Good morning. I was told i would have to get everyone quiet but you all got quiet all by yourselves with no direction. Im with the department of education and the office of elementary and secondary education. I want to thank you for coming to the rethink k through 12 summit. I want to thank you all for being here. In a moment secretary devos will come up. If you havent found already water and coffee in the back. So you can feel free to partake and there are restrooms at the ends of the halls. You will have to go through security again. Those of you who will be participating in the conversation, your microphones in front of you. You need to turn them on when youre about to talk. You turn it on, the red light will come on which will tell you that the microphone is active and when youre not speaking, turn that off. Those who are speaking today, again we really appreciate you being here. Were going to ask that you keep your remarks to about 10 minutes. I will be sitting next to the secretary and i will try not to be abnoxious but i will probably wave and ask that you wrap up quickly with had that happens. But were looking forward to a great conversatioconversation. Looking at innovation in k12. Secretary betsy devos. Thanks so much, jason. And good morning everyone. Its great to see everyone here this Morning Bright and early. I want to begin by thanking you for attending todays summit and for all who are participatinpar we thank you for your willingness to be here and share your thoughts. Last week we had a very thought provoking discussion on how administrators and institutions are transforming Higher Education for their students. So todays focus on k12 education were excited about and looking forward to hearing from the knowledge and expertise in the room with us. I want to say a quick word about the focus on innovation. Earlier this year i embarked on a we think tour. All of which are taking creative approaches for students of all ages. I can continue to travel the country. Its one of the favorite parts of the job is to visit, see great work that is being done in multiple places and ive really been inspired by the innovative educators and administrators ive met thus far but theres still not enough innovation. We need more like them and more creativety and more like you with us. The reality is there are a number of challenges and opportunities. And washington d. C. Does not have all the answers. Fwum government is fought the best at finding new solutions to tough problems. Government isnt the best at being flexible or adaptable to constantly changing d environments. But government can be good at bringing people together to highlight their creative thinking and new approaches. So today weve brought entrepreneurs and leaders from across the globe to share how theyre improving education for those they serve. The common denominator is each of you began by seeing a problem or a deficiency or an inefficiency. You question why it was that way and 10 you developed a solution to fix it or make it better. Your approaches fall broadly under todays themes. Help hadding each child realize his or her unique potential. Shifting the paradigm and customizing learning. Its these types of thinking we need more of, i would argue lots more of in American Education today. We need question everything. Look for ways we can improve and embrace the imperative of change. Each of you have embraced that mindset and your students are reaping the rewards. Because at the end of the day success shouldnt be measured by how many kids are passed along to the next stage. Successicide be determined by how your educating and preparing each student for todays and tomorrows challenges. So lets treat today as an opportunity to share whats working in your respective worlds and where impediments at any level of government are preventing you from achieving your mission of serving students. Thank you again for being here today and im really looking forward to the conversation. Thanks. [ applause ] thank you, madam secretary. So were going to go ahead and get started. In each case ill introduce the people who will be speaking at that portion. The first person will go and speak for their 10 minutes and we ask the otherer person to go up and speak and after the last person is done, well start the discussion. First up were going to hear from two speakersige the topic of attain each childs potential. Superintendent and superintend ntd. Ant. Good morning and thank you for the opportunity to share a little bit about the lindsey journey and the work weve done for lindsey learners. This slide will give a little bit of context as to who we are and some of the challenges that lindsey learners face. If it you look at our demographics, were a Rural Community in the Central Valley of california. 1en h e 1 100 of our learners are on reduced lunch. We have high numbers of English Learners and 44 of our learners are from a home where one or both parents did not graduate from high school and the average education level is fifth grade in the community, the only hope that the lindsey children have is an Effective School cyst toom serve them and him the portance of that. Keep these demographics in mind as you see some of the successes we have demonstrated on the late r slides. A piece of data that is not up there is that 13 of lindseys children meet the federal definition of homeless. To further help you understand our context, i want to start off with a story of a real lindsey learner before we started our transation to a performance based position. This story goes back to a couple of days after high school graduation, around 2008 2009. The high school we just hired a New High School principal and he was in his office unpacking his bags and while he was there putting books on the shelf, there was a knock at the door and the secretary said mr. Hamens, mr. Gonzales is here to see you and the principal said bring him in. I just started but have him come in. Mr. Gonzales enters with his son. Hello. How are you. Come on in. Nice to meet you. Well, for had hammons, i want to let you know that my son just graduated from Lindsey High School two days ago. Great, how exciting. So whats the plan now . So thats what im here to talk to you about. Whats going on . He says for hammons, my son has a High School Diploma from Lindsey High School in his hand. Could you give me that newspaper up on the shelf. Mr. Hammons reaches back, gives the newspaper to mr. Gonzales. Mr. Gonzales puts it in front of his son and said go ahead son, read this newspaper. Come on, mijo, read the article right here. And after a moment of silence, he puts his head down, begins to cry and says dad, you know i dont know how to read. That was a real lindsey learn hadder and there were hundreds or thousands that we failed over the years and you know what the traditional model there are people all across our country who are getting a High School Diploma that makes them feel like theyre ready for life and many of them are in the same situation as junior. The further context of what did we do . And what did we build . We all know this person. Steve jobs. He was creating the ideal listening experience. He was not saying how do i sell more cds. He was saying what is the ideal experience listeners need . And he created i tunes. Thats innovation. We know this person. Looks a little different these days. But this is the early days of jeff bazos. He was thinking what is the ideal reading experience . Now we shop for everything because its the ideal reading experience and the ideal shopping experience. Anybody know these folks . I see a few starbucks cups on the tables out there. It wasnt about making more coffee or better coffee, it was about creating the coffee experience. So what have we done in lindsey . We took some of the same things and said what is the ideal learning experience . Not that as needed for adults but what is the ideal learn hadding experience that can meet every child at their level and share their success, challenge them and make sure they can have academic and personal excellence in life . People have asked us as weve been on this journey. So what is it youre doing in lindsey . And this captures it all. Its founded on a feature focus strategic design and at the very bottom, thats it voice of the community saying this is what we believe for our learners. So a key part is engaging our community to take ownership for the learners in the community. When the community invests in it, then we become servients of the community as leaders. At the very center is the ideal learning expeer ynrience and ar around those are various components we built. From instruction to technology and you can see all of those pieces and i can spend days unpacking each of those pieces of the puzzle there and it all rests on a culture of empowerment, investment, a cultural of growth mindset and that is learner centered and uncomp are amizingly learner centered. In lindsey a huge, major element is its all about it learner and everything we do is about lindsey learners. Im going to unpack just a couple of these pieces. One i want to talk about when you look at this, when you come back to this, ultimately this is what were building in lindsey and its not just challenging them and making sure theyre successful because its not about grade level said or how old you are, its where you are in the learning and when you meet a learner at their level, they experience success in a different way theyve never been experiencing it before. An example may be a learner who might be seven years old. He doesnt go straight in the second grade. What if hes ready for the fifth grades content . So we aloy the learning and regrouping of learners to make sure theyre met at their learning level. We have a system literally where our children of poverty who are learning english literally desire to come back to school each and every day and youll see statistics that demonstrate that in a moment. A key piece we focussed on was Leadership Development. So i cant stress enough the focus that we would need to have in our educational transformation, in our kmupts, in our country on focusing on the leadership because without the leadership, its limited as to how far it will go. How Many Organizations operate. Unfortunately how many Public Schools in america operate. There is no clear direction. There lot of people working really hard but going in Different Directions. So one of the key pieces we did was we initially started with our community and we created the strategic design which gave us the direction. It gave us a clear direction of where we need to go but we also found there is a lot of people that were in our system that were still going in Different Directions and thats inside arrows you see on tis visual. So as you develop and focus on leadership and leadership at every level of the organization from the learners to the Teaching Staff which we refer to as learning facilitators to the sec retearial staff to principals and assistant principals because we have deep levels of alignment towards a vision towards our learners and a commitment to our learners and you have every person in the G Organization working towards that. Our bus drivers do not drive buses. They transport children so they can go to a learning environment to learn. The folks in our cafeteria do not provide food for our learners. They provide nutritious meals so our learners can learn and they will tell you that. The commitment is all about it learning. I have to stress significantly the Leadership Development and how important that is to transform learning in our country. A key piece of that puzzle is also transformational technology. Clearly saying that technology is not the answer. It is not about putting a device in sfrunt of every learn hadder. Thats not what customized runner hadding learning is all about. Its really using technology in a transformational way to accelerate the learning and allows learners to work at different paces and met at their developmental need. So one of the things we provided in lindsey and work towards is a Community Wide wifi project. Every lindsey learner has access to the computer and the internet at school and at home. When we provided a computer for every single lindsey learner and what we realized is only 40 of them had had connectivity to the internet. So in communities, particularly Rural Communities of poverty, having limited access to the internet is a great issue with regard to access to quality learning. So in lindsey we now have community we have access to for 95 of our learners and parents have access to the internet and they have their own computer they can use to access learning and what weve done is weve pushed nearly all of our content online. We have a learner Management System that allows learners and parents to go after the learning and to understand where learners are in their progression of learning. Technology is seen as an effective accelerator of learning. So this is a sample, a shot of our empower platform, its a learner Management System where we house our curriculum, our resources, our assessment. All our resorts are so learners can see where they are. Because in lindsey the learners will basically say this is where i am, this is where im going next. They own their learning. And weeve built structures to insure they come to a point of owning their learning. This is not the only place learning happens. We still have adults learning facilitators providing direct instruction, small group instruction, individualized instruction. But when you have much of the content, accessible Via Technology it allows the real learning to happen for many of our learners. We all believe this. People learn in different ways in different time frames. The traditional educational structure of learners being grouped by age and grade level. A school year thats 180 days long. A lot of those structures, they dont honor this basic principal and so what weve done in lindsey is weve replaced many centers with learning structures. A through f grading does not exist in lindsey. Averaging grades. Grade levels. We still have learners in grade levels beutthe way we understand is very different. The use of technology, the use of space. Learning happening anywhere, not just in classrooms. Credentialing requirements. Funding on seat time. Politically driven governorance models. Schoolboards can be powerful in advancing learning and can also be a great hindrance. The focus on limited to academic profishancy only. You have to demonstrate profishancy in what we refer to as our Lifelong Learning standards and these are things like can you persevere . Are you culturally aware . You have to demonstrate profishancy in those areas from a 5yearold to an 18yearold. So its not just the academics. Its what kind of human being are our graduates becoming. We are replacing these structures with learner centered models and what is it producing . We take a look at some of the results. Remembering our demographic. We went from a Graduation Rate in the low 70s to 92 . 42 of our graduates go straight to a fouryear university. Even though 100 of them on free and reduced lunch and 57 of those, this first group that finished our performance based system got their degree in four years and you can see the numbers for others getting their degrees. Learners are now if vested in their own learning and engaged in their learning. You look at this. This speaks to the culture. The California Healthy kids survey is taken by over 100 high schools and districts throughout the state and a survey taken by learners and they rate things like theres drugs at my campus or there isnt. Theres bullying. Im connected to the adults in my school. Theres alcohol use and you can note in 2010 prior to lindseys system or prior to our performance based system we ranked amongst all schools middle of the way, 54 and among similar schools of poverty we were a little higher. After implementing our performance based system and continuing to refooine our learr based system, you can see the latest data, Lindsey High School ranks at the 99th persen tile, essentially making it the safest, drug free, learned connected high school in the state of california. Thats something we can be proud of, given the demographic and the work were doing for our community. Some things people want to learn more about. People said what is it that youre doing . We have published a book called beyond reform. And many of the people in the Education Field know very well who Robert Marzano is, one of the most well Read Educational researchers and Training Professional Development providers in the country. Hundreds of publications, many, many people read izhad work and are guided by his work. He wrote the forward to lindseys story and this is what he says. A person who knows thousands of schools and hundreds of School Districts throughout this country says Lindsey Unified School District has transformed its system to one that can and should become a model for k12 education. Im going to close with now that were in the middle of our journey and as we work and continue to improve our work together. This story is about a senior who is completing their High School Exit interview. Every senior must complete an interview with a Community Panel and learners and administrators and staff to demonstrate what theyve gone through in their life, the challenges theyve faced and where theyre going in the future. I was in this panel and the learner came forward and he started his presentation by stating with i was 1 1 2 years old somebody wrapped me up tightly in a blanked and they flew me over a fence. Fortunately my father caught me and then he ran and thats how i came into america. And when i was in the fifth grade my father walked in and said son, i bought you a ladder. Youre done going to school because tomorrow youre going to the fields with me and you will work in the fields along side me and bring in money for our family. With everything he had this young man looked at his father and hesaid dad, im never picking up that ladder and im not going into the field wds you. Im going to stay in school and im going to be a counselor. His father laughed and said some day youre going to learn what a real man does and until then ill keep the ladder in the garage for you. And the next thing this young man did, he held up a piece of paper and he said this is my acceptance letter to Fresno State University and im going to be a counselor in lindsey and i asked him but what about your father . And this talked about the kind of person he became. He said my father knew nothing better. He was a good and honorable man and i respect and love him deeply. He knew nothing more to give me. And now he is supporting me in my journey as i go to college. I have hundreds of stories on the front end of our journey and hundreds of stories on the back end of where we are now. Were still in the middle of this. Theres so much more to do. So that is the lindsey journey and the work weve been doing to transform the lives of children and we would hope many of the lessons we have learned will be beneficial to other School Districts who are interested in dismantling the traditional k12 educational model tahats been n place 125 years and truly meets learners at their level and insures their success. Thank you. Well, good morning. Im the superintendent of the Mooresville School distric. As far as School Districts go in North Carolina, were an average size School District, maybe on the larger side. But as far as nationally, were avterage as well. Prek through 12. Eight schools, one high school, one middle school, two intermediate schools and four Elementary Schools and our free and reduced lunch population is about 38 and our per people expenditure is 7500 per student and in North Carolinas 115 School District that places them about 100 out of 115. And what weve been able to do is our digital conversion and the digital conversion we are 1 1 with k12, ipads at kindergarten and first grade and Laptop Computers we started about a decade ago in 2007. And one of the biggest reasons behind our conversion was we wanted to close the Digital Divide that existed between our students, those with means and those that did not have economic means to have access to technology and what youll hear throughout the course of my presentation is very similar to what happened in lindsey. That there was a disconnect, i believe, between our students and what they were learning in our schools and it was almost like they had to power down when they stepped on to the School Ground and what we wanted to do was prepare our students for their futures and not our past. And that quote came from our former supertendant, dr. Mark edwards. He believes it was a way to build engagement in our kids, to tap into an intrinzic motivator. And so what started off as a Technology Initiative really transformed into something much more but through technology were going to make instruction more relevant, provide realexpe and in order to invest resources into a Technology Initiative, there had to be academic achievement tied to it because many that do one to ones, will put devices in the hands of their kids and teachers and they see no real change in the academic achievement. And then we believe it was a moral imperative to do so. We had to prepare our kids for jobs that we dont know that exist yet, to prepare them to achieve their biggest potentials. And so our digital conversion is really a fusion of ped goejy digital resources and culture. You saw a lot of the same things in the slides from lindsey but it became much more than a Technology Initiative. Today we will tell you its much more than just a device in the hands of every child and every teacher. Its an effective entegration of good, sound technology and digital resources with solid pedigogi. And teaching and learning practices and so what we see was a transformation from a teachercentered environment, to a studentcentered if environment. Weve seen a transformation from desks in rows and teachers standing at the front of the classroom giving a lot of direct instruction to more group activities, more student accountability for their own learning and Student Engagement in whats going on in the classroom and what you see here is our empowerment strategies and like i say the computers were a catalyst for an instructional transformation that took place throughout our district. But youll see everything on this wheel from a culture of collaboration and caring to data driven instruction to aligned instructional practices, all those things are very important to us and its a focussed effort on increasing the quality of instruction in our classrooms. So what does this mean for our students . Its great to say were one to one district, weve been doing this for about 10 years now. Were kind of on the cutting edge when we started this in 2007, but if its not impacting in a positive way our students then were basically wasting our time and our resources. As i mentioned before North Carolina has 115 public School Districts and prior to our digital conversion, it was a Good School System in North Carolina. We were about in the 40s in student achievement and as you can see over the course of the last decade we have risen in our academic rankings as measured by our state mandated end of grade and end of course test. So we rank in the top five and have over the last five years and that is one indicator that we look at. A second indicate or that we lo at is our fouryear Graduation Rate. Prior to our digital conversion we about a 77 Graduation Rate from high school in mooresville. And the year before the low 70s. As you can see last year our Graduation Rate was 93 and has been 90 or above over the last five years. An interesting point about this is our African American Graduation Rate prior to 2007 was in the 50 s. Now our Graduation Rate was at 89 last year. Thats a significant increase, obviously, but its also a good indicator of the level of engagement thats going on in our classrooms and the success that our students are having. Another indicator is the total scholarships received or accepted and its not just scholarships offered to kids but these are scholarships that our students actually accept and so you see from 2006, less than a Million Dollars of accepted scholarships to our graduating class last year broke our record in our district to over 4. 3 million in scholarships accepted. So not only are our kids more engaged, are they more effective and learning more in the classroom but also competitive on the National Scene with other children throughout the united states. And so my wife and i, we have five children in the mooresville School District. First time we have a kid graduating, all the way down to a kindergartner and i will say im fortunate all 25 years have been in the mooresville School District. I taught history and its interesting that in my early days of my career i would have conversations about colleagues. We could talk about anything except what we were doing in the classroom. It was not unusual to talk in the hallway about the latest ball game and go in our rooms and close the door and i would teach what i taught and my hi colleague that was teaching history too would teach what they taught. But the level of collaboration bewith tween teachers has increased exponentially. We share best practishes more than we have ever done so in the past and i think as a result our lessons are more aligned, theyre Higher Quality and were sharing that load and so were drawing on the best that all of our teachers have to offer and that is a great benefit to our kids. I was saying my five kids, im very excited about and feel proud about the level of education that they are receiving because i know that theres a culture of caring in our district, that were looking at every child as a individual. And what the technology has allowed us to do is personalize instruction on a level like weve never been able to do so before and so our kids are getting real time information. Our kids know specifically where our strengths and weaknesses are and they can target those thanks to the resources were able to use and i said were about 100th in funding in North Carolina and about fifth in student achievement. And i think thats a good indicator for all of us, that its not necessarily about how much money you have to spend, but where you focus your resources and that you get the biggest bang for your buck and i believe through working cooperatively that we can change americas Education System and i think kwoul rr syoull see a lo examples of success here today and im anxious to hear what everyone has to say. So thank you very much. Thank you so much, tom and steve, for starting us out on a really great way this morning. Before we get into the discussion section, id like to go around the table and have everyone introduce themselves and their affiliation. That would be terrific. Thank you. Well start on this end. Tonight, a look at how cities can prevent attacks by violent extremists. Automakers and regulators talk about selfdriving cars and education secretary betsy devos addresses a group of educates across the country. Well start with remarks from Michael Duffin on Counter Terrorist recruitment. Goodft
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