Aurora's report on how competency-based pathways can create equity in economic mobility is based on districts and schools making professional competencies a core driver of teaching and learning. This is an opportunity for CTE to shine.

Casey, K., & Patrick, S. (2020). A Promise for equitable futures: Enabling systems change to scale educational and economic mobility pathways. Vienna, VA: Aurora Institute.

This report outlines the natural and high-leverage connections between career and technical education (CTE) and competency-based pathways, structures, and practices.

Published in July 2015. CC BY-NC 4.0 Achieve. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 United States License.

Patrick, S., Worthen, M., Truong, N. and Frost, D., Fit for Purpose: Taking the Long View on Systems Change and Policy to Support Competency Education, 2017. Content in this report is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

In order to create equitable pathways that are based on learner interest and readiness without the constraints of our current silos (courses, time, validation within the walls of school, etc.), it will be necessary to ensure policy opens doors and removes barriers.

"The purpose of this paper is to explore and reflect on the ideas that state policy needs to address in the long-term to support a transformation to competency-based education systems designed to ensure equity so all students can be truly ready for success. We will explore some ways that state policy could approach tackling threshold concepts as part of a long-game strategy. This paper is intended as a “thought leadership” piece to spark conversation around next steps for policy at the National Summit for K-12 Competency-Based Education.

Our challenge is to catalyze the creation of a new, transformational theory of change for state policy to work toward in the long term. In doing so, we need to identify the blind spots - the things that we don’t even know that we don’t know - that are standing in the way of a system that is fit for purpose.

Our intent is to push current thinking beyond the assumptions that perpetuate root causes of inequity and the structural issues that perpetuate injustice. We are focusing on a strategy for policy to support systems change over the long haul toward competency-based systems that ensure mastery for all students and equity for all."