What Makes Dual Enrollment Actually Work: Building Pathways Students Can Actually Trust
A student can earn a dual enrollment credit, feel proud of the work, and still discover a year later that it transfers nowhere they actually plan to go. Blog 2 of our series with Britebound examines what it takes to build guided pathways that genuinely count and postsecondary partnerships that share vision, budget, and responsibility rather than simply purchasing seats. For district leaders and intermediaries, this post offers concrete questions to ask and a framework for knowing whether your dual enrollment model is keeping its promise to students.
One Map, Every Framework: The Shared Architecture Behind School Transformation
If your teams have ever spent valuable meeting time translating between frameworks instead of moving learning forward, this piece is for you. Nate McClennen and Rebecca Midles analyzed 16 leading school-design frameworks and 7 change models and found something remarkable: beneath every different vocabulary, the same seven questions keep emerging. Their Learning Innovation Wayfinder offers a common map, not to replace the frameworks your system trusts, but to help every partner finally see they have been working toward the same destination all along.
What Makes Dual Enrollment Actually Work: Intentional, Coherent Design & Equitable Access
Dual enrollment promises a head start on college, but for which students? In the first installment of a four-part series developed with Britebound, Getting Smart examines what separates a well-designed dual enrollment model from a catalog full of disconnected courses. This post introduces two foundational principles, intentional design and equitable access, and offers concrete questions every district can ask about its own program. It is essential reading for leaders who want dual enrollment to be more than a line item.
How to Rethink School Finance Models Before the Funding Cliff Hits
Public schools are navigating a perfect storm: declining enrollment, expiring ESSER funds, and expanding school choice mechanisms are reshaping the financial ground beneath district leaders. Nate McClennen's latest piece on Getting Smart breaks down traditional and emerging school finance models, from weighted student funding to student-run enterprises, and offers concrete action steps for leaders ready to think creatively about sustainability. If your district is feeling the pressure, this is a timely and practical read.
When to Innovate, When to Implement, and When to Improve: A Framework for Strategic Schools
Not every school challenge calls for the same solution, but most systems are only fluent in one approach. In this new piece, Nate McClennen and Rebecca Midles unpack the critical differences between implementation science, innovation, and improvement science, and show leaders how to build the organizational fluency to use all three. If your system defaults to implementation for every problem, or chases innovation without the structures to scale it, this framework offers a clearer, more strategic path forward.
Digital Fluency Is the Missing Foundation in K-12 Career Pathways
What separates a student who can use a digital tool from one who can build something new with it? Kimberly Smith of Digital Promise argues that digital fluency, not just digital literacy, is the foundational skill K-12 career pathways have been missing. Drawing on credentialed cybersecurity programs in rural Alabama and a six-part fluency framework, this piece offers a clear, actionable case for why every career pathway, in every industry, must embed digital fluency now.
Districts Don’t Need Another New Model. They Need Systems That Build Them.
What if the next breakthrough in school design did not require a new building, a charter, or a pilot program imported from somewhere else? At Hidden Valley Middle School in Escondido, a public microschool operating inside a traditional campus has cut suspensions by 60 percent and reduced chronic absenteeism by 12 percentage points, schoolwide. This piece by Dr. Katie Martin and Dr. Devin Vodicka explores how California districts are building the internal capacity to generate and spread learner-centered models, and why that shift from showcase schools to generative systems may be the most important move in education reform right now.
Student Voice, All Grown Up
Keaton Wadzinski has been on both sides of the student voice equation — as a young person who was sometimes tokenized, sometimes genuinely empowered, and as an adult now designing the conditions for youth agency to flourish. In this deeply personal and strategically rich essay, he challenges education leaders to move beyond advisory committees and symbolic inclusion toward something far more honest and far more powerful. This is essential reading for any leader who believes young people deserve a real role in shaping the future of learning.
Core Plus Explore: How Embedded Career Relevance Improves Engagement in Foundational Courses
What if the answer to student disengagement lived inside the curriculum itself? A new partnership between Edmentum and Roadtrip Nation embeds short, unscripted career exploration interviews directly into core high school courses, connecting algebra, biology, and English to real professionals and real possibilities. With data showing fewer absences, greater relevance, and students discovering careers they never knew existed, this model reframes a familiar question: school is not just preparation for graduation. It is preparation for possibility. Education leaders will want to see how this approach works, and what it signals about the future of instructional design.
Beyond the Shiny Object: How to Assess Your System’s True Innovation Readiness
Too many districts launch the next big initiative before their systems are ready to sustain it. In this new piece, Getting Smart contributors Nate McClennen and Rebecca Midles introduce the 5 C's of R&D Readiness and 8 Archetypes of System Transformation, a practical framework for honestly diagnosing where your school or district stands before committing to wide-scale change. Whether your system is a Vanguard or a Frozen System, this tool helps leaders move from reactive initiative-chasing to intentional, coherent redesign.