By Mark Siegel

Michael Horn’s new book From Reopen to Reinvent: (Re)Creating School for Every Child brings the issue into focus. The book flap says it all “As COVID shattered the routines and lives of students, parents, and educators, it also revealed how outdated schools are and the price of remaining rooted in structures and processes designed for a different age.”  Across the county, many schools, districts and whole states are transitioning to schools that value mastery and understanding over seat-time. The good news is that groups like the Modern Classrooms Project and KnowledgeWorks are helping schools transition/

The transition of the literature from “we should” to “here’s how” is quite exciting. We are all looking forward to the October release of Jon Bergmann’s The Mastery Learning Handbook: A Competency-Based Approach to Student Achievementook. I had the privilege of being one of the advance readers and I see this as the missing link which will help teachers learn the in’s and outs of how to actually impelment a mastery/competency-based curriculum one lesson at a time. It is working in classrooms around the world.