The high school transcript has been a staple of K-12 education for over a century. Indeed, the factors that drove the invention of the Carnegie Unit in 1906—the rapid growth of high schools across an expanding nation and the need to standardize college admissions—also created a need to keep a consistent record of a student’s coursework and grades.
Unfortunately, today’s high school transcripts—which look largely the same as they did a century ago—offer only a narrow, two-dimensional view of students, conveying little about their mastery of knowledge and competencies and even less about their accomplishments within and out-of-school. Like the Carnegie Unit, the conventional high school transcript is a relic of a bygone era: an innovation that once served an important purpose, but whose time has passed.
Take, for example, a traditional transcript that shows a “C” in 9th grade algebra. What does that grade actually tell us? What course material did the student truly understand, and what learning gaps remained? Even if the transcript could answer such questions, it still wouldn’t convey the student’s mastery of the kinds of durable competencies described in a state’s Profile of a Graduate.
As states and communities reimagine high school, students need new types of transcripts and learning records—ones that go beyond a list of courses and grades and enable students to communicate, “Here are the competencies I’ve mastered—and here’s what I can do with them.”
Redesigned transcripts can carry greater value as students transition into higher education, career training, and the labor market, enabling graduates to showcase their unique strengths and capabilities in ways a traditional transcript never could. By incorporating new ways to credential learning—such as digital badges—these transcripts can reflect knowledge and skills gained both in and beyond the classroom and support credit toward graduation based on demonstrated mastery.
Finally, it’s clear that students themselves readily see the value of redesigning the traditional school transcript. As one student participant in a transcript redesign pilot told us, “Using the mastery transcript, I love that way more than traditional grading.”
To meet the criteria for this policy action, a state will have:
Adopted a new student transcript, badging, or record system, such as learning and employment records (LERs), that award students badges or other types of credentials for demonstrating the requisite knowledge, skills, and competencies.
States need both the infrastructure to demonstrate student competencies and also the artifacts (e.g., badges) to be included.
Excellence looks like: transcripts that open doors because they clearly demonstrate what graduates can do, digital, lifelong learning portfolios that employers value and potential employees can use to demonstrate skills and know-how.
Download the How to Be a Frontier for State Excellence Guide here
