School districts must develop new strategies to prepare students to join a rapidly evolving workforce and to stay in step with the needs of their communities, say superintendents involved in a new effort to help school systems reach those goals.
Through the Public Education Promise, launched this week, five groups of district leaders and experts organized by AASA, the School Superintendents Association, will design resources to help schools launch creative programs, form community partnerships, and communicate their value to a sometimes skeptical public.
“We’ve got these pockets of excellence” in school systems around the country, said David Schuler, AASA’s executive director. “Our goal is to scale that so every student, every parent, every community has that same opportunity.”
The work comes as parents and policymakers emphasize the importance of strong postsecondary pathways, including those that don’t require a four-year degree. It also comes as public schools face increasing competition from private school choice programs, such as tax-credit scholarships administered by states.
Thirty-three percent of respondents to an August Gallup poll said the nation’s schools do a good or excellent job preparing students for college, but just 21% said schools do a good or excellent job preparing students for careers.
To address those concerns, teams assembled through the Public Education Promise will focus on five goals:
- Prioritizing “student-centered learning” by developing instructional strategies and learning opportunities that are engaging and connected to students’ interests and that help them become engaged citizens. For example, a growing number of districts create a “portrait of a graduate” that outlines skills like creativity they aim to instill in students. Others have built cross-disciplinary programs and project-based programs that give students more autonomy to direct their own learning.
- Teaching “the new basics” by giving students opportunities to develop skills they will need in the workplace, such as problem-solving, goal setting, managing stress, and digital literacy.
- Attracting, hiring, retaining, and rewarding “the best people” by exploring staffing models like team teaching, teacher leadership positions, educator apprenticeship programs, and ways to improve employee morale.
- Building “highly engaged family, community, and business partnerships” by collaborating with parents and local organizations to help schools develop meaningful programs in areas like mentorship, tutoring, and extracurricular opportunities. Working with local employers to develop apprenticeships and career pathways will ensure students can develop skills that will enable them to be employed in their community after graduation, superintendents said.
- “Measuring what matters” by identifying measures in addition to traditional standardized-test scores to report students’ progress and strengths and to hold schools accountable for meeting their communities’ needs. “School districts that use multi-measure assessments look at various factors, such as academic performance, course enrollment, out-of-school experiences, attendance, and discipline,” says an outline of the working groups’ priorities. “They can also include measures of essential life skills, such as critical thinking, collaboration, and communication. These data points, used to guide school district offerings, are more likely to indicate whether students are being prepared for the real world.”
Superintendents will develop resources to guide other districts
Each of the five working groups will focus on one goal, said Kristine Gilmore, AASA’s chief leadership and learning officer, who organized the panels. Groups met for the first time in September to begin studying successful strategies and identifying key principles that can be adapted across districts depending on size, location, and community need.
“There are a lot of pressures on public schools across the country,” Gilmore said. “We need to systematize this work, not leaving things to chance for our children and our communities.”
The groups hope to offer their first resources to fellow superintendents in January, Gilmore said. For example, the group focused on family and community engagement may offer a tool districts can use to “asset map,” or outline, how they can work with employers, organizations, and community members such as clergy to meet student needs.
Henrico County, Va., Superintendent Amy Cashwell is part of the cohort set to make recommendations on how to “measure what matters.”
“We’ve identified what we want our children to know beyond the core academics: those life skills,” Cashwell said. “We know how to measure whether you can read, do math, and [meet] science competencies, but we don’t always know how to measure these other things.”
Cashwell’s group will explore measuring social-emotional skills, like persevering in problem-solving. They may also study innovative school accountability measures that, for example, report indicators like how many students participate in after-school programs and extracurriculars, to demonstrate school success.
“We want to offer resources so that any superintendent in a district—small or big, rural, suburban, or otherwise—will be able to have takeaways to reshape their work for the better,” she said.
