Who Joins
School communities join MTC for a number of reasons, but we find those reasons are commonly driven by one or more of these changemakers:
Forward-thinking Schools
Our schools are reimagining what students learn in high school, and how they best learn it. They embrace real-world, collaborative, project-based learning, and prioritize 21st Century skills, SEL, and meta-cognitive skills. Member school leaders appreciate that traditional ways of reporting on student progress are poorly aligned to learning models of the future. Mastery Learning empowers learners in–and out of–the classroom to tell their own stories in charting successful, flexible postsecondary pathways.
Aligned Districts
The best path to mastery learning stems from deep collaboration across towns, cities, and states. District partnerships led by central offices committed to mastery learning can drive powerful system change. With high schools as our flagship partners, MTC district partnerships also align stakeholders in middle school, Higher Ed, and community.
Learner-Centered States
A growing number of state education systems have endorsed personalized, competency-based education frameworks geared to prepare all high school graduates for a future of work and learning. State leaders and policymakers are leveraging these frameworks and other resources to support the growth of innovative K–12 models. MTC is increasingly supporting cohorts of like-minded schools in these states which are partnering with state education agencies to drive systems change.
Youth-Serving Organizations
Many afterschool and out-of-school time (OST) organizations provide powerful mastery learning experiences. Our new MTC Learning Record (MLR) offers them an easy way to capture evidence of this learning, and allows young people to bridge in-school and out-of-school growth experiences. The MLR is a tool learners can use to demonstrate both college and career readiness.
Member Benefits
Our tools make it easy to document evidence of learner mastery and progress over time in relation to a program's defined competencies, as well as to guide and track progress toward a competency-based model. MTC helps schools and learning organizations empower learners to take greater agency and personalize their learning experiences. If you are interested in membership, please contact Carl Farrington, farrington@mastery.org. If you are already a member and have questions about using the MTC tools, please contact us at support@mastery.org.
MTC member meetings and resources are all accessible through member accounts at www.members.mastery.org. Our products and services are designed to accommodate educators’ hectic schedules and target urgent needs through a variety of offerings including: regular MTC office hours, online peer affinity groups, curated resources and newsletters, annual convenings, and webinars featuring thought leaders as well as student voices. MTC Events are listed here.
MTC works with admission and enrollment officers from both domestic and international colleges and universities as well as with other higher education partners to support sustainable changes in higher education admissions practices. Our competency-based learning records offer colleges information on learners' demonstrated capabilities that is richer and more nuanced than a list of grades and GPAs, while still providing consistency and validity for admission purposes. MTC contacts every college admissions office that receives one of our learning records to guide them on the review of this new tool, answer questions, and provide suggestions for integrating it into their review process.
MTC joins a network of ecosystem partners in advocating for and helping to shape K-16 policies and resources that accelerate systemic adoption of competency-based learning. Through a growing number of targeted partnerships with states and districts, MTC helps to cultivate, highlight, and disseminate promising examples of personalized, skill-based learning models that will prepare young people to navigate flexible work and learning pathways.
Reinventing How Students Prepare for College, Career, and Life
The Mastery Transcript is a game changer. We are providing a transcript that truly helps transform education for every single student. We are actively working with a range of college admissions offices—and they are excited to engage with us. One size never fit all, and that's what MTC is all about.
Journey Towards Mastery Learning
Many school leaders in mastery-based learning systems had no specific roadmap for change, so anticipating the challenges inherent in transforming very entrenched and traditional school systems is nearly impossible. Having learned a lot from member schools and from the field of education more broadly, MTC developed an evidence-based framework of support in the MTC Journeys to Mastery Learning. The framework helps like-minded member schools learn from one another and advance their own school's unique journey to mastery-based learning.
MTC member schools are at different places in their journey, but the common phases our member schools experience include: