Educate. Demonstrate. Validate.™

Completion is not
competency.

Tango Lima Professional Services builds the products and services that make technical education provable — five published textbooks and Cirrostratus™, a learning management system designed around competency rather than seat time.

Practitioner-led, from a working training organization in the Denver Metro. Aviation, healthcare, and the technical trades.

Talk to us See the catalog
Five textbooks
Competency-based education, from program design through remediation
Gold Book Award
Literary Titan, for The Art and Science of Aviation Instruction
Patent pending
Cirrostratus™ — U.S. Patent Application 63/784,390

Where we work

Three sectors where a certificate has to mean the person can do the job.

A Cirrus glass cockpit panel, primary flight display and navigation map lit

Aviation

Flight schools and Part 141/61 operations. Syllabus design, instructor development, and CSAP — the Cirrostratus™ Supplemental Assessment Program — built around the Cirrus SR-series fleet most schools actually fly.

Educate. Aviate. Validate.™
A surgical team operating a robotic surgical system in theatre

Healthcare

Clinical and allied-health training teams. Competency mapping, preceptor calibration, and evidence that a skills check-off held up under observation rather than under a signature.

Educate. Demonstrate. Validate.™
A technician reading a multimeter against a live electrical panel

Technical & Workforce

Community colleges, technical programs, and registered apprenticeships. Program design, remediation strategy, and accreditation-ready documentation for competency-based delivery.

Educate. Demonstrate. Validate.™

The platform

Cirrostratus™

An LMS records that a module was opened. Cirrostratus™ records what a learner can demonstrate, who validated it, and against which standard.

Precision assessment, CBE, and targeted remediation promote skill mastery, not just completion. Our training ecosystem improves speed-to-competency and holds stakeholders accountable. The methods and techniques we use are measurable and defensible.

Patent pending, U.S. Patent Application 63/784,390. Built inside a working training organization, not adapted from a course-delivery product.

DACM™ — Dual-Ascent Competency Model

Two parallel ascents: developmental progress and mastery evidence, tracked separately so a learner cannot be credentialed on attendance alone.

Cycle of Learning™ (CoL™)

Educate, demonstrate, validate — the loop each competency runs through before it is signed off.

CSAP

Cirrostratus™ Supplemental Assessment Program — the aviation assessment layer, aligned to the airframes and avionics in the training fleet.

Full definitions and the reasoning behind each framework →

The TLPS Dual-Ascent Competency Model: developmental ascent and mastery ascent converging on credentialed competency
DACM™ — the two ascents meet at credentialed competency, not at course completion.

Published works

Five textbooks by Dr. Thomas Lescarbeau covering competency-based education from program design through remediation. One of them holds the Literary Titan Gold Book Award.

Literary Titan Gold Book Award The Art and Science of Aviation Instruction

The Art and Science of Aviation Instruction

Enhancing Safety Through Competency & Collaboration

Pilot error remains the chief cause of incidents even as avionics grow more sophisticated. This text does not teach aeronautical knowledge or flight skills; it brings two decades of experience training low-tolerance professions to the work of instruction itself — assessment strategies, lesson planning, and developing a teaching philosophy. Written for CFIs who recognize that mastery is found not just in doing but in teaching.

Buy the book → Paperback · 256 pages · $89.95
Competency-Based Vocational Instruction

Competency-Based Vocational Instruction

For Postsecondary & Adult Learners — A Definitive Guide

Moving from industry into academia asks an expert practitioner to become an expert teacher. This guide spans the full instructional journey — adult learning theory, mastery-based education, curriculum design, authentic assessment, and industry partnership — with tools and templates for classrooms, workshops, and labs. It also confronts how far U.S. vocational training lags its international peers, and what can be learned from them.

Buy the book → Hardcover · 512 pages · $189.95
The Fidelity Imperative

The Fidelity Imperative

Setting Global Standards for AI-Driven Competency-Based Education

The first comprehensive standards for AI-supported CBE. Chapters follow the full lifecycle of a high-fidelity program — foundational principles, program architecture, compliance navigation, faculty development, crisis response, and advanced analytics — each with evidence-based strategies and modular frameworks adaptable to schools, colleges, and workforce organizations.

Buy the book → Hardcover · 332 pages · $150.00
The Apprenticeship Advantage

The Apprenticeship Advantage

Building Profitable, Competency-Based Programs That Solve Workforce Shortages

A playbook for designing apprenticeship systems that return measurable value to employers and opportunity to learners. Drawing on more than 200 studies and exemplars from Switzerland, Austria, and Germany, it covers ROI you can present to a board, braided public-private funding, sector pathways in healthcare and advanced manufacturing, and credentialing employers trust.

Buy the book → Hardcover · 492 pages · $149.95
Pathways to Success

Pathways to Success

Remediation Strategies in Competency-Based Education for Students with Learning Disabilities

Traditional remedial tracks have produced segregation and lower graduation rates, particularly for low-income and minority students. This textbook reframes remediation as a growth-oriented pathway grounded in mastery learning, neuroplasticity, and Universal Design for Learning, with individualized remediation plans, IEP-to-CBE alignment, assistive technology, and IDEA and ADA compliance.

Buy the book → Paperback · 224 pages · $94.95

Checkout is hosted externally. Each title links out to its retailer.

Peer-reviewed research

The catalog rests on published scholarship as well as practice.

Journal article

Lescarbeau, T. (2023). Postsecondary competency-based education: Analyzing leadership perception. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 47(5), 345–353. https://doi.org/10.1080/10668926.2022.2038722

Read the article →

Free companion resources
with your purchase

Four of the five titles have working tools behind their chapters — spreadsheets, assessment forms, fillable templates, and reference images you can put straight to use. For a limited time they come free with purchase. Enter the order number from your receipt and we will email a download link.

Resources are packaged by title and organized to follow the chapters. Companion resources are not yet available for the aviation instruction text.

Before you start

  • Use an email address you can sign in to Google with. Access is granted to that specific account, so the link will not open from a different one.
  • Your link stays live for 48 hours. Download the file rather than bookmarking the link.
  • One claim per order number. To request a second title, submit the form again with the same order number.
  • The download is a ZIP archive. Double-click it to unpack the folder.
  • Email does not arrive within a few minutes? Check your spam folder, then write to tom@tangolimapro.com.

Why competency-based training

Time-based programs measure how long a learner sat in a seat. That is a proxy, and it fails at exactly the moment it matters — when the graduate is alone with the aircraft, the patient, or the panel.

Competency-based education replaces the proxy with the thing itself: a defined standard, a demonstration against it, and a validation by someone qualified to judge. It is harder to administer, which is why most programs stop at the language and never change the assessment.

Our work is the administration — the models, the documentation, and the system that carries them. That is what the five books describe and what Cirrostratus™ runs.

Start the conversation

Select the intake that matches your organization. Aviation operators and flight schools follow one path; colleges, healthcare systems, and workforce programs follow the other. Both are reviewed directly by Dr. Lescarbeau.

Aviation intake →
Flight schools, Part 141/61 operations, CSAP
Workforce intake →
Colleges, healthcare, apprenticeships, technical programs