ABSTRACT
The traditional high school transcript, and the system of Carnegie units or standard units and crediting course that it reflects, is fast becoming outdated. Grade inflation, inconsistent standards of grading, and the compliance culture of student learning that the typical transcript and crediting system perpetuates have resulted in transcripts and letter grades being poor facilitators or communicators of meaningful student learning, and also in student stress and competition. Meanwhile, educators have new aspirations for their students, including twenty-first-century skills, interdisciplinary and applied learning, and performance assessment, all of which the current model of transcripts and crediting do a poor job of supporting and reporting. New educational technologies and techniques, including standards-based grading, badging, digital portfolios, and digital platforms, are making a new kind of transcript more possible and feasible. Presented here is an extension of competency-based education (CBE), also called competency-based learning (CBL), that is being called competency-based crediting, which includes most CBE elements, but extends it by ending Carnegie units and credits for course completion, replacing them with credits for competencies, or mastery credits, earned and awarded, and by replacing the typical high school transcript with a competency-based transcript. The Mastery Transcript Consortium transcript is one example of this change.
