Measures, Metrics, and Indicators for the Third Horizon (LearnerStudio, December 2025)

LearnerStudio's December 2025 synthesis brief from its MMI project — an 18-month effort that convened 53 leading thinkers, practitioners, and innovators (plus twelve youth co-designers) to map the current landscape of measures, metrics, and indicators aligned with the "Third Horizon" of learning. The brief argues that outdated measurement is a "critical choke point" preventing both educational innovation and the strategic deployment of capital, and identifies six concrete R&D areas ripe for catalytic investment.

The document is the foundation source for this KB: it names most of the actors the rest of the KB will track, codifies the five-level framework that organizes work across the field, and crystallizes the implementation gap as the central diagnostic.

Why the field needs new measurement

The brief opens by naming three forces compounding pressure on American education — AI, post-COVID academic and emotional fallout, and declining public trust — alongside rising demand from students, parents, employers, and community leaders for more holistic, learner-centered approaches. Standardized test scores, it argues, retain a legitimate role in transparency and equity, but have come to dominate measurement conversations at the expense of holistic, actionable, future-oriented assessments rooted in learning science.

The cost of that dominance lands on two groups in particular:

Innovators can't prove effectiveness, can't secure funding, and can't drive continuous improvement when the only available measures don't capture what their programs aim to develop (critical thinking, creativity, collaboration). They either rely on anecdotes or distort their programs to fit outdated metrics — diluting their original purpose.
Funders face elevated perceived risk and end up incentivizing traditional approaches with readily available metrics, even when those approaches have limited systemic-change potential. Patient capital can't flow to breakthrough work it can't evaluate.

The brief frames the shift needed across four dimensions, attributing the framing to The Study Group's Handbook for Assessment in the Service of Learning:

Why we measure: from post-hoc system accountability to learner mastery and empowerment.
What we measure: from narrow, static content to holistic human skills, modernized domain knowledge, and well-being — plus metrics of scope and reach (how broadly H3 solutions are reaching) and systems-change indicators (whether incumbent systems are giving way).
How we measure: from episodic summative tests to unintrusive, authentic, embedded, real-time tools.
For whom we measure: from administrators to learners, educators, and families.

The landscape scan: more than expected, concentrated at the wrong level

Partnering with The Study Group, LearnerStudio scanned existing frameworks and assessments. What started as a small set grew to over 2,000 vetted indicators via targeted harvesting from assessment databases, Python-driven discovery, and human expert review. The field, the brief argues, is "not starting from scratch" — a rich foundation of tools and research already exists.

The problem is distribution. Roughly 73% of those measures cluster at the individual learner level. Measurement of relationships, learning units, networks, and the broader ecosystem is far less developed — meaning the field has an incomplete view of whether H3 systems are actually emerging and thriving.

To organize the pool, the project developed a five-level indicator framework:

Individual — cognitive and social-emotional capacities of learners and the adults supporting them.
Relationships — relational trust, communication, collaborative problem-solving, supportive networks.
Unit — schools, hubs, programs, microschools, pods, learning organizations.
Networks — districts, CMOs, nonprofit networks, homeschool networks.
Ecosystem — policy, funding, culture, public sentiment, structural conditions.

The framework is the structural spine of the brief and the lens it uses to surface what's underdeveloped. (See the concept page for the full mapping with example measures.)

The implementation gap

Even where measures exist at the individual level — and many do — they aren't reaching practice. The brief identifies several failure modes:

Tools are locked behind academic paywalls.
They're not designed for practical application by educators.
They over-rely on survey collection, with survey fatigue now a real concern.
DIY practitioner-built tools lack rigor and transferability.
Measures are developed in isolation, with no thought given to integration into learning systems.

This "disconnect between measurement research and practical implementation" is what the brief calls the critical choke point preventing both educational innovation and strategic capital deployment. Closing it is the through-line that motivates the entire R&D agenda the brief proposes.

Existing momentum: who is already in the work

A core section of the brief catalogs work already underway, organized roughly by function. The list reads as a map of the field — and most of these orgs warrant their own pages:

Cataloging and curation - EdInstruments at Brown — searchable database of education measurement tools. - Mathematica's Education-to-Workforce Indicator Framework — 99 recommended indicators tracking outcomes from early education through career.

Developing new assessments - Urban Institute's Student Upward Mobility Initiative (SUMI) — funding research to develop and validate measures of skills that drive economic mobility. - Learning Engineering Tools Competition — has awarded over $10 million to EdTech innovations leveraging data and learning science.

Advancing methods and rigor - The Study Group — exploring new methods for developing measures in service of learning; LearnerStudio grantee. - ETS and the Carnegie Foundation — bringing psychometric rigor to next-generation competency-based measures. - Search Institute — developed the Developmental Relationships Framework and validated survey tools for the relational factors essential for young people to thrive.

Capacity-building and practitioner translation - Transcend and the Learner-Centered Collaborative — helping practitioners understand and implement new approaches to measurement and learner-centered design.

The brief's framing of these efforts is essentially: real progress is happening, but practitioners aren't always aware of it, and scale remains a challenge. The field needs a coordinated push to connect this work, fill remaining gaps, and accelerate adoption.

What the youth said

A March 2025 design sprint at SXSW, facilitated by partners Big Thought, the History Co:Lab, and iThrive Games (the latter two are LearnerStudio grantees), gathered twelve learners aged 14–18 from Dallas. Their stated preferences, paraphrased from the brief:

Assess what learners can do with their knowledge, not what they can recall on a test.
Favor final products and verbal explanations over traditional documentation.
Use process-oriented assessments that capture the whole learning journey, not just the destination.
See learning — and what counts as "success" — as a collaborative process, with students having a voice in defining it.
Allow flexible mastery-based pathways rather than age-based advancement.
Recognize learning wherever it happens; the brief quotes learners saying they often gain "more detailed and enriching information" outside school than inside it.
Integrate well-being and mental-health support into the measurement picture.

The brief notes these findings align with Shereen El Mallah's (University of Virginia) youth-engagement research, which finds learners want assessments that "shift from evaluating declarative knowledge to capturing how they think by observing their problem-solving processes, reasoning, and ability to transfer skills across authentic, real-world contexts."

Rigor is not the trade-off it's assumed to be

A section the brief titles "H3 Measures Can Be Built with High Levels of Rigor and Reliability" pushes back on a recurring objection: that holistic, future-ready measurement necessarily trades rigor for relevance. The brief's claim is that this is "a false choice" — some early H3 measures already demonstrate psychometric validity, and the live conversation is about expanding the definition of quality to also encompass practicality, usability, and relevance.

Alongside this is a parallel concern about replacing one overused format (standardized tests) with another (surveys). The brief points to "AI-enabled, embedded, and passive data collection" as the more promising direction — though it also acknowledges, in the R&D section, the need for UX labs where young people can flag tools that feel "creepy" or invasive.

Healthy tensions

The brief frames a set of unresolved tensions as "growing pains" rather than dead ends — and explicitly as the fertile ground for R&D:

Agreement on durable skills, no consensus measures. The field universally agrees holistic durable skills matter, but lacks a commonly accepted measurement set.
Creation vs. use. When H3 measures do exist, they often aren't designed for easy implementation or aren't on educators' radar.
Authentic / qualitative vs. quantitative / accountable. Portfolios and graduate portraits sit in real tension with the comparability demanded by state and federal accountability frameworks.
Local innovation vs. standardization for comparability. Community-driven graduate portraits don't roll up cleanly across districts.
Private R&D vs. public infrastructure. Private companies lead a lot of next-generation assessment R&D; the brief explicitly flags the risk that proprietary products could create access issues and consolidated power rather than contributing to a robust public infrastructure.

Six R&D areas ripe for catalytic capital

The brief's most concrete deliverable is its menu of investment priorities. Each area packages several specific sub-recommendations — these are the field-shaping bets, named in the brief's own words.

1. Create shared infrastructure

A structured, searchable, open-source database of high-quality H3 indicators — a "knowledge commons" that democratizes access.
State or regional latitudinal data pilots that capture and organize participation and achievement data across any setting where structured learning happens: schools, homes, clubs, workplaces, libraries, museums, higher ed, online platforms.
Assessments that translate authentic, project-based work into Learner Education Records (LERs) — performance rubrics, portfolio review protocols.
New credentialing platforms that issue verifiable micro-credentials for specific skills.

2. Advance system-level research

Practical tools to measure relational health — collaboration, intercultural competence, social capital, the strength of trust and connection in a learning community.
System-level indicators and tools for assessing the evolution and health of H3 ecosystems (the structural gap the level-imbalance finding makes most acute).

3. Build better instrumentation

Measurement packages that integrate academic measures with metrics for essential human skills (adaptability, emotional intelligence, creativity).
Performance-based assessments for civic readiness — applying critical thinking and ethical reasoning to real-world societal issues, beyond simple content tests.
Adaptive assessments for digital literacy including ethical and effective use of AI for creative problem-solving.
Embedded, real-time assessments that use AI to track essential human skills during authentic learning tasks.

4. Align funders and innovators

Convening organizations that build shared language and aligned investment strategies for Third Horizon work.
Implementation Labs specifically tasked with translating psychometrically rigorous tools into practical, user-friendly formats — a direct attack on the implementation gap.
An advance market commitment for H3 tools — a funder coalition aligning to guarantee purchase or subsidization of tools meeting specific H3 criteria. Signals to innovators that the financial future is viable.

5. Include youth in co-design

Orgs that integrate youth voice through co-design, polling, interviews, focus groups.
UX Labs where young people test new background assessment tools and flag "creepy" or invasive AI monitoring.

6. Make a market for better tools

State or district policy pilots giving schools flexibility to use new assessment tools and accountability models prioritizing essential human skills.
Educator capacity-building — professional development and communities of practice focused on assessment literacy for the H3 era.

The framing throughout: these are "high-leverage opportunities for catalytic investment" rather than infrastructure to be built from scratch by any one actor. The brief positions LearnerStudio as a convener and facilitator on the question, not as the builder.

Authors

Babak Mostaghimi — founding partner at LearnerStudio; focused on systems transformation, learning for the future, and AI.
Jason Weeby — founder and principal consultant at Periscope Advising; human-led, AI-enhanced strategy practice.

Why this source is foundational for the KB

Three reasons it anchors everything that follows:

It supplies the structural framework. The five-level framework gives every other actor a place to be slotted: are they working at the individual level, relationships, units, networks, or ecosystem? The 73%-at-individual finding is the single most important quantitative claim in the source — it tells the rest of the KB where the gaps are.
It names the diagnostic. The implementation gap is the through-line. Future ingests will either show actors closing it, talking about it without closing it, or ignoring it.
It seeds the corpus. Of the ~14 organizations named in the body, most are the right entry points for further ingest: LearnerStudio canon, the cited capacity-builders, the funders, the framework-publishers.

Participant roster

The brief's back matter lists 53 named participants in the design sprints and interviews. Notable for KB navigation, the roster spans:

LearnerStudio (Cassie Crockett, Courtney Garcia)
Authors / partners: Babak Mostaghimi (LearnerStudio), Jason Weeby (Periscope Advising)
Foundations and funder voices: Lemnis (Kathy Bryant), Gates Foundation (Jamie McKee), Margulf (Danielle Allen, Liz Aybar Conti, Vanessa Douyon), Raikes (Zoe Stemm-Calderon), Schwab (Joe Shook), Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (Gaby Lopez), Jasper Ridge Partners (April Chou).
Research / institutional: OECD (Mario Piacentini), Brookings (Rebecca Winthrop), Boston College (Karen Arnold), Clayton Christensen Institute (Tom Arnett, Julia Freeland Fisher), ETS (Laura Slover), CFAT / Carnegie (Brooke Stafford-Brizard), KP Catalysts (Karen Pittman, Katherine Plog Martinez), KnowledgeWorks (Lillian Pace), WestEd (Natalie Walrond), Aurora Institute (Jennifer Kabaker).
Network and innovation orgs: Next Generation Learning Challenges (Andy Calkins), Transcend (David Nitkin), Learner-Centered Collaborative (Katie Martin, Devin Vodicka), Education Reimagined (Emily Liebtag), Getting Smart (Caroline Vander Ark), Big Picture (Andrea Purcell), reDesign (Antonia Rudenstine), The Study Group (Sheryl Gómez, Eric Tucker), Full Scale (Virgel Hammonds, Beth Holland, Beth Rabbitt), History Co:Lab (Fernande Raine, Susan Rivers), Imagine Network (Margo Roen), Mastery Learning Transcript (Mike Flanagan), Cambiar (Christina Heitz), Open Systems Institute (Doannie Tran), Institute for Self-Directed Learning (Tyler Thigpen), Project Invent (Jax Chaudhry), Rock by Rock (Jeff Imrich), Valor Collegiate Academies (Daren Dickson), One Stone Ventures (Chad Carlson), Incubate Learning (Sujata Bhatt), Bay Ed Fund (Rui Boo), Indiana Charter Innovation (Scott Bess), Holleran Education (Jen Holleran), Campaign for our Shared Future (Heather Harding), Learning Engineering Virtual Institute (Thomas Christie), Futre.me (Diane Tavenner), formerly NewSchools Venture Fund (Jason Atwood).
Twelve youth participants (anonymous) aged 14–18 from Dallas.

The list is a discovery surface in its own right: many of these orgs and people aren't substantively described in the brief but appear in the field at large.

Follow-ups

Extract the five-level framework pyramid graphic (PDF page 3) as an asset — currently deferred pending PDF→image tooling. See log.md.
The user has additional LearnerStudio documents (Learning to Flourish, the concept note, the Human Skills in the Age of AI meta-analysis, Techademics Future Tech Stack, Public-Purpose Utilities) that would be the obvious next ingests — the brief references each.
The participant roster contains many orgs and people not promoted to entity pages on this pass. Promote when a second source provides enough substance to fill a page.
The brief mentions LearnerStudio's prior published work on "what makes a strong H3 learning environment" with an inline link in the original PDF (page 3) — worth tracking down and ingesting.
The "advance market commitment" pattern is theoretical here; if any funder coalition has put real capital behind it elsewhere, that's a high-priority discovery target.
The Education-to-Workforce Indicator Framework (Mathematica), the Developmental Relationships Framework (Search Institute), and EdInstruments are concrete artifacts that deserve their own source pages once examined directly — they're discussed here only second-hand.