Week 15

Capstone Rubric — The Prospero Strategy

The student selects a real-world case — a corporate takeover, a geopolitical crisis, a macroeconomic failure — and orally defends a multi-step plan to disrupt, isolate, and synthesize the opposing forces, citing specific mechanics from the play. Five categories below, each scored Novice / Developing / Proficient / Exemplary. One of them is a hard gate.

1. Case Selection & Framing

Exemplary: Student can also state clearly where the analogy breaks down — every real case diverges from the play somewhere, and knowing where is itself evidence of understanding both.

2. Mechanic Citation & Accuracy

Exemplary: Student cites their own Workbook evidence log from a specific week unprompted, and uses a Bacon aphorism — not just the Marginalia — as direct support for a claim.

3. Multi-Step Plan Coherence

Exemplary: Plan anticipates a likely counter-move by the opposing force and adjusts sequencing in response.

4. The Epoch III Requirement — Hard Gate

A plan that ends at the checkmate — with no synthesis phase addressing what comes after — cannot score above Developing on this category regardless of strength elsewhere, and caps the overall defense at Developing no matter how strong Categories 1–3 are. This gate exists on purpose: a plan that doesn't end at the win is the actual evidence that fifteen weeks of power-mechanics training produced someone who thinks about the aftermath, not just the winning.

Exemplary: Plan also addresses institutionalization (Week 14) — a mechanism by which the arrangement continues without the student's intervention being permanently required.

5. Defense Under Questioning

Exemplary: Student identifies a limitation in their own plan before the panel does, and explains what would need to be true for the plan to fail.

Panel Questioning Guide

"Where does your real-world case not actually resemble the play? What breaks if we push the analogy there?"
"You cited [mechanic] from Week [X] — read me the actual line."
"What does the losing side do three moves from now, and does your plan survive it?"
"You have full leverage — why not use all of it?"
"What would have to be true for someone to run this exact plan on you?"

Scoring Sheet

Category	Score (N/D/P/E)
1. Case Selection
2. Mechanic Citation
3. Plan Coherence
4. Epoch III (gate)
5. Defense
Overall	capped by gate

A Note for the Panel

Categories 1–3 and 5 measure execution and composure. Category 4 measures whether the course's actual point — that power which cannot hand itself off eventually fails — was absorbed. A low score on Category 5 alone is coachable in a way a low score on Category 4 is not.