Making Learning Visible: The Journey to Eagle Rock’s New Competency Framework

At Eagle Rock, we believe learning should be meaningful, connected, and visible. Students learn through classes, the wilderness, Real World Learning, community experiences, and countless other opportunities, but how do we make that learning clear? How do we help students understand where they are growing, where they are headed, and how their experiences connect to graduation?

Those questions have guided a four-year journey to develop Eagle Rock’s new competency framework, a system designed to make the skills and growth behind an Eagle Rock education clearer to students, families, staff, and the people who interact with our graduates beyond campus.

Eagle Rock has always been competency-based. Students do not earn traditional grades or simply complete a checklist of requirements. Instead, they demonstrate mastery through their learning. But over time, it became clear that the existing graduation requirements did not always communicate that learning as clearly as we wanted them to.

For students, some requirements were difficult to understand or felt disconnected from the experiences they were having at school. For staff, there were questions about how different learning opportunities connected to graduation. For families and external partners, it could be difficult to explain exactly what an Eagle Rock diploma represented.

The goal was not to change what makes Eagle Rock unique. It was to create a clearer way to understand and communicate it.

Starting With Empathy

The process began through a Changemaker Cohort partnership between a staff member and now ERS alum Topaz, who worked together to explore how Eagle Rock’s graduation requirements could become more authentic, clear, and meaningful.

Before deciding what needed to change, the team wanted to understand how the existing system was experienced by the people using it. Students, staff members, and alumni participated in empathy interviews, sharing their experiences with Eagle Rock’s previous learning plan and identifying areas where the system worked well and where it created confusion.

Those conversations revealed an important tension. Eagle Rock wanted students to have the freedom to pursue learning that reflected their interests and goals, but students also needed enough structure to understand what they were working toward.

The new framework needed to hold both of those ideas at once: personalization and structure.

Students should be able to learn in ways that are meaningful to them without losing sight of the skills they need to develop before graduation.

Looking Beyond Eagle Rock

Once the team understood more about the experience within Eagle Rock, the next step was to look outward.

The team connected with schools and organizations across the country that were also exploring and implementing competency-based education, including One Stone (Boise, ID), Boston Day and Evening Academy (Boston, MA), The Workshop School (Philadelphia, PA), FlexTech High School (Farmington Hills, MI), Denver School of Innovation and Sustainable Design (closed in 2024), and America Succeeds. They also explored frameworks developed by organizations including Big Picture Learning (Providence, RI), Building 21 (Philadelphia, PA), Future9 Learning (reDesign), and America Succeeds (Denver, CO)

These conversations offered more than examples to borrow. They provided opportunities to ask questions, compare approaches, and think more deeply about what Eagle Rock needed. One of the most valuable lessons was the importance of learning within a broader community of schools and organizations. As a rural school, Eagle Rock can sometimes feel far removed from other communities doing similar work. Connecting with educators beyond campus created space to step back, gain perspective, and consider what might be possible.

The question was never simply, "Can this work at another school?" Instead, the team asked, "What can we learn from this that might work for Eagle Rock?" That spirit of collaboration became an important part of the framework itself.

Building Something Together

With insights from students, staff, alumni, and other schools and organizations, Eagle Rock had a foundation to begin building.

But the team did not want the framework to be something designed by a small group and handed to everyone else. For the system to truly reflect Eagle Rock, the people who would use it needed to help create it.

Staff members across the school contributed to conversations about what students should know and be able to do, what skills mattered most, and how those skills could be described in ways that were clear and meaningful.

The framework went through multiple iterations as the team refined its language, reorganized competencies, and worked to create consistency across the system. What began as a larger collection of ideas gradually became a framework organized around five expectations, 25 competencies, and 75 skills.

Each skill includes six levels of growth, from Emerging to Advanced, allowing students to see not only what they are working toward but also how their skills develop over time.

Connecting Learning to Graduation

One of the most important goals of the framework is to help students see how their everyday learning connects to their path toward graduation.

A wilderness experience, for example, can provide opportunities to develop skills such as giving and receiving feedback, while Real World Learning can create opportunities to strengthen communication, problem-solving, or other competencies. Instead of viewing those experiences as separate from graduation, students can now connect them directly to the skills they are developing.

Students are also able to establish baseline levels of proficiency and track their growth over time. To graduate, students must reach proficiency across all 75 skills, or demonstrate two levels of growth when they begin at a higher level.

The framework intentionally avoids traditional grades and numerical levels. Instead, students and educators can focus conversations on what a student can currently demonstrate, what growth looks like next, and what evidence shows that progress.

This creates a different kind of conversation about learning.

Rather than asking, "What grade did you get?" students can ask, "What am I working on, and how am I growing?"

Creating Systems That Last

Developing the framework was only part of the work. Eagle Rock also needed to consider how the system could remain consistent and useful over time.

That led to structures such as caretaking groups, which help maintain shared understanding around competencies and review evidence of student learning. These groups can help staff members determine whether student work demonstrates different levels of proficiency and create greater consistency across learning experiences.

The goal is to build a system that can continue to serve students even as people and programs change.

That matters because learner-centered education requires both flexibility and strong foundations. Students need the freedom to pursue learning that reflects their interests, while the school needs systems that make sure those experiences remain connected to meaningful growth.

The competency framework is designed to support both.

A Clearer Picture of Student Growth

The framework is also supported by tools that help students track and communicate their learning.

The Competency Explorer allows students, families, staff, and external partners to explore the skills that make up an Eagle Rock education. The Growth Transcript helps students track their progress toward graduation, while the Experience Transcript provides a record of the learning experiences they have completed, the growth they demonstrated, and the evidence connected to that learning.

Together, these tools help tell a fuller story of what a student has learned. Instead of simply listing the classes or experiences a student completed, Eagle Rock can begin to show the skills developed through those experiences and the growth that took place along the way.

That clarity can be especially meaningful beyond Eagle Rock, when students are explaining their education to colleges, employers, or other people who may not be familiar with a learner-centered school.

Continuing to Learn

The competency framework is not intended to be a finished product.

As students and staff use it, Eagle Rock will continue to learn from the experience. The school can look at which competencies students are developing consistently, where fewer opportunities exist, and what kinds of learning experiences may need greater attention.

That information can help staff make more intentional decisions about what learning opportunities to offer in the future.

In many ways, that reflects the same approach Eagle Rock asks of its students: pay attention, gather evidence, reflect on what you are learning, and use that information to decide what comes next.

After four years of listening, researching, collaborating, and revising, Eagle Rock has created a framework that brings greater clarity to something the school has valued from the beginning.

Learning is bigger than a classroom, and growth is bigger than a grade.

The competency framework gives students a clearer way to see the skills they are developing across their experiences and the progress they are making toward graduation. More importantly, it creates a shared language for students, staff, families, and partners to understand what an Eagle Rock education makes possible.

And, like the students it is designed to support, the framework will continue to grow.