Background

Arizona K-12 education is flourishing within an eLearningi centric school system designed and implemented with a focus on teacher-student interaction. After passage of the first eSATSi legislationi in 2006, student academic performancei began to soar and high school dropout rates began to plummet. All the while the student population was growing from 1 million to 1.3 million by 2016. Arizona’s unique focus on digital curricula and teacher professional development assured successful adoption of eLearning. Arizona now leads the United States in efficiency, effectiveness, accessibility, equity and accountability with an eLearning computer for every student. eLearning has generated large cost savings in construction avoidance, teacher effectiveness, and delivering thirteen K-12 academic years of learning, typically, in eleven to twelve calendar years. The savings have returned per pupil K-12 funding to historical legacy education levels while affording a net twenty percent increase in teacher salaries. The benefits of each graduate's occupational success and Arizona's economic development far exceed the ten year eLearning investment of two percent of legacy education cost.

System designs are a powerful means for determining what to do and in what order. Most people get a comfortable feeling then they hear their car or dress was created by a great designer. But few have experience in bringing designs to fruition.

Fortunately we are still living in the automotive age. Everyone is familiar with roadmaps. Most of us are pretty good at using them to get around in a strange city. Our eSATS team came to the realization that our system design for eLearning transformationi of Arizona K-12 education while absolutely critical, is not sufficient on itsi own. Thousands of Arizonans are going be engaged in the next ten years doing their part to implement the transformation. A road map is needed to garner their hearts and minds and to engage them in implementing the system design.

We could have gone to our friendly cartographer or Google/Yahoo/Mapquest Maps for help. But, it was time to use the civic entrepreneur’s lever – “borrow” a roadmap framework and embed the eSATS system design into it.

In 2002 the biotech folks and the Flinn Foundation invested a few hundred thousand dollars with the Battelle Memorial Institute to craft “Arizona’s Bioscience Roadmap.” It is a great document. We believe if it is good enough for the biotech folks it ought to be good enough for eLearning and K-12 education. Lets take a look at their sections and sequence:

Vision is 10 years: K12 eLearning is not a one time expenditure or effort but must be a major commitment with adequate resources to ensure success over the long haul.