Since 2018, North Dakota has led efforts to support personalized, competency-based learning as a core driver of student success after graduation. That year, the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction, in partnership with KnowledgeWorks, launched the five-year North Dakota Personalized, Competency-Based Learning Initiative to support pilots in a handful of districts. The Initiative establishes a broad, statewide community of practice focused on the creation of resources that help educators implement meaningful, competency-based learning experiences.

At the heart of this work is the state’s Portrait of a Graduate and the North Dakota Learning Continuum, which provides districts with a model competency framework that they can either adopt in full or use as a starting point for their own. In 2021, the state passed legislation permitting any district to waive seat time rules for awarding credit (Policy Action 1) by formally adopting a local mastery learning framework.

In parallel with these efforts, the state has been a national leader in developing the technical infrastructure that could serve as the foundation for a new high school transcript. In 2022, North Dakota announced the launch of a Learning and Employment Record (LER) system and first-of-its-kind digital wallet that gives learners ownership of their credentials and allows them to share their digital transcript with college admissions officers.

As North Dakota continues to advance this work, the state could explore opportunities for a statewide initiative with dedicated resources to incentivize community-based high school redesign.