Devos will, but before she does just wanted to say a couple housekeeping things. If you havent found already we have water and coffee in the back and feel free to partake. That are restrooms at the end of the halls. If you do leave the building you can come back in but you have to go to security can such as wanted to warn you about that if the take some time. Those of you who be participating in the conversation, microphones in front of you. You do need to turn them on when youre about to talk. Theres a button that says talk. When you turn on the red light will come on which tells you the microphone is active. When youre not speaking please turn it off. We would appreciate that and you would probably prefer we dont hear any private conversations as well. Those are sticking day, we appreciate you being here, we ask you keep remarks to about ten minutes. I will be sitting next to the secretary at the head of the table and ill try not to be obnoxious but i may waive or give an indication if youre getting close to the ten minutes and ask that you do wrap up quickly when that happens. Were looking for to a great conversation talking about innovation in k12, now it is my honor to introduce the person whose id this was and where happy to do with her this morning, secretary betsy devos. [applause] thanks so much, jason, and good morning, everyone. Its great to see and when here this Morning Bright and early. I want to begin by thanking you for attending todays summit and for all of you who are participating, we are very grateful for your participation, your willingness to beer, and take your time and share your thoughts. Last week we had a robust and very thought provoking discussion about innovative educators, administrators and institutions are transforming Higher Education for the student. Student. Todays focus on k12 education, we are very excited about and looking forward to hearing from the knowledge and the expertise in the room with us. Before we begin i want to say a quick word about the focus on innovation. Earlier this year i embarked on a rethink school tour were revisited learning environments from wyoming to indiana, all of which are taking creative approaches to education for students of all ages. I continue to travel the country is one of the favorite parts of the job is to be able to go and visit to see great work that is being done in multiple places. Ive really been inspired by the innovative educators and administrators ive met thus far. But theyre still not enough innovation. We need more like them and we need more creativity. And we need more like you here with us. The reality is our number of challenges and opportunities facing american students. And washington d. C. Does not have all the answers. Government is not the best at finding new solutions to tough problems. Government isnt the best at being flexible or adaptable to constantly changing environment. And government certainly isnt the best at questioning the status quo. But government can be good at bringing people together to highlight their creative thinking and new approaches. So today we have brought education leaders and entrepreneurs from across the country to share how they are improving education for the students they serve. While you who represent a Diverse Group of schools and organizations from across the education landscape, the common denominator is that each of you began pacing the problem or a deficiency or an inefficiency. You questioned why it was that way and then you develop a solution to fix it or make it better. You approaches fall broadly under todays opinion, helping each child realize his or her unique potential. Shifting the paradigm and customizing learning. Its these types of thinking that we need more of and i would argue lots more of in American Education today. We need to question everything, look for ways in which 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 dollars are spent or how many kids are passed along to the next stage. Success should be determined by how your educating and preparing each student for todays and tomorrows challenges. So lets treated as an opportunity to share whats working in your respective world, and where in 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. Were going to get started. I have the honor of introducing our presenters. In each case ill introduce the people who will be speaking at the portion. The first person will go up and speak for their ten minutes and then well just have the next person cut and speak right after the second last person to be on the situation is done and it will start the discussion. First up we will hear from two speakers on the topic of a, tom rooney, superintendent of Unified School District and then will hear from stephen mauney, superintendent of mooresville graded School District. Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to share a little bit about the lindsay journey and the work weve done for lindsay learners. This slide will give a bit of context as to who we are and some of the challenges that lindsay learners face. If you look at our demographics there, we are a Real Community in the Central Valley of california, 100 of our learners are on free and reduced lunch. We have high numbers of english learners, and when you look at that bottom statistics of 44 of our learners are from a home where one or both of the parents did not graduate from high school, and the average education level is fifth grade in the community, the only help that the lindsay children have is an Effective School system to serve them. And the importance of that. Keep these demographics in mind. As you see some of the successes we demonstrate on one of the later slides. A piece of data that is not up there is that 13 of nancys children meet the federal definition of homeless. I want to start out with a story of a real lindsay learners before we started our transition to a performancebased system. This story goes back to couple days after High School Graduation around 2008 half 2000 nitric high school we just had a New High School principal, and he was in his office and packing his bags 20082009. While he was there putting books on he was there putting books on the shelf, there was a knock at the door, and the secretary said, mr. Hammons, mr. Gonzales issued to see you with his son junior. The principal said bring him in. I just started but have him come in. Mr. Gonzales enters with his son. Hello, how are you . , nin, mr. Gonzales. Nice to meet you. Well, mr. Himes, i want to let you know that my son just graduated from Lindsay High School two days ago. Oh, great. How exciting. Whats the plan now . He says thats wanted to talk to you about. He says come on, sit down. Whats going on . He says, mr. Hammons, my son has a a High School Diploma from Lindsay High School in his hands. Could you give me that newspaper up there on the shelf . Mr. Hammons reaches back, gives the newspaper to mr. Gonzales. Mr. Gonzales puts it in front of the San Francisco head, son, read this newspaper for mr. Hammons, the new principal at Lindsay High School. Come on, read the article right here. After a moment of silence, junior which is said that and begins to cry and says, dad, you know i dont know how to read. That was a real lindsay learner, and there are hundreds or thousands of them 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 they are ready for life, that they accomplish something, and many of them are in the same situation as junior. Some for the context of what did we do then and what did we build. We all know this person, steve jobs. Now, steve jobs was creating the ideal listening experience. He was not saying how do i sell more cds. He was saying, what is the ideal experience that listeners need, and he created itunes. Thats innovation. We know this person. He looks so different these days but this is the early days of jeff bezos. He was thinking what is the ideal reading experience . We used to buy our books here, and that was not just books but now we shop for everything because its the ideal reading experience and the ideal shopping experience. I bet you know these folks. I see a few starbucks cups on the tables at there. It wasnt about making Better Coffee or more coffee. It was about creating the ideal coffee experience. So what have we done in lindsay . In lindsay we took some of the same things and we said, so what is the ideal learning experience . Not that it is needed for adults. Not so they can be convenient, but what is the ideal learning experience that can meet every child at the level, interest or their success, challenge them and make sure that they can become, at academic and personal excellent in life. So this is a simple visual because people asked us as weve been on this journey for seven to eight years, people have asked what are you doing at lindsay . This visual captures it all. Its founded on a bleacher focus strategic design and that at the very bottom is the voice of the community saying this is what we believe for our learners. So key part of our system is engaging our community to take ownership for the learners in the community. And when the community invest in it then we become servants of the community as leaders. At the very center is the ideal learning experience, and all around those are various components of our system that we build. From advancing and developing leadership to instruction to technology. You can see all of those pieces. I could spend days unpacking each of those pieces of the puzzle. It all rests on a culture of empowerment, a culture of investment, a culture of growth mindset and a culture that is learner centered, radically learned centered and uncompromisingly lurid center. In lindsay, a huge major element of this is its all about the learner and everything we do is about lindsay learners. Im going to unpack a couple of these pieces one, to talk about when you look at this we come back to this ultimate this is what were building in lindsay. Its not just meeting them at the level, challenge it in and making sure their successful. Because of lindsay its not about grade levels and what grade you are in or how old you are. Its where you are in the morning. When you meet a learner at the level they experienced success and gave away that theyve never been experiencing it before. An example would be a learner who might be seven years old. Doesnt just go straight into the second great. What if hes ready for the fifth grade content . So we allow the grouping and regrouping of learners to ensure that there met at the developmental earnings level, but most important is the last line on this slight. 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. Use some statistics that demonstrate that any moment. I keep peace we focused on was Leadership Development. So i cant stress enough the focus that we would need to have in our educational transformation, in our communities and in our country by focusing on the leadership. Because without the leadership it is limited as to how far it will go. This visual shows the Many Organizations operate. Unfortunately, how many Public Schools in america operate. There is no clear direction. Theres a lot of people working really hard, deeply committed to children, but going in Different Directions. One of the key pieces we did was we initially started with our community and created a strategic design which gave us the direction, a very clear direction about what we need to go to create a learnercentered system. But then we also found there was a lot of people though that were in our system that were still going in Different Directions and thats the inside arrows you see in this visual. As you develop an focus on leadership, and leadership at every level of the organization from the learners to the Teaching Staff, which we referred to as learning facilitators, to the secretary of staff, to the formal leaders as principals, assistant principals and district staff. Because in lindsay this is what we have. We have deep levels of alignment towards a vision, towards our learners and a commitment to our learners. And we have every person in the organization working towards that. Our bus drivers did not drive buses. They transport children so that they can go to a learning environment to learn. The folks in our cafeteria did not provide food for our learners. They provide nutritious meals so our learners can learn, and they will tell you that. Thats the commitment is all about the learning. So i have to stress significantly the Leadership Development and how important it is in order to transform learning in our country. I key piece of that puzzle is also transformational technology. I would clearly say that technology is not the answer. Its not about putting a device in front of every learner. Thats not what customized learning is all about. It really is more about using technology in a transformational way to accelerate the learning and allows learners to work at different paces and to be met at the developmental need. One of the things we provided in lindsay and we work towards his acumen to wide wifi project. We not only provide access, every single Lindsay Lohan has access to the computer and internet at school and at home. When we provided a computer for every single lindsay learner and what we realized is only 40 of them had connectivity to the internet. So in communities, take liberal communities of poverty, having limited access to the internet is a great issue with regard to access to quality learning. So in lindsay we work with our local community, and we now have access for 95 of our learners and parents, have access to the internet and have their own computer they can use to access learning. What weve done, and i will show in a moment, that we pushed nearly all of our content online. We have a learning Management System that essentially allows learners and parents to go after the learning and to understand where learners are in the progression of learning. Technology is seen as an effective accelerator at learning. So this is a sample, a shot of our and Power Platform. The Power Platform is all learner Management System where the house our curriculum, our resources, our assessments. All other results of our learners are housed on this alerts can see where they are. Because in lindsay the learners would basically say this is white and in my learning, this is one going next, this is how im going through my head. They own their learning. We have built structures and provide instruction to ensure that they come to point of owning their learning and the platform, this is not the only place for learning happens. We still have Adult Learning facilitators working directly dividing direct instruction, providing small group instruction, individualized instruction. But when you have the content, much of the content accessible the technology it allows 24 7 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 a school year that is 180 days long, a lot of those structures, they dont honor this basic principle that people learn in different ways at different time frames. What weve done in lindsay is we have replaced many traditional structures with learner centered systems. Not all structures but many of them. Giving a few examples. A through f grading does not exist in lindsay. Averaging grades, grade levels. We still of learners and grade levels but the way we understand the grade levels is very different. The use of technology, the use of space, learning happening anywhere, not just in classrooms. Credentialing requirements. These are all traditional structures that are convenient for adults, not for adults funding on seatac. Governance models, Effective School boards can be very powerful for advancing learning but inEffective School boards can also be a great hindrance to advancing learning in Public Education in america. The focus on limited to academic proficiency only. In lindsay you have to demonstrate academic proficiency but you also have to demonstrate proficiency in what we refer to as our Lifelong Learning standards. These are things like can you persevere . Are you culturally aware . Are you an economic produce and a global responsible citizen . You have two dementia proficiency in those areas at all levels from a five year old to an 18 year old. So its not just the academics. Its what kind of human beings are graduates becoming. We are replacing these structures with learner centered models. What is it producing . Just take a look at some of these results. Remembering our demographic. We went from a a graduation rae in the low 70s the 92 . 42 of our graduates go straight to a fouryear university. Even the 100 of them are free and reduced lunch. And 57 of those, the group that things are performed space system, got a degree in four years. You can see the number for others were getting degrees. Discipline is greatly decreased because learners lawyers are in the own learning. If you look at this, this speaks to the culture. Among similar schools of poverty, we were a little higher. After implementing our