Formulating another model

If game playing is what the people of the country are satisfied with, then the current status of evaluating student learning will continue.  But, from what I see from those in their late 20s and early 30s, the status quo will be changed.  That's a breath of fresh air.  To what?

Perhaps, "mastery" of a discipline to be learned will be the focus.  It will be hard, after all, to fake what you don't know about writing an app or running software that becomes a usual skill for business.  If mastery is achievable, then the breakdown of the graduated k-12 system should happen.  Various schools will begin to take their places that offer fields where basic knowledge, experience, and simulation can be gained.  A person "graduates" when all of the foundational knowledge has been gained, all of the necessary experience gained, and all of the simulations achieved.  A communications school, for example, would offer all of the various ways that business uses presenting, selling, social media communication, and marketing communication.  Technology might offer programming skills in all of the basic formats for use on the internet, all of the hardware, experience in both solving problems that arise in business applications and fixing "glitches" for personal use.  They would explore a majority of the types of apps that are available for making life easier.  These are only two of the types of schools to emerge.

And how would student evaluation happen?  Grades would not be given, simply a mark for completion of a training regimen, the number of experiences needed, and the completion of simulations required. If an experience or simulation breaks down or goes awry before completion, the student simply goes through the experience or simulation again, or goes back to the formal training that prepares for the activity that had gone awry.

And what would people in society expect from a graduate of one of these schools?  If from a technology school, that they would not have had a survey course in World History or in British Literature, but that they could fix the technological problems faced by businesses.  If from a communications school, that they would know how to make presentations to sell to the public on the internet, how to communicate within a corporation or with a buisiness' customers, and how to communicate in person with employers whether in a corporation or an entrepreneurial endeavor, but that they might not be so knowledgeable about cellular respiration or the digestive system of a worm.

Other exciting arrangements and possibilities exist for schools.  The above is merely one configuration.  Schools would be more productive and efficient rather than taking 13 years of one's life to teach that average behavior and achievement is all right, that chemistry and introduction to analytic geometry are for everyone, and that credits are awarded based on some subjective, unpredictable, and manipulated grading system that has little to do with "mastery" of anything.