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The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) provides state K–12 leaders significant flexibility with how they design their education and accountability systems and grants them an unprecedented opportunity to invest in personalized learning. KnowledgeWorks’ new report, “Recommendations for Advancing Personalized Learning Under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA),” offers guidance on how states can approach these new opportunities as they develop their ESSA implementation plans while keeping federal, state, and local policies in alignment.

The report recommends states define personalized learning as a teaching and learning framework that:

• Aligns instruction to college-/career-ready standards and social/emotional skills that students need to be successful.
• Customizes instruction in a way that allows all students to design their learning experiences according to their own interests.
• Varies the pace of instruction according to each student’s needs, so students may accelerate/decelerate their pace based on their level of mastery.
• Encourages educators to use data from formative assessments and student feedback to differentiate instruction and provide supports/interventions to ensure all students remain on track for graduation
• Allows students and parents access to clear, transferable learning objectives/assessment results to better understand expectations for mastery and advancement.

KnowledgeWorks divides its report into five sections: Accountability, School Improvement, Assessment, Educator Workforce, and Extended Learning Opportunities (ELOs). Each section includes a description of flexibilities under ESSA that states can leverage to advance personalized learning; specific strategies to use these flexibilities to build a personalized learning system; and questions for state leaders to explore with other K–12 stakeholders to help integrate the strategies into a federal, state, and local aligned personalized learning system. Here are some highlights:


Accountability. ESSA allows states to develop new accountability systems that align to college and career success for all students. States should create “accountability indices” that incorporate these best practices for advancing personalized learning:

• Include personalized learning indicators “to incentivize adoption of personalized learning strategies.”
• Emphasize growth to proficiency to better identify where students are in their learning trajectory “and set rigorous goals to ensure each student progresses at a rate of growth” that will ensure mastery of K–12 standards/competencies.
• Balance accountability across each level of the system. “In addition to the minimum, essential goals and measures identified by the federal government for all states to monitor, states should include a set of state-level goals and measures that align with the state’s vision of student success and local goals and measures unique to each district’s vision for teaching and learning.”
• Incentivize deeper levels of mastery by developing accountability systems that track student performance growth in real-time. States can track the percentages of students who enter a school off-track, students who have advanced to on-track during the year, and students who have progressed to advanced/honors levels.
• Make continuous improvements by designing dynamic accountability systems that can adapt as necessary to improve teaching and learning.

School Improvement. ESSA eliminates federally required school improvement strategies, so states can redesign their own support systems and interventions for schools and districts. States should incorporate these strategies to “maximize system capacity and ensure high quality implementation.”

• Provide all underperforming schools “with diagnostic support to help schools identify the underlying causes of underperformance and develop a plan for improvement” and frequent diagnostic reviews.
• Establish early warning data systems and provide districts with reports so local school leaders can diagnose/address problems before they escalate.
• Establish a set of principles for districts to address in their implementation plan if they want to access federal/state school improvement resources to fund school reform strategies.
• Empower high-impact principals with greater autonomy to implement school improvement strategies.
• Emphasize growth and sustainability when establishing exit criteria for low-performing schools regarding school improvement/accountability plans.

Assessments. ESSA allows states to replace or reform current assessment systems to those that better align with personalized learning environments. As states reexamine their current systems, they should ensure they integrate these elements:

• Divide summative annual assessments into smaller, more frequent tests administered throughout the year to enable students to demonstrate mastery when they’re ready.
• Use computer-adaptive assessments for “formative, interim, and summative assessments to identify where each students is in his or her learning trajectory and align customized supports.”
• Ensure assessments provide evidence of student mastery of social/emotional competencies as well as academic competencies.
• Ensure assessments include performance tasks so students can demonstrate “deeper levels of mastery” and align to student interests when possible.

Educator Workforce. ESSA allows states to design new strategies to improve educator quality to prepare teachers/leaders for success in personalized learning environments, but will “require significant changes to pre-service preparation, certification, professional development, and evaluation programs to reflect new teaching and leading roles.” States should develop professional competencies that reflect the skills and responsibilities teacher/leaders need to excel under such a system and align all educator workforce policies to these competencies to provide “clearly defines pathways for professional growth.”

• Encourage teacher/leader preparation programs to collaborate with K–12 school systems “to define professional competencies for personalized learning environments” and align preparation to those competencies. ESSA Title II Part A funds can assist with this.
• Modernize credentialing policies and reform state Title II Part A professional development programs to ensure they align with statewide professional competencies for personalized learning.
• Ensure educator evaluations systems “align with statewide professional competencies and customized professional development opportunities to ensure educators continuously improve their practice.”

Extended Learning Opportunities (ELOs). ESSA allows states many opportunities to leverage federal funding to provide high-quality ELOs. States should develop strategic plans to leverage these opportunities in alignment with that state’s vision for personalized learning. As they develop these plans, state leaders should consider the following:

• Use Title I funds to increase access to ELOs for at-risk students. States can use up to 3% of funds (under the direct student services reservation provision of ESSA) for these purposes.
• Use Title IV block grants (the Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grant) to incentivize district innovation that focuses on personalized learning and help districts leverage technology to expand personalized learning opportunities.
• Prioritize ELOs in the 21^st Century Community Learning Centers Grant program under ESSA.

Learn more about how to leverage ESSA provisions to advance personalized learning opportunities by reading the full report. Also, see this KnowledgeWorks factsheet to learn how personalized learning provisions and opportunities differ under ESSA from No Child Left Behind (NCLB). It also highlights personalized learning opportunities with regard to assessment design, state accountability systems, school improvement strategies, new direct student service provisions under ESSA, teacher and school leader certifications/licensure funding opportunities, and ESSA block grant programs.