Craft Category: Artifacts

What Counts for Learners: Closing the Gap Between Competency-Based Learning Models, Practice, and Policy

A synthesis report designed to help funders, policymakers, and system leaders understand what competency-based learning looks like at the level of the learner and the surrounding policy conditions. Drawing on ten high schools across eight states, the report identifies three defining learner experiences, examines the state and local policy conditions, and names concrete moves to advance CBL.

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October 5, 2026

Making Competency-Based Learning Visible: What Learners Experience Across Ten High Schools

What makes learning competency-based across schools that organize it differently? FullScale studied ten public high schools to develop shared language for understanding competency-based learning through learners’ experiences. Surveys, observations, and learner conversations revealed three shared markers: demonstrated proficiency shaped what learning happened next (Mastery-based Progression), feedback and revision strengthened evidence of mastery (Iterative Purpose), and authentic work demonstrated competency (Rigorous Application of Learning).

These experiences coexisted with success on conventional academic measures. At two schools, stronger local competency performance was associated with stronger external assessment results. Yet fragmented records and policies governing credit, assessment, and reporting shaped whether competency evidence counted toward progress and remained visible beyond the classroom.

This descriptive study gives practitioners and policymakers a common reference point for recognizing CBL across models and strengthening the conditions that support it.

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October 5, 2026

From Urgent to Future: Redesigning the Educator Role for the AI Era

This white paper reframes the debate about artificial intelligence in education by arguing that the central challenge is not technological disruption, but the design of the educator role itself. Grounded in research, field partnerships, and system-level analysis, it outlines how policy can be used deliberately to strengthen and sustain the human expertise students need to learn, grow, and thrive in an AI-enabled future.

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June 18, 2026

Executive Summary: What We Can (and Can’t) See: A National Landscape Scan of Competency-Based Learning in High Schools

As competency-based learning (CBL) gains momentum in U.S. high schools, FullScale’s national landscape scan examines how CBL is currently showing up across the field. This executive summary highlights key findings on what aspects of CBL are publicly visible, where current outcome measures provide an incomplete view, and how policy conditions shape implementation.

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June 2, 2026

What We Can (and Can’t) See: A National Landscape Scan of Competency-Based Learning in High Schools

To better understand how competency-based learning (CBL) is showing up across high schools, FullScale conducted a national landscape scan of 106 schools engaged in CBL and related approaches. This report uses observable markers to examine which CBL practices are most visible across the field, where implementation remains harder to see, the extent to which current outcome measures capture quality, and the policy conditions shaping the work.

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June 2, 2026
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