Rhode Island LEAP TASK FORCE

Rhode Island LEAP TASK FORCE

March 23, 2021

The Learning, Equity & Accelerated Pathways (LEAP)

Task Force

Rhode Island LEAP Task Force Cadence

Cadence Purpose Topics Addressed

2/11,

11:45amTask Force Launch Session

Remarks from the Commissioner, the Governor-designate, Chair Cottam, and a

keynote address from the 10th U.S. Secretary of Education Dr. John King Jr.

2/16

8:30amUnderstanding Root Causes

Academic and non-academic data along with key analytic insights with

Curriculum Associates, Renaissance Learning, and Scott Gausland

2/23

8:30amDrawing Upon National Expertise

Expanded learning opportunities with Dr. Jennifer McCombs, RAND & Dr.

Matthew Kraft, Brown University

3/2

8:30amDrawing Upon National Expertise

Serving the needs of diverse populations with Dr. Marc Brackett, Yale

University; Dr. Madeline Mavrogordato, MSU; and Dr. Nathan Jones, Boston U

3/9

2:00pmDrawing Upon National Expertise

Thinking through a whole-of-system response via an equity lens with Dr.

Kenneth Wong, Brown; & Prof. Paul Reville, Harvard

3/16

8:30amRecommendations Deliver draft recommendations of task force to the Commissioner

3/23

8:30amRecommendations Finalize revised draft recommendations of the task force to the Commissioner.

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LEAP Task Force Agenda – Meeting VII

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Timing Purpose Speaker

8:30am Call to Order Dr. Kelvin Roldán, Deputy Commissioner

8:32am Opening Remarks Angélica Infante-Green, Commissioner

8:35am RemarksIan Rosenblum, Acting Assistant Secretary

U.S. Department Of Education

8:38am Welcome RemarksCo-Chair Ana Riley, Deputy Commissioner

Co-Chair Jim Erinakes, Superintendent of Exeter-West Greenwich

8:40am Review Revised Recommendations Co-Chair Ana Riley, Deputy Commissioner

9:00amAround-The-World

Breakout Rooms

Lisa Foehr, Chief of Teaching & Learning

Spencer Sherman, Chief of Innovation

Christine Lopes-Metcalfe, Chief of the School Building Authority

10:20am Wrap-Up Co-Chair Jim Erinakes, Superintendent of Exeter-West Greenwich

10:30am Task Force Adjournment Angélica Infante-Green, Commissioner

Communicating About Our LEAP Work

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• Sharing on Twitter

• Retweet RIDE's posts

• Tag @RIDeptEd

• Use the hashtag -- #LEAPRI

• Sharing on Facebook

• Share RIDE's posts with your Facebook friends

• Share with your colleagues and friends!

• Encourage folks to reach out with thoughts or recommendations at

[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Theory of Action

If RIDE... Then Rhode Island will...

1. Engages in a collaborative solution-oriented

process, focused on collectively accelerating

student learning for the state's most impacted

populations

Form solutions-oriented partnerships and realize economies of

scale to create impactful, efficient solutions that serve Rhode

Island students where they attend school, live, and play.

2. Grounds its strategy in data and in research or

evidence-based best practices

Strategically invest resources in a limited set of solutions with a

track record of success in supporting and transforming

outcomes for students.

3. Identifies, communicates, and supports targeted

high priority standards/models for accelerating

learning

Focus our energies on collectively implementing a few high-value

activities that will quickly accelerate student learning.

4. Creates the conditions and structures that enable

LEAs to collectively accelerate student learning

Ensure our entire system will move in coordination and with

intentionality to respond to the clear and present needs of

students, families, and educators, while accelerating learning.

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Local Education Agencies (LEAs) are in the best position—in collaboration with their community stakeholders—to accelerate learning and meaningfully

support students, families and educators. RIDE’s role is to empower districts, support conditions for success, and hold districts accountable.

The Work of LEAP

Systemic Enabling Conditions

• Conditions needed to support this change

LEAP Task Force Absolute Priorities

• Clear commitments to change

LEAP Recommendations

• Specific actions to be taken by systems

Framework for LEAP

• An approach to acceleration in Rhode Island

RIDE Fiscal Guidance for the Field

• Supporting financial decision-making

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Recommendations: Systemic Enabling Conditions

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In order to meet the urgency of this moment and achieve the recommendations, goals, and beliefs laid out by the

LEAP Task Force, certain enabling conditions must be met at the systems level.

1. Address systemic racial inequities in Rhode Island's educational system.

2. Center the voices of students and families in all of our work, across the entire system.

3. Prioritize cross-sector partnership and intentional collaboration across Rhode Island's entire education system--

between PK-12 and IHEs, between LEAs and CBOs, between municipalities, mayors, and the state-- to implement

collective impact approaches.

4. Codify collective action and shared accountability across all systems.

Recommendations: Five LEAP Absolute Priorities

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The LEAP Task Force believes the following absolute priorities will accelerate student learning and move

our PK-12 system forward. This work must elevate and center the needs of Rhode Island students who

are multilingual, differently-abled, and who live in the urban core through an explicitly anti-racist, equity-

focused lens.

1. Energize our school communities— students and educators— by launching a back-to-school campaign and

statewide toolkit, with attention to students who are chronically absent and opportunity youth.

2. Ensure all students have access to high-quality and personalized support from adults, both during the

school day and through extended learning, partnerships for before/after school, or summer learning

opportunities.

3. Universally screen all students and align resources to need.

4. Improve and support student transitions, across grades and systems.

5. Close the digital divide.

Recommendations: LEAP Absolute Priority #1

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Energize our school communities— students and educators— by launching a statewide back-to-

school campaign, with particular attention to students who are chronically absent and opportunity youth.

1. Launch a targeted whole-of-state campaign and communications toolkit in multiple languages to re-

engage our school communities about returning to school safely.

2. Re-engage and empower chronically absent youth and opportunity youth, as well as the students who

have fallen out of our state systems.

3. Highlight the importance of participating in summer programming and extended learning offerings,

including before and after school, and out-of-school time opportunities.

4. Elevate the power of coming together for common, shared experiences on social-emotional wellness.

5. Explicitly use summer programming as an opportunity to uplift youth voice and re-engage youth and

their families in the schooling experience.


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Ensure all students have access to high-quality and personalized support from adults, through extended

learning, partnerships for before/after school, and summer learning opportunities.

1. Commit to every child and every family having access to at least one high-quality extended learning opportunity

this summer.

2. Ensure that every urban student, multilingual learners, and differently-abled students in Rhode Island is enrolled

and engaged in quality summer learning opportunities that, ideally, is designed specifically to serve them.

3. Recruit and expand staff to provide in-school and expanded learning opportunities, with a focus on activating

adults within local communities.

4. In planning for any expanded learning programming, prioritize the student-centered design and the values of voice

and choice, flexibility and access.

5. Forge intentional partnerships between LEAs and CBOs, recognizing their respective strengths, sharing unique

expertise, and collaborating to ensure a more fluid and seamless post-summer transition.


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Universally screen all students and align resources to need.

1. In the coming year, universally screen all students both academically and social-emotionally, and

target resources based on need and urgency.

2. Plan and allocate resources with a clear and focused priority for supports and staffing related to every

urban students, multilingual learners, and differently-abled students in Rhode Island.

3. Root all solutions in high quality instructional materials, professional learning for educators, and

positive, productive relationships with students.

4. Center all actions from an orientation of culturally responsiveness and anti-racist stance that promotes

social-emotional learning and wellness.

5. Focus on building and sustaining adult capacity to work in teams to support students holistically

through a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) lens.


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Improve and support student transitions, across grades and systems.

1. Create stronger partnerships to support educational transitions between grades and across state and

local systems (i.e., education, housing, health, social services, mental health).

2. Targeted family engagement and resources for outreach and support to communities around the PreK

and the post-secondary transitions.

3. Articulate clearer pathways to both college, career, and workforce that respond to student and

community voice.


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Close the digital divide.

1. Prioritize achieving equity across the Ocean state by resolving any remaining challenges students,

families, or communities face related to the access to high-quality internet and technology devices.

2. Ensure students, families, and communities have access to digital literacy programming and

broadband capable of supporting learning.

3. Identify areas of improvement for remote or distance learning instruction and implement digital

inclusion policies, programs and tools-- with particular focus on distance learning during inclement

weather.

Recommendations: Whole of System - SEA

The LEAP Task Force believes RIDE, LEAs, and CBOs must, when able, work together to create coordination and coherence, while also

recognizing the unique vantage points, policy levers, and expertise each sector brings to the challenge at hand.

• In support of the LEAP absolute priority statements, RIDE should...

• Seize this opportunity to tackle structural educational inequities across the state through anti-racist and anti-bias policies and

practices.

• Elevate LEAP absolute priorities to support these recommendations with the power of policy and regulation.

• Create alignment across pre-existing systems, partnerships, and initiatives—between EOHHS, DOH, DCYF, RIDE, and others.

• Launch Summer 2021 work and begin planning programming to lead a statewide summer program in Summer 2022 using

ESSER III funds, elevating student interest for that programming both responds to and is designed around engagement.

• Advance RIDE's shift from compliance toward support by aligning ESSER I, ESSER II, and ESSER III stimulus funds and

support LEAs with making strategic decisions.

• Provide public transparency for ESSER I, ESSER II, and ESSER III spending and outcomes.

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Recommendations: Whole of System - LEA

The LEAP Task Force believes RIDE, LEAs, and CBOs must, when able, work together to create coordination and coherence, while also


• In support of the LEAP absolute priority statements, LEAs should...

• Tailor time and energy to provide targeted, progressive supports to those most in need, with particular attention to those

who have been historically marginalized.

• Untether learning from seat time and reimagine what mastery looks like.

• Focus on bundles of high priority standards for additional emphasis, while using high quality instructional materials, including

during summer and other extended learning time opportunities.

• Leverage community partners to provide enrichment, extended learning opportunities, and summer learning programs.

• Remove barriers to collaboration, including the sharing of data to allow students to be well-served and have needs met.

• Reconfigure human capital to support the reorientation of LEAs toward urgent student support.

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Recommendations: Whole of System - CBOThe LEAP Task Force believes RIDE, LEAs, and CBOs must, when able, work together to create coordination and coherence, while also


• In support of LEAP absolute priority statements, CBOs should...

• Provide programming that promotes academic growth and social-emotional wellbeing, but also meets student demand,

ensures students attend, and keeps students highly engaged

• Leverage existing relationships with students and families to engage students in extended or enrichment learning

opportunities; provide students the opportunity to know and grow alongside the same adults

• Intentionally partner with municipalities, parent organizations, and school systems, for program design and recruitment

• Create intentional engagement with and alignment to LEAs, for many reasons, including: (a) equitably identifying students

most at need for programs; (b) for staffing or aligning content, where appropriate; (c) for coordination and facility use; and (d)

for including creating feedback loops to share data and student information with school systems and bridge the gaps

• Engage in professional learning to better be able to serve multilingual learners and differently-abled students

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Recommendations: Next Steps by RIDE

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Based on the draft recommendations the LEAP Task Force, the agency is committing to take action. In

alignment with this commitment, the following 11 next steps are RIDE's commitment to the work ahead.

1. Present final LEAP Task Force recommendations to the Council on April 6; Task Force

members are invited to attend.

2. Release final LEAP Task Force report to the public by mid-April.

3. Reflect LEAP recommendations in ESSER II application and LEA fiscal guidance to support a

streamlined application process aligned to both LEAP recommendations and LEA community need, to

be released by mid-April.

4. Establish public-facing metrics for success related to LEAP's absolute priorities by early May.

5. Develop internal RIDE agency implications, connect this work to the RIDE strategic plan, and

operationalize internally across divisions and departments while communicating priorities externally.

Recommendations: Next Steps by RIDEBased on the draft recommendations the LEAP Task Force, the agency is committing to take action.

In alignment with this commitment, the following 11 next steps are RIDE's commitment to the work ahead.

1. Align improvement efforts in low-performing schools and districts to the LEAP recommendations.

2. Distribute priority CCSS standards bundles for SY2021-2022, and provide this work to CBOs, as well.

3. Design and begin to launch a state-wide communications campaign and toolkit.

4. Continue to prioritize professional development supporting the social-emotional

needs of educators and students.

5. RIDE has already released the ACN and SAIL RFP; there will

be community engagement opportunities and ongoing, broad sharing of these offerings with families

through a communications plan.

6. Release a racial equity decision making tool, both internally and externally, by June 2021.

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LEAP Task Force Norms (Guidelines) for Discussion

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1. Please keep your microphones muted when you are not speaking.

2. Please keep questions topic specific.

3. Comment on initiatives, not individuals.

4. Be present; listen actively and respectfully, without interrupting.

5. Honor equity of voice; help make sure all perspectives can be heard.

6. Trust the process; be solutions oriented.

7. Type in the chat if you have any difficulties.

Move to Breakout Rooms

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1. Feel free to elevate questions; the note taker in your breakout room will record those

inquiries, in hopes that RIDE can return to you with answers either before– or during— our

next time together.

2. Make sure your breakout room has identified a speaker that is prepared to share-out

some of the key conversations or talking points from your time together.

3. We will reconvene here in the general room at 10:20am.

Thank You for Your Service & Commitment!

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1. The final draft report document will be shared with the LEAP Task Force on April 1.

2. The final draft report document will be shared with the RI Council on April 6.

3. The final LEAP Task Force report will be released mid-April.

Rhode Island LEAP TASK FORCE

Documents

Transcript of Rhode Island LEAP TASK FORCE