Flex model programs or schools have an online curriculum with onsite support. This category of blended learning is more common in high school because it requires a good deal of independent study. The Christensen Institute describes flex models this way:

Students move on an individually customized, fluid schedule among learning modalities. The teacher of record is on-site, and students learn mostly on the brick-and-mortar campus, except for any homework assignments. The teacher of record or other adults provide face-to-face support on a flexible and adaptive as-needed basis through activities such as small-group instruction, group projects, and individual tutoring.

Flex models vary in the degree and type of face-to-face support but many include small-group instruction, group projects, and individual tutoring. In contrast to rotation models where students spend 20-30% of their time online, students in flex models spend more than 50% of their time online. Matriculation at rotation schools is typically by cohort (with some flexibility to meet individual needs) while students in a flex models are typically progressing as they demonstrate mastery in most courses. Rotation schools add some online learning to what otherwise may look like a traditional school while flex schools start with online learning and add physical supports and connections where valuable expanding the potential for innovation is higher in flex schools.

Examples. The Flex name comes from San Francisco Flex and Silicon Valley Flex, two Bay Area schools that combine the K-12 core curriculum with a full day of academic support, clubs, and activities. FuelEd works with school districts to create flex learning environments with the PEAK platform which allows teachers to add open or created content.

The Carpe Diem network was launched with a top performing Yuma Arizona secondary school where students split their time between workshops and personal learning online. Six teachers and a team of paraprofessionals support the development of 300 students grades 6-12. Given the 50/50 split with online and workshops, some observers would call this an individual rotation model but the roots are pure flex (See feature on Carpe Diem Indianapolis and Cincinnati).

Connections Learning developed a midwest flex network of 7 Nexus Academies. The double shifted high schools serve up to 300 students. The facilities look like modern office space. In addition to master teachers, students benefit from a counselor, a fitness trainer, and a success coach to guide them through Connections’ comprehensive online high school curriculum. Nexus students benefit from frequent small group instruction in half hour sessions.

In partnership with school districts, AdvancePath has been managing flex dropout prevention academies nationwide for most of a decade. Students that are a year or two behind have the opportunity to get back on track by earning credits more rapidly than would be possible in a typical classroom. AdvancePath has a robust response-to-intervention (RTI) solution for high school-a personalized pathway for every student.

After opening an iPrep demonstration site, Miami Dade added flex academies to 8 comprehensive high schools.

12 benefits. There are at least 12 potential benefits of flex models:

1. Competency-based. Students progress based on demonstrated mastery. They use cohort groups and teams when and where they are helpful.

2. Accelerated learning. Flex models allow students to move at their own pace. For students with partial content knowledge but credit deficiencies, the ability to move quickly and test out of topics they have mastered may allow them to earn credits at two or three times the normal rate.

3. Customized experience. Flex models make it easy to customize the experience for each student. As platforms get more robust, student pathways will become more customized (by interest, modality, motivation, and schedule).

4. Portable and flexible. Students can take a flex school on the road for a family vacation or for a work or community-based learning experience. There’s a flex school with a football team. For districts, flex programs can be quickly deployed in less than 90 days and scaled rapidly.

5. Productive operations. Flex models have the potential to operate at lower cost than alternative education models.

6. Small rural high schools. Flex models make it easy to run very good very small high schools. Where it would have been difficult to serve 100 students with a traditional comprehensive high school model, a flex program can offer every AP course, every foreign language, every high level STEM course-all in an affordable and well supported environment.

7. New staffing models. Flex models make use of differentiated (levels) and distributed (locations) staffing. As noted at OpportunityCulture, we need to invent new ways to leverage talent with technology and flex models will be the source of the most interesting and productive staffing strategies.

8. Early college. Flex models facilitate college credit accumulation in high school. Look for AP, dual enrollment, and career/major specific models. Flex students should be able to finish high school in three years with a year of college credit. Like Career Path High, a flex school can be located on a postsecondary campus.

9. Career focus. Flex models can focus on particular careers and make time for work-based learning. GPS Education Partners is a network of manufacturing flex academies in the upper midwest where students take high school classes in the morning and complete manufacturing internships in the afternoon.

10. Leverage local assets. Flex models have the unique ability to leverage community assets like museums, theaters, historical sites, natural resources, as well as local employers.

11. Early movers. Like two in-district charter high schools in Kettle-Moraine Wisconsin, flex schools can operate as a school-within-a-school offering thematic integration.

12. Site visits. For many of us site visits are the most important component of professional learning. A flex academy provides a local opportunity for staff members to experience competency-based blended learning with innovative staffing and scheduling–a visit is far more powerful than reading about it.

Do now. Using a flex model, every community can afford to have a great high school. Every community should have a flex option that provides a fully supported individualized pathway to graduation. Every community should use a flex model to leverage local resources and meet specific needs. Every district should open a flex model so that everyone can visit and experience the future of education.

The current system of preparing U.S. schools and system leaders is broken. Candidates self-identify, pay for required degrees often made up of random coursework, and don’t benefit from jobs that develop relevant leadership skills.Educating School Leaders, Arthur Levine said, “Many of the university-based programs designed to prepare the next generation of educational leaders are engaged in a counterproductive ‘race to the bottom,’ in which they compete for students by lowering admission standards, watering down coursework, and offering faster and less demanding degrees.”

Last week, we considered the question, “What do principals need to know and be able to do?” in the first blog in this series. It was suggested that the leadership challenge has moved from technical to adaptive, requiring a diverse set of skills.

When we surveyed leading alternative leadership development providers, they described pathways with 10 common attributes:

1. Proactive identification of potential leaders

2. Coherent designs focused on student achievement

3. Sequence of varied and valuable leadership experiences

4. Blended learning opportunities, both personalized and cohort-based

5. Competency-based progression based recognized job requirements

6. Differentiated pathways with opportunities to specialize

7. Strong tracking systems for individual learning plans

8. Commitment/contribution from hiring entities and prospective leaders

9. Clear and aligned incentives

10. Accountable providers funded and accredited based on outcomes.

It’s conceivable that these attributes could be incorporated into degree programs, but it is clear that preparation and licensure could also occur on alternative routes. What is clear is a focus on intentional design of a personalized sequence of learning opportunities and work experiences to effectively prepare school leaders-whether within or outside the context of a degree program.

Experience matters. Serving as an assistant principal–with the typical focus on student discipline–is often completely inadequate training to be a principal. Similarly, the principal to superintendent track is insufficient preparation.

Like military leadership development, districts and networks should identify promising talent, provide broadening experiences, on-the-job training, and more candid feedback. Leading school, district or wide improvement projects can provide much more relevant experience.Hillsborough County Public Schools follows this model. Superintendent MaryEllen Elia held just about every job in the central office, “I had a number of jobs that crossed over divisions: instructional, nontraditional programs, summer school, elementary, high school, transportation, food service, data, assessment, and facilities,” said Elia.

Like Leadership Public Schools, districts can distribute innovation projects among schools giving a large number of teacher leaders valuable project-based collaborative leadership experiences. As noted in Improving Conditions & Careers, blended learning environments,extended reach strategies, and a more dynamic education sector all provide expanded leadership development opportunities and pathways.

Like learning experiences for entrepreneurs at tech trainer General Assembly, high quality on-the-job training (online and blended) should be available from experts and with talented peers.

Respondents also mentioned the need for ongoing principal peer interactions. A preparation program can get a principal started on a pathway of development as an education leader. As we’re beginning to see in engineering and medicine, we’ll see education providers beginPowering Lifelong Learning Relationships. Imagine an individual development plan and professional learning community powered by apps that were automatically updated for new policies, best practices and new tools.

It’s exciting and encouraging to see some of the folks training high performing leaders thinking about blended personalized learning for leaders-not just students. It suggests the potential for more efficient and effective replacements for the system of courses, credits, and credentials. However, enacting these ten attributes at scale would require new state policies governing licensure.

Licensure. It’s widely apparent that the current system of licensure for educators does not work. It is expensive for educators and yields a high percentage of type I & II errors (i.e., letting the wrong people teach and keeping the right people out).

Some argue that, like the independent school sector, licensure should not be required. Some Canadian provinces just require a teaching certificate to become a principal. Some states do not require a license for superintendents (and that’s how I got in).

There may be a few rebel red states that could scrap state licensure altogether, but most will only change when there is a viable replacement alternative. There appears to be three alternatives:

• Performance-based: Digital Learning Now suggests that teachers should be granted certification after several years of demonstrated performance-principal certification could work the same way. Schools, districts, and networks should have the ability to work with any organization they choose to craft leadership development pathways. School leaders should earn reciprocal certification based on demonstrated performance.

• Competency-based: Another option is a “show what you know” system. Accounting, law, and real estate are licensed by exam. Doctors and pilots are required to pass multiple assessments and demonstrate proficiency under supervision. More dynamic job clusters are beginning to use other competency-signaling strategies including badges, references, and portfolios.

• Authorization-based: Today, licensure is granted by state accredited institutions of higher education, but states could require existing providers to re-apply for accreditation under a new system of time bound performance contracts tied to specific outcomes and invite new providers to apply. A system of authorized/accredited providers could use a variety of competency-based strategies to award licensure.

New Leaders has been training leaders for high performing schools for 13 years. In Improving Principal Preparation with their blended Leadership Practice Improvement (LPI) program they outlined their rationale for the third approach because, “States have the opportunity to rethink the approval process for these programs, the criteria for approval, and the monitoring systems to guarantee that programs continue to deliver highly prepared school leaders.”

At the Bush Institute, the Alliance to Reform Education Leadership (AREL) is working with the Center for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins on a framework to evaluate principal preparation programs. Like New Leaders, AREL recommends, “States should monitor principal preparation program outcome data and hold programs accountable for producing effective principals.” That means program approval must be outcome-based and providers with weak outcomes lose the ability to license principals. (EdTrust made a similar recommendation for teacher preparation programs.)

It’s time to rethink leadership preparation in education. The linear model is obsolete, expensive, and time consuming. It’s time for new pathways and new partnerships that prepare leaders for the schools our young people deserve. New models of preparation must be about matching leadership to the next generation environment where they will serve.

Course Access programs allow students to participate in part-time online learning. Half a dozen states have taken steps to expand access, particularly for high school students, to advanced courses, electives, world languages, and career and technical courses. According to a report issued by The International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL), Course Access, “Is a mechanism by which students can gain equitable access to a variety of courses in a programmatic effort to increase access, quality and equity in public education.”

Most school districts report that they currently have, or plan on adding part-time online learning options. Course Access takes that idea a step further; it is state initiatives that authorize a group of diverse providers, ranging from individual teachers to national organizations, to provide public school students with expanded course offerings.

The iNACOL policy brief, Course Access: Equitable Opportunities for College and Career Ready Students provides an overview of Course Access as a state policy solution to opportunity and achievement gaps in K-12 education. The brief suggests that Course Access can easily and affordably extend access to quality college and career preparation to every high school student in the country. For example, few high schools can afford to offer all 32 Advanced Placement courses and 6 world languages, but with Course Access it is provided and cost effective. In addition to these suggestions the brief includes model legislative principles for state Course Access legislation.

The iNACOL report recommends that Course Access initiatives should prioritize poorly served students, should use a rigorous review and authorization process, and should be based on sustainable funding that encourages completion and achievement.

“The funding model should allow for progression and funding based on demonstrated competency, not seat time,” and according to the brief, “Courses should have clear, explicit, mastery-based learning outcomes, and the funding model should reward providers for student attainment of these outcomes.”

While districts should not be able to limit student learning options, the expansion of online learning options requires that students are connected to guidance and support services. The iNACOL brief mentions options that could be used in tandem:

• Local support: The student’s home school may retain a portion (e.g., 10-25%) of the student’s funding for the course to cover a relative share of costs for services such as assessments, counseling, custodial, and administrative functions. (For example, in a state with an average expenditure of $9,000, one of six classes would be worth $1500, 85% of that would be $1275).

• Online support: One key lesson learned in Louisiana was the importance of the counseling program set up to provide technical assistance to school counselors, students, and parents. Course Access program counselors work with school counselors to make them aware of the program and course options, and to ensure that courses selected by students and families are educationally appropriate, logistically feasible, and keep the student on track to an on-time graduation. (For more, see DLN paper onGuiding and Personalizing College & Career Readiness.)

The release of iNACOL’s brief follows Digital Learning Now’s Leading in an Era of Change: Making the Most of State Course Access Programs released last summer. This white paper recommends that multi-state networks share the burden of course reviews, while encouraging reciprocity of teachers and approved providers across state lines.

A group of Stanford Students developed A Framework for Selecting Quality Course Providers at Competitive Prices which builds on Louisiana’s market-oriented pricing strategy.

Ken Bradford, leads Louisiana’s innovative Course Access program. He said the goal is, “To provide high-quality educational options to students in both rural and urban areas of the state that currently do not have access to the classes they need to prepare for college or a career.”