The R&D Agenda outlines knowledge-building and tool-making priorities to drive a national shift from seat time to real-world, competency-based high school learning.

STANFORD, Calif. – The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching today released a national research and development agenda (R&D Agenda) aimed at supporting the transformation of the American high school from time-based to competency-based models, to better prepare students for civil society and the modern economy. 

The agenda, “A National Call to Action: A Research and Development Agenda for High School Transformation,” identifies eight interconnected research priorities to guide efforts to modernize high school education beyond the century-old Carnegie Unit system. The research priorities are undergirded by two foundational and cross-cutting areas for investigation: Aligned Public Policy and AI/Infrastructure.

“American education is at a crossroads. While we hurtle toward an AI-driven economy that demands skills like creativity, critical thinking, and adaptability, our high schools are trapped in an outdated architecture preparing students for a world that no longer exists,” said Dr. Timothy Knowles, President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. “This agenda is about building knowledge and tools to accelerate the transformation of the American high school – schools marked by much more ambitious goals for students; engaging, rigorous and experiential learning experiences, and; more powerful signaling systems to inform and accelerate student learning.”

The R&D Agenda is designed to address the urgent challenges high schools face today. Since the pandemic, chronic absenteeism has soared, student disengagement has accelerated, and educator burnout has reached crisis levels. Meanwhile, employers seek skills not reflected in traditional diplomas, four-year college enrollment is dropping, and economic security remains elusive for most Americans.   

The R&D Agenda is also designed to chart a path to the future. It calls for building knowledge about public policies that lead to improved student outcomes.  It calls for research on the development of the digital (AI), physical and social infrastructures required to deepen academic knowledge and skill development. And it outlines specific, actionable priorities to accelerate high school transformation:

• Create shared vision and decision-making across communities for transforming high school
• Establish a supportive learning culture and positive relationships for student and educator connection, purpose and agency
• Reimagine the role and working conditions of teachers and leaders to empower educators to accelerate the development of academic and durable skills
• Reimagine the high school canon, ensuring student learning experiences are grounded in science and are reliably engaging, rigorous and experiential, moving beyond seat time
• Create learning ecosystems, tools and structures spanning high school, postsecondary and career, to significantly advance student opportunity beyond graduation
• Increase access to credible, accelerative credentials through high school
• Build valid and reliable assessments of academic and skill development, capture evidence of learning from a wide variety of contexts, in and out of school, and provide useful insights to students, educators and families
• Create tools and methods for educators to engage with families to advance student learning and success, in and beyond high school

From today through 2035, the Carnegie Foundation will work with research partners, practitioners and policy makers across the nation, to generate evidence and synthesize findings across three domains: 

• Discovery Research that explores current practices, identifies promising innovations, and maps the landscape of what exists across different contexts and communities.
• Development Research that focuses on creating, testing and refining tools, practices and systems through iterative cycles of design and implementation in real-world settings.
• Impact Research that evaluates whether policies, programs and practices achieve intended outcomes, for whom and under what conditions.

“Transforming American high schools requires more than school-level proof points —it demands unprecedented collaboration across districts, states, researchers, and communities,” said Dr. Brooke Stafford-Brizard, senior vice president for innovation & impact at the Carnegie Foundation. “This R&D Agenda provides the coherent framework we need to align toward collective impact. Only by working together with a deep and expansive bench of collaborators can we ensure that high school transformation doesn’t just happen in pockets of innovation, but takes root, sustains, and scales nationwide to benefit every student.”

Further, the R&D Agenda anchors Carnegie’s Future of High School Network, launched in partnership with XQ Institute, which brings together some of the nation’s most innovative school systems to test and refine competency-based models in real-world settings.  

Over time, we expect the R&D agenda will focus national resources and effort, and ensure the American high school becomes a much more powerful engine of opportunity for all.