Fewer competencies should be used as the organizing structure for teacher education programs, since all relevant topics cannot be covered thoroughly anyway. One variant of an outcomes-focused approach to teacher education is an objectives-oriented strategy. The criterion is not what the teacher does but what happens to pupils as a consequence of…

When designing competency based education programs to meet state requirements, California educators would do well to select only a small number of highly significant competencies per basic skill area, for which they can devise on-target instruction and valid competency measures. (SJL)