In many schools, rigorous academic coursework—Advanced Placement classes, dual-enrollment programs, or career-technical electives—is reserved for only the highest-achievers.
What does it take for a district to make those options available to the majority of the student body?
Answering that question has driven the work of Jennifer Norrell, the outgoing superintendent of East Aurora schools in Illinois, and Lazaro Lopez, the associate superintendent overseeing curriculum and instruction for the Township High School District 214 outside of Chicago.
Norrell and Lopez, both recognized as 2025 EdWeek Leaders To Learn From, discussed how they transformed their districts’ approaches to college and career readiness in a May 6 panel during Education Week’s Virtual Leadership Symposium.
In East Aurora, Norrell vastly expanded the district’s AP program, more than doubling the percentage of high schoolers taking these courses over the past six years, while holding the pass rate steady.
Lopez led the creation of what he calls a “college-ready by design” framework in District 214 that allows students to explore and pursue career interests through coursework and work-based learning. In the 2023-24 school year, 84 percent of the district’s graduating seniors earned early college credits.
“Our theory was, if the school had a purposeful place in a student’s self-discovery of their future, … and if we can design a system that revolves around that individual, then we get them to not only be at school but to be fully engaged with school,” said Lopez.
He and Norrell spoke about the logistical and pedagogical challenges involved in building a college- and career-ready approach from the ground up. Read on for three takeaways for school and district leaders from the conversation.
1. Lay the groundwork for students to tackle challenging courses.
In East Aurora, leaders wanted to make sure students could handle more academically rigorous content before they started expanding AP offerings, said Norrell.
“This requires more than just having counselors put kids in new classes,” she said. “This was an entire paradigm shift for us as a district.”
Norrell and her colleagues started by focusing on shoring up students’ reading skills—a necessity if the high schoolers were to take courses featuring college-level texts. The district mandated additional reading classes for most students, including some who were in honors courses.
They also transformed 9th grade classes, and some 10th grade classes, into pre-AP classes, aligning the curriculum to the prerequisite knowledge and skills students would need for AP classes down the line.
Steps such as these set students up for success, Norrell said.
2. Support teachers’ growth.
In offering advanced coursework, District 214 took an “all of the above” approach, said Lopez. The district has dual-credit courses, student work experiences, and a portfolio of career-related electives.
Putting these courses on the schedule required educators who were certified to teach them.
Building up staff capacity was a “slow and steady transition,” said Lopez. The district offered incentives in teacher contracts—covering more of the tuition for graduate school courses if the master’s degree a teacher was pursuing would allow them to teach one of the district’s dual-credit courses.
District leaders also formed partnerships with local institutes of higher education, negotiating a cohort rate with one university that allowed a group of teachers to earn the MBAs that would certify them to teach college-level business courses.
3. Shift school day schedules to make it easier for students to have deep academic experiences.
Both East Aurora and District 214 are on block schedules, an approach in which students are in fewer classes for longer periods of time each day.
In District 214, students can more easily leave campus during the day to complete their career-related internships, said Lopez—like the students in the district’s medical academy, who spend several hours at a hospital once a week.
A block schedule also gives teachers more space to dig into challenging texts or explore complicated topics, said Norrell. It means that students’ lunch block is longer as well, opening up a portion of that period for some kids to receive additional intervention services.
“It gives you more flexibility and more time,” said Lopez.
To listen to the full panel discussion with Norrell and Lopez, watch the event recording.
