Carnegie is working to significantly increase the number of underrepresented students who have access to engaging, rigorous, equitable, experiential, and effective teaching and learning. We believe that it is not enough to ensure that more young people complete existing secondary and postsecondary requirements. New tools, designs, and modalities are needed to provide students with richer, more engaging learning opportunities inside and outside of the classroom and school house.

We are undertaking our work on the future of learning in close partnership with the XQ Institute.

It begins with investigative work. We are convening and listening closely to practitioners, scholars, designers, community leaders and policy experts to examine and illuminate alternatives to traditional, time-based credit accumulation (e.g., the Carnegie Unit) as the singular measure of progress toward school completion.

We will then identify and highlight K–12 and postsecondary “pathfinders” that have shifted practice toward effective, scalable designs. These may include institutions using civic, service, and experiential education; hybridized secondary school models; and unique forms of apprenticeship, internship, and early-college pathways to increase student engagement and demonstrate proficiency on academic, social, and emotional competencies.

These pathfinders will anchor our national effort to build community, district, state, and postsecondary partnerships, dedicated to adopting engaging, rigorous, equitable, experiential, and effective teaching, learning, and assessment modalities; testing viable models; and understanding their use, utility, and value across a range of contexts.

Over the next decade, we will incubate, launch, and support efforts to further the development of a “post-Carnegie-Unit” ecosystem; establish policy frameworks for districts, states, and the federal government to incent and support promising alternatives to time-based models of learning and attainment; and bring improvement methods and tools to bear to better the work.