A Vision for Redesigned High Schools:
Professional Development for State Policy Leaders
Overview
The American Youth Policy Forum (AYPF), working with the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), is planning a series of field trips to help state policy leaders learn more about high school redesign. This project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, supports the Honor States Grant Program, an initiative of the National Governors Association (NGA), by providing hands-on professional development activities to governors, their staffs, members of state education boards and commissions, state legislators, and senior state officials working in K-16 education.
Over the next two years, this project offers state policy leaders, who are involved in the NGA Center for Best Practices initiative, an opportunity to participate in strategically designed and intensive field trips, in which participants visit redesigned high schools and engage in substantive policy discussions.
Rationale and Strategy
Yesterday’s high schools do not reflect the diverse needs and interests of today’s learners. The need to redesign high schools to improve student achievement has been well documented by researchers and education advocates who are now calling on policy leaders to make high school reform a top priority. Many governors are answering this call by committing to improve high schools, but they have different levels of understanding about the characteristics of effective high schools and the policies needed to support them. Increasingly, state policymakers are searching for answers to difficult and challenging questions, and despite their efforts, many policymakers are struggling to find what policies are most effective to bring about change.
The field trips will allow participants the opportunity to see “a vision for redesigned high schools” by visiting schools and meeting with leaders of promising reform efforts who have grappled with many of the same issues in their own work. Over the past 12 years, AYPF has planned and facilitated over 100 field trips for policymakers on a variety of youth topics, and the experience has revealed two very important lessons: 1) Allowing policymakers to see, firsthand, examples of redesigned or innovative schools and youth programs is one of the most effective ways for them to envision the change process and to build the political will to make successful reforms happen, and 2) providing a well-constructed forum for policymakers to exchange ideas, share lessons, and debate policy approaches enables them to return home with the knowledge to begin formulating policies and reform strategies.
Project Goals and Objectives
The overarching goal of this project is to help state education policy leaders learn about innovative strategies to support high school redesign and to understand how to begin to apply similar innovations in their states. Specifically, field trips are carefully designed to accomplish three goals.
• Expose state policy leaders to effective programs, schools, and districts from which they take away concrete, practical lessons.
• Provide time for participants to learn about successful policies and interventions that support high school redesign and discuss various approaches to complex and difficult problems.
• Encourage state policy leaders to benchmark their high school redesign efforts, share lessons learned (both positive and negative), and build a network of information, resources, and contacts.
Dissemination
Following each field trip, AYPF will post a thorough description of the briefings and site visits from the trip to its website and disseminate this summary to participants. The summary will describe the programs and schools visited and the promising practices and policies that have been critical in transforming schools, increasing academic achievement, and engaging students, along with a complete list of contacts. A final report, prepared by AYPF and NCSL, will synthesize lessons learned and outline key recommendations for state policymakers working to redesign their high schools. In partnership with NCSL and NGA, the final report will be widely disseminated to national, state, and local policymakers and practitioners as well as to other key education leaders.
For a complete schedule of upcoming trips, click here.
Resources
NGA's Honor States Grant Program
NCSL's High School Redesign Project
Contact
Iris Bond Gill, Senior Program Associate
The American Youth Policy Forum (AYPF), a nonprofit, nonpartisan professional development organization based in Washington, DC, provides learning opportunities for policymakers practitioners, and researchers working on youth issues at the national, state, and local levels.