Smart Cities That Work for Everyone: 7 Keys to Education & Employment

By Tom Vander Ark

Every person, organization and region needs to get smart—
to skill up, learn more and build new capacities faster and
cheaper than ever. Innovative new tools and schools are making it possible for
individuals, organizations, and cities to boost learning outcomes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781632330338

Tom Vander Ark

Tom Vander Ark is an advocate for innovations in learning and the power of place. As CEO of Getting Smart, he advises school districts and networks, education foundations and funders, and impact organizations on the path forward. A prolific writer and speaker, Tom is the author of Getting Smart, Smart Cities That Work for Everyone, Smart Parents, and Better Together and has published thousands of articles as well as coauthoring more than 50 books and white papers. He writes regularly on GettingSmart.com and LinkedIn and contributes to Forbes.

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©2015 by Tom Vander Ark

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Vander Ark, Tom

Smart Cities that Work for Everyone / by Tom Vander Ark.

p. cm.

Paperback: ISBN 978-1-63233-034-5

Ebook: ISBN 978-1-63233-033-8

1. Education 2. Schools & Teaching

I. Vander Ark, Tom, II. Title.

19 18 17 16 2015

5 4 3 2 1

Printed on acid-free paper ∞

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Forewords

Kevin Johnson, Mayor of Sacramento

Adrian Fenty, Former Mayor of Washington, D.C.

Michele Cahill, Carnegie Corporation

Preface

Acknowledgments

Cities That Work for Everyone

Why Cities?

Why Learning Matters to Cities

The Challenges of Reform

Why Innovation Matters

Why Schools Struggle to Innovate

7 Keys to Smart Cities

Why Next Gen Learning is a Game Changer

Sparking a Revolution

Students Deserve More

What Is Next Gen Learning?

Attacking Poverty

Blueprint of the Learning Revolution

Next Gen Learning at Scale

Seven Keys to Education and Employment

1: Innovation Mindset

It All Starts With an Innovation Mindset

Putting the Pieces Together

Developing Student Mindsets

Developing Educator Mindsets

Developing Community Mindsets

2: Sustained Leadership

What it Takes to Lead

Innovation is Harder Than Improvement

Leveraging Broad-Based Leadership

Making Way for Innovation

Portfolio Strategy

Overcoming Obstacles

Blended, Lean and Iterative

3: Talent Development

Talent Matters

Blended and Personalized Development

Preparing Educators

Informal Learning

4: Collective Impact

Family Engagement

Community Engagement

Partnerships

Building Collective Impact

5: Aligned Investment

Investing to Grow an Ecosystem

Funders as Leaders

Funding Alliances

Investment and Incentives

Investing in Public and Education

6: New Tools and Schools

New Schools

Connecting Teachers and Tools

New Tools

Engagement

Efficacy

7: Advocacy and Policy

Bringing an Innovation Mindset to Policy

Policies that Boost Achievement, Innovation and Employability

Advocacy

Next Steps

Action Steps for Smart Cities

Do Now! 10 (or more) Things You Can Do to Contribute to Your Smart City

Appendix A: Contributor Bios, Blogs and Videos

Appendix B: City Blog Posts

Appendix C: Organizations Referenced Book

Appendix D: Smart Cities Asset Mapping

Appendix E: Resources

Appendix F: Disclosures

Endnotes

Foreword:

Kevin Johnson, Mayor of Sacramento

I grew up in the low-income community of Oak Park in Sacramento, California, where I attended public schools that did not prepare me for the rigors of college. Fortunately, I was a talented athlete, and basketball was my ticket out of poverty. Unfortunately, when I arrived at college on scholarship I was ill-prepared. I needed remediation, and, frankly, was confused about how I could be a solid student after my time in the K-12 system.

That experience infuriated me and drove me to begin work to ensure that no child from my neighborhood ever had that experience. In 1989, I started an after-school program called St. HOPE Academy, which sought to revitalize the community through education, economic development, the arts and civic leadership. In 2002, we went further when my high school alma mater, Sacramento High School, was threatened with state takeover for academic failure. We embarked on an effort to restructure the school as a charter school.

I met Tom Vander Ark during the Sac High conversion process—which turned out to be more challenging than either of us had anticipated. We both understood the importance of good schools to the health of cities. But we underestimated the tremendous pushback that we'd get from people who wanted to maintain the status quo. Today, St. HOPE operates a pre-Kindergarten through 12th grade public school system in Sacramento that serves more than 1,700 students. We are proud to say that our schools are among the highest performing in the city.

My vision since elected mayor of Sacramento in 2008 has been to make Sacramento a city that works for everyone. To that end, my team has mobilized volunteers, improved public art, attacked homelessness, slowed gang violence and encouraged the city to Think Big with regard to economic development. We launched Stand UP to promote education innovation and Sacramento READS! to boost literacy. We collaborate with the school district to align city services to maximize resources to support public education.

As outlined in the chapter on leadership, education and civic leaders should work together to build a portfolio of compelling schools and programs. School report cards should provide parents and families with information on education options. As outlined in the chapter on talent development, cities should create partnerships to develop great teachers and leaders.

I've been pleased to learn that many mayors share my passion for education and understand its importance to the future of their city. The United States Conference of Mayors (USCM), where I serve as president, has established as a national goal that every student should graduate from high school ready for college and career, regardless of income, race, ethnic or language background, or disability status. This college and career readiness is to be achieved in part by expanding linked learning approaches, including college preparation, career and technical education, and work-based learning.

At the 2014 UCSM annual conference, U.S. mayors passed resolutions aligned with the recommendations in this book, including:

• Equitable access to quality early learning;

• Investing in youth jobs and career and financial education;

• Creating cities of learning, where students earn digital badges to connect in- and out-of-school learning;

• Supporting the implementation of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) with rigorous and comparable assessments;

• Increasing the talent and diversity of the teaching profession;

• Supporting the College Scorecard and processes that support assessing college ratings, affordability and related career implications;

• Strengthening career pathways, expanding apprenticeships and providing access to good middle class jobs; and

• Closing the skills gap to reduce unemployment and ensure employees have skills necessary to work in high-demand fields.

Alongside mayors, faith leaders, civil rights advocates and business executives all have a role to play to level the playing field and extend opportunity to all children. If we expect our educators to create a demanding but supportive environment for students, we need to create the same sort of high-demand, high-support environment for education leaders.

It's clear—you can't have a great city without great schools. If you want to reduce crime and poverty, you need a good education system—it's the great equalizer, it's the passport, it's the civil rights issue of our time.

Foreword:

Adrian Fenty, Former Mayor of Washington, D.C.

In The Race between Education and Technology, Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz argued that rising educational attainment is the number one driver of prosperity and declining inequality—and U.S. attainment stalled 30 years ago. Other nations have raced by us, often with newer and better education systems. High skills or low wages have become the reality. They concluded that our future success depends on a profound breakthrough in educating our kids.

When I was elected mayor of the District of Columbia in 2007, we had in mind the profound breakthrough that Goldin and Katz described. Test scores in the District were among the lowest in the country. On my first day in office, we introduced legislation to take control of our public schools. It was a bold idea and part of a hands-on approach to city government. Chancellor Michelle Rhee quickly implemented new talent development strategies and set to work on building a performance-oriented culture. The changes caused controversy, but they quickly boosted academic results.

In this global economy, talent development is job one for mayors. It starts with quality early learning, it includes great K-12 schools—the feeder system of a city—and adult learning and higher education linked to emerging job clusters.

In addition to the progress we made in education, my administration also built new parks, opened low-income housing, and made the District a safer place to live. New retail developments brought new jobs. It is this sort of fullcourt press that is necessary to revitalize our cities and boost education-based mobility.

For a mayor, talent development also includes creating leadership opportunities for locals and attracting super-smart, innovative people from all over—people who see changing the world as a life mission. City government is a vital service, but it also can be an exciting and challenging working environment.

In this new economy, cities must be pro-innovation and pro-people. As Tom points out in this book, cities can do both by supporting job creation and by making learning a priority. Everyone deserves a supported on-ramp to the innovation economy. That means equitable early learning, great K-12 options, affordable and relevant job training, and vibrant universities.

As a venture investor and business adviser, I appreciate the role of startups and growth companies more than ever. Not every city can and should be Silicon Valley, but every city can leverage local assets and create a vital job formation climate.

Great cities work for everyone. As noted in this book, great cities take sustained leadership, impact-focused partnerships, and aligned investments. What may be most important in the long run is that great cities will feature great learning opportunities. Great cities help everyone learn.

Foreword:

Michele Cahill, Carnegie Corporation

Educators have heard the good news this year that the United States has for the first time reached a high school graduation rate of 80 percent, with gains in large urban districts and among African American and Latino students as significant contributing factors. Reactions to this achievement have been mixed, ranging from celebration to cautious optimism to dismissal, the latter due to recognition that graduation does not equal college readiness, particularly for low-income students. At a time when earnings are tracking so closely with educational achievement and income inequality is growing, our young people will depend more than ever on schools to prepare them with the meaningful knowledge and skills needed for success in postsecondary education and careers. Without effective high schools, the social contract with young people that lies at the heart of the American dream—invest in yourself, work hard and learn, and you will have opportunities for rewarding work and meaningful choices about your future—is clearly at risk. While there are broader, non-education factors involved in our country's high rates of child poverty and growing inequality that need to be addressed, the stakes are high and the need is urgent for redesigning our high schools. We need to ask, as rigorously as we can, what it will take to get to 90 percent graduation rates with college readiness in the coming decade.

Fortunately, we have existing proof points that it is indeed possible to provide adolescents—even those who enter high school substantially behind—with an academically challenging curriculum and accelerated learning that enable them to catch up, get on track and graduate ready to succeed in postsecondary education. Greg Duncan and Richard Murnane write about High Schools That Improve Life Chances in their recent book, Restoring Opportunity: The Crisis of Inequality and the Challenge for American Education, which profiles the New York City Small Schools of Choice initiative and its evaluation results. The evidence they cite is highly encouraging, especially now that researchers from MIT and Duke have confirmed the original findings of the social policy research organization MDRC and are identifying positive outcomes in students' first years of college.

Looking to implications for the country, the question is, What will it take to do this at scale? As someone involved in the New York City Small Schools of Choice initiative work and in high school reform more generally, and with more than forty years of experience in K-12 and higher education, youth development, and the nonprofit, government and philanthropy sectors behind me, I have come to see that an ecosystem for learning is essential; moreover, design thinking is essential for creating this ecosystem and for enabling it to work at scale. An ecosystem draws in energy and contributions from a broad base of leadership, including educators, advocates, policy makers, philanthropy, government and civic voices. To be effective, their efforts must be rooted in common design principles that guide them in creating good secondary schools that significantly improve life chances.

At the heart of an ecosystem for learning is an ability to draw upon the assets of an entire city or community to support students as they grapple with the two primary tasks of adolescence: building competencies and forming their identities. In New York City, this involved a competitive design process rooted in common principles informed by research about teaching, learning, the organization of schools, and youth development and resiliency. Educators who proposed schools had to engage in a rigorous planning and approval process, and their plans had to demonstrate the capacity to put in place core elements: strong and capable school leadership; a school culture that promoted positive youth development through caring relationships, high expectations for all students, and student voice and contributions; high-quality teaching across disciplines; accountability for all students; an academically strong curriculum; and parent and community engagement. Only teams that met these criteria were approved to open schools.

Where does the ecosystem come in? To meet these challenging criteria, we needed to redefine school as a porous organization and redefine partnership as a core design element, not an add-on. When partnership is a core element of school design, students have opportunities for relationships with adults and experiences that literally expand the world that is well-known to them through connections with cultural organizations, professional and business settings, science and technical organizations, or community services. Students have opportunities to take on new roles and try out identities that can motivate them and build confidence and effort. Partnerships that are designed as core to schooling also can expand and deepen curriculum through themes, Project-Based Learning, internships, student research and expeditions.

Design thinking gives real roles to partner organizations in a learning ecosystem. New approaches are pushing the boundaries, as digital and blended learning open up new opportunities for educators to think creatively about how to credit student work accomplished outside a traditional classroom in an expanded learning time framework. From an equity perspective, building an ecosystem that affords access to learning opportunities that extend and enrich academics is highly promising, as economically advantaged families are dramatically increasing their investments in student talent-building activities and experiences in out-of-school time.

Moving this agenda in a time of tight budgets and high standards is challenging. Yet it can be a powerful strategy for increasing student engagement and effort, for supporting teachers in meeting college-ready standards, and, most of all, for tapping the extra capacity we will need to get to college readiness at scale].

Michele Cahill on Smart Cities

Preface

Cities, some would argue, are the world's greatest inventions, bringing productivity and opportunity to billions. But for many, cities are a hellhole of poverty and violence offering no visible way out. While sociologists have studied cities for years, a new generation of technologists, systems thinkers, and sustainability advocates is taking a fresh look at living together in close proximity. There are a number of interesting new hypotheses about how cities should evolve to be more livable and sustainable, including efforts to build density, speed transport, reduce consumption, boost employment and raise wages. In the long run, what will matter most is learning.

Now that anyone can learn almost anything anywhere there is a broadband connection, digital tools and networks are changing our assumptions about human development and changing the opportunity set for individuals and communities. As the subtitle of my book Getting Smart suggested, personal digital learning is changing the world.

With the shift from print to digital well underway, it was becoming obvious that new tools and new school models were being developed and adopted in some places much more quickly than others. The Smart Cities project was launched to investigate the civic formula required to dramatically boost learning outcomes and employability and, as Mayor Johnson suggested, create cities that work for everyone.

This project set out to explore questions in these five areas:

• Where do innovations in learning occur? What are the drivers of innovation? How and why are innovations incorporated by formal systems of education? How do innovations in learning spread? What role do incentives and barriers play?

• Why is K-12 education in America susceptible to superficial fads but resistant to best practice sharing and fundamental innovations?

• Why are some cities improving learning opportunities and outcomes and some are not? What should learning and civic leaders do to rapidly boost learning and employment opportunities and outcomes?

• What role does state and federal policy play in encouraging or blocking improvement and innovation?

• Can the learning sector be a job creator? Does every city need an incubator and education technology (EdTech) fund or will these capabilities naturally cluster? What should every city do now?

With this ambitious list of questions in mind, the crowdsourced Smart Cities blog series was launched in 2012 to catalog the innovations in learning in America's great cities. Hundreds of people contributed this this broad but rather informal investigation. In the spring of 2014, more than 60 thought leaders were invited to contribute to this book project.

My preparation for this project included five years as an executive for a public company, five years as a public school superintendent, seven years as an instructor in finance, strategy, and leadership in two MBA programs, six years as a partner in the leading education venture fund, and philanthropic sponsorship of 1,200 new schools, 400 nonprofit organizations, and school improvement efforts in three dozen very challenging urban environments. The Getting Smart team has, in the last few years, published 33 papers, several books, and more than 5,000 blogs on related topics. The point of this immodesty is that the subject of innovations in learning is a long-time interest, and the conclusions derived through this widespread but informal process are well grounded in success and failure on a large scale in several sectors. A clear, although not simple, premise emerged as seven keys to smart cities.

Premise. As the majority of the world's population becomes urban, cities must become centers of learning for young and old. Every person, organization and region needs to get smart—to skill up, learn more and build new capacities faster and cheaper than ever. In the long run, education is the economic development agenda.

Innovative new tools and schools are making it possible for individuals, organizations and cities to boost learning outcomes. Most learning innovations occur in what this book will call ecosystems—and these unique environments begin with a handful of people with an innovation mindset. This combination of persistence, entrepreneurship and a collaborative focus on impact can be taught in every classroom and encouraged in every city.

Following forewords from two remarkable city leaders and one lifelong advocate for youth development, and then introductions to the concepts of smart cities and next generation learning, this book focuses on the seven keys to education and employment: Innovation Mindset, Sustained Leadership, Talent Development, Collective Impact, Aligned Investment, New Tools and Schools, and Advocacy and Policy.

This book is intended to serve as an outline for regional action and investment, a guide for philanthropic and venture investment, a blueprint for civic entrepreneurs and Edupreneurs, and a