In close collaboration with ConnectEd: The California Center for College and Career, SCOPE is working with district, school, industry, non-profit, and higher educational leaders to help build and advance the field of Linked Learning (formerly “multiple pathways”). The current cohort is comprised of nine participating districts across California that have received implementation grants from the James Irvine Foundation as part of the California Linked Learning District Initiative. The goal is to build leadership capacity, professional knowledge, and research evidence that will advance high quality, high equity education systems and improve policies and practices for high school students participating in Linked learning pathways across the District Initiative.
As a way of supporting this reform from a systems perspective, this series will:
- Provide structured opportunities for district leadership teams (superintendents, cabinet-members, and school, community, and industry leaders) as well as pathway leadership teams (administrators, pathway leads, grade level teacher teams) to engage in substantive discussions about how to best implement Linked Learning.
- Build capacity of district and pathway leaders to navigate the many challenges to implementing Linked Learning as a comprehensive district strategy.
- Create a vehicle for district and pathway networking and knowledge development.
- Capture new knowledge that can be shared among district and pathway participants and the larger numbers of districts nationally that wish to learn from this work.
With ConnectEd, SCOPE plans and implements Leadership Development Series, featuring a strand for district leaders and one for pathway leaders. This includes:
- Summer institutes for district leadership teams at Stanford University. These features unique learning opportunities with experts from the Stanford University schools of business, education, design, and engineering.
- Residencies hosted by network districts and attended by district leadership teams from all participating districts.
- Multi-day learning events for pathway leadership teams.
For the 2012-13 school year, District and Pathway teams are being supported to:
- Design and implement assessment systems that include culminating performances
- Utilize common rubrics to measure student progress toward pathway outcomes
- Use work-based and project/problem-based strategies to engage and accelerate student learning
- Use outcome-aligned rubric data from performance assessments to inform and improve instruction
- Deepen the commitment and capacity of pathway, school, district and community leadership to sustain this work
- Other regional learning events for district leadership teams.
In addition to this work, SRN will synthesize important lessons from this work. This will include the production of several knowledge briefs as well as case studies.
