Off the Clock: Moving Education from Time to Competency

How to base learning on mastery instead of time

What if you could remove time and space pressures from the process of teaching and learning? The authors of Off the Clock not only suggest this, but they have implemented it in New Hampshire. Due in part to their work, the New England Consortium won the 2011 Frank Newman Award for State Innovation through the Education Commission of the States. This book′s core idea is that student achievement should be based on mastering competencies instead of "seat time." In addition, learning does not need to be restricted to a school building or traditional school calendar. Fred Bramante and Rose Colby describe a uniquely 21st century learning environment in which:

• Every student is engaged
• Parents and students have more control over learning
• Dropouts are all but eliminated
• Curriculum becomes virtually limitless, project-based, and interdisciplinary

This text for educators, policymakers, parents, and community members provides a comprehensive approach to implementing a large-scale competency-based reform initiative. Wherever this model is applied, public education will be vastly improved, more efficient, and, quite possibly, less expensive. The ultimate beneficiaries will be our nation′s children.

“School taught me that I was not very bright. Life taught me that school was wrong.” These words epitomize the foundation for Fred Bramante’s dedicated passion for transforming public education into a system that will work for virtually ever student.

Fred is a former middle school Science teacher, a former candidate for governor, a life long entrepreneur, and a past Chairman and long standing member of the New Hampshire State Board of Education. Appointed by both Republican and Democratic governors, he led a full-scale effort to redesign public education, especially at the high school level, which resulted in a major revamping of New Hampshire’s education regulations and the subsequent development of the New Hampshire vision For High School Redesign. Fred has been the public voice of this movement and has carried the competency-based message around the country.

Fred consults with state departments of education, and national and regional associations across America. He has been a featured speaker and presenter at numerous education conferences. He holds a BS from Keene State College (1970) and an MA in Educational Leadership from Plymouth State University (2006). He has been honored to receive the Alumni Achievement Award from both Keene (1995) and Plymouth (2009). In 1964, Fred graduated 206th of 212 students in his high school; that year his applications for admission to both colleges were rejected.

Rose Colby is a nationally recognized Competency-Based Learning and Assessment Specialist, assisting schools in designing high quality competency, assessment, and grading reform systems in many states.  She is a Talent Cloud Fellow for 2Revolutions, an education design firm.  She is a member of the national Advisory Board and contributor to CompetencyWorks, the national clearinghouse and resource for innovative practices in competency education.  She has served as Competency Education Consultant for the N.H. Department of Education supporting school districts as they develop their competency education systems and in designing and supporting the new state accountability pilot system, the New Hampshire Performance Assessment for Competency Education (NH PACE).  She is an Adjunct Professor at Southern New Hampshire University in the Masters/CAGS program in Competency Education. Rose is the author of two books on Competency Education: Competency-Based Education:  A New Architecture for K-12 Schooling (Harvard Education Press, 2017) and Off the Clock: Moving Education from Time to Competency (Corwin, 2012.)