Apr 2, 2012
- Imagine if each state provided its K-12 students a simple, navigable portal that linked them to the best learning resources in the world and they could choose their favorite path from a menu of possibilities.
- Imagine if K-12 students, with protections in place, could connect to learning teams, mentors, and experts worldwide in convenient, accessible, virtual environments without travel costs.
- Imagine if instead of one massive state test in math and reading at the end of the year, students took a series of objective and performance assessments matched to specific competencies in each course for each subject as soon as they were ready and their results determined what they learned next.
- Imagine if states offered a clean, simple system to track each student’s choice of courses from a menu of options and each student’s use of other school services, and then used that data to direct the flow of funding down to the course and service level.
- Imagine if states viewed students as paying customers and produced detailed reports using customer relationship management software about the quality of faculty and administrative service to students at the local and state level.
- Imagine if states used the power of cutting edge information systems to keep track of Common Core and state standards and ensure they have assessments in place to measure the competencies associated with those standards, one by one, for each student at any point in time.
Tomorrow I’m going to blog about an exemplary data system that is already doing exactly these things. It will offer evidence that these six dreams are irrefutably possible from a technology perspective. We just need the leadership and will to make them happen.
