The NCEE Blueprint: Designing Systems That Work
We’ve been researching top education systems for nearly four decades—unpacking what they do, how they do it, and the challenges they face. The NCEE Blueprint: Designing Systems That Work is the distillation of that research
Designed for policymakers and education leaders, the NCEE Blueprint offers insights into the core components of successful systems, their dynamic interconnections, and how disparate elements come together to drive high levels of student performance.
It isn’t a step-by-step guide, but rather it highlights the strategies, structures, and qualities of systems that deliver high-quality, future-ready education for all learners.
Organized into four interconnected components, each with a forward-looking Anticipating the Future section, the NCEE Blueprint serves as a driver for dialogue and a springboard for possibility—helping leaders design education systems with the future not just in mind, but at their strategic heart.
Thinking Differently About…
This series offers a different perspective on things we think about a lot in education. It’s primarily for education system designers and is meant to inspire, while also presenting global policies and practices that provide insights into how to improve success for students in the United States.
The first brief in this series dives into domestic and global examples of inspiration and strategies for improving math success for students in the United States.
Explore new ways of thinking about time in education. This brief is Part 1 of a two-part series on time. It covers Grades 1-9, and the second brief will cover upper secondary (Grades 10-12).
Forthcoming in this series we think differently about staffing, from working conditions to recruitment.
This series is ongoing. Sign up for our newsletter to stay informed about new Thinking Differently About… releases.
Framework for AI-Powered Learning Environments
Insights from some top-performing school systems
Generative AI (GenAI) is here to stay, and it is only the beginning of what will come from emerging technology. The question is no longer “Should we give students access to AI?”, but rather, “How should students work with AI?” And, as GenAI matures beyond ChatGPT to more robust, organization-specific applications, it will dramatically transform our education system.
This framework is intended to provide education leaders a strategic approach for integrating artificial intelligence into their systems based on best practices from successful implementation in other sectors. It is designed to help plan a short-term strategy—for the next 18-20 months—as well as a longer-term strategy on integrating AI technology into learning systems in ways that will help prepare students for an ever-changing future.
The Relentless Improver
The U.S. Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) School System
The Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) serves children of military families both in the United States and overseas. In recent years, DoDEA students have consistently outperformed their peers in other states on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—and they do so by wide margins. DoDEA has also showed the most progress in closing longstanding achievement gaps between White students and their Black and Hispanic classmates; and it was the only school system to see its scores hold steady, and even rise somewhat, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This case study explores DoDEA’s unique, high-performing education system including its structure, governance, curriculum standards, and assessment methods. It also looks at other factors that might influence these high performance levels, such as the disciplined military culture and the strong support systems for students and families.
Anticipating the Future
This series of briefs explores both the current priorities and the future goals driving some of the world’s best-performing and most innovative education systems. Filled with real-world examples, both domestic and international, these briefs look around the corner to answer questions such as:
How is assessment evolving to prepare students to thrive in school and beyond in our rapidly changing world?
How can we build a teaching force that is empowered, resilient and adaptive to future shocks, innovative, and responsive to new challenges and opportunities?
How can school systems learn from the experience and leverage the most effective and innovative practices of the era to become stronger and better prepared than ever?
How do we build more robust and equitable career pathways to prepare all our youth to thrive in work and life?
This series is ongoing. Sign up for our newsletter to stay informed about new Anticipating the Future releases.
Building a World-Class Learning System
Insights from some top-performing school systems
NCEE asked Geoff Masters, Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Council for Education Research (ACER) and an international expert on educational assessment, to take a broad look at the learning systems in a small set of jurisdictions—British Columbia, Estonia, Finland, Hong Kong and South Korea—that have long performed well on the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The question we posed to him was, what do these different education systems have in common now, and as they look into the future?
The result of this multi-year study is a free-to-download eBook that provides a framework for looking at learning systems comprehensively, with chapters focused on system aspirations; curriculum and assessment; student, teacher, and leader support; and the ecosystem that supports learning. Learn more about the study and download the book here. Case studies that delve deeper into some of the jurisdictions included in the study are forthcoming.
