Scaling personalized learning at the district level may seem like a daunting task, and it is. But when the right conditions are put in place, schools can move beyond pockets of excellence to a truly personalized approach for every student. Building a vision with district stakeholders and creating a culture of innovation where everyone is encouraged to try new things and learn from failure while ensuring the transparency required for each person to understand their role in pursuing that vision are the foundation for aligning all aspects of the system behind your district's vision for personalized teaching and learning.

High school students benefit from meaningful relationships with adults at school, and teachers can foster those ties in little ways every day.

Teachers can create positive learning experiences for students that combine assessment with agency, opportunity, and community building.

Two of the most important questions in designing, or redesigning, learning environments
are: How does learning happen? and How can we best create environments that support
learning? While empirical research has unearthed important insights and established agreedupon
models to help answer these questions, this research base is extensive, complex, and
often not honored by the design of traditional schools. To that end, our Designing for Learning
Primer aims to summarize the essence of what’s known about how learning happens in a way
that is digestible and actionable.Two of the most important questions in designing, or redesigning, learning environments
are: How does learning happen? and How can we best create environments that support
learning? While empirical research has unearthed important insights and established agreedupon
models to help answer these questions, this research base is extensive, complex, and
often not honored by the design of traditional schools. To that end, our Designing for Learning
Primer aims to summarize the essence of what’s known about how learning happens in a way
that is digestible and actionable.

Finding Your Path: A Navigation Tool for Scaling Personalized, Competency-Based Learning is designed to help learning communities understand the conditions for sustainable systems change and to develop and advance a strategic plan for district-wide transformation to personalized, competency-based learning.

The purpose of this document is to provide guidance for all stakeholders around the idea of mathematics
pathway acceleration. Acceleration deserves thoughtful attention to ensure that students are challenged and
that they are mastering the full range of mathematical content and skills, without omitting critical standards.
Acceleration is defined as moving at a faster rate through a defined mathematics pathway than grade level
peers. Mathematics pathways are a set of courses designed to prepare students for post-secondary success.

Schools aren't that different from companies when it comes to the innovator's dilemma. The entities in their value networks may be different—consisting of parents, employee unions, voters, and government regulatory agencies instead of customers, suppliers, and investors—but the influence of their value networks nonetheless make it hard for them to adopt certain types of innovations.

There have been many debates in education I’ve been exposed to including those about blended learning, personalized learning, push-in interventions, block scheduling, math strategies, etc. With each of these debates, it’s too common for one group to try to debunk the evidence or practices of another group. Consistently in these debates, we hear caveats about the need for highly skilled teachers, better job-embedded professional development, and changes to teacher education programs. Once there’s some agreement about wanting to make a change, then there’s further discussion as to why it’s impossible due to bell schedules, lack of prep time, or change occurring in leadership and state policies. These common arguments often block the ability to make real transformational instructional shifts, but they are a way to overcome these barriers.

This post is the third in a five-part series on Lake County Schools in Florida. Begin with the district overview and follow along at these schools: South Lake High, Lost Lake Elementary, Sawgrass Bay Elementary, and Lake Windy Hill Middle.

Slidedeck created by Drew Schantz, EdElements, for presentation at The 2023 Magellan Summit.

This document was created to build understanding and goals as the district continues to move toward the vision of “personalized learning for all”. This is not an evaluative document but rather one that recognizes the many small moves required to provide a personalized learning experience for all students

This toolbox highlights thinking routines developed across a number of research projects at PZ. A thinking routine is a set of questions or a brief sequence of steps used to scaffold and support student thinking. PZ researchers designed thinking routines to deepen students' thinking and to help make that thinking “visible.”

The stories we hear these days about education are largely focused either on the culture wars–what gets to be taught and what doesn’t–or how far students are “behind” in learning after nearly three pandemic school years. These stories are important, but what gets lost is the quiet revolution taking place across the nation–including in Kentucky–to modernize education for the future.

Most educators agree that the traditional “sit and get” classroom will not help us achieve greater educational equity or promote the deeper learning skills our students need to succeed. In response, a growing number of schools, districts, and states are embracing approaches that are more equitable and learner-centered—where each student's unique profile of strengths, needs, interests, goals, family and cultural background, and experiences are nurtured and leveraged to enable them to succeed.