The 2009 ADP Network Leadership Team Meeting

Last month, Achieve hosted the fifth annual American Diploma Project (ADP) Network Leadership Team Meeting in Washington, D.C. The goal of the ADP Network annual meeting is to give states a chance to address key challenges and opportunities associated with adopting, implementing and sustaining the college- and career-ready policy agenda. Participants had time to engage with national experts, learn from colleagues in other states, and meet in state teams to plan next steps in their ongoing efforts to advance the ADP policy goals. Prior to the meeting, Achieve hosted its first-ever Communications and Outreach Workshop for state communications and policy leaders.

With over 300 participants from the 35 states in the ADP Network at the Leadership Team Meeting—including 20 K-12 chief state school officers, 20 state board of education members and legislative leaders, nearly 40 higher education leaders, over 50 members of states' business, philanthropy and education communities, and over 80 representatives from states' governors offices and departments of education—there was a broad consensus that this was not only Achieve's most well attended annual meeting, but also its most successful to date. While a variety of topics were discussed, there were three major areas of focus throughout the meeting: the Common State Standards Initiative, the Race to the Top Fund competition, and how to deliver and sustain the college- and career-ready agenda.

Common State Standards Initiative: The Common State Standards Initiative was on the mind of everyone in attendance: 48 states have signed onto the Initiative led by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), including many ADP states that have been working to align their high school academic standards with college- and career-ready expectations over the past few years. A panel, featuring leaders from the NGA and CCSSO; Eric Smith, Florida's Commissioner of Education; Mitchell Chester, Commissioner, Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education; Janet Durfee-Hidalgo, the Governor of Rhode Island's education policy advisor; and Stan Jones, president of the National Consortium for College Completion and former Commissioner for Higher Education in Indiana, focused on this topic, highlighting the benefits of states adopting common standards as well as technical and political strategies for moving forward.

Race to the Top: With the first Race to the Top (RTTT) application deadline coming up in a few months, the $4.3 billion fund was an area of particular interest across the 35 states. Joanne Weiss, Director of the U.S. Department of Education's RTTT Fund, spoke at the meeting about the goals, expectations and timeline of the Fund, clearly laying out expectations for the four areas of reform required in the RTTT applications—standards and assessments, teacher effectiveness, P-20 longitudinal data systems, and low-performing schools—with a focus on how these four areas must work together to build a strong system of high expectations and critical supports. (View a video of her speech or read the transcript.) States also had the opportunity to discuss each of these four areas in-depth at breakout sessions.

Delivery & Sustainability: Issues around implementing and sustaining the college- and career-ready agenda were also front and center at the meeting, with discussions around addressing pushback to college-and career-ready graduation requirements, a session led by Sir Michael Barber of McKinsey & Company on how to develop goals and systems that structure and facilitate the implementation and delivery of college- and career-ready policies, and the launch of Achieve's new project Taking Root: Strategies for Sustaining the College- and Career-Ready Agenda. Given the progress made by many of the ADP Network states on adopting college- and career-ready policies, the challenge now is to make sure states have the strategies and elements in place so that college-and career- ready policies can take root.

To view the PowerPoints that accompanied the presentations, go here.