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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=pbraverman]The "new" kind of transcript, called the Mastery Transcript, is the brainchild of a 14-year school head named Scott Looney (who is, fair disclosure, a good friend of mine). It is supported by an avalanche of educational research into how students learn and build success in their lives. Scott's school in Cleveland, Hawken School, is pioneering an adjunct high school this fall dedicated to the concept, and indeed it is ungraded — though Hawken itself retains traditional grades. You can be sure the new school will have flaws, and you can be sure they'll make adjustments as they go along.

If anybody is interested in WHY such an initiative might be appealing (and, yes, minor colleges like Harvard are already on board), reading might start with their site, www.mastery.org, rather than with the vapors over the death of merit.

Reasonable people can disagree about the idea, but years of thought have gone into this whole thing, and reducing it to "How stupid" says far more about the poster than about the "new" transcript.

Sorry to interrupt the quick insults to defend an approach that assesses students based on what they've learned, how deeply they think, and what they can do with their knowledge, rather than simply test scores. Call me a wild-eyed dreamer, but that seems like an idea worth discussing.[/quote]

Thanks for surfacing this.  I hadn't heard about it yet.  But initiatives like this are the future of self-directed, tech-enabled education.  I agree it will be difficult for more traditional k-12 schools to adjust, and perhaps for public schools also since the whole No Child Left Behind factor is part of their DNA now.[/quote]

Actually it won't be that difficult. This format looks very familiar to me as a public school parent. It is literally a click away from what they are already doing in DC. The format looks a lot like the standardized test reports we get, merged with the long format, skills oriented, elementary school report card (ours already don't have typical grades). The on line sample was geared to high school, but I can see that it isn't too far off.[/quote]

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