How Education Policy Leads to Extraordinary Experiences for Students

What do these extraordinary student experiences have in common? They’re all made possible when a state creates a flexible policy environment and an innovative school district is hyper-focused on meeting the individual needs of its learners.

Northern Cass School District—30 miles north of Fargo, North Dakota—is a rural school community thinking outside of the box to innovate. It’s one of many schools proving that with the right policy environment, extraordinary student experiences are not just a dream, but a reality.

We talked to superintendents, educators, and students in rural districts around the country to understand the connection between the learning experiences they offer to young people and the state-level policies that support their innovations.

The insights, challenges, and solutions shared mirror what we’ve heard from education leaders across the country—from New York City to Los Angeles, suburban Chicago to suburban Miami, and rural North Dakota to rural Massachusetts. We’re sharing these rural bright spots as inspiration for policy and district leaders in rural, suburban, and urban settings.

Why Education Policy Matters

In North Dakota, the legislature, the Department of Public Instruction, and the governor joined forces to pass a law that created personalized, competency-based graduation pathways, allowing districts to forgo certain requirements and create their own policies for demonstrating academic skills and mastery.

This political leadership alignment was a critical asset, says Dr. Cory Steiner, superintendent of the Northern Cass School District in North Dakota. “Our governor, who comes from the business world—in his frame of reference and the idea from the tech world that if you’re not innovating, you’re falling behind—has really pushed us to reframe our perspective on education,” he says.

Steiner says the governor and the state school superintendent both believe in empowering local districts and their boards to design with the community and listen deeply to learners. “So it’s learner-centered for Northern Cass and it’s learner-centered for Bismarck, but that might be two very different things,” he says.

Rural systems have unique assets that prime them for innovation. Because of their small size and tight-knit nature, rural school districts can see how new policies directly influence student experience faster. As Mike McNeff, Superintendent of the Rugby School District in North Dakota, points out, “In a small system, the speed of innovation can happen faster. I’m able to do things quickly in my district.”

Rural communities demonstrate well how to leverage relationships in the community and state to partner together to shift policy. Dr. Beth Regulbuto, Superintendent of the Southern Berkshire Regional School District in Massachusetts, says that collaboration is key for rural school districts. In Massachusetts, less than 20% of school districts are considered rural, which makes passing legislation that favors rural systems difficult. Regulbuto combats this issue by joining as many boards and state-level commissions as possible to raise awareness about the innovations and strategies rural districts use to sustain and to try to put them on the map.

Policies That Matter Most

Three policy areas emerge as critical for transformative change in all contexts:

• Assessments and accountability
• Seat time and graduation requirements
• Funding

Assessments and Accountability

Flexibility in assessment systems is essential for measuring the impact of innovative practices in rural schools. Traditional standardized assessments may not fully assess the depth of student learning, particularly in contexts that emphasize personalized, project-based, and place-based approaches, which often involve real-world experiences and community engagement.

Rural students and leaders advocate for a more expansive approach that includes both traditional and non-traditional measures of learning and progress. “Standardized tests are not a true reflection of who I am as a person,” says Maleah Pfeifer, a senior at Northern Cass.

Another traditional measure of student success is the GPA. Steiner from Northern Cass in North Dakota notes the focus on GPA can be limiting. He says that parents don’t talk about letter grades or percentages anymore, but they do care about GPA because North Dakota colleges have a GPA requirement tied to college funding. Steiner wishes he could recognize measures of success beyond GPA. “That would completely shift the system to be about learning and not reporting,” he says.

While accountability systems are intended to ensure quality and equity, they can also be burdensome and limit innovation. Dr. Audra Pittman from Calistoga Joint Unified School District in California says balancing compliance work with innovative initiatives is a constant challenge. “We are required to write a new plan and a new reporting requirement that is often duplicating work,” says Pittman. “This is often especially cumbersome for small districts that don’t have the people to focus solely on reporting requirements. This also gets in the way because you’re spending your time doing compliance paperwork, and not able to devote your time to making improvement and change.”

Leaders believe that there is a place for standardized forms of assessment: These data provide valuable insight across the student body and often serve as the fuel for a community to try more innovative approaches to teaching and learning. Rural students and leaders advocate for a more expansive approach that also would provide insight on the impact of innovative approaches.

Seat Time and Graduation Requirements

Flexibility in seat time and graduation requirements can enable schools to create more personalized and engaging learning experiences. As of 2023, every state allows schools to measure student success by mastery rather than seat time, but innovation to take advantage of this has been limited without incentives to approach teaching and learning differently.

In North Dakota, Rugby Schools lobbied the state to change the seat time requirement from a certain number of days to a certain number of hours, which provides greater flexibility. “It allows us to embed more days—early out days and full professional development days,” superintendent Mike McNeff says. This enabled the district to run a co-op program where students gain practical experience that aligns with their career goals and apply their skills in real-world work environments. This is another example of districts in North Dakota leveraging the support and encouragement from state leadership to innovate.

At Northern Cass High School in North Dakota, senior Taylor Pfiefer has appreciated the flexibility. “Not having seat time requirements has given me significantly more opportunities; it has allowed me to work on my future as well as accomplishing my school at the same time,” he says.

In Lindsay Unified School District in California, flexibility also means allowing learners to work at their own pace. Aiden Duran, a junior at Lindsay Senior High appreciates the flexibility. “In U.S. History class, I’m trying to go ahead so I can finish the course early and then work on classes I need a little more time for.”

Dawson Boland, a Learning Facilitator at Lindsay High School, says Lindsay is extremely learner-focused. “It’s about giving students more pacing and more time,” he says. “You can be really focused on students being successful rather than attendance to get money. That has really held up. It really is about the learners doing good, not just about them being here.”

At Lindsay, educators are not called “teachers;” they’re called “learning facilitators.” And while that may seem like a small shift, it represents how deep the learner focus goes. Teaching is not a transfer of knowledge from an authority figure to the students; rather, it’s guiding the students in their own educational journeys and at their own pace.

Funding

Flexible funding for school innovation is critical to supporting sustainable innovation, especially in resource-constrained rural districts. This funding can be used to address pressing challenges like staff shortages and the drying up of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds. By investing in areas such as hiring key staff members, providing professional development for teachers and staff, using technology to mitigate capacity gaps, and addressing the unexpected school and system level costs that emerge as innovation work evolves, these districts can enhance student learning and ensure equitable educational opportunities.

Regulbuto in Massachusetts says community involvement is critical in securing funding and sustaining the work. “When you are a regional school district superintendent, your role is entrepreneurial; you are designing the system from top to bottom,” she says. “You have to go to the communities with a plan, and it’s soup to nuts—from revenues, programming expenditures, grants, etc. We as a team start with our collectively developed vision, so I think there are a ton of benefits to building relationships with all stakeholders because you have to build trust, and you have to involve the community in really understanding what they need and what they value. And this community from day one wants to sustain. They believe in and support their schools at extraordinary levels, but it’s not sustainable without additional rural aid or state funding.”

Steiner in North Dakota says his district applies for grants to help support innovation—even if the grants aren’t a perfect fit. For example, if a $20,000 grant comes with some additional commitments for Steiner, he makes it work because it helps fund the district’s innovative programs.

The Role of State Leaders in Driving Innovation

While local districts play a crucial role in driving innovation, state-level leaders can significantly accelerate the adoption of student-centered practices. State education agencies and other policymakers can create a more favorable environment for schools to experiment and innovate by acting as:

• Visionaries
• Facilitators
• Funders

Visionaries

State leaders can lead from the front by providing cover, vision, and direction for innovation efforts. By creating a supportive environment that encourages risk-taking and experimentation, these leaders can help schools break free from traditional practices and explore new approaches. State leaders can also work to ensure innovative learning practices are measured with multiple forms of assessment that better assess student learning—including both academic outcomes and the quality of student learning experiences. North Dakota’s continuous improvement system, for example, includes the annual administration of a student engagement survey that accounts for 30 percent of an elementary or middle school’s overall rating and 20 percent of a high school’s overall rating.

Steiner says it’s beneficial when political leadership sees the work the same way as the schools. “It’s nice to have political leadership that uses the term ‘learner-centered’ because it improves buy-in from the community. When the governor supports that district’s initiatives, parents and families are more inclined to join the movement than to fight against it. Leaders at the state level are not only using the same terminology but also uplifting them within the community.”

Alignment among state agencies, higher education institutions, and businesses can also create a strong foundation for school transformation. For example, in North Dakota, the state has worked closely with colleges and universities to develop pathways for students to earn college credit while still in high school.

Facilitators

State leaders can facilitate innovation by easing the path for student-centered learning. One policy change state leaders should get behind is reducing compliance paperwork and streamlining processes, which Dr. Pittman from Calistoga noted above as a barrier to innovation.

Several states—Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, Michigan, South Carolina, and Utah—have published “flexibility guides” to make schools and districts aware of the options available to them. These guides can help schools navigate the complex landscape of state regulations and identify opportunities for innovation.

Funders

State agencies can also directly fund innovation efforts. This may involve investing in research and development (R&D), providing grants for schools to pilot new programs, or adopting innovative models themselves. It’s important that this funding doesn’t just support existing programs but also incentivizes districts to transform their schools and systems.

States committed to fostering innovation can look to private philanthropy for inspiration: what might it look like to provide flexible, multi-year, and/or renewable grants with streamlined application and reporting processes? Regulbuto highlights the need for funding to support creative, out-of-the-box innovation. “I’m happy to create or develop something in-house; I just need the funds and the resources,” she says.

Rural aid through state funding formulas can also provide additional resources to rural districts, which often face unique challenges. However, it is important that these funds come with the expectation that they support innovation and not simply maintain the status quo.

McNeff leverages grants to support innovation work but worries about sustaining that work once the grant is done, since they are often one-time payments. This speaks to the importance of states establishing sustainable R&D infrastructure that lasts beyond time-limited pilot programs. He also says that’s why—despite the favorable flexibility in North Dakota—only a few districts are truly transforming education right now.

By its nature, innovation comes with unpredictable costs: With the iterative nature of the school innovation journey, it’s a challenge to predict what will be needed and and how much it will cost. Flexible, longer-term funding for innovation could help districts meet emerging needs and respond to what they’re learning along the way.

Rural districts in North Dakota, Massachusetts, and California are demonstrating that with the right support, collaboration, and state-level policy, it’s possible to create educational environments that are truly student-centered and responsive to the unique needs of each learner.