NO GRADES, NO PROBLEM! Identifying Other Measures of Student Success
Ayana Verdi, founder of Verdi EcoSchool. Photo by Marcus Cote
By Jenna Reid, Contributing Writer
rior to the 2020 pandemic, the pace of change was pressuring schools nationwide to prepare students for a rapidly changing, competitive workforce and accurately track each individual’s progress.
Today, that pressure is compounding as students, parents, and teachers brace for consistent changeups to the traditional classroom setting. These days, students are juggling in person with online learning, school shutdowns, testing delays and ongoing uncertainty as districts try to address hotspots, containment, testing requirements and CDC guidelines. Out of the chaos, however, silver linings have emerged for pilot schools that became early adopters of the Montana-based Mastery Transcript Consortium (MTC). MTC senior director of partnerships Ben Rein says the consortium has joined with more than 334 schools in the last four years to reduce dependency on grades as a measure of a student’s success. The Verdi EcoSchool in Eau Gallie is one of five lorida based schools to adopt the C model in the past year. Rather than requiring schools to use classroom time or the pace of learning as a measure of success, Rein said MTC is a gradeless measure that instead captures each student’s unique, strength and skills holistically.
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