Overview
For over a decade, Utah has been a national leader in the shift to a personalized, competency-based system of education. At the heart of this work is the state’s robust Personalized, Competency-Based Learning (PCBL) framework. The framework is based on the state’s Portrait of a Graduate, which serves as the foundation for a multitude of educator-facing resources, including a Portrait of a First Year Teacher and accompanying competencies.
In addition, in 2019, Utah launched a grant program providing planning grants to the first cohort of six Utah school districts, including a number of high schools, to support their competency-based efforts. Now known as the Personalized, Competency-Based Learning Grant, this program continues to provide planning and implementation grants to new cohorts of local schools and districts.
Utah is also rethinking transcripts. In 2023, the state launched a pilot program with the Mastery Transcript Consortium to develop new competency-based learning records that align with the state’s Portrait of a Graduate and the state’s PCBL efforts. The program includes a number of districts that have received PCBL grants to support their school redesign efforts.
