XQ’s core belief is that our nation’s collective ability to transform its high schools is limited by our reliance on the Carnegie Unit and credit hour. As the fundamental architecture of our entire education system, the Carnegie Unit defines and dictates how student learning is organized, delivered, measured, and accredited based on how much seat time students accumulate in math, English, science, and other subjects.
Now,XQ is partnering with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching to stimulate new thinking, attract and acknowledge innovators, amplify and accelerate their work, and ultimately establish the building blocks of a new architecture that liberates learning from the confines of a time-based system and elevates what’s best for students.
We announced the partnership and its components in March of 2022 at Carnegie’s Annual Summit on Improvement in Education—the first gathering since the pandemic—with a keynote address co-presented by Carnegie’s President Tim Knowles and XQ’s CEO Russlynn Ali. We alsohosted breakout sessions, recorded interviews with conference attendees, mounted a data walk and writing walls, and held a celebration for educators. We’re analyzing what we heard at the event to inform the next phases of our work and will be sharing what we learn more widely.
The power of the Carnegie+XQ partnership lies not just within each organization’s expertise. Together, we have the ability to catalyze a new way structuring and accrediting high school learning for the entire field. This new architecture begins with new learning experiences—the place where innovation is most needed and is most directly experienced by students and educators. But we believe it will ultimately include building blocks such as a new student performance framework, a comprehensive badging system, and bold new school models.
Learn more: http://carnegiexq.org/