The U.S. Department of Education has discontinued experiments on the disbursement of federal aid in competency-based education programs and ones that are a hybrid of competency-based and traditional academic programs, several sources said. The department did not respond to a request for comment.
Created in 2015, the experiments under the experimental sites initiative allowed for waivers of certain federal rules with a goal of generating data that could inform policy on competency-based education, a delivery method centered on what students know and can do rather than conventional grading. Yet, as has been the case with many such federal experiments, sources said the competency-based education project had not generated many helpful results.
The department also apparently has said the expansive federal negotiated rulemaking completed earlier this year will lead to clarifying regulations on competency-based education.