Proficiency-Based Learning: A Roadmap for Educators

The Great Schools Partnership supports schools and districts around the country as they design and implement proficiency-based education systems. From our many years in diverse school settings, we’ve distilled the foundational steps needed to implement a high-quality proficiency-based system. These steps are not necessarily sequential, as there are many entry points for beginning your journey toward proficiency. Each toolkit embedded in this roadmap provides links to free resources developed by Great Schools Partnership staff and tested in hundreds of schools. While useful in isolation, each stop along the roadmap represents one component of a complex system. The goal of a proficiency-based system is to ensure equitable outcomes for all students, and each component of the system should be viewed with an equity lens (see our Educational Equity Toolkit).

We know there is no one particular pathway to implementation, as each district is unique, but given essential steps to follow, supported by practical suggestions and quality resources, districts can build a local model that is equitable, personalized, and rigorous for all students.

Proficiency Roadmap

Choose an icon below or continue scrolling to start your journey.

Planning for Proficiency

The Great Schools Partnership created the Framework for Proficiency-Based Learning to help schools develop efficient standards-based systems that will prepare all students for success in the colleges, careers, and communities of the 21st century. For this reason, our model is focused on prioritizing and assessing the most vitally important knowledge and skills, while also balancing these high academic expectations with the need for flexibility, responsiveness, and creativity in the classroom. Our framework and guidance documents provide a foundational structure that will help schools and districts prioritize learning goals and build a more coherent academic program.

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Beliefs and Practices of Proficiency-Based Learning

These foundational beliefs and practices are essential for implementing equitable proficiency-based systems.

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Framework for Proficiency-Based Learning

This framework represents a system of essential structures necessary to promote equitable outcomes for all students.

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Building Proficiency Systems

This visual breaks down the four key stages and related tasks associated with building a school’s or district’s proficiency system.

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Proficiency-Based Learning Policy Checklist

This checklist is intended for use by educators looking to revise or develop policies for guiding the implementation of proficiency-based learning.

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Community Engagement Toolkit

This toolkit guides schools and communities in engaging in an ongoing, two-way process of building relationships, working collaboratively to support all students, and sharing power.

Developing Competencies

Establishing a curriculum with a set of common standards is one of the essential structures to promote equitable outcomes for all students. These structures help educators create coherence as they define and prioritize student learning outcomes, plan for assessment and feedback, select methods for communicating progress, and determine readiness for graduation. Learning outcomes include transferable skills, graduation competencies and performance indicators (long-term), learning targets (short-term), and habits of work. While these structures are critical, a commitment to the achievement of all students must serve as the foundation to ensure equity.

Please note: Tools marked as PDFs will be downloaded directly as PDF files; all other links will direct you to a web-based version of the tool.

Design Criteria Chart: Graduation Standards (PDF)

This tool provides guidance on developing effective graduation standards.  

Design Criteria Chart: Performance Indicators (PDF)

This tool provides guidance on developing effective performance indicators

Graduation Standards Protocol (PDF)

This is a protocol that schools can use when developing graduation standards.

Performance Indicators Protocol

This is a protocol that schools can use when developing performance indicators.

Proficiencies and Scoring Criteria Exemplars: Rhode Island

An exemplar set of graduation standards, performance indicators, and scoring criteria.

Transferable Skills

Transferable skills are essential life skills that students should practice and demonstrate across content areas and will need in any form of postgraduate training, study, or career.

Designing Assessments

These tools are intended for educators to use as they design, critique, and refine summative assessments and scoring criteria aligned to a proficiency-based learning system. Effective proficiency-based summative assessments provide students with an opportunity to clearly demonstrate and provide evidence of their learning against clear expectations, defined by scoring criteria. Strong summative assessments provide opportunities for authentic demonstration that indicate a student’s ability to transfer their skills and knowledge to novel situations, beyond the specific assessment task provided. Note that the full range of summative assessments, including traditional tests, can be designed in order to provide evidence of student learning and levels of student proficiency.

Please note: The tools and resources for this section were created and compiled into a toolkit. Visit the toolkit below to discover and download the constituent tools and resources.

Summative Assessment Toolkit

These tools are intended for educators to use as they design, critique, and refine summative assessments and scoring criteria aligned to a proficiency-based learning system.

Learning and Assessment Pathways

These pathways represent the flexibility and choice possible in a proficiency-based learning system focused on producing equitable outcomes for all students. 

Planning for Instruction

The Elements of Effective Instruction (EEI) is a framework that outlines five intertwined elements of instructional practice that complement and enhance one another. When integrated into learning experiences, these elements foster student engagement with the ultimate goal of improving student outcomes and achievement. The framework is grounded in the understanding that students are more interested and invested in their learning when they feel safe in their learning environment, understand what they are learning and why it matters, have opportunities to practice, receive clear feedback on their work, and engage in complex, meaningful thinking.

Please note: The tools and resources for this section were created and compiled into a toolkit. Visit the toolkit below to discover and download the constituent tools and resources.

Elements of Effective Instruction Toolkit

The Elements of Effective Instruction framework outlines five intertwined elements of instructional practice that complement and enhance one another. 

Grading and Reporting

The purpose of a grading system is to give feedback to students so they can take charge of their learning and to provide information to all who support these students—teachers, special educators, parents, and others. The purpose of a reporting system is to communicate the students’ achievement to families, post-secondary institutions, and employers. These systems must, above all, communicate clear information about the skills a student has mastered or the areas where they need more support or practice. When schools use grades to reward or punish students, or to sort students into levels, imbalances in power and privilege will be magnified and the purposes of the grading and reporting systems will not be achieved. The tools and guidance below is intended to highlight the central practices that schools can use to ensure that their grading and reporting systems help them build a nurturing, equitable, creative, and dynamic culture of learning.

Please note: The tools and resources for this section were created and compiled into a toolkit. Visit the toolkit below to discover and download the constituent tools and resources.

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Grading and Reporting for Educational Equity Toolkit

This toolkit comprises guidance for developing school profiles and transcripts; it also includes a guide highlighting the central practices schools can use to build equitable grading and reporting systems.

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College Admissions

This resource provides insight for students and schools on how institutions of higher education evaluate proficiency-based high school transcripts. 

Analyzing Data

Gathering, disaggregating, analyzing, and sharing data about and with your school community is a powerful way to identify inequities in your policies, practices, and community engagement strategies. Data can also help your school community organize and prioritize your improvement efforts. To help guide educators, families, students, and other members of your school community toward educational equity, the Great Schools Partnership created the resources below. They are based on our experience supporting school communities working collaboratively for more equitable, rigorous, and personalized education systems that prepare every student for college, careers, and global citizenship.

Please note: The tools and resources for this section were created and compiled into a toolkit. Visit the toolkit below to discover and download the constituent tools and resources.

Using Data to Improve Schools

This toolkit comprises step-by-step resources for educators interested in ways to use data to inform their instructional practice. A self-assessment and student feedback survey are included.

Interested In Learning More? Let’s Talk.

Personalized, equitable, and student-centered education is too important to put aside. Together, we can improve learning for all your students.

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