Dive Brief:
- Rhode Island’s Statewide Personalized Learning Initiative published a white paper setting a shared vision for personalized learning that can be taken to scale across the whole state.
- EdSurge reports the framework provides a definition of personalized learning and maps out broad goals and objectives, calling on districts to do the local work of creating a vision of learning for each school, build up their tech infrastructure, pilot new learning models, use data to track successes and failures, and develop plans for scaling what works.
- The initiative plans to gather a research network next month, launch pilots in the summer and fall, and keep people engaged in the work for several years — the time they expect it will take to make a systematic, statewide shift in education.
Dive Insight:
Rhode Island education leaders have seen the state has a good testing ground for scaled personalized learning because many districts are already familiar with blended learning and have the technology infrastructure to support it. The fact that the state is so small also helps, but it may make it hard to draw parallels for other states to follow suit.
New Hampshire has taken the lead on developing next-generation assessments and it, too, has benefited from its small size through an already challenging process. When the Obama administration invited more states to experiment with new tests, it became very clear the progress in New Hampshire would be hard to replicate in larger states like New York. Size matters.
