edCircuit note: Matt Ridenour wrote this outline in 2020 for a school system without age-based grades or fixed class periods, where students move through modules when they have mastered them. Ridenour’s outline is unchanged below. An update after it explains what mastery based learning is, where states have moved since 2020, and what the research says about the approach Ridenour proposes.
The current public education system has stagnated. The information and technology explosion has exposed a behemoth that is not able to pivot and adapt. Without massive action, the United States will continue to lose traction in our ever-shrinking global learning community. Is it time to push the Hard-Reset button and start over?
Here are the basic tenets of the paradigm shift:
1. Eliminate the concept of age tied to grade
2. Eliminate structure of hourly periods and teachers/students in a box
3. Establish a clear progression of skills and check points
4. Create modules of learning that:
a. Help guide students to their clearest path of interest
b. Provide a thorough, verifiable understanding of a subject or topic
c. Are sequential and upon completion provide a complete set of knowledge applicable to a career or higher education study pathway
d. Provide a comprehensive mix of experiences, both mental and physical, that encompass individual, small group, large group, and cyber learning
e. This system should be created with an OPEN SOURCE mentality so that it is perpetually being redesigned and refined. This will ensure highest and best practices for an ever-evolving knowledge base.
The 30,000 Foot View
• Establish “Rivers of Learning”
• Each river represents a major field of human interest
• Each river is divided into subsets or streams that provide a more specialized learning mode.
• All rivers flow to the same “ocean” which is a learner who is prepared for one of 2 things:
• Further specialized study
• (Doctor, lawyer, engineer, etc.)
• Entrance into the labor/workforce
The 20,000 Foot View
• Define all skills necessary for success in every area/profession.
• Provide a published visual roadmap to completion
• Define both horizontal and vertical parameters for progress in each study area.
• Each stream of study contains modules that spiral in complexity until the student has mastered the entire skillset.
• These modules/learning packets accumulate to a complete body of knowledge.
• Each stream shares the common human elements that all students need in order to become successful adults
• Health and human function, including diet and exercise knowledge
• Common sense tools
• Financial tools
• Communication tools
• Etc.
The 10,000 Foot View
• Begin each student with a common play-based curriculum.
• Use well designed early childhood modules to determine learning types and interests.
• Guide students to the stream that best suits their interests.
• At a certain point, a stream of learning is declared and followed. Until that point, all modules are general in format.
• Students may transfer to different streams if interests change, and all modules are weighed for compatibility for that new stream. If early modules are well designed, student interests are accurately identified and changing streams would be rare.
The 5,000 Foot View
Changes necessary at the basic level of our current system
• Eliminate structured classrooms
• Eliminate mandatory lecture format
• Eliminate mandatory period structure
• Create open learning centers
• Create single study centers as well as small and large group study/collaboration centers
• Create modules that require both mental and physical maturity.
• This is a safeguard against gifted students completing all modules at a very young age and entering the workforce before they are physically mature.
• Modify the role of teacher to the role of mentor/teacher.
• Teachers would provide labs, lectures, office hours, and single, small group and large group instruction as needed.
• The school would provide the space and the mentors, but the students would use them a la carte.
• Define module completion with subjective and/or objective criteria.
• A panel of mentors/facilitators would determine any subjective completion questions, with a governing body system.
• OR
• Objective criteria would be based on standard assessments and official proctors. (However, it would be much preferable to eliminate the concept of exit exams and replace them with sequential measurable completion tasks. For example, Module 1 has an objectively defined completion point that unlocks module 2.
Part of completion would be student involvement in furthering the library of modules available for that stream of study.
This open source mind set would help refine best practices and create an ever upward evolving pillar of knowledge.
Barriers to entry:
Our current system is massive and unable to pivot. Infrastructure and labor pools represent daunting obstacles to change. I recommend that we begin with study models to refine this approach as a means to transition our school system to its next highest function.
Further, models of 2-year sprints would provide the quickest accountable results. A program beginning with Kindergarten or young five candidates studied over 2 years, alongside another model of 11th and 12th grade students would provide much needed data to roll out on a larger scale.
This article was originally published by The Learning Counsel
Further Reading
- Patch.com – Goucher Poll: Education Reform Popular But Cost Raises Questions
- The New York Times – Bringing a New Vibe to the Classroom
- edCircuit – CoSN Podcast: S1E2, What New K-12 CTOs Need to Know
Mastery based learning in 2026: where Ridenour’s ideas stand
Ridenour’s outline describes what is usually called mastery based learning: each student moves to the next module only after showing a clear, verifiable command of the current one, and time, not the standard, is what varies. The idea is older than it may look. The Education Endowment Foundation, an English charity that summarizes research for schools, notes that mastery learning was developed in the 1960s: material is broken into units with set objectives, students must show mastery on unit tests (typically 80 percent) before moving on, and those who fall short get extra teaching, tutoring or peer support until they meet the bar. Since 2020 the idea has moved from proposals like Ridenour’s into state policy, but the evidence suggests that how it is done matters a great deal.
Where states have moved since 2020
The broader movement is often called competency-based education, a subject edCircuit has covered in Competency-Based Education’s Sustainable Value to Learners. In a 2025 opinion piece for The 74, Bill Hite, chief executive of the nonprofit KnowledgeWorks, wrote that all 50 states now have competency-based education policies, compared with about half of states a decade earlier, and introduced a state policy map built with the Aurora Institute. Hite’s examples include Arkansas schools that let students move ahead once they show mastery, Kentucky classrooms where students progress when ready with teachers acting as coaches, and Utah’s tools for measuring 13 characteristics in its Portrait of a Graduate. KnowledgeWorks advocates for this approach, so its count describes policies that permit it, not how many students actually learn this way.
The biggest barrier Ridenour names, a system built around hours and periods, has also drawn attention. The 74 reported in May 2023 that the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the testing organization ETS had begun a joint effort to develop assessments that measure mastery rather than seat time. The Carnegie unit, the foundation’s own credit-hour standard, works out to roughly one hour per day, per subject, for 24 weeks. Carnegie’s president, Timothy Knowles, called time a “crude” measure of learning. Not everyone was convinced: Michael Horn of the Clayton Christensen Institute said the part of the plan meant to measure skills such as collaboration was, in Horn’s reading of the literature, “unproven and underdeveloped,” and Scott Marion of the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment warned that competency-based assessment “is not for the faint of heart.”
What the research says
The Education Endowment Foundation rates mastery learning as having moderate impact for very low cost, based on limited evidence: about five months of additional progress over a year, on average. Behind that average is wide variation. Studies with primary school pupils show larger effects (about eight months) than those with secondary pupils (about three), and effects are larger in mathematics and science than in reading. The foundation also found that a high bar for mastery, usually 80 to 90 percent, matters, and that the approach appears much less effective when pupils work at their own pace. That last finding bears directly on Ridenour’s proposal for students to use mentors and modules “a la carte”: the research supports mastery with structure, regular feedback and extra support, more than open-ended self-pacing.
American evidence points the same way. A 2016 American Institutes for Research study of ninth graders in 18 high schools in three states found that practices varied greatly among schools calling themselves competency-based. Students who had clear learning targets, extra time and chances to retake exams showed more motivation and confidence, whether or not their school used the label. The study measured associations, not causes, and its author’s conclusion was that simply calling a school competency-based is not enough.
What leaders can take from this
Ridenour’s own recommendation, to begin with study models and two-year trials rather than a system-wide switch, fits the evidence well. Leaders who want to test mastery based learning can start with a narrower set of steps:
- Begin in one subject, such as mathematics, where effects have been strongest, and with clearly sequenced units.
- Set a high, explicit mastery bar and decide in advance what extra support students get when they miss it.
- Keep teachers in charge of pacing and feedback rather than leaving students to move alone through material.
- Allow retakes and extra time, the practices linked to motivation in the AIR study.
- Prepare teachers for the change, a topic edCircuit has covered in preparing the next generation of teachers.
- Measure results over the two-year window Ridenour suggests, and compare them with similar students in ordinary classes.
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