Craft Category: Artifacts

This publication re-envisions professional practice, learning and development for educators in competency-based education.

As school districts transition to new, more powerful student-centered learning models, it’s critical that educators leading the transformative practice are equipped for their new roles. Moving Toward Mastery describes a teaching profession that is equity-oriented, learning-centered and lifelong; it recommends 15 strategies that can help school districts successfully make this paradigm shift.

Building off examples of effective teaching, professional development and practice across the nation, the new report explores how communities can work together to prompt and sustain complex systems change of moving both students and teachers from a one-size-fits-all approach to education to one in which all students and all teachers can succeed.

This book, developed with input involving practitioners as part of the National Summit on K-12 Competency-Based Education, offers 16 Quality Design Principles to guide the development of competency-based learning with the goal of creating a system in which every student succeeds. While producing high-quality schools certainly requires attention to the structure, policy and operations, it also requires replacing the underlying beliefs and culture of the traditional system with an inclusive culture of learning. As states, districts and schools re-design education systems, the 16 Quality Design Principles provide a cohesive framework that offers a set of guideposts for schools and districts. While all principles are essential, districts and schools are using different entry points to begin transforming their systems and make different design choices. No matter the entry point, the depth of implementation or the model, the Quality Design Principles are composed to spark discussion that will accelerate the shift from the paradigm of the traditional system to one that seeks to have every student succeed.

This brief highlights recommendations for policymakers with guidance on strategies and action steps to drive the transformation of K-12 education systems to meet the needs of every student.

Policymakers, at every level, need to ensure the nation’s education systems are fit for purpose, equity-driven, capable of preparing all students – rather than only a portion – to graduate with the knowledge, abilities and dispositions necessary to achieve success, to contribute to their communities and to advance society.

These recommendations move states forward from their current state of education to a future state with equity-driven systems of excellent educational opportunities by rethinking accountability, redesigning and aligning systems of assessments, building educator capacity and creating system coherence.