Certificate of Initial Mastery

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The certificate of Mastery was created by report America's Choice: High Skills or Low Wages,. It called for the nation's workforce for the challenges of a new world economic order. The Report of the Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, published in June 1990 by the National Center on Education and the Economy, led by Marc Tucker

Recommendation One. A new educational performance standard should be set for all students, to be met by age sixteen. This standard should be established nationally and benchmarked to the highest in the world. Students passing a series of performance- based assessments that incorporate the standard would be awarded a Certificate of Initial Mastery. This certificate would qualify the student to choose among going to work, entering a college preparatory program, or studying for a Technical and Professional Certificate, which would be explicitly tied to advanced job requirements. These standards would not be intended as sorting mechanisms, but would allow multiple opportunities for success; the goal would simply be to ensure achievement of high performance standards for the great majority of the nation's workforce.

The NCEE eventually signed contracts with districts and states covering over half of public school children, including WASL and MCAS. However, the formal terms and contractual agreements have nearly all been abandoned. They have been effectively replaced by the No Child Left Behind, and tying the high school diploma to Standards based test inspired by Outcome-based education. Incidentally, the age of 16 was patterned after the European practice of ending the education of the non-college bound at 16 followed by an apprenticeship period, and this is why all states are using tests given at the 10th grade, even though US high schools don't graduate until age 18.