For a long time, we have organized school around a pretty simple deal for students: show up, do the work, make it through the semester, and earn the credit. Eighteen weeks. A certain number of instructional minutes. Enough assignments completed. A passing grade at the end. Survive the semester and move on.
But somewhere along the way, I wonder if we as educators confused the structure of school with its purpose. The job of being in a classroom isn’t to survive 18 weeks. The job is to learn, develop skills, and grow.
That sounds obvious. But if we really believe it, we have to be willing to rethink some things.
For more than a century, American education has been organized around the Carnegie Unit, a system that largely linked academic credit to the time a student spent studying a subject. Today, even the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the organization whose name is attached to that system, is challenging us to think differently about the relationship between time and learning. The Carnegie Foundation has argued that a time-based system of education is increasingly at odds with what we want education to accomplish.
2 fundamental questions
That raises two fundamental questions: What if making it through the semester isn’t the outcome? What if learning and skill development are?
Think about a student who struggles with Algebra I all semester. They turn in enough assignments, earn enough points, and receive a D. They survived. Technically, the system shows the student as having succeeded. But what exactly did the credit certify?
Now imagine another student who doesn’t understand an important concept the first time. Or the second time. They receive feedback, get additional instruction, try again, and eventually demonstrate that they understand it and can use it. Which student better accomplished the purpose of the class?
There is another side to the question. What about the student who can demonstrate in October that they have mastered something we hadn’t planned to teach until December? Why should that student spend another two months proving something we already know?
If the job is learning and growth, time becomes a resource rather than the finish line.
Searching for a new way forward
At Eastern Hancock Schools, these aren’t theoretical questions for us anymore. We’re rethinking what school could look like if we truly believed its purpose was learning and skill development instead of accumulating time and points.
EH Connect, a new hands-on, project-based program within Eastern Hancock High School, is giving us a place to begin answering that question. Instead of treating a student’s grade as an accumulation of points over a semester, we’re identifying the most important things they need to know and be able to do and asking them to provide evidence of that learning. Credit is increasingly tied to demonstrated proficiency rather than simply completing the course.
That shift requires us to rethink how and where that evidence can be developed. Students who enroll in the program as freshmen can now learn through integrated projects, authentic problems, experiences outside the traditional classroom, and eventually through work-based learning. The question becomes less about where a student learned something and more about whether they can demonstrate that they know it and can use it.
Across the rest of Eastern Hancock, we’re in the process of moving all learning in the same direction. This shift reflects a broad movement toward competency-based learning. Organizations studying competency-based education, including the Aurora Institute, have argued that students should progress based on evidence of mastery rather than on seat time alone.
A learning curve for administrators and teachers
We’re becoming more intentional about defining what students need to know and be able to do. We’re working with teachers to clarify what matters most for student learning. We’re developing proficiency scales, reconsidering how grades communicate learning, creating better opportunities for students to demonstrate mastery, and beginning to think differently about what earning credit should mean.
This work requires a significant learning curve for administrators and teachers. Changing a grading scale is easy – changing what a grade actually means is much harder. Changing the requirements for earning credit is harder still. It requires us to reevaluate instruction, assessment, intervention, scheduling, reporting, and what we do when a student either hasn’t learned something yet or is ready to move beyond it.
Eventually, we want a credit to mean more than: Our students made it through the semester. We want it to mean: They learned essential skills. They can demonstrate them. They’re ready for what comes next.
Maybe there is something to surviving
There is a fair counterargument to all of this. Maybe surviving the semester actually does develop some important skills.
There is something to be said for perseverance, meeting deadlines, doing things you don’t always want to do, and sticking with something when it gets hard. Those are skills, too, and I don’t want to lose them.
School shouldn’t eliminate struggle. Some of the most meaningful growth in life happens precisely because something is difficult. There will be days when kids don’t want to go to school. There will be assignments they don’t love. There are going to be teachers and classmates they have to learn to work with. There will be deadlines, expectations, frustrations, mistakes, and things they don’t understand the first time. That’s part of growing up.
Maybe the question isn’t whether students should struggle. Maybe we should be more intentional about which struggles actually help kids grow.
What if we could design a system where students develop the same academic knowledge and skills, while both students and teachers enjoy the experience more? What if perseverance came from meaningful challenges rather than endurance, responsibility from work that matters rather than points, and skills like communication, collaboration, and curiosity were intentionally developed rather than left to chance? And what if teachers had more freedom to respond to the students in front of them instead of feeling pressured to get everyone through the same material on the same timeline?
What we’re exploring
That’s really what we’re trying to explore at Eastern Hancock. We’re not trying to make school easier. We’re not trying to eliminate deadlines, expectations, hard work, accountability, or struggle. We’re trying to make those things matter. We’re trying to build a system where the hard work is in service of learning and growth, not just to make it to the end.
Schools need schedules. Families need predictability. Teachers need manageable systems. Credits, semesters, classrooms, grades, and calendars all exist for good reasons. But they are structures. They aren’t the goal.
The goal is to develop young people who know things, can do things, and have developed the skills and habits they’ll need for whatever comes next. If our current structures accomplish that, great. But when they don’t, we should be willing to question them.
If we can achieve the same outcomes, or even better ones, while bringing a little more joy to students and to the adults who spend their lives helping them learn and grow, shouldn’t we at least try?
And maybe that’s the opportunity in front of us: to build a school experience where kids no longer feel they’re in survival mode, but actually building the confidence and capabilities needed to take on what’s next.