Craft Category: Artifacts

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:

1. Establish Profiles of a Graduate
2. Launch Innovation Zones
3. Create Competency-Based Education Task Forces & Pilots
4. Offer Credit Flexibility
5. Make Credentials Meaningful
6. Align the pathways between K-12, higher education, career and technical and education, and the workforce — and make them competency-based
7. Modernize the Educator Workforce
8. Diversify the Educator Workforce
9. Produce Balanced Systems of Assessments
10. Create Next-Generation Accountability Systems
11. 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.

The Aurora Institute’s 2020 Federal Policy Priorities are an equity-driven and future-focused set of recommendations designed to ensure the nation’s education system is fit for purpose. The priorities are intentionally constructed to support moving states and localities forward from their current state of education to future systems capable of preparing all graduates with the knowledge, abilities, and dispositions necessary to achieve success, to contribute to their communities, and to advance our society.

Policymakers at all levels are positioned to take advantage of existing law and policy—or adopt effective strategies being piloted around the country—to move K-12 education toward its higher purpose. At the federal level, these priorities call on national leaders to:

1. Prepare Educator-Leaders for the Future,
2. Increase Access and Affordability to Diversify Educator Talent Pools,
3. Expand the Innovative Assessment Pilot, and
4. Increase Access to Broadband Connectivity.

For more information or technical assistance, connect with our Center for Policy.