Graduation Requirements

Staples High School has a 1.0 credit Mastery-Based Diploma Assessment (MBDA) requirement for students. Our Vision of a Graduate is known as the “Contributing Citizens” document, which will serve as the basis for this assessment experience for Staples High School graduates.

As a school community, we've embedded skill assessment into pre-existing school learning activities, experiences, and projects to capture student mastery of critical skills. Over the course of the four years, students are guaranteed to participate in experiences that will allow them to demonstrate mastery through their core academic and elective courses. Student mastery of a domain will be documented using a portfolio created in a Google Drive. Students will be able to select from various course assignments that are either designated by a teacher or selected by the student based on their ability to connect an assignment with one of the four domains.

The MBDA experience is a four-year process through which students demonstrate proficiency in the capacities of the Vision of a Graduate (Contributing Citizens). While the capacities of the Vision of a Graduate are embedded in all courses throughout the SHS curriculum, designated assured experiences ensure that students have the opportunity to focus specifically on each capacity during their four-year Staples High School experience. Students who attend less than four years at Staples are also responsible for this graduation requirement and will work with a MBDA advisor to consider work from other academic institutions that can satisfy the four domains. Once students have demonstrated mastery in each of the four domain areas (Collaborators, Communicators, Critical Thinkers, and Creators), they will be awarded one non-grade bearing credit toward graduation that will be reflected on their final transcript.