Mastery learning is a form of personalized learning that gives students the necessary time to master particular skills before progressing to the next level of work. The student takes on the responsibility of learning a skill versus merely accepting a low grade and never really learning the information.

The teacher’s job is to break down the learning steps, to offer suggestions for internalizing the knowledge, and to give the time necessary to learn the information. The advantage of mastery learning is that it offers clear expectations, fosters mastery of a unit of study, is not competitive, and encourages student responsibility.

The procedure is to offer information, provide learning strategies and activities, provide a variety of assessments – performance assessment with rubrics scale, quizzes, written tests, and self-assessments – and re-teach and retest if necessary.

Quizzes are distinguished from tests. Quizzes are to give feedback during the learning process. Tests are given at the closure of a body of work such as after the completion of an area of study in history, science, math, and language. Tests are always corrected, no matter what the score, for learning. In the event that a retest has to be taken, all subsequent tests will be more in-depth; therefore, certain criteria must be met before a retest is administered such as: reviewing previous material, completing supplemental work, and receiving additional instruction from a teacher when necessary. If the student is still not successful in mastering the material after the second test, alternative testing approaches will be utilized.