One Small High School in Rural North Dakota May Hold the Key to Reshaping the Future of Education across APAC

I had the honor of sharing with some of the most innovative university decision-makers and influencers in higher education at Coursera’s APAC Educators forum on Thursday. These individuals are serious about shifting education to help build mental infrastructure, particularly in relation to the tech industry. Why the interest in tech? Many people may think a company is involved in, say, finances, or marketing, or what-have-you. But at the end of the day, all companies today are technology companies. And if we aren’t able to build the talent pool to supply these technology companies, it’s a problem. A big problem.

Perhaps the real challenge is, as the panel discussants pointed out: how do you get away from an educational system of high stakes testing, that increases the gap between the elites and the non-elites and move toward a system that is more encompassing of all learners, with their sometimes different needs.

There may be a way to do that, using the mastery learning that online and flipped approaches to teaching can foster. Oddly enough, a small rural high school in the midwestern United States provides insight into the solutions these innovative APAC administrators want to tackle. How? As a consequence of COVID’s radical challenges, Northern Cass School District 97 in Hunter, ND, has established systemic change in their educational system by switching to competency-based education. This approach emphasizes mastery of the materials rather than the amount of time spent in a class. 

Current systems of learning are designed to rank-order students and keep them all moving along at lock-step. Great students can become bored, while poor students can fall further and further behind in their studies, often simply being passed from grade to grade.

Mastery learning approaches, on the other hand, are designed to help kids become proficient—and even excellent—at their studies. These flexible systems allow students to master skills before moving on. But the Northern Cass program does more—it also allows students to leave school for part of the day to work at internships, jobs or college classes. 

As one Wall Street Journal article about Northern Cass’s approach has observed “Embracing these principles requires shaking off century-old conventions like the grading system, grade levels and the way credits are awarded, all of which has limited the adoption of competency-based education. But after the pandemic exposed the inequities of the current system—with many socioeconomically disadvantaged children struggling to connect online and keep up with assignments—more districts and states may be willing to experiment.”

A fresh willingness to experiment is apparent, not only in the US but worldwide. We can all use the wake-up call of the pandemic to rethink and reshape education—looking at some of the most innovative and successful programs available to help serve as our guide. In the end, mastery learning with flipped classroom approaches may hold the key to move toward a system that is more encompassing of all learners.