11:00 AM -- 12:00 PM
More with Dr. Richard Elmore (session #225)
Dr. Elmore will continue to address educational and workforce issues raised in his previous Plenary Session.

PARTICIPANTS
	Stuart Kahl, Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, Measured Progress, Inc., New Hampshire
	Shilpi Niyogi, Executive Vice President, National Services Strategy & New Business Development, Pearson Education, District of Columbia
	Stanley Rabinowitz, Director, Assessment and Standards Development Services, WestEd, California
	Kevin Sweeney, Executive Director of Psychometrics, The College Board, Pennsylvania

11:00 AM -- 12:00 PM
Multi-State Collaborations: Lessons Learned from Two New England Efforts (session #226)
This session will explore two efforts at multi-state collaboration: the development of the New England Comprehensive Assessment Program (NECAP) and the newly formed New England Secondary School Consortium. Through NECAP, three states developed common grade level expectations and common assessments in reading, mathematics, writing and science. The Consortium's goal is to ensure that by 2016 every public high school student in the four partner states will receive an education that prepares them for college, career, and civic responsibility in our increasingly interconnected global community. This session will highlight the benefits, challenges and lessons learned from these collaborative efforts.

11:00 AM -- 12:00 PM
Building Stepping Stones into the Workforce (session #227)
States are developing many innovative strategies to more effectively move low-skilled, low-wage adults into the workforce by customizing academic programs to meet the unique needs of those who are non-traditional entrants into postsecondary education. This session will look at how some states are moving to stackable certificates that will allow students to take shorter and more achievable steps to prepare for postsecondary education so that they can more efficiently move into livable wage jobs.

PARTICIPANTS
	John Medina, Developmental Molecular Biologist, University of Washington School of Medicine; Director, Brain Center for Applied Learning Research, Seattle Pacific University, Washington

11:00 AM -- 12:00 PM
P-20 with No Money: Potential for System Alignment in Difficult Economic Times (session #228)
This session will discuss approaches states can use to make progress on implementing influential P-20 alignment efforts despite slim state budgets. The session will additionally identify high-leverage efforts to allow states to gain maximum "bang for their buck" in improving P-20 transitions, and how public/private partnerships can further P-20 efforts

PARTICIPANTS
	Clifford Adelman, Senior Associate, The Institute for Higher Education Policy, District of Columbia

11:00 AM -- 12:00 PM
How State Universities Can Take the Teacher Preparation Bull By the Horns (session #229)
Producing more high quality science and math teachers is not just important for middle and high schools, but is an essential component to ensuring a robust economy. This roundtable session will highlight the collaborative role that 114 state universities are playing in the preparation of strong math and science teachers and the promise of stronger state-university cooperation.

PARTICIPANTS
	Rob Eissler, Chair, House Public Education Committee, Texas House of Representatives; ECS Commissioner; Texas
	Alyson Klein, Staff Writer, Editorial Projects in Education, Ed Week, Maryland
	Jonathan Plucker, Director and Professor, Center for Evaluation and Education Policy, Indiana University, Indiana
	David Sokola, Chair, Senate Education Committee, Delaware Senate; Member, ECS Nominating and Steering Committees;Delaware

3:00 PM -- 4:00 PM
What Does it Take for State Policy to Enable Disruptive Innovation? (session #235)
This follow- up session with Clayton Christensen will provide the opportunity for deeper discussion related to disruptive innovation.

PARTICIPANTS
	Michael Flanagan, Superintendent of Public Instruction, Michigan State Department of Education, Michigan
	Tim Pawlenty, Governor of Minnesota, 2008-10 ECS Chair
	James Roebuck, Co-Chair, House Education Committee, Pennsylvania House of Representatives; Member, ECS Steering Committee, Pennsylvania
	Florence Shapiro, Chair, Senate Education Committee, Texas Senate; ECS Commissioner; Texas

3:00 PM -- 4:00 PM
21st Century Skills: Flavor of the Month or Here to Stay? (session #236)
Seeking to ensure that students are prepared for changing educational and career demands, states are developing "21st century standards". This session will explore emerging state practices and lessons learned related to 21st century standards and assessments, and how these new tools might complement--rather than supplant--other efforts to help all students achieve high expectations.

3:00 PM -- 4:00 PM
Tapping Technology to Maximize Student Achievement (session #237)
While today's students commonly use technological tools in out-of-school time for learning, social networking and play, many schools are not maximizing technology's capacity to more effectively deliver content, increase student engagement and assess student mastery of knowledge and skills. This session will explore the unfulfilled potential of emerging technologies to increase efficiencies and enhance student achievement.

3:00 PM -- 4:00 PM
A New Model to Improve Math Instruction & Student Learning in the Early Years (session #238)
There are three critical areas of study that appear to make a difference in teacher practice, and ultimately, student learning: subject-specific content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and the use of evidence of learning to meet immediate learning needs. Educational Testing Service and Tennessee State University have involved a consortium of Tennessee HBCUs in a professional development project in order to address and integrate the content from all three areas to form a powerful professional development experience. Funded by the State of Tennessee, the project involves a unique partnership between colleges and elementary schools who work together to identify, develop and implement best practices in mathematics. The process of establishing the project, necessary components and preliminary results of the effort will be presented along with a "view from within" by participating school principals.

3:00 PM -- 5:00 PM
Making Opportunities Affordable in an Era of Constrained Resources (session #239)
Tennessee ranks 44th nationally in the percentage of its working-age adults with an associate's degree or higher and has significant gaps in participation by geographic area and student socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, and age. Furthermore, degree productivity has consistently lagged as state support per student has waxed and waned across economic cycles. Increased degree attainment became the cornerstone of Tennessee's participation in Making Opportunity Affordable (MOA), a multi-state, multi-year initiative funded by Lumina Foundation for Education to increase the degree productivity of state higher education systems. A recent policy audit highlighted several areas in which postsecondary policies lack alignment with the productivity agenda of MOA. Dennis Jones, who led the policy audit, will facilitate a conversation involving representatives of various stakeholders to examine how campuses, localities, the business community, and state policymakers frame the problem and view their role in contributing to solutions.

10:15 AM -- 12:15 PM
What's Around the Bend for High School Reform (session #330)
Many states have focused efforts on improving high schools--often by raising high school graduation requirements and revising state assessments. This session will identify "what's next" for high school reform: a new "college-ready" definition to better prepare students for postsecondary expectations, high-school assessments to more accurately predict college success (and help students acquire missing knowledge and skills before college), and well-honed dropout prevention measures to more effectively identify at-risk students while saving money.

PARTICIPANTS
	Tony Bennett, Superintendent of Public Instruction, Indiana Department of Education, Indiana
	Holly Franks Boffy, 2010 Louisiana State Teacher of the Year, Paul Breaux Middle School, Louisiana
	Jonathan Plucker, Director and Professor, Center for Evaluation and Education Policy, Indiana University, Indiana
	Paul Reville, Secretary of Education, Executive Office of Education, Massachusetts
	Philip Schmidt, Associate Provost, Western Governors University, Utah

10:15 AM -- 12:15 PM
Education, the Economy and Workforce Development (session #331)
Attendees will discuss how to best determine whether their states have "workforce issues" or "workplace issues." You will talk about means of assessing workforce needs and certifying student skills, how to get students up the economic ladder as quickly as possible, and how to potentially reallocate resources.

10:15 AM -- 12:15 PM
Developmental Education as a Critical State Strategy to Increase College Success (session #332)
As states seek to improve college attainment rates among their residents, many are struggling with how to successfully educate students who come to postsecondary education lacking the academic skills necessary to be successful. This workshop will explore how policies and practice can make developmental education a critical component of state strategies to increase the percent of their residents with a postsecondary credential. The workshop will provide information on how states can become involved in Getting Past Go a national initiative of the Education Commission of the States, funded by the Lumina Foundation on Education, on increasing the college success of students who require developmental education.

10:15 AM -- 12:15 PM
Assessing 21st Century Skills (session #333)
Businesses recognize the need for workers with skills like critical thinking, teamwork, integrity and personal responsibility. Education systems can deliver programming to address those skills but the challenge is assessing them. How can we ensure students master 21 Century Skills and how can we assess them? How can state standards and learning objectives better identify those skills? How can we build the political will to ensure that youth are civically, ethically and morally prepared to lead their generation?

10:15 AM -- 12:15 PM
Teaching Quality and Leadership (session #334)
Members of the ECS Teaching Quality Strategy Team will discuss their recent work to identify TQ policies and strategies and work and need to be brought to scale. These recognized experts represent not only the field of education and research, but also the corporate and business worlds and science and technology. This workshop promises to be thought-provoking and will provide policy and strategy recommendations for future direction for the wide-scale improvement in teaching quality across our states.

10:15 AM -- 12:15 PM
Creating a Policy Agenda for Linking Early Learning and the Early Grades (session #335)
This session will introduce a recently developed ECS Early Learning tool - a Comprehensive Policy Framework for Building Continuity and Alignment across Early Learning and the Early Grades. This new framework provides an overview of extant state policies that can be used to increase continuity across learning systems. This interaction session will provide an overview of the Framework and facilitate participants' efforts to identify potential policy opportunities for their states.

PARTICIPANTS
	Barbara Clark, Assemblywoman, New York Assembly; ECS Vice Chair; Member, ECS Executive and Steering Committees; Board Member, NCLC; New York
	Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles E. Ducommon Professor of Education, Stanford University, California