Washington state is a national leader in transforming high school education through its focus on competency-based education—called mastery-based learning (MBL) in the state—and on student success after high school. In 2021, state leaders launched the Washington State Mastery-Based Learning Collaborative to establish best practices for implementing MBL and to create tools, resources, and professional learning opportunities for educators in schools making the transition to MBL. The program also seeks to inform future policy by helping policymakers understand what quality MBL looks like and how it works. For the 2024-25 school year, 47 schools in 28 districts are part of the collaborative.
Washington state has also been a national leader in expanding access to advanced coursework. In 2011, the legislature passed a law requiring every high school to offer students enough advanced courses to enable them to earn a full year's worth of postsecondary credits before graduation. In 2019, the state became the first in the nation to adopt an automatic enrollment policy for advanced coursework for all of its high schools.
As Washington continues to advance this work, state leaders could explore opportunities to launch a statewide initiative with dedicated resources to incentivize community-led high school redesign.
