Statewide districts: A way to unleash creative new learning options—and study them as they grow.

Education Reimagined partnered with the Center for Reinventing Public Education to co-author a paper about what a statewide district might make possible. The paper entitled, Statewide districts: A way to unleash creative new learning options—and study them as they grow, should inspire new ways of seeing what the future of education can look like and lead to new actions in communities across the country.

Inspiring new ideas at the state district level

In partnership with the Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), Education Reimagined is pleased to announce the publication of, “Statewide Districts: A way to unleash creative new learning options—and study them as they grow.”

In this paper, Robin Lake, Director of CRPE, and Kelly Young, President and Founder of Education Reimagined share how statewide districts might be one solution to help enable state’s design policies that support their local efforts, ensure all students have access to new options, and surface lessons in real time about what works and what doesn’t.

Statewide districts have the potential to:

• Provide infrastructure and supports to allow cities, community groups, or even individuals to form small learning communities
• Validate students’ learning, and give them credit for it
• Allow youth to access a variety of service providers and mentors
• Ensure all families can access educational options
• Conduct or commission research on promising innovations

We have seen from places like VLACS in New Hampshire, the Florida Virtual School, and District C in North Carolina how these ideas have opened up space for meeting young people and their families needs in ways that the current system cannot.

The pandemic underscored the need for a public education system that is responsive to the needs of students and families. Communities and educators are eager to build that system. 

We can’t afford to allow possibilities that came into view during the pandemic to vanish in a rush to return to normal, nor can we afford to watch innovations flourish outside of public education but remain inaccessible to students who stand to benefit from them. We need to build public education systems that encourage and support innovation—and we need states to help. Statewide districts might be one solution worth exploring more.

For more information or to discuss the paper further, please contact Emily at Emily@educationreimagined.org.

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