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 cau