Regional P-20 Summit - Strategic Action Recommendations
April 23, 2003

Resource Sharing – Find ways to locate and share resources to meet critical needs.

Development of Partnerships

• Develop mechanisms to identify needs, institutional strengths, and potential partnerships; e.g. data bank, partnership fair, website.
• Adopt a covenant or compact model between higher education institutions and P-12 schools with principles that are mutually beneficial.
• Create a data bank of best practices and innovations in the region; e.g. retention of teachers and school improvement plans.
• Support continuous improvement activities for partnerships and effective teams that focus on learning,

Ensuring Success of AAT Programs

• Identify resources for AAT programs, especially for rural community colleges; e.g. faculty, online courses.
• Recruit students for AAT programs through outreach to middle schools, high schools, paraprofessionals, and other adults.
• Seek funding for AAT scholarships and other incentives.

Regional P-20 Dialogue – Reach consensus on over-arching issues with legislative and institutional policy implications.

Influencing Public and Legislative Opinion

• Define a common agenda and articulate common messages.
• Marshal existing mechanisms for influencing public opinion and legislative action.
• Collaborate on collective regional action to influence policy-making.

Institutionalizing “Thinking P-20”

• Examine alternatives to fragmented governance of education at the state level.
• Structure ongoing P-20 dialogues at the regional level.
• Identify roles that each constituency should play in raising all students to the level of meeting standards.
• Establish leadership academies to help “grow your own” leaders.
• Recommend ways to reward innovation in meeting standards.
• Recommend institutionalizing rewards for partnering.
• Promote intra-as well as inter-institutional collaboration.

Content Articulation – Convene faculty groups by disciplines to align curricula and instruction with standards across levels.

Connecting disciplinary faculty – K-12, community college, and 4-year

• Convene P-20 faculty groups by discipline.
  • Define operational implications of content and pedagogical standards and disseminate results.
  • Develop mechanisms to assess and report implementation.
  • Identify strategic content issues that will attract outside resources
  • Develop future-focused assessment practices that are diagnostic, drive instruction, and match teaching to student potential.
  • Generate HR development models for professional growth of educators.
  • Devise a process to assess progress of educator candidates toward meeting standards and report aggregated results.
• Align college expectations and IAI with high school exit expectations specified in the Illinois Learning Standards.

Participation in the AAT development process
Participate in AAT work groups for math, science, and special education degree programs, including faculty and other stakeholders from all levels

Data Warehouse – Determine questions that need to be answered from a data warehouse. Some issues for questions:

• Tracking individual students, teachers, and programs
• Assessment of candidate progress toward meeting standards
• Data-driven models for professional growth of educators
• Policy data for legislators and stakeholders
• National data network to validate standards

Think Tank – Design a new P-20 educational system.

• Examine models from the military and other sources.
• Identify elements of new models already in operation in the region.
• Include ways a P-20 system can promote diversity among students and faculty and provide a learning environment that is sensitive to diversity.
• Create alternative models for review by stakeholder groupsReport viable options for a new system design.