In 2011, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation extended grants to three educational organizations working to develop or enhance competency-based approaches in large, urbanized school systems. The grant initiative, called Project Mastery, funded the development of technology-enhanced tools, including curriculum materials and online learning…

In 2011, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation created the Project Mastery grant program to support competency-based education initiatives in large school systems that serve a high proportion of disadvantaged youth. Competency-based education meets students where they are academically, provides students with opportunities for choice, and awards…

Presents an evaluation study of competency-based vocational education in Pennsylvania. Data were gathered via interviews with state education officials and representatives of educational agencies and via surveys completed by teachers. Results showed the highest levels of implementation occurring in vocational schools, especially in areas related…

Since vocational education leaders will require many more and different skills in the future, this project was conducted to develop and implement a relevant and responsive field-centered, competency-based certification program for vocational administrative directors in Pennsylvania's western region. To this end, the following objectives were…

This final program performance report contains an eight-page narrative and supplementary materials from a competency-based vocational education (CBVE) staff development project. The narrative reports the project whose purpose was to promote curriculum-improvement activities as identified by teachers through a self-evaluation process with the end…

This special demonstration project was undertaken to field test and disseminate a curriculum entitled Emergency English for Refugees (EER). Designed to meet the immediate English language needs of pre- and non-literate adult refugees and immigrants, the EER is a 26-unit competency-based English-as-a-second-language (ESL) curriculum that deals with…

The Framework of Work Based Foundation Skills Project was undertaken to facilitate development of Pennsylvania's new workforce investment system Team PA CareerLink by identifying and developing common definitions of the foundation skills all workers need to function effectively in any workplace. A framework of 19 work-based foundation skills and…

This module is one in a series of six designed to help vocational educators develop skills needed to make use of the Vocational Technical Education Consortium of States materials and to develop and manage individualized instructional programs. Recommended for use by both pre- and inservice teachers and curriculum development specialist interns,…