We will need to agree upon experiences and support likely to produce the outcomes we seek. It’s here where available tools, professional learning models, and existing practices leave room for great opportunities to change the learning landscape.⁵²

This report has outlined a mostly U.S. K-12 centric perspective on the transition to competency-based education, the barriers to progress, and a series of investment opportunities.

The transition to competency will happen — it is very likely that the core architecture of school will shift from time-keeping to learning — but there is an opportunity to make it happen faster, better, and more equitably.

In short, it begs the question: as we consider time, path, and place, do we also need to rethink the high school credential itself?

The reality is that American youth don’t get what they need from high school. There are lots of reasons — some economic, some cultural, some educational. Two root problems are how we’ve defined the finish (current course-based graduation requirements) and how we communicate success (through a transcript based on seat time requirements).

For 125 years, we’ve managed and recorded the high school experience as a series of courses and grades. Today’s high school transcript is a record of time and activity, but not a very good measure of knowledge, skills, and dispositions. It doesn’t capture experiences or work products that provide evidence of growth and accomplishment.

Student course taking is guided primarily by the number and type of credits required by the state (and occasionally also the district) for a high school diploma. These requirements, which define the minimum expectations for compulsory education, are effectively a social contract and equity promise.

Standards-based reforms of the last quarter-century have worked to better connect the high school with entrance requirements for post-secondary pathways that lead to living-wage jobs with long-term opportunities. These standards have been critical in raising sights and more clearly defining what students should know and be able to do by the end of high school, but they are not always accompanied by aligned course requirements. States that haven’t yet done so should be sure that their course requirements for a diploma are fully aligned with their new standards.

However, because standards are often accompanied by definitions of “grade level” proficiency, they can create barriers to students moving at their own pace. Course requirements, too, are often time- rather than learning-based, and often isolate knowledge in rigid disciplines, rather than helping students to think in interdisciplinary ways as typically required in real-world settings. So even as states move to assure their systems are fully aligned and that there are clear benchmarks for assuring equity, they’ll need to find innovative ways to address these tensions. Over time, a better high school credentialing system will require innovations in everything from the way we express our expectations for young people to the way that learning is organized, measured, and recorded.