My high school measured performance through "Exhibitions" and "Gateways" (the difference was that an Exhibition was usually the culmination of a 2ish month long project, while a Gateway was the culmination of a 2 year Division, roughly equivalent to 2 grades in a conventional school).
The requirements for a Gateway were:
1.) A substantial portfolio - we usually needed 2-3 pieces of work that met the standards for advancement into the next Division, in each skill area (there were like 6 core skill areas).
2.) An oral presentation of one of those pieces of work in front of a panel of judges, similar to a thesis defense.
The panel would have 4-5 people and would usually consist of one's teachers in the subject area (all classes were team-taught, so we had 2 teachers), a teacher who was not one of ours, a classmate, and an outside community member.
The oldest graduates of my high school are only 4 years out of college now, so it's hard to judge how successful this is. But consider that the first two graduating classes were 32 and 48 students, respectively. Of those, I'm at Google. One engineering-ish friend is at Intuit. Two classmates are at Harvard Law, one of whom spent a couple years at Bain beforehand. There're a bunch that have gone into teaching, and several that have started blue-collar businesses (the school was in central Massachusetts, which has much less of a knowledge economy than the immediate Boston area).
The requirements for a Gateway were:
1.) A substantial portfolio - we usually needed 2-3 pieces of work that met the standards for advancement into the next Division, in each skill area (there were like 6 core skill areas).
2.) An oral presentation of one of those pieces of work in front of a panel of judges, similar to a thesis defense.
The panel would have 4-5 people and would usually consist of one's teachers in the subject area (all classes were team-taught, so we had 2 teachers), a teacher who was not one of ours, a classmate, and an outside community member.
The oldest graduates of my high school are only 4 years out of college now, so it's hard to judge how successful this is. But consider that the first two graduating classes were 32 and 48 students, respectively. Of those, I'm at Google. One engineering-ish friend is at Intuit. Two classmates are at Harvard Law, one of whom spent a couple years at Bain beforehand. There're a bunch that have gone into teaching, and several that have started blue-collar businesses (the school was in central Massachusetts, which has much less of a knowledge economy than the immediate Boston area).