflect students' lives and future outside of school less and less.
Competency-based education has been actively used widely on the east coast for at least 20 years before it gained traction on the west coast.
New York City has competency-based schools...
Many organizations exist to advance and support competency-based education.
Detailed Definition of Competency Education by CompetencyWorks (2020)
What is Competency-Based Education: An Updated Definition by Aurora Institute (2019)
Quality Principles for Competency-Based Education [book PDF] by Aurora Institute (2018)