Student Success 2025

Calling for Change

An education that prepares every Delaware child for success in 2025. Today’s students will enter a world after high school that is increasingly interconnected and complex. The next generation of adults will face new challenges in the global economy, including significant advancements in technology and increased global competition. With a job market no longer confined to our nation’s borders, Delaware students must compete for jobs against their peers from around the world.

To truly succeed in the future, students will need more than just core academic knowledge–the shared standard academics that every students must have as a foundation, including English language arts, math, social studies, science, the arts, and world languages. School can no longer be defined by the four walls of a classroom. To tackle tomorrow’s problems and excel in the jobs of the future, students will need skills and attributes like creativity, flexibility, and curiosity.

Student Success 2025 imagines a landscape where equitable opportunities meet the needs of these students and where lifelong learners are equipped to adapt to changing times. The goal is for all Delaware students to thrive, accomplish more, and take advantage of expanded opportunities aligned with their unique skills, interests, and abilities. This includes providing support needed for all students to succeed, including students who are homeless, living in foster care, hungry, neglected, physically disabled, cognitively challenged, or learning English. Every child in Delaware–regardless of zip code, economic means, or style and pace of learning–deserves to have options for his or her future and to be ready for whatever tomorrow holds.

Click here for a pdf of the plan.

Public Collaboration

The Vision Coalition of Delaware collaborated with 4,000 Delawareans, including 1,300 students and recent graduates, to create the Student Success 2025 plan.

Learn more

North Star

The North Star guides our journey on the path to excellence. It shows what students need to know, be, and do to live a lifetime of success. It serves as the beacon for our vision to improve public schools for every Delaware student.

Learn more

Measuring Success

Looking at where we are today, the coalition set goals to measure success leading up to 2025.

Learn more

Student Stories

David, age 13

I think our schools are working for a majority of people, but some kids need the extra push. Challenge them more. They need higher expectations.

Alan, age 10

I have way more trouble learning if the teacher lectures. I learn way better if I actually interact with the lesson.

Donna, age 8

Unity is when you work together.

From Sussex to Kent to New Castle, Delaware is all about community. Our ability to establish a shared vision for students and collectively wrestle with tough issues distinguishes us from other states.

From January 2014 to September 2015, the Vision Coalition of Delaware worked to engage and unify Delawareans around education and listened to your views on the future of students in our state. The result was Student Success 2025.

timeline-process

The Coalition brought together a broad Steering Committee and six Working Groups that focused on key policy areas and engaged students, parents, teachers, and national and international education leaders, who lent their ideas and insights for improving student achievement.

Student Success 2025 would not be possible without the input of 4,000 Delawareans who helped guide the creation of this ambitious plan. Delawareans contributed through:

A public online survey for sharing opinions and ideas about education;
More than 30 community conversations held in Sussex, Kent, and New Castle counties;
A survey and conversations with more than 1,300 Delaware seventh through 12th graders;
An online discussion forum; and
Discussions at the 7th Annual Vision Coalition Conference on Education, attended by more than 400 people

The North Star guides our journey on the path to excellence. It shows what students need to know, be, and do to live a lifetime of success. It serves as the beacon for our vision to improve public schools for every Delaware student. Students will need core academic knowledge to provide a foundation for learning, yet they will also need skills and attributes that go beyond academics.

With volumes of information available at our fingertips, the learning experience will no longer be passive – students will need to drive it. As technology plays a bigger role in the lives of our children, the ability to communicate with peers at home and globally will become increasingly important. As the world of work becomes more complex, young people will need to be adaptable and prepared to learn throughout their lives.

As the social and environmental challenges in our communities grow, our children will need to be more empathetic and innovative in their problem-solving. Collectively, the skills found in the North Star – a distillation of comments shared by 4,000 Delawareans as well as several national and international contributors – will prepare students to be strong communicators, engaged citizens, successful in their careers, and lifelong learners. With our focus on the North Star, Delaware can build a system of public education that builds toward these attributes, so that children can succeed no matter what path they choose.

To me, curiosity is the most important because it leads you to new discoveries.

By the time a child celebrates his or her fifth birthday, nearly 90 percent of intellect, personality, and social skills are already developed. When children arrive in kindergarten ready to learn, they are more likely to thrive in school and in future endeavors.

To cultivate this potential, it is imperative that Delaware continue to accelerate gains made in high-quality early learning – and sustain and grow investment in this area.

Achievement gaps form as early as nine months.

By age four, children from middle- to high-income families are exposed to approximately 30 million more words than children from families on welfare. Young children from lower income families also appear to struggle more with memory, thinking flexibly, and social-emotional skills.

Because some skills – such as literacy- must be established before others can be acquired, closing these gaps requires a system of high-quality learning from birth through third grade. The need is urgent to dramatically reshape Delaware’s education system and embrace early learning as a full partner. Early childhood programs under our existing mix of public and private providers all meet basic licensing standards, but quality varies widely. Three state agencies in Delaware oversee early childhood.

Creating a Cohesive System for all

Aligning these – standards, assessments, and data systems – in a cohesive system is vital to ensuring high-quality early learning for all.Central to a high-quality birth to third grade system are talented, well-compensated teachers and leaders with knowledge of early childhood development. Fewer than half of Delaware’s early learning professionals possess a bachelor’s degree or higher.

The average salary for an early learning teacher is less than $22,000—only half of what elementary, middle, and high school teachers earn. Most early learning professionals earn an hourly wage with no benefits and a longer school day and year.

Recommendations

Expand Access and Quality of Supports for Families

1
Increase access to evidence-based home-visiting services for families of children most at-risk for school failure.
2
Strengthen use of comprehensive health screenings and provide interventions to address student and family needs and issues at a young age.
3
Increase quality across all early learning programs–including community, district, and home-visiting providers–for children birth to five by raising standards for high-quality early education and gradually requiring programs receiving public subsidies to achieve a required Star level of quality.
4
Establish and incrementally expand voluntary, full-day, high-quality prekindergarten for three- and four-year-olds. Community-based programs and districts could apply to provide education and care at a required level of quality, professional qualifications of staff, and length of school day.

Deepen Investment in Teacher Quality

5
Support early learning professionals to reach higher expectations. Increase professional qualifications and associated compensation to align with K-12 educators, and provide incentives to reach higher levels. Over time, require associate and/or bachelor’s degrees for early learning teachers.
6
Strengthen professional development and career paths, and articulate credits toward degrees. Establish individual licensure and assessment practices and provide higher quality professional development opportunities for early learning educators.

Strengthen Alignment with K-12 System

7
Create a seamless academic experience for students from early learning through third grade by adopting and implementing a statewide framework for aligning:
- Early learning standards and assessments of what children birth to eight need to know and be able to do across all domains of development;
- Professional standards, competencies, evaluation, and compensation for teachers; and
- Leader (principal and early learning administrator) professional preparation and ongoing professional development to equip them with child development knowledge across the birth to eight timeframe that supports strong instructional practice.
8
Develop an aligned governance structure to enable unified and efficient decision-making as well as new and sustainable sources of funding.

Personalized Learning

Success today demands that students demonstrate creativity, critical thinking, and the capacity to contribute in a fast-paced and ever-changing world. While all students are required to reach the same high academic standards, personalized or student-centered learning empowers educators to tailor instruction for each unique student— recognizing strengths, interests, needs, and pace, and structuring each student’s experience accordingly. Advancements in technology play a key role in personalization by enabling students to drive their own learning progression and by equipping teachers with tools to provide support.

Today, our statutes and regulations assume that every child will be taught by a teacher in a 30-by-30-foot classroom. However, learning is becoming accessible anytime, anywhere. Through technology and partnerships with businesses and community-based organizations, students’ learning time can extend beyond the school day, school year, and school building.

Performance-based Tasks in Real-world Environments

Student assessments today primarily focus on a few core academic subjects. As imagined through the North Star, improved assessments must include performance-based tasks and take place in real-world environments that enable teachers to customize students’ learning where needed, in order to address areas for improvement.

Innovative efforts to personalize learning are already taking place and generating increased student engagement and excitement about learning. And in some Delaware classrooms, teachers are using technology to blend classroom lessons with online learning. As these concepts become widespread, more students will have the tools they need to take ownership of their learning experience.

As we look at education more holistically, we realize that the emotional and physical health of children are increasingly important to their long-term health and academic success. There need to be more seamless connections between schools and a range of critical wraparound supports in the community.

Ideally, dedicated resources and staff would support the investments in and growth of innovative ideas that work. Today, however, there is an uncoordinated and underfunded mix of public and private sector leaders trying to move this work forward.

I have way more trouble learning if the teacher lectures. I learn way better if I actually interact with it.

— Alan, age 10

Progress Underway:

High academic standards in math, English language arts, and science
Student assessments aligned to those standards
Early stage digital learning across schools, including distance learning and blended learning
Statewide adoption of Schoology, a digital Learning Management System that helps teachers personalize instruction, share lesson plans, and participate in professional development.

Recommendations

Shift Policies and Programs to be Student-Centered

1
Set and uphold high expectations for all students across academic skills and social-intellectual behaviors identified in the North Star, such as persistence and integrity. Revise annual assessments, student portfolios and graduation requirements to align with these expectations and provide all students with access to mastery-based learning opportunities to meet them.
2
Create a statewide network of community organizations, employers, and education institutions that are approved to provide extended-learning opportunities (ELOs) to students for credit. ELO organizations would be approved through an application process tied to their ability to boost performance in specific competencies
3
Support the holistic development of schools in high-need communities that provide a broad array of wrap-around services to students (e.g., physical and mental health services) and engage with community partners to provide these services.

Support and Encourage Innovation

4
Provide flexibility and funding to encourage and support schools to provide more personalized learning experiences through different uses of:

Time (e.g., learning outside of the classroom and outside the school day)
Talent (e.g., redesigned teacher roles)
Technology (e.g., blended learning)
5
Build capacity to evaluate and scale innovative best practices statewide. Additionally, support schools and districts in implementing changes and increase public awareness of personalized learning.

Invest in Infrastructure to Support Blended Learning

6
Create technology-enabled tools that monitor student progress from preschool to career against competencies identified in the North Star, and provide students and parents with a menu of opportunities (e.g., in-school or online classes, extended learning opportunities) to achieve mastery. Provide support to parents and students on utilizing tools to increase student and parent ownership of learning.
7
Invest in increasing state broadband capacity and student access to internet devices both in school and outside of the classroom. Support and guide schools and districts in key areas such as procurement, privacy, and sustainability

Postsecondary Success

The North Star reflects the characteristics of a successful student one decade from now, one whose defining quality will be his or her readiness for advanced education and career. While we know that an increasing number of jobs will require a four-year degree, we also know that there are many good jobs in Delaware that do not.

In fact, we know that there are hundreds of great jobs in sectors like advanced manufacturing or health care that only require a one-year certification or a two-year associate degree, and employers have indicated that they can’t find enough qualified applicants.

Preparing Students for Challenges Beyond High School

Decades of research confirm that higher levels of education correlate with higher earnings, higher tax revenues, and lower unemployment rates. Yet today’s preparedness measures for students indicate that too few of them are ready for challenges beyond high school. This has to change.

We are proud that Delaware is one of twenty-five states that administers a universal SAT. We now need to focus on helping students improve their scores, as only 29 and 53 percent of high schoolers met the SAT college readiness benchmark, in math and reading respectively.

Unfortunately, 41 percent of Delaware high school graduates, mainly students of color and from high-needs populations, are required to take remedial courses upon entering Delaware colleges. These courses do not provide credits toward a degree, but students on scholarship programs must still pay for them. Remediation is expensive and impacts degree completion. Nationally, fewer than half of students in remedial courses actually complete them—and many end up dropping out of college as a result. On the other hand, students who excel in their high school classes currently have limited options for dual enrollment in college-level courses to move at their own pace.

Incorporating Meaningful, up-close experiences

For too many young adults, meaningful employment is not within reach. Currently, 12 percent of young adults ages 20-24 are unemployed. This means a smaller percentage of youth are gaining work experience early in their careers, and, without any job experience, their chances of entering a fulfilling career are thin.

Student exposure to college and career must begin as early as middle school. High school years need to incorporate meaningful, up-close experiences at colleges, universities, and in the workforce. Life after graduation should generate excitement and ignite confidence. Graduating high school with college credits or an industry certification must be within reach for all students in the coming years—and Delawareans in business and higher education can help turn that possibility into a reality.

Freshmen year, I tried welding. It was something totally different, but I kinda liked it.

— Darrell, age 18, recent high school graduate and currently in welding trade school

Progress Underway:

Several comprehensive state strategies dedicated to supporting young people to attend college, such as College Application Month and Getting to Zero
Five new career pathways in some Delaware high schools, ranging from computer science to culinary arts. In 2017-18, students were enrolled in 14 state model pathways total
SPARC Delaware (Succcess Pathways and Roads to Careers), an online platform that links more than 100 businesses to students statewide that helps students explore career options
College access supports and scholarships through SEED (Student Excellence Equals Degree), Inspire, and the University of Delaware’s Commitment to Delawareans

Recommendations

Connect Education, Workforce, and Community Resources

1
Support school redesign that deeply integrates K-12 schools with postsecondary education institutions and employers and allow students to seamlessly transition across systems.
2
Strengthen educator capacity by providing structures for highly effective teachers to co-develop curriculum with employers to support new pathways. Expand teacher externship experiences to improve teaching practices.
3
Provide all students with early exposure to workforce and higher education experiences, beginning in middle school, with the goal of greatly increasing the number of students graduating high school with college credit, an associate degree, and/or an industry-recognized certification. Enable all students to graduate with one meaningful career experience and one higher education experience.
4
Increase alignment among K-12, higher education, and the workforce by connecting data systems to follow students as they transition across systems, and aligning K-12 graduation requirements with postsecondary entry requirements.
5
Encourage industry associations to develop certification programs, training centers, and apprenticeship programs for high school students. Engage employers in taking a significant role in developing industry-relevant curricula and meaningful workplace credentials

Enhance Student Supports and Access

6
Create multiple, rigorous learning paths anchored in key industries, aligned to the North Star characteristics, and linked to a range of academic and career options. Provide all students and adults with ownership over selecting a pathway that best meets their needs and aspirations. The pathways should allow for multiple entry points and should have the potential for advancement, with no dead ends.
7
Increase in-person and technology-enhanced counseling supports to engage students at an early age and help students and families navigate the system. Provide targeted support for those needing early intervention and those at risk of falling behind or dropping out.
8
Develop digital, individual student portfolios that document student mastery of both “soft” and “hard” skills required for graduation. Encourage higher education and employers to contribute to these portfolios by assessing student skills and by accepting portfolios when students apply for admission or a job.
9
Build on existing scholarships to provide Delaware students with the financial means to attend four-year, two-year, and certificate programs from public institutions of higher education in Delaware.

Educator Support & Development

Teachers and school leaders are the two most important in-school factors contributing to student achievement. Across Delaware, excellent educators may look different from classroom to classroom and from school to school.

However, great educators share a single characteristic: a passion for teaching and leadership that propels students toward success. Preparing all students for the future begins with providing every educator with the preparation, development, and support to excel.

Encouraging Innovation and Creative Methods in Preparation & Practice

We strive for all students to have access to highly effective teachers, for every school to be led by an exceptional team of leaders, and for all educators and students to be supported in their growth. We need to elevate perceptions of the teaching profession so that it continues to attract top talent. We need to scale up successful programs to reach all schools by encouraging innovation and creative methods, both in teacher preparation and in teaching practice in the classroom.

We believe greater individualization of professional learning for all educators, ongoing and embedded in the school day, will contribute to improved student learning. As educators receive feedback, their learning must be aligned with the needs of their students and school through a more holistic and meaningful system of evaluation.

Rethinking Roles & Responsibilities

Today, Delaware schools serving a high-needs student population have a higher percentage of new teachers and have lower retention rates. These schools deserve special attention and resources, including culturally prepared and effective teachers.

Finally, the career paths for educators and principals are still largely driven by time served in the position and degrees earned. If we want to build the profession, we must rethink those paths to create new roles and responsibilities for educators based on demonstrated effectiveness.

My mom’s a para-educator, and seeing how she’s impacted lives makes me want to do the same. I think I want to be a teacher.

— Alejandro, age 17

Progress Underway:

Expanded opportunities for every teacher to collaborate with his or her peers through professional learning communities
New policies that increase the entry requirements for becoming a teacher and improve the rigor of the training process
State and nonprofit efforts to share best practices across statewide school networks
Nationwide recruitment efforts to attract top teachers and principals to Delaware

Recommendations

Empower Leadership

1
Develop a highly selective, rigorous statewide principal recruitment and selection process available to all district and charter schools
2
Provide intensive leadership training for high-potential school leaders, particularly for our highest need schools.

Improve Initial Educator Training

3
Ensure all new teachers are “learner-ready, day one” such that they are prepared to meet the needs of each of their students in achieving the skills identified in the North Star, like:

• Being expert in the content and pedagogy of their discipline;

• Working in innovative, flexible school models (e.g. blended learning);

• Engaging families and developing cultural competencies; and

• Supporting student social-emotional development.
4
Build closer connections between teacher preparation programs and K-12 schools by requiring that preparation programs demonstrate both how their graduates are effective teachers, and how the programs are improving their courses based on feedback from schools. For example, by:

• Designing “residency programs” and “model schools” jointly managed by teacher preparation program staff and K-12 administrators;

• Sharing performance of traditional and alternative teacher preparation programs publicly to help aspiring educators select strong preparation programs and help schools recruit well-prepared candidates;

• Encouraging teacher preparation programs to match the supply of new teachers with the needs of Delaware schools, and offering incentives to teachers in high-need subject areas such as STEM, special education, English language learning, and speech therapy; and

• Ensuring that “professional” teacher certification is tied to demonstrated effective performance in a teacher’s first few years on the job.

Strengthen Professional Learning

5
Support the ongoing development of all teachers by ensuring they get individualized support targeted at addressing their specific growth needs in ways that build toward their capacity to support each other as well as the broader expectations of students consistent with the North Star and the school’s goals.
6
Support an evaluation system that uses student performance as a key measure of effectiveness, provides meaningful differentiation of performance, and utilizes feedback from multiple sources (e.g., peers, students, and families). Use these evaluation findings to more effectively personalize professional learning
7
Support new models of teacher collaboration and development within and across schools by:

• Experimenting with new models of teacher collaboration and support within and across schools;

• Using grants/waivers to encourage schools to provide flexibility around teacher scheduling and use of time;

• Developing online Professional Learning Communities;

• Utilizing a competency-based approach to professional development with credits granted to teachers based on mastery of a particular skill or practice;

• Creating supports for sustained replication and scaling across the system of those approaches that work; and

• Building a statewide, online repository of best practice materials where educators can access and contribute content. Materials could include highquality videos of effective teaching practices or standards-aligned curricular materials and lesson plans.

Build Strong Policy Framework for the Profession

8
Design and implement exciting educator career pathways that allow for a compelling and coherent set of options for educators and principals to advance their career based on demonstrated effectiveness. These pathways should allow for differentiation and specialization, such as:

• Providing opportunities for advancement for accomplished teachers without leaving the classroom;

• Providing teachers an opportunity to expand their reach with students virtually (beyond the “one teacher-one classroom” model); and

• Allowing principals to have differentiated support (e.g., rigorous development of high potential principals via mentoring from highly effective principals) and a differentiated compensation system based on their principal evaluation system
9
Encourage districts to implement mutual consent policies that require both teacher and principal approval for teacher or leader placements at a school.
10
Ensure all students, particularly those in high-need schools, have access to highly effective educators by:

• Providing these schools with increased recruitment and selection support, higher compensation for teachers and leaders, and increased control for effective leadership teams in selecting staff members; and

• Developing teams of highly-effective educators who provide additional capacity to low-performing schools. Districts and charter schools could identify a small cohort of highly-effective teachers who would receive additional training before supporting turnaround efforts at low-performing schools

Fair & Efficient Funding

About a third of our annual state budget, $2.13 billion in 2016, supports public education. Per-pupil, Delaware is the 13th most generous state in the country when it comes to supporting public schools.

Unfortunately, the mechanism by which Delaware expends those dollars was established during the World War II era and has long been obsolete. Consider how much has changed since then—and the student needs that couldn’t have been anticipated. Delaware is one of four states that does not provide additional resources for English learners and one out of approximately 15 states that does not provide additional resources for low-income students in its funding formula.

Funding for Children, not for “Units.”

Delaware is one of only a few states where education funding follows “units,” or staff positions, rather than reflecting the needs of individual students. Our funding system was built on the structure of schooling in the segregation-era 1940s under the assumption that all children learned the same way.

The model is an impediment to innovation such as distance learning opportunities, and does not adequately reflect the far-ranging needs of our children—from those receiving special education services to English learners.

Greater Funding Flexibility at School & District Level

Moving toward greater funding flexibility at the school and district level requires maintaining sufficient funding levels. Our funding has plateaued, funds to districts have not been returned to 2008 levels, and many of the state funding sources are going down or are not expected to be stable in the future.

Most states reassess property taxes every two to five years. Delaware has not reassessed property taxes in decades, contributing to inequities in state sources of funding for education. Districts are expending great effort and facing growing challenges to pass local referenda to support the needs of schools. Establishing sustainable revenue sources is critical to reaching the changes outlined here.

As spending increases and revenue slows, we need to make the expenditure of those dollars easily understood by taxpayers so that they can encourage maximizing the use of every dollar.

If we don’t prioritize investments in our education, students feel like it’s less worthwhile.

— Halim, age 17

PROGRESS UNDERWAY:

Greater flexibility to enable educators and schools to meet the needs of special needs students by shifting needs-based funding from dozens of categories into three more flexible ones
LEAD Committee studies (2008) that identified ways to reallocate $158 million in Delaware’s education budget and put forward recommendations for how the state could move towards a funding system based on the unique needs of students

Recommendations

Ensure Funding Responds to Individual Student Needs

1
Increase funding system equity by factoring student needs into funding allocations, and update system so that funding follows each student, enabling them to take courses from a variety of approved providers (e.g., other district schools, distance learning, higher education organizations).

Increase Equity and Flexibility

2
Conduct property reassessments on a consistent, rolling basis to enable a more sustainable, sufficient revenue and accurate equalization process.
3
Allocate a larger portion of district/school funding in flexible funds so that district and school leaders can expand the ways they educate children to meet specific student needs, rather than in one-size-fits-all categories.

Build More Transparent Systems

4
Create incentives at the local and state levels to increase efficiency, particularly for sharing of services such as technology or professional development across districts and public charter schools. Publicly share district and school budgets as well as key district/school financial performance metrics in formats that are accessible to the public.

System Governance, Alignment, & Performance

Advancements in instruction and learning beg for system-wide changes across school types and from birth to K-12 to higher education and career. We want to build an innovative and stimulating system of public schools, where our educators work together across charter and district lines in ways that protect their autonomy, but create more opportunities to learn from one another.

Delaware is a state of neighbors; we know one another. Our entire state enrollment of 133,000 is smaller than many medium-sized districts in other states, yet we don’t always leverage our size to our advantage. Rather than creating a coherent, aligned, system of schools that are continuously learning and improving together, we are fragmented and too often uncoordinated.

For years there have been discussions about too much bureaucracy at the state level, too many districts, or too many charter schools. In fact, while our state does not look too different from other states, the reality of 43 local decision-making bodies (19 district and 24 charter school boards) below our state Department of Education in a state this size presents challenges to creating a coherent, high-performing system of public schools.

Delawareans, like much of the country, have raised questions about how much to rely on student test scores in determining the efficacy of our children and the adults working with them. The recommendations that follow suggest building on the path to higher academic standards and aligned assessments that we’ve been on since 2010, but, consistent with our North Star, expand our definition of student success.

There is some work to build upon. Delaware’s Early Learner Survey, which will be implemented statewide in fall 2015, provides baseline data for kindergarten readiness across holistic domains for the first time, enables elementary schools to tailor instruction and support services appropriately for their youngest students, and allows the early learning system to adjust to meet children’s developmental needs. This is a start, but more can and must be done across the learning continuum to align our systems with a new vision of student success for all.

Finally, we know that schools can’t do this alone. We know that a higher percentage of children coming to our schools are facing more learning challenges. The numbers of children that don’t speak English, require special education support, or come to school from challenged home lives are on the rise. This will require all facets of the community—from parents and businesses to nonprofits and social services—to step up more.

Student-led conferences allow me to show my parents how I’m doing in school and help us work together to figure out how to improve.

— Adamari, age 16

Progress Underway

Early Learner Survey, a more holistic tool to assess student progress
Collaborations across districts, like the BRINC Consortium (which involved six districts working together on personalized, blended learning environments), and the teacher evaluation consortium of public charter schools in Wilmington
Wilmington Education Advisory Committee recommendations, which call for significant governance and funding changes in the City of Wilmington that would have statewide implications

Recommendations

Align Governance, Performance, and Student Success

1
Establish a redefined system of support and accountability anchored around the North Star, which includes academic measures as well as holistic measures, and encourages improvement and high performance for schools and school boards. Measure performance consistently across the system and connect performance with tailored supports that recognize differences among schools. This may be done by staff within the current Department of Education structure or through an independent third party evaluator.
2
Develop aligned school, district, and state-level scorecards that track annual growth and performance across excellence, equity, and efficiency measures. Use multiple mechanisms for measuring performance and share results publicly in an easy-to-understand format.

Strengthen System Alignment, Support, and Collaboration

3
Develop a state strategy for supporting and managing the Delaware school system’s portfolio of schools. Assess the addition of new schools (e.g., public charter schools and magnets) against the overall value they add. Actively encourage expansion and sharing of school models and strategies that have potential to improve student performance.
4
Build capacity of an intermediary organization to enable collaboration between early learning organizations, the K-12 system, higher education, and the workforce. The intermediaries would develop policies and strategies that increase alignment and take an integrated approach to improving system performance. For example, to create career pathways statewide, we need an intermediary that can connect our high schools to our higher education providers and employers in a high-quality way.
5
Increase funding allocated to programs focused on statewide collaboration among schools and districts, as well as with early learning providers and higher education organizations, to enable system-wide improvement.
6
Encourage public charter and district school boards statewide to find more ways to share services and create more efficiencies. The state might accelerate this process by providing districts and public charter schools with flexibility or grants to develop shared services arrangements and structures to support efficiency within and across sectors and by allowing districts and public charter schools to repurpose any cost-savings realized through such cooperation back into the classroom.
7
Align school and district enrollment options with student needs to enable equitable access to high-quality schools for all students.

Deepen Family and Community Engagement

8
Create incentives for the development of student and family engagement models and encourage the use of two-way communication strategies between schools and families that utilize a variety of in-person and technology-based approaches.
9
Encourage employers to allow employees to take time to participate in family engagement activities.