Moving schools beyond grades
Mastery.org is the company behind the Mastery Transcript® and the consortium of schools that use it. We help schools show what students can actually do, and we help colleges read it.
- 2017
Launches with 54 founding schools
0 accepting colleges
- 2019
First transcript reaches a college
55+ accepting colleges by spring
- 2024
Joins ETS
500+ accepting colleges
- 2026
A new chapter as Mastery.org
1,017 accepting colleges
A record of real student work, built by schools and read by colleges
Schools build the record
Each school defines its own competencies and builds every Mastery Transcript from real coursework and the skills students demonstrate, not just a letter grade.
Colleges read it
Admissions offices read the Mastery Transcript as easily as traditional grades, and our team reaches out to every college a student applies to.
Students admitted to college with a Mastery Transcript
Colleges and universities accept the Mastery Transcript
A better way to show what students know
The idea sparked in 2014 at Hawken School in Cleveland, where head of school Scott Looney saw the most basic of all high school documents, the transcript, as a boulder in the way of high school innovation. The Mastery Transcript Consortium® launched in 2017 with 54 founding schools, and the movement has been growing since.
That 99 percent of high school transcripts follow an identical format is a vestige of an outdated industrial age. We hope to reflect a new age that demands a new approach to education.
Scott Looney
Founder of MTC; Head of School, Hawken
From the Consortium to Mastery.org
In 2026 the Mastery Transcript Consortium moved on from ETS under new ownership and now goes to market as Mastery.org. The name is new; the mission is not.
Read the letter from our foundersWhat stays the same for members
- The tools you use stay the same.
- Your pricing stays the same.
- The community, symposium, and events continue.
New ownership means more investment in the movement, not less.
The people you'll work with
Matt Sornson
Matt co-founded Clearbit and led it through its acquisition. He grew up in a family of Michigan educators and started the new Mastery.org to change what schools can see and say about what students actually know.
Aaron Rasmussen
Aaron co-founded MasterClass and founded Outlier.org. The son of a rural Oregon science teacher, he has spent his career making world-class learning accessible to more students.
Jason Cummings
Jason has spent years working directly with MTC member schools, leading competency-based learning workshops and guiding schools from their first portrait of a learner to sending their first transcripts.
Susie Bell
Susie spent seventeen years in Connecticut's Windsor Locks public schools, where as superintendent she led one of the country's earliest district-wide shifts to mastery-based learning. She has since guided member schools implementing the Mastery Transcript and Mastery Learning Record.
Matthew Alexander
Matthew builds the systems that help schools discover Mastery.org. He also writes about why traditional measures of learning are breaking, from grade inflation to the limits of the GPA.
Waseem Hussain
Waseem builds the tools schools use to turn authentic student work into mastery-based records and share them with the 1,015 colleges that accept them.
John Otander
John builds the Mastery.org platform. He previously built data and developer tools at Clearbit, Gatsby, and Components AI.
Iliana Gonzalez
Iliana works with admissions teams to make the Mastery Transcript easy to read and trust. She brings fifteen years in education and enrollment.
Education Advisory Council
Scott Looney
Chair of the Advisory Council Founder of MTC Head of School, Hawken
Tim Knowles
President, Carnegie Foundation
On a mission to replace the Carnegie Unit with competency-based learning.
Susie Bell
Senior Advisor; former Superintendent
Proved a whole district could go mastery-based.
Andrew Ho
Professor of Education, Harvard
Keeps the measurement science as rigorous as the mission is ambitious.
Denise Pope
Co-Founder, Challenge Success; Senior Lecturer, Stanford
Has the receipts on what grade pressure does to kids.
Ted Dintersmith
Author, What School Could Be
Visited 200 schools in all fifty states to find out what school could be.
Laura Slover
Managing Director, Skills for the Future, ETS
Making durable skills as measurable as math.
Mike Flanagan
CEO, E3n
Built the platform that turned the mastery idea into a working transcript.
Debra Wilson
President, NAIS
Brings the voice of the independent school world to the council.
Lisa Reyes
Psychometrician, Salesforce
Knows what employers actually accept as proof of a skill.