What If High School Diplomas Were Microcredentials and Experiences
Concept: Create a new competency-based high school diploma framework focused on innovation. A diploma that would represent preparedness for the automation economy.
Background: High school graduation requirements have been pretty static since the Committee of Ten recommendations in 1894. They focus on the traditional path of scholarship and success in college.
The International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme is recognized worldwide. High schools join the network and colleges recognize the diploma based on the value of the proposition. It’s demanding, but it doesn’t focus on innovation.
What’s New: We live in a “show what you know” world where it matters more what you can do than where you went to college. Smart technologies are reshaping the employment landscape. Job and career readiness are becoming more important than college readiness.
Developments: Five New England states have adopted proficiency-based diploma policies moving high schools and colleges toward competency-based education. The expectations are a mix of traditional and work ready standards (e.g., Maine has guiding principles and Vermont promotes transferable skills).
Opportunity: Create new standards for high school completion and post-secondary acceptance. Participating universities would/could offer automatic entrance and a year of college credit.
Concept: Ask students to complete and present 20 projects (or more broadly, successful learning experiences). Four to six per year over three or four years, including:
- Launch a business or sustainable initiative (entrepreneurship)
- Build a mobile app (for the business/initiative)
- Secure and serve a customer with marketing services
- Demonstrate success in two work settings (internship)
- Visit two of the world’s greatest cities and compare sustainable development
- Propose a solution to a global health challenge
- Propose a strategy to extend social justice
- Conduct a science experiment and publish the results
- Complete at least two college courses (one online)
- Use data to solve a local problem (community service)
- Publish 40 reviews/reflections (individual) in science and social science
- Publish two major works: papers, books and/or sites (team)
- Produce and present two works of public art (performance, exhibit)
- Explain 10 emerging implications of artificial intelligence on lives/livelihoods
- Apply to a valuable post-secondary experience (college or equal)
Some of these projects/experiences could be completed on a team and some as an individual. They would all help develop and demonstrate 10 important success skills in 20 microcredentials (about two in each skill category):
- Self-directed learners
- Skilled communicators
- Design thinkers and persistent innovators
- Effective entrepreneurs
- Empathetic collaborators
- Resourceful problem solvers
- Data & AI literate
- Global citizens
- Experienced project managers
- Exhibiting health and wellness
If graduation requirements were described as 20 projects and 20 microcredentials, it would allow students to attack the requirements in their own way and at their own pace, often working in teams and cohorts. The key would be sustained relationships with skilled advisors who could help construct projects mapped to important skills.
Pilot and Scale: The innovation diploma could be piloted with one high school and one college and then extended statewide, and then nationwide–adding colleges that recognize the diploma where there are high schools interested in offering it.
Like the IB, it would afford an alternative high school experience, and in doing so would advance personalized and competency-based learning while preparing thousands of youth for the innovation economy.
This post is an update to a 2016 post on rethinking grad requirements.
For more, see:
- Grad Requirements: From Know Science, To Do Science, To Automate Science
- It’s Time to Update Your Graduate Profile – Here’s How (Podcast with Ken Kay)
- Community Conversations Shape Portrait of a Graduate
Speaker, Presenter, RPCV, Math Goddess
8yHigh schools could partner with local tech ed schools so every high school student could leave with some kind of tech certificate: engine repair, A/P, composites, programming, LPN.... very employable skills and good pay.
Senior Proposal Analyst at Pearson Online & Blended Learning K-12 USA
8yExcellent idea and now is the time
Consultant, researcher and service provider - Digital credentials and flexible recognition technologies
8yThis sounds an awful lot like Open Badge micro-credentials for extra-curricular projects, aligned to skills frameworks. Cool idea, if it doesn't self-select advantaged kids, who may not need the extra help. Admissions and Registrar communities in PSE should be involved - they will be the downstream "consumers" of these micro-credentialed achievements. I suggest these Lumina projects: the Connecting Credentials Project and the Credential Engine.
Cutler Capital | Founder & Former CEO of Paper ($1.5B) | Quarterback | Speaker
8yThe challenge that a lot of K-12 institutions have mentioned is that they feel handcuffed to the higher-ed system. For many K-12 schools, they measure their success on where their students go after, and unfortunately so many HE institutions still rely on standardized tests. We need to collectively push in order to make these "micro-credentials" more applicable. Employers are already starting to look at it, so the shift is coming. Keep up the hard work, Tom. It is having an impact!
Co-Founder at SparxWorks and Independent Consultant
8yYou say that the key would be "sustained relationships with skilled advisors who could help construct projects mapped to important skills." I agree entirely and wonder where we would find enough of these people to adopt a plan like this on a broad scale.