- A good competency-based admission policy should encourage innovation at the secondary school level. It would allow a student to demonstrate knowledge of the required subject matter without completing a discrete course that would translate into a Carnegie unit.
- A good competency-based admission policy should make it possible for a student to be admitted to college by taking either college preparatory or “tech prep” classes. If a school district can document that students who have taken “applied” math or science courses, for instance, can meet university-defined competency standards, those students would meet admissions requirements.
- A good competency-based admission policy should be based on attainment of the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed in college, not on the completion of a discrete course.
- A good competency-based admission policy should leave responsibility for presentation of the students’ case for college readiness with the secondary schools. Once the university has set admissions standards in terms of competencies and specified general requirements for presenting student records, secondary schools would develop valid and reliable assessment techniques and present them in a “user-friendly” format.
(Excerpted and condensed from the report of the University of Wisconsin Task Force on Competency-Based Admission – June 1993)