What is the MBLC?

What is the MBLC?

The MBLC network of 47 member schools across Washington State is an initiative of the Washington State Board of Education (SBE). MBLC member schools are working toward implementing high-quality mastery-based learning (MBL) and culturally responsive-sustaining education (CRSE) practices, with educational equity as a guiding value.

• Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education (CRSE): Culturally responsive-sustaining education is grounded in a cultural view of learning and human development in which multiple expressions of diversity (e.g., race, social class, gender identity, language, nationality, religion, disability) are recognized and regarded as assets for teaching and learning.
  (Adapted from the New York State Framework for Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education)

• Mastery-based Learning: The state defined mastery-based learning (MBL) in 2025 SB 5189 (and clarified that MBL has the same meaning as competency-based education):

  • • Students are empowered daily to make important decisions about their learning experiences, how they will create and apply knowledge, and how they will demonstrate their learning;

    • Assessment is a meaningful, positive, and empowering learning experience for students that yields timely, relevant, and actionable evidence;

    • Students receive timely, differentiated support based on their individual learning needs;

    • Students progress based on evidence of mastery, not seat time;

    • Students learn actively using different pathways and varied pacing;

    • Strategies to ensure equity for all students are embedded in the culture, structure, and pedagogy of schools and education systems; and

    • Rigorous, common expectations for learning, including knowledge, skills, and dispositions, are explicit, transparent, measurable, and transferable.

• Culturally Responsive-Sustaining (CRS) Mastery-based Learning (MBL): CRS MBL means MBL implemented in a CRS way.