Mead Design Studio connects mastery projects to college admissions
Mead Design Studio is a mastery-based public school-within-a-school that gives students a record colleges can read while preserving interdisciplinary project work.
Mead Design Studio / Spokane, Washington / Public school
The school model
Mead Design Studio is a mastery-based, interdisciplinary school-within-a-school inside Mead High School in Spokane, Washington.
The studio gives students a different way to organize high school. Learning is project-based, interdisciplinary, and built around exhibitions that ask students to make their work visible.
What gets measured
Students build evidence through mastery projects rather than only through isolated course assignments. The public nature of exhibitions gives students practice explaining what they learned and why it matters.
That evidence needs a record that can travel. The Mastery Learning Record gives the studio a way to make project-based learning readable for colleges.
Why the transcript matters
Mead Design Studio publicly describes its partnership with the Mastery Transcript Consortium to provide a mastery-based learning environment for students.
It also publishes a college admissions list for 2023-24 Design Studio seniors using the Mastery Learning Record, including acceptances to institutions such as Oregon State, University of Colorado Boulder, University of Denver, Tulane, Washington State, Whitworth, and Eastern Washington.
What this proves
Mead Design Studio shows that a public school-within-a-school can send students into college admissions with a mastery record. The learning can stay interdisciplinary, and the record can still be legible outside the program.