“Traditional teacher prep does not teach you how to do” deeper learning, says Carrie Bakken, a teacher and codirector at the Avalon School in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Bakken and her colleagues know that if their classrooms and their students are going to meet the deeper learning competencies, then their own professional learning needs to hew closely to those competencies as well. The teachers’ learning, just like that of their students, “needs to be more inquiry-based.”

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Results released yesterday from the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the Nation’s Report Card, show there’s still much work to be done to prepare students for success after high school. High school seniors scored one point lower in 2015 than 2013 in math, while the average reading score was not significantly different. The results also show that achievement gaps are still prevalent, with only 12 percent of Hispanic students and 7 percent of African American students scoring at or above proficient, in comparison to 32 percent of white students.

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In December of 2015, on the same day that President Obama signed the “Every Student Succeeds Act” (ESSA), the U.S. Department of Education released the 2016 National Education Technology Plan (NETP). First released in 1996 and updated every five years since, the NETP is the flagship educational technology policy document for the United States. The 2016 Plan, Future Ready Learning: Reimagining the Role of Technology in Education, articulates a vision of equity, active use, and collaborative leadership to make everywhere, all-the-time learning possible.

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Today’s Digest explores deeper learning in a few ways – in action in the classroom, from the educators’ perspective, and at the federal and state level in education policy.

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As the nation continues to work toward raising the graduation rate, it is critical that high school graduates are prepared for what comes next. New reports look at the necessity of college and career preparation, the cost of remediation if students are not adequately prepared, and what steps states and governors can take to build on progress and ensure all students graduate from high school.

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Community partnerships is one of seven gears in the Future Ready Framework and recently I saw this gear in action. I joined a group of mayors from the New Jersey Black Mayors Alliance for Social Justice as they met alongside their superintendents to learn about the new Future Ready New Jersey certification program being developed by a consortium of organizations including the New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE), the New Jersey School Boards Association (NJSBA), and the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT).

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States are stepping up to the plate to drive access to high-speed broadband for students and families. Several newly released reports focus on connectivity, the rise of digital education, and highlight the impact that lack of access can have beyond K-12 education.

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The inclusion of the Literacy for All, Results for the Nation (LEARN) Act in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015 provides an enormous opportunity for states and districts to address the national literacy crisis. Leadership at the federal, state, and local levels is imperative to ensure that the nation’s students graduate from high school with the skills needed to succeed in postsecondary education and the workforce. Results from the most recent administration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), known as the Nation’s Report Card, show though that students’ literacy skills continue to lag. More than 60 percent of eighth graders and 60 percent of twelfth graders scored below the “proficient” level in reading achievement on NAEP. In fact, during the past four decades, the literacy performance of seventeen-year-olds on NAEP has remained flat.

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Out of the 2016 Deeper Learning Conference came many reflections and ideas for moving the deeper learning movement forward. The last Digest discussed Getting Smart’s Six Entry Points for Deeper Learning, but this week looks at equity in deeper learning, embracing failure as part of deeper learning, and reflections from one school.

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Over the past few weeks and many miles traveled, I’ve seen first-hand the opportunities for American education under the new Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). At every level – classroom, school, district, state, and federal – it is a time to explore possibilities, discuss change, and work closely with those that have “boots on the ground” in the nation’s public schools.

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