The introduction to this paper considers competency-based education, the goals of education, and the need for some social indicators of how well students are meeting these goals. The main body of the paper looks at competency differences, instructional approaches, and educational research in several areas: focus of new research; natural variations; differences by school type, subject matter, and instructional approach; aptitude-treatment interactions; self-selection; and compensatory education. The author concludes that research support should be granted for a series of interrelated studies on how to increase a particular competency, rather than for single experiments which have little cumulative educational value. (MF)