In many traditional grading systems, learners are ranked, sorted and seen as a number in a gradebook. But there's a Competency-Based world in which learners can be valued for who they are and how they are growing as individuals. It's time for a paradigm shift from a traditional to a Competency-Based approach to assessment, grading and reporting. If learning truly happens anywhere, anytime and we believe it does not occur in silos nor in time boxes, then we must rethink structures such as traditional courses (or content/subject blocks in elementary), taught by one subject-area educator, to a group of learners who are the same age. These structures underpin the traditional grading system, so as we reimagine them, we must also rethink how learning is assessed and reported. 

We are all familiar with what traditional grading looks like but imagining an alternative is challenging. We hope this Playbook makes the alternative visible and concrete, in service of supporting others to imagine what’s possible. This Playbook will focus on the systemic change that comes with designing an entirely new structure for assessing, grading and reporting learning. It will follow the flow chart below, walking through the decisions system leaders need to make in the design process. It will acknowledge all of the puzzle pieces to attend to along the way that you see in the graphic below including educator capacity, family communication and technology needs, but these are items that would need entire Playbooks on their own and will not be discussed in depth in this specific piece.