Legend.org Acquires Mastery Transcript Consortium from ETS

Legend.org will operate as Mastery.org, helping schools turn authentic student work into trusted records of learning that go beyond grades, courses, and seat time

NEW YORK, July 23, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Legend.org, an AI-native education assessment platform, today announced its acquisition of the Mastery Transcript Consortium (MTC) from ETS, a global education and talent solutions organization. The new entity will operate as Mastery.org. MTC pioneered the Mastery Transcript and MTC Learning Record, competency-based digital records that go beyond traditional grades and GPAs, giving schools a more modern way to communicate what students know.

Mastery.org will continue MTC’s mission to support its member schools, which include public, private, charter, and international schools, while investing in building a more modern transcript experience. The immediate focus will be continuity: preserving the core Mastery Transcript experience and strengthening the tools schools already use. Over time, Mastery.org will expand the platform to make evidence capture, competency records, educator workflows, and transcript review easier and more legible. This transition reflects both the maturity of the MTC model and a natural evolution of its mission, positioning Mastery.org under Legend’s leadership to reach more schools, support more learners, and increase the impact of mastery-based learning.

The acquisition brings together MTC’s nearly decade-long effort to reimagine the high school transcript with Legend.org’s expertise in helping educators evaluate authentic student work. As Mastery.org, the organization enters a new phase of growth, building on a strong foundation to expand adoption of mastery-based transcripts and accelerate innovation in learner-centered credentialing. During its stewardship of MTC, ETS helped integrate the organization’s work into a broader vision for skills-based learning, advancing competency-based education and scalable learning records as critical tools for connecting learning to opportunity. MTC’s impact has been felt across ETS, helping to shape ETS’s ongoing work to advance skills-first pathways and next-generation credentialing systems globally.

“Mastery Transcript Consortium began with a simple but urgent idea: create a new approach to measuring students’ competency — one that reflects what students actually know and can do, not just the courses they’ve completed,” said Scott Looney, founder of Mastery Transcript Consortium and Head of School at Hawken School. “Schools have spent years building richer forms of learning around projects, competencies, exhibitions, and authentic work. They need transcripts that make that learning visible and credible. I’m excited to see Mastery.org carry this work into its next chapter.”

The need for better records of learning has become more urgent as generative AI calls traditional grading techniques into question. When homework, essays, and assignments can no longer be treated as simple proxies for understanding, schools need better ways to capture authentic work, document process and revision, and connect evidence directly to demonstrated competencies.

“The future of learning does not fit neatly into a GPA,” said Matt Sornson, CEO and co-founder of Legend.org. “Students are writing, building, researching, presenting, collaborating, and solving real problems. Mastery.org gives schools a trusted way to turn that work into an official record.”

Mastery.org will continue working with schools, higher education leaders, and assessment experts to ensure mastery-based records remain rigorous, useful, and legible.

“The vision behind MTC, to make skills legible to higher education institutions and employers, is a critical unlock as durable skills become increasingly important indicators of success,” said Laura Slover, Managing Director of Skills for the Future at ETS. “We’re proud ETS was part of MTC’s journey and excited to see its next chapter unfold under Aaron and Matt’s leadership, building on the enduring legacy Scott Looney established and expanding the impact of this important work.”

About Mastery.org
Mastery.org helps schools recognize, measure, and communicate student learning through evidence of mastery. Building on the work of the Mastery Transcript Consortium, Mastery.org supports mastery transcripts, learning records, and AI-assisted tools that help educators capture what students know and can do from authentic work. Mastery.org works with schools and learning organizations committed to competency-based education, durable skills, and more meaningful records of student growth.

About Legend.org
Legend.org is an AI-native education organization founded to help schools understand student learning from everyday work. It was co-founded by Matt Sornson of Clearbit and Aaron Rasmussen, co-founder of MasterClass and Outlier.org. Its platform supports teachers by analyzing authentic student artifacts, including writing, projects, presentations, and other evidence, using rubrics and learning standards to provide clearer signals of mastery, growth, and next steps. Legend.org will operate going forward as Mastery.org.

About Mastery Transcript Consortium
Mastery Transcript Consortium pioneered the Mastery Transcript and MTC Learning Record, helping schools create flexible, scalable records of student learning that can supplement or replace traditional high school transcripts. Founded by Scott Looney in 2017, MTC grew into a national and international network of schools committed to competency-based learning, student agency, and more meaningful ways to communicate readiness for college, career, and life.

About ETS
ETS is a global education and talent solutions organization enabling lifelong learners to be future ready. Our mission – advancing the science of measurement to power human progress – ensures our focus to enable everyone, everywhere, to demonstrate their skills and chart their path to future readiness for life. We are committed to readying 100M+ people for the next generation of jobs by 2035. We deliver on this commitment through trusted assessments and skills solutions – including TOEFL, TOEIC, GRE, Praxis and Futurenav – and groundbreaking initiatives powered by our Research Institute. With a robust global footprint, including subsidiaries (PSI), offices and operations in more than 200 countries and territories, we help over 50 million individuals each year measure their proficiency and unlock new opportunities. Discover how we expand our worldwide impact: www.ets.org

Contacts
Erin Clinton Haworth | erin@clintonhaworthcollective.com | 201.602.0881
Kristen Mitchell | kmitchell002@ets.org | 908.310.0306