Education Elements Newsroom
The Personalized Learning Toolkit gives leaders premium content and tools proven to support effective and sustainable instructional shifts. SAN CARLOS, CALIF. (April 16, 2019) – After eight years of working alongside school leaders, and a year of testing, Education Elements is making its personalized learning expertise and proven methodology widely available to schools and districts through the Personalized Learning Toolkit. The toolkit helps school leaders take a do-it-yourself approach to planning, designing, and launching a school- or district-level student-centered, personalized learning initiative.
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What edtech innovations can you anticipate this year? We asked 49 edtech executives to look into their crystal balls and share their thoughts about what will happen in 2019. In addition to the usual suspects—more augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) apps—a lot of people believe this will be the year that social emotional learning (SEL) and interoperability become part of the mainstream. There are also a lot of predictions about improving safety and security. Read on to see what’s in store for 2019… Berj Akian, CEO, ClassLink • With 2019 here and 2020 in arm’s reach, there’s an ever-growing expectation that next-generation tech tools should do a better job of informing educators on which resources improve learning outcomes. I’m pleased to say that more and more education leaders and technology products providers are regularly talking and doing something about this. I hope this topic always remains the main problem to solve, and that the slow, steady progress the industry is making continues. • The industry has made loads of good progress on interoperability; now it’s on the mind of all educational leaders. This is a good thing, because it will take motivation from all sides to achieve simpler data connections between systems. The only wrinkle I see in the land of interoperability is that the conversation is still too complicated, and school leaders still don’t have a go-to resource that helps them translate the techno-babble of open data standards into plain English. What the industry needs is a place where interoperability can be discussed and advocated without complicated jargon and a standards bias—maybe a “Church of Interoperability” that’s open to all. I see Project Unicorn possibly filling this role. They see the bigger picture and nicely bridge the tech and curriculum sides of the discussion. ... Anthony Kim, CEO, Education Elements • We will increasingly see a shortage of people going into and staying in education. While educators have the benefit of a clear purpose, the working conditions are not competitive to other industries. • We will start seeing school districts completely redesigning their organization, to try to figure out how to get more done with less. • Innovations will be around how we provide embedded PD for our teachers and administrators. While schools of education will still be largely traditional, educators will seek non-traditional sources to develop their professional capabilities. This article originally appeared on eSchool News. Access the whole article here.
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This white paper includes a framework, actionable ideas and insights from districts who have successfully implemented personalized learning, to help you get started.
District Partners in the News | Ed Elements in the News | Mentions
TEMPLE, TX (KXXV) - Educators from across the state joined together for a training that blends technology with unique instruction methods.
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District Partners in the News | Ed Elements in the News
Educators from across the state came to Temple Monday to learn about how to use more personalized teaching techniques from Google and Education Elements.
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District Partners in the News | Ed Elements in the News
TEMPLE, TX (KXXV) - In an effort to transform and enhance instruction, improve relationships, and help all learners take more ownership of their learning, Temple ISD is stepping up to improve blended learning. On Monday, Dec.10 the Temple Independent School District, along with partners Education Elements and Google for Education Texas, will host The National Academy for Personalized Learning.
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District Partners in the News | Ed Elements in the News
In Putnam County, Tenn., with 23 schools spread across 400 square miles, we share many of the challenges faced by our fellow rural school districts nationwide, including inconsistent attendance, long commutes, and a high "mobility rate" - the rate at which students are moving in and out of the district.
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District Partners in the News | Ed Elements in the News
In Putnam County Schools, students use a variety of carefully chosen digital resources to meet them where they are On day one of math class, about one-third of school students are ready to master grade-level standards while others aren’t yet able to complete basic skills. Indeed, it’s not uncommon that students’ abilities span not just one grade level, but several grade levels. And while whole-class instruction may meet the needs of some students, more often than not, it leaves out many more students than it helps. An effective way to tackle the challenge of teaching core academics to all students across ability levels is to implement a personalized approach supported by a variety of carefully chosen digital resources.
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Ed Elements in the News | Press Release
In this episode, we had a conversation with Megan Huneck. Megan is a Design Principal on the Design & Implementation team at Education Elements, collaborating with district and school leaders to develop and implement personalized learning
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Ed Elements in the News | Press Release
SAN CARLOS, CALIF. (PRWEB) November 15, 2018 Jason Bedford brings diverse experience from schools, districts, and education technology solutions providers to support school district leaders
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Between navigating the personalized learning journey, and managing misconceptions and uncertainty, it can become an enormous task to communicate Personalized Learning efforts. This podcast will help understand how to create an inclusive and effective dialogue to get families and other stakeholders excited about PL.
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Ed Elements in the News | Press Release
SAN CARLOS, CALIF. (PRWEB) OCTOBER 01, 2018 Based on 8 years of work with 750 schools in 140 districts, Education Elements – a K-12 consulting partner specializing in personalized learning and organizational design – released their annual report sharing the academic achievements and professional growth of their school district partners.
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As educators, we are constantly revising our practice to focus our craft on student learning driven by sound instructional theory. With the classroom implementation of instructional technology, it is important to continue with the same journey. Blended learning is no longer a strategy that is relevant in some activities and with some lessons, but rather a consideration that must become a part of how we view our role in the classroom.
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Ed Elements in the News | Mentions
How good are schools at learning? Can they get better? As a culture, we worry a lot about student learning. But students don’t learn in a vacuum: Most are part of organizations (namely schools) that involve adults who also are engaged in learning, both individually and collectively. So what could help them learn?
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Ed Elements in the News | Press Release
SAN CARLOS, CALIF. (PRWEB) JULY 31, 2018 National K-12 consulting firm, Education Elements, and K-12 Operating System, Kiddom, launch a pilot with integrated offerings to provide comprehensive support to schools and districts.
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Ed Elements in the News | Mentions
Mike Wolking, currently completing an Axford Fellowship while on leave from Education Elements, sent me a summary of a short investigation he completed in how a student spends their day. He followed a student in a New Zealand secondary school for a day and tracked her activities. As I read through the summary, I thought it might be a helpful way to begin to think about the quality of personalized, competency-based education. This type of data could be useful for reflection and opening up conversations about where there might be opportunities for strengthening instruction, assessment, and learning experiences as well as identifying where operational policies or organizational habits are getting in the way. One would have to also consider the question: How do we think a student should spend their time in order to optimize learning and development?
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Ed Elements in the News | Press Release
SAN CARLOS, CALIF. (PRWEB) JULY 23, 2018 Google Cloud recognizes Education Elements’ technical proficiency and proven success in helping schools and districts through systemic change across the areas of vision, learning approach, technology, funding, community and culture
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EE in the news | Ed Elements in the News | Innovative Leadership
At Education Elements, we’re really lucky to support the design and implementation of blended and personalized learning across more than 700 schools and districts around the country. In this work, we’re often asked, “How do we set up teams to build our internal capacity and support the implementation, scale, and deepening of blended and personalized learning?”
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District Partners in the News | EE in the news | Ed Elements in the News
Fresno is a city of a half a million people (twice that in the metro area) in the middle of California's central valley. It's a diverse city with large Hispanic and Hmong populations. The Fresno Unified School District (@fresnounified) serves 75,000 students, of which almost nine in ten live in or near poverty, in about 100 schools.
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EE in the news | Ed Elements in the News | Organizational Leadership & Change Management
After reading in the The Culture Code about the strategy for creating high-performing teams by establishing a set of simple rules to guide complex decisions (heuristics), I decided to pick up The New School Rules by Anthony Kim and Alexis Gonzales-Black of Ed Elements. The six new rules for helping schools to become more responsive are: Plan for change, not perfection. Build trust and allow authority to spread. Define the work before you define the people. Aim for “safe enough to try” rather than consensus. Harness the flow and let information go. Schools grow when people grow.
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District Partners in the News | EE in the news | Ed Elements in the News
Earlier this week, we introduced the Kansas State Department of Education’s (KSDE) space-themed school redesign project, which could liberate and support schools to reimagine learning to achieve the state’s new vision for education: leading the world in the success of each student.
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EE in the news | Ed Elements in the News
Personalized learning is a pretty well-known term, but educators have different definitions for personalized learning, making for a sometimes-confusing approach to its implementation. Now, a new report seeks to apply a common definition to personalized learning and outline best practices for educators to advocate for the practice in their districts.
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District Partners in the News | Ed Elements in the News | Mentions
FAIRBANKS, ALASKA - Teachers in an Alaska borough are embracing a different approach that allows students to choose what and how they learn. Educators at the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District are leading the charge in incorporating personalized learning for the borough's 13,702 K-12 students, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported
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District Partners in the News | Mentions
FAIRBANKS — Students in Jeannette Fortune’s class at Ladd Elementary School spend one hour a week learning about a subject of their choosing. The 8- and 9-year-olds have investigated earthquakes, solar panels, hot air balloons and robots. Students have studied football tackles, chameleons, the state of West Virginia and volcanoes.
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EE in the news | Ed Elements in the News | Mentions | Organizational Leadership & Change Management
In this episode, Anthony Kim and Alexis Gonzalez-Black are hosted by Robin Peter Zander to discuss their new book The NEW School Rules: 6 Vital Practices for Thriving and Responsive Schools, how they can make an impact in education and how can students and schools thrive in this 21st Century.
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EE in the news | Ed Elements in the News | Mentions | Organizational Leadership & Change Management
In each episode of the Inside Our MIND podcast, we take a look at issues and challenges facing education that we are working to address through research, technology and strategic initiatives. In our latest episode, host Brian LeTendre welcomes Anthony Kim to the show to discuss his new book The New School Rules: 6 Vital Practices for Thriving and Responsive Schools. Anthony and Brian discuss how schools and districts must change from an organizational standpoint in order to have a truly successful personalized learning model.
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District Partners in the News | Mentions
Classrooms at Nikiski North Star Elementary have been incorporating personalized learning into their classrooms as a wave one school. The school’s hands-on training ended this month, a year after the district started rolling out the personalized learning plan. Wave two schools are scheduled to complete their training by this winter. Wave three schools launched personalized learning earlier this month and are scheduled to complete the program in spring 2019.
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EE in the news | Ed Elements in the News | Mentions
It is now April, and for many of us, the resolutions we set in January are starting to feel more like a memory than the habits we hoped they would be. Why is that? I think it is a combination of two factors: 1) We were not honest about our expectations — we shot too high or too low and didn’t take into account what we could honestly do. 2) We focused on the wrong issue. For example, we wanted to lose weight but tried to increase our exercise rather than fix our diet. Right intention, but the solution didn’t quite work because we didn’t fully understand the problem.
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EE in the news | Ed Elements in the News | Mentions
Don’t call schools outdated; call them inadequate. Don’t focus on technology; emphasize the benefits for teachers. And try not to talk about testing too much.
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EE in the news | Ed Elements in the News | Mentions
Interest in personalized learning continues to surge all across the country. However, not everyone understands what personalized learning looks like or the changes it will necessitate, and people are often wary of what they don’t understand. So how we talk about personalized learning can either engage families or push them away.
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Ed Elements in the News | Organizational Leadership & Change Management
On this Podcast, Anthony is interviewed by Justin Baeder Director of The Principal Center about how schools and district organizations can be more effective and impactful.
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District Partners in the News | Mentions
Educating students in a safe nurturing and engaging learning environment, E. B. Ellington is a Gifted and Talented Academy with high expectations for all students. We're in Ravenel for our Cool School of the week.
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Ed Elements in the News | Organizational Leadership & Change Management
In this episode, we are talking with Anthony Kim, a nationally recognized leader in education technology, school design, and personalized learning. He is the founder of Education Elements and has been involved in helping hundreds of schools change the way they think about teaching and learning.
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Ed Elements in the News | Mentions
In high functioning schools and systems, leaders play four important roles: governance, operations, community building and change leadership. As El Paso superintendent Juan Cabrera and I discussed in a recent post, each of these roles can feel like a full-time job. Just maintaining the status quo (governance and operations) are complex and politically charged roles. Mobilizing collective community action to better supports youth and families can be an enormous lift–and school leaders almost always have a role in making it happen.
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Ed Elements in the News | Mentions
In a recent meeting with a small group of teachers we asked them about the professional development at their school. Each teacher glanced around at the others, unsure what to say. With a nervous laugh, one said “Ummm. It’s not that effective?” And the floodgates opened. A series of adjectives and descriptions followed, with teachers calling it boring, saying it was unactionable, and lamenting that they spent most of their time in professional development sessions wanting it to be over. It sounded familiar.
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Ed Elements in the News | Press Release
SAN CARLOS, CALIF. (PRWEB) FEBRUARY 01, 2018 Education Elements, the national expert on personalized learning, proudly announces its expansion in Georgia with an exciting new partnership with four Georgia school districts. This partnership kicked off with a meeting on January 16, 2018, that brought together 13 schools in four Georgia school districts, including Bibb County School District, Dougherty County School System, Muscogee County School District, and Savannah-Chatham County Public Schools to strategize ways to increase student achievement and engagement through the design and implementation of personalized learning in each of the schools.
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Ed Elements in the News | Press Release
SAN CARLOS, Calif., Jan. 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Authors Anthony Kim and Alexis Gonzales-Black today announced the launch of their new book, The New School Rules: 6 Vital Practices for Thriving and Responsive Schools. Designed to increase the effectiveness of schools in a rapidly changing world, The New School Rules provides both a practical guide for improving the practices of school and districts, as well as a thoughtful examination of the self-imposed barriers that can hinder the completion of work in any type of organization.
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From Sir Ken Robinson, films like Most Likely to Succeed, and campaigns like XQ Super Schools Project, we are constantly reminded of the need to change our schools from the model developed during the industrial era. Back then, we focused on developing a large workforce with common basic skills to prepare students for factory work. Our needs are so different today — yet our schools have not been updated.
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District Partners in the News | Mentions
School districts in Utah, Illinois, Arizona, and Missouri won free support from Education Elements consultants to help drive their personalized learning initiatives forward.
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Ed Elements in the News | Education Elements
Not too long ago, I took the opportunity to visit the Motown Museum in Detroit. In 1959, Berry Gordy founded Motown Records, which developed artists like the Temptations, Four Tops, Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and the Jackson 5. At first glance it seemed that Berry’s success was because he had a knack for identifying superstars but a deeper look reveals more. Motown’s success was actually built on an operating system which is similar to that of some of the most successful organizations today.
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Ed Elements in the News | Press Release
SAN CARLOS, CALIF. (PRWEB) NOVEMBER 09, 2017 Education Elements is hosting its 4th annual Personalized Learning Summit for district leaders from May 2–4, 2018 in San Francisco, CA. The Summit hosts hundreds of district leaders from all over the country to learn from industry veterans, exchange ideas with peers, and experience cutting edge technology at some of Silicon Valley’s biggest tech companies.
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District Partners in the News | Education Elements | Mentions
Personalized learning, competency-based learning and dynamic organizational design have shown promising results in school districts across the nation, according to a new report from Education Elements.
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This article is part of the guide The Personalized Learning Toolkit. The consulting firm Education Elements designated four factors as the keys to successfully integrating a personalized learning model, based on its experience with 100 districts, 300 schools and 300,000 students. Those four elements—flexible content and tools, targeted instruction, data-driven decisions and student reflection and ownership—are the Core Four of Personalized Learning. A framework built around the Core Four provides schools with definitions, details and direction, including actionable ideas, tips and insights from districts who have successfully implemented the four elements.
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District Partners in the News | Education Elements | Press Release
SAN CARLOS, Calif., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- With much excitement, Education Elements, a recognized national leader in the design and implementation of personalized learning, today announced the five winners of their first Personalized Learning (PL) Challenge. Districts in Utah, Illinois, Arizona, and Missouri were each selected by Education Elements' team of judges, and will be awarded personalized support from Education Elements.
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If you were looking for another reason to support ballot question 3A, Greeley Evans School District 6's upcoming ask for a mill levy override, we want to talk to you about blended learning. And if you weren't looking for any reason to support 3A, you really need to hear this.
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Ed Elements in the News | Education Elements
Separate from its Playbook that helps define a vision, Education Elements, a consulting firm, helps schools and districts design next-generation teaching and learning models.
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The Greeley-Evans School District 6 Board of Education heard the results of a study of the district's blended learning initiative at its meeting Monday night, showing some of the clearest data yet of the initiative's effectiveness.
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District Partners in the News | Education Elements | Mentions
Call them millennials, call them digital natives, call them zombies, but the cliche is that today’s kids can be identified by their hunched posture, their eyes locked on a screen and their tendency to communicate in emoji. However, this idea that schoolkids are perpetually plugged in isn’t exactly true—especially not among kids from poorer families. In the USA, one third of schoolchildren (kindergarten through high school) can’t go online at home, and most of these children are from low-income and rural areas. A decade ago, Larry Irving of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) called this digital divide a “racial ravine,” and his language still rings true today....
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Ed Elements in the News | Education Elements | Mentions
The Trump Administration’s 2017 and 2018 education budget proposes some drastic cuts, most notably, the elimination of the $2.3 billion Title II-A (ESEA) funding and $1.2 billion 21st Century Community Learning Centers program. According to the administration, ESEA funding and 21st Century Community Learning Centers programs are ineffective and duplicative. But the budget documents (which consist of more than 27 volumes of artifacts) did not explain why they are ineffective (or with what they are duplicative), though there is no shortage of opinions on both sides of the debate. This is our current reality. Outrage isn’t going to help, so I’m focusing on the actions we can take, given the reality we face.
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District Partners in the News | Education Elements | Mentions
EVANSTON — Administrators and staff of Uinta County School District No. 1 met with officials from the Kansas Department of Education on Thursday, Sept. 7, to discuss the district’s personalized learning program, including blended learning. Blended learning, a priority of the district over the past several years, combines traditional face-to-face instruction with the use of technology and online learning. Jaraun Dennis, UCSD No. 1 director of personalized learning, said, “As a district we usually talk about needing four components — small group instruction, integration of digital tools, the use of data to make data-driven decisions, and the idea of self direction.” According to Dennis, blended learning is just a part of the district’s move toward a personalized learning model that includes “some element of student control over time, place, path, or pace.”...
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District Partners in the News | Ed Elements in the News | Education Elements | Mentions
Indiana’s Metropolitan School District of Warren Township is rapidly emerging as a personalized learning leader in the nation’s heartland. The district, one of sixteen winners of federal Race to the Top District grants from the U.S. Department of Education in late 2012, launched its first cohort of five schools implementing personalized instructional models in January 2016. Superintendent Dena Cushenberry and her leadership team chose a deliberative strategy to retool their schools’ teaching approach “to prepare their students for their future, not ours.” They implemented new commitments to professional development for their teachers to master the new pedagogy, embracing participatory innovation and a willingness to experiment. Using short- and long-term goals around growth as personal development plans for teachers and students alike, Warren’s classroom culture evolved into one where personalizing teaching and learning could thrive comfortably. Details follow.
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Ed Elements in the News | Education Elements | Mentions
chool and district leaders face a difficult balancing act when it comes to change. On one hand, leaders are expected to drive rapid and complete change, often with academic, enrollment, or other quantitative performance indicators as immediate benchmarks. On the other, bringing change too quickly or forcefully can overwhelm teachers and students, leaving leaders without anything to show for their efforts. With short tenures being common in the role of superintendent as well as principal (each averaging less than five years in the role), it’s no wonder bringing about significant change is difficult, because by the time a leader has established enough credibility to try something new, it is nearly time to move on. It is for this reason that while the most successful change initiatives may start with top leadership, they must also include school leadership teams. These teams, made of teachers, coaches, and school administrators, increase context and credibility among staff, and often have a greater likelihood of sticking around for longer...
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Ed Elements in the News | Education Elements | Mentions
Education Elements provides personalized learning services–consulting and platform tools–to school districts. They recently released their third annual Impact Report, “Building Capacity for Personalized Learning and More,” examining the impact of personalized learning, competency-based learning and dynamic organizational design on districts across the country. Here are several highlights of what they found. Personalized Learning “As personalized learning grows in popularity, additional voices have emerged that point to the risks associated with it,” said Anthony Kim, Founder and CEO of Education Elements. “We are pleased to report that districts who are thoughtful about their implementations and focus on the needs of their communities see a positive impact year-after-year on not only student test scores, but also student engagement, teacher satisfaction and overall district effectiveness.”...
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Ed Elements in the News | Education Elements | Mentions
Former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates has said repeatedly that one of his favorite ways of teaching kids is by letting them guide their own education, typically with laptops or tablets, and moving the teacher more into the role of coach. The style is known as "personalized learning," and a study involving 36,000 students just upheld it as a major driver of improvement in reading and math skills. Since personalized learning has had scant formal evidence showing its success as a teaching method, the new study also adds some empirical support that Gates and many other techies have been on the right track in their endorsements...
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Ed Elements in the News | Education Elements | Mentions
Former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates has said repeatedly that one of his favorite ways of teaching kids is by letting them guide their own education, typically with laptops or tablets, and moving the teacher more into the role of coach. The style is known as "personalized learning," and a study involving 36,000 students just upheld it as a major driver of improvement in reading and math skills. Since personalized learning has had scant formal evidence showing its success as a teaching method, the new study also adds some empirical support that Gates and many other techies have been on the right track in their endorsements...
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Ed Elements in the News | Education Elements | Mentions | Press Release
Education Elements, the leading consultancy supporting public school districts to become more student-centered, announces the release of their new whitepaper series, Guide to Selecting Curriculum to Support Personalized Learning. Having supported 600 schools across 34 states, Education Elements has developed a structured approach to effectively identify and implement a proper curriculum framework that supports each district's’ unique needs. This expansive guide is broken into a three phases whitepaper series and is available at no cost through Education Elements’ website.
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Ed Elements in the News | Education Elements | Mentions
Education Elements, the leading consultancy supporting public school districts to become more student-centered, announces the release of their new whitepaper series, Guide to Selecting Curriculum to Support Personalized Learning. Having supported 600 schools across 34 states, Education Elements has developed a structured approach to effectively identify and implement a proper curriculum framework that supports each district's’ unique needs. This expansive guide is broken into a three phases whitepaper series and is available at no cost through Education Elements’ website. “For district leaders, selecting the right curriculum for their students can be one of the greatest challenges they encounter, especially when they're making new changes to welcome a more personalized approach,” said Amy Jenkins, Chief Operating Officer of Education Elements. “This new resource is designed to support leaders through a structured approach to selecting curriculum that supports a personalized learning environment.”...
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District Partners in the News | Education Elements | Mentions
It has been said that “Success is led by the power of communication.” We knew that if we wanted to be successful in our implementation of personalized learning in Yuma School District One, we would need to develop a communication plan tailored to different audiences within our community that rang with clarity. And it did indeed turn out that our approach to communication was critically important, even more so than usual when embarking upon a new initiative, in that we were asking our community to help support our personalized learning initiative through a bond election. Therefore, our messaging had to address the “why” around personalized learning, how it would impact our teachers, students and parents, and the benefits that we envisioned our community reaping. As personalized learning was a new concept for our community, clear communication and the understanding of our constituents was paramount....
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Radically changing the core of what a school does is hard work. It requires vision and commitment from district leadership, incredibly strong leadership from principals and dedicated teachers that truly believe the educational options they have provided their students can be better. Since 2010, my organization has been incredibly lucky to have worked with more than 500 schools across more than 100 school districts that have done just that (with impressive results). We read the recently released RAND report “Insights on Personalized Learning Implementation and Effects (July 2017)” with optimism, but also a little bit of concern about over-generalizations from their findings and conclusions. First, it’s important to note that 40 schools included in the RAND report received funding from the Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC) with the intention of creating one innovative school model. In the case of the schools and districts we support, they are teeing up the funding (as well as models, infrastructure and support) for many more schools from the beginning. Why is this important?...
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District Partners in the News | Education Elements | Mentions
As the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District approaches the start of the 2017 to 2018 school year, administrators and teachers are starting to implement the early stages of a new educational approach: personalized learning. In conjunction with the personalized education consulting group, Education Elements, the district is shaping what personalized learning will look like throughout the different schools and classrooms that make up the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District. “We are very excited to work with Education Elements as a part of our strong investment in our staff,” Superintendent Sean Dusek said in a statement on the district’s website. “We are poised to make significant progress in personalizing the educational experience for all of our students and this professional development will help us fulfill our long term goals in this endeavor.”...
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District Partners in the News | Education Elements | Mentions
I am a second-year principal at Marion Jr.-Sr. High School. Before my time here, I spent three years as an eighth-grade science teacher, seven years as a chemistry and physics teacher and three years as a high school assistant principal. Despite this experience, I can honestly say that as of seven months ago I knew almost nothing about personalized learning. Just six months ago, school-issued devices at Marion were non-existent. Now, we are a 1:1 school. When I reflect on how far we have come throughout the past year, I am impressed by how much hard work everyone has done to begin to make personalized learning (PL) a reality. Our district PL Council engaged in serious debate over our vision of PL, our rollout plan (cohort vs. all-in), and our areas of priority and focus. Our PL Building Leadership Team collaborated on expectations and commitments, agreed on base model designs for PL in our classrooms, turn-key trained using the Education Elements’ Core Four, and started the process of developing a formal support structure for teachers transitioning to PL in their classrooms...
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Competency-Based Education | Mentions
Coined in the 1970s, competency-based learning is gaining converts and building enthusiasm in our K-12 education system, taking the focus off grades and seat time—and replacing it with an emphasis on students’ mastery of specific concepts and skills.
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A new guide provides insights on districts’ efforts to pioneer approaches in “competency-based learning,” and documents the many challenges they can face along the way.
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Ed Elements in the News | Press Release
Irwin brings significant experience supporting large K-12 districts across the United States as former lead of Gartner's K-12 practice Education Elements, a consultancy supporting public school districts to become more student-centered, welcomes David Irwin to its team of Managing Partners where he will be responsible for supporting school district leaders in their efforts to transform their districts. Upon joining Education Elements, Irwin will continue the next chapter in his mission to transform public education. For the past 14 years, Irwin has worked at Gartner Inc., the world's leading IT research and advisory firm, in several roles including supporting state and local government clients and edtech providers, leading North American consulting operations, and spearheading product development for their events division.
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EE Summit | Ed Elements in the News | Mentions
Education Elements, a consulting firm, hosted a personalized learning summit earlier this month in California. If you missed it check out this blog post that features highlights from the event.
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Baby Boomers were raised in an analog world and experienced the dawn of a digital domain. We Boomers grew up with limited access to information, and a greater appreciation for hierarchy and long-term career planning. Millennials and Generation Xers grew up with immediate access to information, with connections and comfort engaging online with people across the world. It’s the difference akin to watching a movie on VHS versus streaming it on Netflix.
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Ed Elements in the News | Press Release
Digital Promise and Education Elements announced today the release of the Competency-based Education (CBE) Toolkit, the culmination of over a year’s work in ten forward-thinking school districts who are sharing lessons learned from their CBE implementation journey. The toolkit shares highly actionable advice and thoughtful reflection from the contributing districts, and is intended to help other district leaders and teachers at any phase in the CBE implementation journey.
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District Partners in the News | Mentions
I first heard about personalized learning during a meeting with my former principal. He began talking about how the district was looking into moving towards personalized learning through a blended learning model, and all I thought was, “Oh, this is just another educational fad.”
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District Partners in the News | Mentions
News-Miner Community Perspective:
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If you’re an educator, the disruptive world of Silicon Valley probably couldn’t seem farther from your local public school system. But what you may not realize is that the techniques that start-ups prize are already changing the way educators across the country implement changes in their school systems. In today’s fraught political and educational climate, schools would do well to look for inspiration wherever they can find it—and one of the most important lessons educators can borrow is from Silicon Valley. In order to succeed, the lesson goes, you have to be willing to fail fast.
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The cloud offers big benefits to companies of all sizes. But to maximize the value and power of the cloud, you need to know how well it’s performing for you. That’s what Education Elements found out when the personalized learning company installed New Relic to monitor its use of Amazon Web Services.
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District Partners in the News | Mentions
New approach energizes teachers and students after period of low performance in education
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What millennials want in a workplace has already become the stuff of clichés. Beanbag chairs, beer on tap and a smorgasbord of free lunch options.
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Ed Elements in the News | Press Release
Includes Real-World Strategies for Schools Adopting Blended & Personalized Learning Education Elements and The Learning Accelerator today released a new communications planning guide for school districts that are transforming education through blended and personalized learning. The new guide is in response to the nation-wide movement towards personalization in education and reflects what these two organizations, both deeply involved in this movement as blended and personalized learning implementation experts and catalysts, have discovered as critical to success. "A clear takeaway from our past work is that effective communication is a cornerstone of successful innovation in education," said Kira Keane, Partner at The Learning Accelerator. "School districts that develop thoughtful communications plans build a culture of engagement, transparency, and trust that is critical for innovation both to take hold in the classroom and to be scalable across many schools."
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There are many elements critical to the success of change management initiatives, including those involving blended and personalized learning. Having worked with almost 200 districts across two organizations, we have learned that communications is one of the areas districts have the least experience with, but which can have the biggest impact. That's why we've designed a communications guide for school leaders and districts, with tips, examples and resources. Here's where to start:
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A new law passed by Virginia’s legislature and expected to be signed this month by Governor Terry McAuliffe presents an important opportunity for the commonwealth to support the work of its most cutting-edge school divisions.
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s we reboot, rethink, and reassess our values in the first couple of months of 2017, I'd like to reflect on what this year will mean for education. In the months to come, we will face substantial shifts resulting from the elections of the past year, which not only brought us new politicians, but also demonstrated a deep division between the perceptions of the coastal cities and the rest of the country. As the CEO of a personalized-learning company, Education Elements, I use this time of reflection to consider what changes and shifts are afoot for our districts partners. For education as a whole, there are five major changes that I predict 2017 will bring:
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District Partners in the News | Mentions
n the middle of January, with little daylight and plenty of snow, we began the process of bringing together the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District community to learn about personalized learning.
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Witlin to Support Education Elements' Efforts to Increase and Enhance Consulting Capabilities for School District Clients Education Elements, a consultancy supporting public school districts to become more student-centered, today announced the addition of Jack Witlin to the organization's Board of Directors. Witlin will replace Jennifer Carolan as the company works towards the advancement of its existing suite of client consulting services.
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District Partners in the News | Mentions
As a leader in a school system today, it can be difficult to make the choice to move forward with a districtwide change, knowing that the team around you may not fully endorse your decision. For us, the implementation of personalized learning across Freehold Township Schools in New Jersey was a move we knew would require all hands on-deck. It was the best decision for our students, and our teachers were going to be the ones making major changes to their lessons. Because of this, we made sure to include many teachers in the process from the start—building excitement and early buy-in for the work. This is how we made change happen—and how you can, too. Make it fun As we embarked on our journey, the first activity we performed as a team was the Marshmallow Challenge—to show the power of iteration and that it is OK to fail forward. For those unfamiliar with it, the Marshmallow Challenge is a team-building activity where you are given 18 minutes to build the tallest free-standing structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string and one marshmallow. When the time runs out,the structure must be standing with ...
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District Partners in the News | Mentions
By design, some students go through two years of kindergarten in Middletown, New York.
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Over the last fifteen years, I have been directly involved in supporting a diverse mix of charters, virtual schools, and public school districts. All of it with a lens around expanding opportunities around choice, voice, path and place to create the best possible outcome for those our decisions impact most: the students. My work has exposed me to philanthropy, non-profit policy organizations, public schools, charter networks, and state departments of education where I have seen both success and failure when change was not implemented correctly.
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Serving over 12,000 students in Indiana, the Metropolitan School District of Warren Township’s mission is to prepare its students “to be self-directed learners who are literate, creative, curious, civic-minded citizens who do meaningful work in school and life beyond school.” As part of the U.S. Department of Education’s Race to the Top-District (RTT-D) initiative, Warren Township was awarded $29 million to provide its students with a more robust and equitable education, including the 75% of the student population that comes from low-income families, by purchasing and implementing new educational resources. Inspired by what Warren administrators and teachers saw while visiting fellow RTT-D grantee Middletown City School District in New York, Warren Township developed a comprehensive plan for implementing personalized learning by prioritizing blended learning in the classroom and beyond.
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District Partners in the News | Ed Elements in the News | Press Release
The 10 district leaders selected as the third cohort of the prestigious Lexington Education Leadership Award Fellowship completed their personalized learning fellowship with a celebration in Washington DC on November 9, 2016.
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Education Elements is launching Touchpoint, a new tool designed to support districts as they manage personalized learning initiatives.
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Until recently, one of the only things people talking about personalized learning could agree upon was that there was nothing standardized about it. There is no single accepted definition, nor is there a single right approach or way to measure its impact.
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Ed Elements in the News | Mentions
IT’S ELEMENTARY, MY DEAR: Since 2010 Education Elements has been trying to find the right mix of ingredients to make personalized learning happen in more than 500 schools across 100 districts. Last week it released its 2015-2016 Impact Report, which claims that these students saw more than 100 percent growth in math and reading according to the NWEA MAP. Sound too good to be true?
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Ed Elements in the News | Press Release
SAN CARLOS, CA (PRWEB) SEPTEMBER 07, 2016
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District Partners in the News | Mentions
A year after a Yuma, AZ district introduced an iPad 1-to-1 program into grades K-8, at least one of its schools is seeking grant money to set up a program that would provide activities before and after school for students as well as classes for parents.
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District Partners in the News | Education Elements | Mentions
In my opinion, many school districts attempt to implement too many initiatives, too often and without enough clarity on how each fits into the greater scheme of the overall instructional program. Something I refer to as “initiativitis.” It’s nobody’s fault. With the constant changes in state curriculums and assessments, and the frequent onslaught of the newest “research-based, best practice,” districts struggle to keep up. The challenge is that newer initiative priorities are often layered upon older ones, whether they had been successful or not. Teachers become unsure on what the expectations are. Is this new initiative replacing something, or am I supposed to just add this to what I’m already doing? The new and old initiatives often become isolated into pockets of implementation, not complementing but competing with one another for instructional time and resources...
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District Partners in the News | Ed Elements in the News
Next phase of tech-infused teaching model goes deeper on personalization and authenticity
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District Partners in the News | Press Release
The second cohort of Lexington Education Leadership Award (LELA) fellowship winners celebrates the completion of their personalized learning fellowship. Each of the leaders is poised to bring their newly gained expertise to their district to improve the learning environment for students.
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EE Summit | Education Elements | Press Release
The Personalized Learning Summit brings together more than 250 district leaders at various stages of their personalized learning journeys to share best practices and learn from each other and experts through two days of innovation tours, keynote speakers, and interactive workshops.
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District Partners in the News | Press Release
The Lexington Institute has awarded the Lexington Education Leadership Award (LELA) fellowship to 10 outstanding district leaders from across the country. Each is a pioneer in the space, ready to do even more to support students and teachers in personalized learning.
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District Partners in the News | Mentions
On the surface, it may seem like charter schools are the ideal testing grounds for educational technology. They’re designed to be small and nimble. These “incubators of innovation,” as President Obama called them, are able to quickly try out new ideas.But in the journey towards successfully implementing educational technology in classrooms, the tortoise may outpace the hare. That’s because it’s only in big, slow-moving traditional schools that edtech can reach its full potential to democratize education.
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If there is one thing I know about school districts, it is that each is unique with its own strengths, challenges, goals, political context and quirky qualities. But if there is another thing I have learned, it is that despite the differences, there are things that hold true.
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EE Summit | Ed Elements in the News | Press Release
The Personalized Learning Summit brings together more than 250 district leaders at various stages of their personalized learning journeys to share best practices and learn from each other and experts through two days of innovation tours, keynote speakers, and interactive workshops.
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District Partners in the News | Mentions
We are pleased to announce that applications are now open for the third class of Lexington Education Leadership Award (LELA) Fellows. Applications are online here and will remain open through April 10th.
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Cloud, big data, and security are all big factors in education IT this year. At the same time, there is a cultural shift taking place not only among the student body, but within the demographics of the IT departments themselves.
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King’s appointment as acting Secretary of Education, may signal greater support to superintendents in developing a shared understanding and changing mindsets across their leadership, teachers and community.
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District Partners in the News | Mentions
It’s tempting to believe that money can solve all your problems—especially if you’re a school superintendent. I’ll never forget the moment my school district won its Race to the Top district grant from the federal government in 2012. 28.6 million dollars! I felt like I had won the lottery. Except that instead of buying a mansion or a yacht, my reward would be ensuring better outcomes for all my students in Warren Township in Indianapolis.
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Ed Elements in the News | Mentions
Educators have much to choose from when they're looking for adaptive digital curricula to personalize learning for math or English/language arts. But those who want high-quality, adaptive offerings for science and social studies have a limited menu of options. Those educators are increasingly searching for curricula that will allow them to personalize the learning experience for students and collect highly relevant data without having to build it from scratch themselves.
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Like many in the education world, I was excited to read the recent announcement by Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan regarding their significant investment in personalized learning. From working in the edtech space for many years, I’ve observed not only the general tendency to under-invest in what should be considered the most important industry in our country (K-12 education), but also that poorly invested money in edtech fails to produce the intended outcomes.
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No gymnasiums, no cafeterias and no administrators. That’s school policy at AltSchools, a chain of private, for-profit schools backed by the likes of Andreessen Horowitz and Mark Zuckerberg.
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The Lexington Institute is excited to announce that ten outstanding leaders from across the country have been accepted into the first Lexington Education Leadership Award (LELA) Fellowship. The LELA fellowship is an exciting and highly selective 6-month program designed to expose district superintendents to personalized learning and facilitate the first steps to implementation.
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Michael Horn left the Clayton Christensen Institute on October 10 in search of new challenges. Now the man renowned for applying “disruptive innovation” ideas to education will find his next career to be even more chaotic.
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Technology has drastically and quickly changed the way we live, work and play. It has also opened new doors for how we learn, teach and engage. Developing a personalized path for students that engage them more deeply and accelerate their learning is not only possible, but necessary to improve the way that we currently do school.
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District Partners in the News | Ed Elements in the News
In terms of student proficiency, today’s classrooms are more diverse than ever. We’re “detracking“ students previously sorted by ability. We’re mainstreaming those with special needs. And we’re serving more and more students who are just learning English.
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Highlight from Education Elements is a cloud based personalized learning platform (PLP) being used in over 100 schools across the country serving more than 60,000 students.
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District Partners in the News | Ed Elements in the News
As schools swing back into session, stories of mismanaged 1-to-1 computing initiatives in schools are filling the news—and unsurprisingly so in many cases, as I wrote back in 2011. But there are plenty of good “edtech” stories, too, worth highlighting.
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Statesville, N.C. – As a hazy morning sun rises over the rural farm community surrounding North Iredell Middle School, the students take their seats and lift their MacBooks to start the school day. Soon, the glow of hundreds of screens illuminates each face in every classroom.
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District Partners in the News | Mentions
Fulton County Schools (FCS) is launching an initiative to turn its 101 schools into personalized learning environments.
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As K–12 blended learning has grown, efforts have popped up across the country to create breakthrough proof points that stretch our collective understanding of what is possible for students.
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