Future Focused State Policy Actions to Transform K-12 Education
State policymakers are in a unique position to enable the innovations in education necessary to prepare students for a rapidly changing world. Working with 8,500 educators nationwide, the Aurora Institute identified the top issues to address in state policy for transforming our K-12 education system, with a special issue dedicated to continuity of learning in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis.
Guided by values of educational equity and future-readiness for all learners, this publication is a set of 11 opportunities to make the nation's education system fit for purpose. At the state level, the Aurora Institute Center for Policy is supporting policy analysis and making recommendations governors, state legislators, education agencies, school leaders, and other policymakers to work together with their communities to:
- Establish Profiles of a Graduate
- Launch Innovation Zones
- Create Competency-Based Education Task Forces & Pilots
- Offer Credit Flexibility
- Make Credentials Meaningful
- Align the pathways between K-12, higher education, career and technical and education, and the workforce — and make them competency-based
- Modernize the Educator Workforce
- Diversify the Educator Workforce
- Produce Balanced Systems of Assessments
- Create Next-Generation Accountability Systems
- Ensure Continuity of Learning
Taken together, these policy priorities challenge lawmakers and education decision-makers to wield their influence and take advantage of existing opportunities to disrupt the traditional one-size-fits-all model of K-12 teaching and learning and unleash learning from the confines of place and time.
