Future Ready Schools is a free, bold effort to maximize digital learning opportunities and help school districts move quickly toward preparing students for success in college, a career, and citizenship. The effort provides districts with resources and support to ensure that local technology and digital learning plans align with instructional best practices, are implemented by highly trained teachers, and lead to personalized learning experiences for all students, particularly those from traditionally under-served communities.
The Alliance for Excellent Education and the U.S. Department of Education are leading this effort with the support of the over 50 organizations.
Future Ready Schools Overview
Future Ready Schools is a free, bold effort to maximize digital learning opportunities and help school districts move quickly toward preparing students for success in college, a career, and citizenship. This effort comes at a critical time as districts embrace college and career readiness as the goal for all students and recognize the potential of digital tools to help teachers personalize learning for each student. While less than 30 percent of U.S. schools have the bandwidth they need to teach using today’s technology, federal and state efforts are expanding this capacity to ensure that at least 99 percent of the nation’s students have access to high-speed internet in their schools within the next five years. Such connectivity, along with strategic planning by districts to maximize its availability, has the potential to transform the educational experiences of all students, regardless of their background.
District leaders must respond to these changes with thoughtful planning to align necessary technologies with instructional goals to support teaching and learning. The effort provides districts with resources and support to ensure that local technology and digital learning plans align with instructional best practices, are implemented by highly trained teachers, and lead to personalized learning experiences for all students, particularly those from traditionally under-served communities. The Alliance for Excellent Education and the U.S. Department of Education are leading this effort alongside a vast coalition of national organizations. Future Ready Schools can be found at www.futurereadyschools.org. Districts can download the Future Ready Schools fact sheet here.
Future Ready Schools Pledge
The Future Ready District Pledge, according to the U.S. Department of Education, is designed to set out a roadmap to achieve transformation success and to commit districts to move as quickly as possible towards a shared vision of preparing students for success in college, careers and citizenship. As of November 2015, approximately 2,000 school superintendents have signed the Pledge. To see what Superintendents have signed the pledge in our state, click here.
In an effort to support superintendents and district leadership teams and to fulfill the Future Ready District Pledge—and determine their readiness to do so—The Alliance for Excellent Education has developed both the Future Ready Schools Framework and Future Ready Schools Interactive Planning Dashboard. The Future Ready Framework provides the roadmap for a successful digital transformation. With student learning at the center, a district must align each of the seven (7) key categories, called gears, plus leadership, in order to implement and sustain successful digital learning.
The 7 Gears of the Future Ready Schools Framework are as follows:
- Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment
- Personalized Professional Learning
- Robust Infrastructure
- Data and Privacy
- Community Partnerships
- Budget and Resources
- Use of Space and Time
Future Ready Librarians
Future Ready Librarians is an expansion of the Future Ready initiative aimed at raising awareness among district and school leaders about the valuable role librarians can play in supporting the Future Ready goals of their school and district. Two guiding questions are central to Future Ready Librarians.
- How can librarians and libraries support Future Ready schools?
- How can librarians and libraries become more Future Ready?
Future Ready Librarians will provide resources, strategies and connections for district leaders and librarians to be able to work together to promote and implement innovative learning opportunities for students.
The Future Ready Schools Interactive Planning Dashboard is a free, online tool to help district leadership teams plan systemically to use technology effectively to engage students, empower teachers, and improve learning outcomes. Through the dashboard, district leaders assess their digital readiness levels, identify gaps, obtain strategies, action plan and track their progress over time. Districts can download more information about the Dashboard, here.
Source: futurereadyschools.org. For questions, email Sara Hall at shall@all4ed.org.
Future Ready Schools® TED Talk
In this video, Vancouver Public Schools (WA) shares stages of development of a teacher leader program designed to encourage the building of leadership capacity in teachers. The video includes advice for district leaders as they consider the changing role of teachers in the classroom as leaders in the digital transformation.
Future Ready Schools® (FRS) has announced a series of free regional events to support educators who are planning to implement personalizing learning strategies for their students. This student-centered approach tailors instruction to students’ strengths and needs while engaging them in challenging, standards-based academic content. The eight “institutes” include personal professional development opportunities for district leaders, IT directors, principals, librarians and media specialists, as well as teacher leaders and instructional coaches.
FRS is working with an advisory board of education experts to create a research-based, two-day agenda filled with personalized professional learning opportunities for educators led by expert facilitators. Each FRS institute will launch ongoing regional networks of experts who will act as mentors to ensure districts have the resources needed to create personalized learning plans.
Registration is open to one leadership team per district at www.futureready.org/institutes.
The 2017 FRS institutes are free, but space is limited.
The Future Ready Schools® (FRS) publication, A Guidebook for Success: Strategies for Implementing Personalized Learning in Rural Schools, helps education leaders capitalize on existing assets while addressing their community’s challenges. This guidebook highlights how district leaders can use the research-based FRS framework and free planning resources to leverage opportunities and overcome challenges inherent in their rural setting to transform teaching and create a personalized learning experience for their students.
To help rural districts overcome these challenges, FRS developed a research-based framework and five-step planning process to guide schools and districts as they transition to a personalized learning model centered on individual student learning and facilitated by innovative instruction accelerated by the smart integration of technology.
Download the guidebook here.
Future Ready Schools® (FRS) announces the release of eight Planning with a Purpose micro-credentials designed for FRS district leaders and leadership teams.
The FRS Planning with a Purpose micro-credentials use the FRS planning tools (interactive dashboard) to show mastery in developing an implementation plan to deploy personalized learning strategies across a school system—public, private, or charter.
Each micro-credential covers one of the seven FRS framework topics (also called “gears”) plus collaborative leadership.
Submission details to consider include the following:
- Submission is free and should take less than two hours if the district has collected specific gear assessment data via step 3 of the FRS five-step planning process.
- There is no limit to the number of team members from one district who may earn a micro-credential in each topic.
- Micro-credentials specifically address step 3 of the FRS five-step planning process and are designed to recognize achievement and mastery of individual team members.
Future Ready Schools® announces FRS Principals, the latest expansion of the FRS initiative that supports personalized learning and innovation.FRS Principals helps school leaders develop the necessary skills to lead a successful FRS school; build an in-depth understanding of change management; and showcase leadership culture necessary for success. Through eight FRS institutes planned for 2017, FRS Principals will tap an active network of like-minded educators beyond their own school, district, and state for help and advice when challenges arise. FRS Principals is the latest track to be added to the FRS initiative, joining dedicated #FutureReady resources for librarians and instructional coaches.
Future Ready Schools® announces the new Instructional Coaches Framework and Strand, created by over 15 leading instructional coaches. The FRS Instructional Coaches strand provides instructional coaches with research-based strategies, protocols, and resources to help coaches effectively collaborate with and support their schools and districts with professional learning designed to strengthen instructional practices.
Instructional Technology Specialist Laura Nylen explores Personalized PD for Future Ready Librarians.
