 First of all, I wanna thank Burlington Central High School for hosting me this morning. We are here in their veterinary lab and it's amazing to see what this space has to offer and to know what students are doing in this space. They had students who recently won a national competition here from District 301 and it is a super cool space that has dozens and dozens of students in their VET one VET two program as well as other students in their ag programs. And this is kind of a big part of kind of what we wanna anchor in on actually as we think about this work. And so to get us going, I wanna start by introducing myself for those of you who don't know me, my name is Jason Klein. I'm the senior director of learning partnerships at Northern Illinois University. I work as part of the leadership team alongside Rodrigo Lopez, our director of P20 initiatives and the dean of our College of Education, Dr. Lori Alice Piper with the Illinois P20 network. And I also work as part of the NIU Illinois CTE project team that works alongside ISB on all things, career and college readiness related as well as career and technical education related. And so with that, as we'll talk about in a moment, the PACE framework is essential to that. If you're unfamiliar with the Illinois P20 network, while we have not updated numbers on the website, we are now well over 270 school districts, community colleges, universities, state agencies and other organizations that are part of the network with over a million students across the state that are represented by the work of the organizations that these partners do. And so we're really excited to be able to share information with everybody today to just help get the word out because you still have the opportunity over the course of the next eight days to dig into what we're gonna talk about today and provide your feedback. And as a matter of fact, we know that the state agencies are very, very interested in your feedback. So everything we're going to share here today is a draft document with the exception of the original PACE framework that's been out for a number of years now and will be replaced by some newer version of the PACE framework. So our goal for today is to give you some information and then turn you loose to provide feedback over the next eight days between now and March 21st. And we've got the links in here for the feedback form to be able to do that moving forward. And so I'm gonna drop the link to the slides into the chat one more time here and then we're gonna dive in. I do wanna let you know one last thing and that is I do come from a background as a teacher or principal and a district level administrator prior to my work at NIU. And I think important for today I've worked in two elementary school districts and one high school district and I've never worked in a unit district. And so for those of you that are in a high school district or an elementary district or for like REFE directors or people from regional offices of education if you are in a region with elementary districts and high school districts this is a topic that's really critical to do some of that work together across districts in order to meet its the intent and the purpose of this. And so that is really important for today's context. So this is a picture of my dog, this is Trini. I have only had a dog for three years for just under three years. Prior to that I never in my life had a dog. And here I sit with dogs with me for this webinar that's kind of a first for me. And we're playing ball while we engage in the webinar and we're in this vet lab. And so this is so exciting because again would I have been a vet if I'd grown up with dogs? I don't know. Would I have been a vet if my school district offered this when I was in high school? I don't know. But what we wanna know, what we wanna do here and this is the central idea of the pace framework is we want students to know what their options are. And for most students, for most of us as teachers knowing what the options are, that alone is very, very hard in a world where careers are constantly changing and evolving and new careers grow out of nowhere and old careers disappear out of nowhere. I mean, I like to give the example that I went to school in the early to mid 90s. I went to college at that time and the place I was going to college was literally the place that was growing the World Wide Web and no one imagined that within a year of me graduating there would be tens of thousands of people around the world making money as a website developer. That was not a career that was in in wide discussion even at the institution that was at the center of that. And so that's really, really important for us to keep in mind. And that's where the pace framework comes in, frankly, not only for our students and their families but for all of us. Obviously we want our students to have opportunities to explore their interests as they learn about this range of careers and to really understand these workforce dynamics. How much money will I make doing that? How much money will I spend to get to that place and be able to make decisions informed by that? So this is what we're gonna cover today. We're gonna give you a little bit of history as well as some policy updates. Talk about the pace framework in its current form which is its original form. And then really the meat of what we wanna highlight the updated high school pace framework the new middle school pace framework and then wrapping up with the opportunities for public comment. So with that said, this all comes officially from the post-secondary and workforce readiness act which was passed into law in 2016. It was unanimously approved through the general assembly by a democratically controlled general assembly and it was signed into law by a Republican governor, Governor Rauner. And so I think that's important in the context of is that this was truly bipartisan in its origins and in its scope and in what it intends to do for our students, for school districts and community colleges and frankly for the workforce as well and for business and community organizations. So these are the four main components of the post-secondary workforce readiness act the pace framework which is the one we're gonna talk about today and then competency based education, transitional math and transitional English, excuse me and the college and career pathway endorsements. So while we're not gonna go deep into all four of those and into the other three today those are things you are certainly that we offer opportunities to learn about throughout the year and we're happy to direct you to that information as well as the ISB CTE webpage which is isb.net slash CTE. And if you've joined in the last little bit I did just drop the link to the slides into the chat once again. So you've got access to that because there are some links in here throughout. So this past spring at the end of May Governor Pritzker signed an amendment into law for the PWR Act. And this amendment is why we're here today. So this is exceedingly important. So there were two of the four areas that you saw in the pace framework, or excuse me in the PWR Act two of them were the primary callouts in this amendment. One of those was the pace framework and the other one was the college and career pathway endorsements. And so it is really important for me to point out that at this time today, March 13th as we stand here the agencies are implementing or are in the rulemaking process. So there will be other opportunities down the line to have public comment on those rules. And that's all underway but what we're gonna talk about today is the work the agencies have done around the pace framework. And this is really unique because it is multiple agencies which is not typically the case. So here are the requirements of the new legislation for the pace framework. First of all, not listed on the slide by July 1st, 2023, the agencies and let me tell you who those agencies are. So most of you on this call are familiar with the Illinois State Board of Education that does most of the governance for early childhood and then governance for K-12 education in the state of Illinois. Then we have the Illinois Community College Board, the Illinois Board of Higher Education and the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. And again, if you're in an elementary district or you work in an elementary school or middle school you may not have a lot of awareness of the Illinois Student Assistance Commission but very important in the financial aid space. They have also owned the pace framework since its inception. So they lead professional development, they provide support and resources and you'll start to see isac.org as we move through this presentation. And so, but the responsibility for an initial draft of the updated pace frameworks in line with this law for grades six through 12 is due to the state by July 1st, 2023. So the agencies got to work late last summer at the beginning of this school year developing that new pace framework. And so what we're gonna have in front of us today in the slide deck that's available out on the web is the result of that work and it is now open for public comment before it moves towards hopefully being official by that legislative deadline of July 1st, 2023. Then by July 1st, 2024 the Chicago Public School District 299 must adopt and start its implementation of a pace framework for grades six through 12 and it has to be aligned to the state framework. So districts and we'll get to this for all districts in the next item here, but districts can adopt what the state has produced as it's written or they can develop their own that is aligned with that. And we're gonna talk about the pace framework as a curriculum document momentarily and a little bit here in this presentation. So it's really important that depending on your role if we think about the occupying space of other state standards the pace framework really occupies that space for career and college readiness. That's how I would think of this from a curriculum and instruction perspective. So then by July 1st, 2025 all other districts in the state that have students in grades six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 and 12 must have adopted their version. It could be the actual pace framework or something they've developed internally but that must be adopted and begin being implemented for the 25, 26 school year. All these frameworks, whatever each district must have a framework posted on its website by the relevant deadline date for that district. So for CPS, that's by July 1st, 2024 and for all other districts you have to have that posted by July 1st, 2025. So with that said, let's take a look at the original pace framework and this and all of the pace resources are available on the ISAC website. These resources have continued to evolve over the years as they've worked with districts, they've made new resources, they've updated resources. One of the things I think that's really cool that was done a few years ago is they provided even more of a structure. They reordered some of the existing resources, added some new resources and almost put it into a walkthrough so that if I'm a principal or curriculum director or superintendent who's ever responsible for implementing the pace framework in a particular district, ISAC has tried to really walk districts through what they see as being the best practice for implementing that. So with that said, the original pace framework, one of the things I wanna call out from this text is that it is to provide guidance to students, families and educators. So this is kind of unique in that the call out to families here and that's that we're not just educating our six through 12th graders or previously our eight through 12th graders on career and college readiness. We have a responsibility here to include students, families in that process. There's also an acknowledgement that for many of us as educators, unless we're deep into the career and technical education or the college and career pathway endorsement space, we may not really have an awareness of what all the options are in front of our students. And so part of the idea here is that the pace framework is designed to help those of us that may have less awareness with that along through that process. It also, this is another really important statement about the purpose of the pace framework. This acknowledges that high schools and communities with all kinds of people involved and for learners of all ages have done career preparation, post-secondary preparation for many, many, many years for decades, right? And so it's not to throw that baby out with the bathwater per se, but the idea of the pace framework here is to really make this intentional and to have events feed into other events or activities feed into other activities and to ensure that this experience is available for all students and not just as something for students whose families read the newsletter and show up at that parent night, that they get that experience but the other 80% of the students in the school do not get that experience. And so that's the really critical ideas here of the pace framework is we may be continuing to do activities that we've successfully done for many, many years but within a context, within a framework that's really intentional. So one of the things we've talked about at the Illinois P20 Network is this notion if we think about the MTSS model and tiered instruction and tier one being what all students are getting and the importance of having a really solid tier one and that curriculum and instruction is relevant and engaging for all students. And some of the tier two and tier three kinds of issues that we see whether academic or behavioral or whatever, some of those will go away the stronger our tier one instruction is. Well, the pace framework does provide essentially a curriculum and we'll talk about that here and a set of standards if you will for organizing tier one instruction around career and post-secondary readiness. And so I think that's a really important thing that we hope people take away from this initial look at these new frameworks whether they do it well or not that's where you have the opportunity to make decisions about that and offer feedback but conceptually I think that's a really, really important idea for people to consider. So this is the original pace framework this is the current pace framework still at the moment. You can see it goes from eighth grade to 12th grade and there's a couple of really important things I wanna call out here to help you understand the composition the structure of this pace framework. First in the lower left corner we have the three circle Venn diagram there's some overlap between these things they don't stand entirely on their own but the red circle represents financial aid and literacy the yellow circle represents career exploration and development and then the green circle represents post-secondary education exploration, preparation, selection. I will share with everybody one thing I have put into my feedback form is I'm not sure why the circles are red, yellow and green I actually have an idea in my head but I don't know if that's the intended purpose I would change the colors up of the circles because I don't think the stoplight analogy doesn't work for me though again I can make the argument that if we don't have the financial aid and financial literacy piece worked out that stops us from having certain options so maybe that was the idea. With that said in each of these vertical bars by grade level and 12th grade is a little bit different but there are two subsections and that's highlighted here on the left side in the eighth grade, a student should be supported too and a student should know. So this is really kind of getting at what should they be able to do and what should they know? So again, I hope that the connection to other kinds of curriculum and instruction standards starts to really stand out with regards to that and then within each of the columns you see that each of the, I'm going to refer to them as standards because they really that's the idea here from a curriculum and instruction framework they are color coded with a circle the bullet is not just a bullet point it is a color code and it is yellow, green or red and I'm choosing those words very intentionally you'll see why when we move to the updated high school framework. So if it's yellow that means that represents a career exploration activity, career development activity, if it's red that means it's a financial aid and literacy activity if it's green that means it's a post-secondary education exploration preparation selection activity and one of the things you'll notice as you move from left to right all three of the colors appear at each grade level. So again, a curriculum and instruction connection I would make that I think would be particularly helpful for people working at the middle school and high school level is we know our math standards at one time many years ago algebra was something that you started in seventh, eighth or ninth grade and now we know that we are doing essentially pre-algebra activities since we're touching on each of the strands of our math curriculum at each grade level we're doing them with our youngest learners and in some ways always were right two plus blank equals four, what goes in the blank? I mean, I did that in first grade many, many decades ago but at the time it wasn't being framed as hey, that's pre-algebra, that's algebra that's really what we're looking at there this works the same way as that idea in the math curriculum that we are touching on all of these throughout the years, the grade levels as students grow up and move through through their school experiences. I will point out that there are far more red dots in 12th grade than in any of the other grade level because that's really weird now, boom I'm filling out my FAFSA for the first time in the fall of 12th grade, for example and the realities, those financial realities are becoming real and there are actual tasks that students need to do in order to have those options available to them for their first year post-secondary. So this is the structure this is the existing PACE framework as it stands today. I wanna point out again on the ISAC website there are lots of resources there we are not diving deep into those resources today because we're sure that many, many of these resources let me say this first, many of these resources absolutely applicable regardless of what the ultimate PACE frameworks look like on July 1st of this year as districts dive into this. But also wanna point out that this notion of customized local examples, that's not new as a matter of fact, there are districts in the state that have had PACE frameworks that have gone down to sixth grade that have even gone down to the intermediate grades in elementary school prior to now and you can see those examples on the ISAC website. So that is linked here in this slide in the slide deck. And again, you don't have to write your own PACE framework you don't have to modify the state PACE framework but you also can do this so long as it is aligned with the new PACE frameworks when those are available. So just food for thought and again we have districts literally across the state who prior to now have had their own custom PACE frameworks previously. So wanna point out that everything for the rest of this the key links are not only in the slide deck they are on the ISBE website and they've been there for a couple of weeks now they've been in the weekly newsletter from the state superintendent's weekly newsletter that is now sent out by Dr. Sanders every week typically on Tuesday. And so this is found on the college and career readiness page that link is here in the slide deck and there are links here to the new middle school framework that I'll show you momentarily the high school framework that we'll look at next. There's a document that has been created that shows what the changes are from the existing framework to the new framework. So a summary document we'll see a screenshot of that in the slide deck and then the feedback form that we'll talk about at the end. So all of that is also available it's been available, it's been published and it's there and you can go to that you can send that link to others you can send this slide deck to others as you wanna talk about this further. So first let's look at the updated high school pace framework. So what we're not going to do right now is we're not going to dive into all of the details and again there is a summary sheet. I did point out previously that each of the bullet points listed here for the standards has a colored circle next to it the yellow, the green or the red. And I wanna call out that like one of the changes and this is just one minor change but there is this idea by the end of 11th grade you'll see it right in the middle vertically of that column that all students will complete a post-secondary plan workshop by the end of 11th grade that's something they'll do that's in the student should be supported to section and that plan as you can tell just from the colored dots has all three, the red, the yellow and the green dots next to it. And so that is an example of the evolution. There are content differences in here as well and those differences are all outlined here and they're outlined by grade level. So this I think is particularly helpful for districts that have experience implementing the pace framework. Now, if your district is new to the pace framework then frankly, I would spend less time with this document and more time just pulling apart this document, right? I mean, there's a lot in this and so what we're not gonna do right now is do activities that unpack this. We led an administrator academy just a couple of weeks ago on March 2nd where we did do unpacking of the pace framework and we will offer that again coming up in the future and certainly we will be unpacking the new pace frameworks through that. And while it's an administrator academy that is open to anyone. It's a great half day online workshop for counselors to attend, teachers, teacher leaders as well as administrators and those that aren't administrators or administrators who don't need administrator academy credit absolutely get professional development hours for that. So this what we're not gonna do right now is the unpacking but you may wanna do that. And again, particularly if you're a district that has experience with the existing pace framework or your own version of it then this document is going to be what you're gonna wanna really explore. And we have changes in wording. We have items that have been moved from one grade level to a next. We have items that have been deleted. One of the things that I will call out is that I think things in the newer version one of my takeaways is there's some more specificity. And that's based on feedback that's based on all the work that's happened in schools the work that ISAC has done directly with schools what ISBE certainly has seen and the results of this work that ICCB and IBHE and their institutions have seen. So really again, this is a very handy useful document for districts that have more experience with this. Now the middle school framework is entirely new. So eighth grade is not new. Eighth grade was part of the existing framework but the new legislation requires this to be sixth through 12th grade. And so that is very important here. So on the right side of this is the middle school framework and on the right side of this we have what was the left side or is the left side of the high school paced framework. So there's that effort to draw a very clear connection. Then the first three columns are essentially the middle school framework. Now on the right side of this middle school framework you see the same red, yellow and green circles with financial aid and literacy, career development career exploration and development, excuse me and post-secondary education, exploration, preparation and selection. Now on the middle school framework we have three different circles. And I will say as a middle level educator both as a teacher and a principal these are certainly very, very important concepts at the middle level with young adolescents. And so these are self-advocacy, identity and planning. And so one of the questions that we've asked people to think about and then offer feedback on is how well do these align and how do they align? And I think the more that practicing educators particularly middle school and high school folks can talk about that alignment together and then offer feedback up in these next eight days the better off ultimately this tool will be. Then what you can see here in this tool is we have those same in sixth grade same idea of the two areas. It's a student should be exposed to and then a student should be supported to. And so then in seventh grade it's just a student should be supported to. And then eighth grade it gets a little complicated here because we have both the middle school framework eighth grade as well as the high school framework eighth grade. And the idea here is a student should be supported to so that then they can do these things in the eighth grade column from the high school framework and know these things from that column. And so it's a very similar idea. It's a little bit different. And the activities are color coded or excuse me the standards, if you will the competencies are color coded by identity planning and self-advocacy. And again, one of the things that you see here is all three of those areas self-advocacy identity and planning exist in sixth grade in seventh grade and in eighth grade. And so they're also chunked nicely within each of the sections of each of the grade level columns to help organize work around that. So at this point, again, we're not here today to unpack the standards largely, but this is an opportunity if people have questions if there's strengths that you see that you wanna share out with the group if there's areas for improvement that you see that you wanna share out with the group you're welcome to do that either in the chat or in the, or we can unmute. And so I'm trying to scroll through here. One question that came into me directly is about whether or not these were crosswalked with the ASCA or the Illinois SEL standards. And so I intentionally, and this is partially why we're doing this. I can't speak to some of the process that's happened. What I can say, and I don't wanna give away the like big reveal in our administrator academy, I've done the work on the back end too to verify that I still feel this way about the new PACE framework. But one of the things that exists with multiple PWR components, most explicitly actually the cross-sector essential employability competencies which map to the SEL standards literally perfectly. And so that's really cool for districts to think about what language do we wanna use or do we wanna use different language with our elementary school students than with our high school students but make sure they understand again, particularly in fifth through 10th grade or fourth through 10th grade that there's a thread in that language that's explicitly going after the same concepts in their development. And so I can't speak to that question but that is a great one. Call out in the chat from Dr. Lance, the identity cluster is interesting to see. And yeah, I mean identity, right. I mean, I certainly self-identify with my career which maybe too much, but there's so much more to that. And to what degree is the identity and career piece of chicken and egg piece too, right? Especially for adolescents to think about as they consider who they are in middle school and high school years. And sometimes unfortunately, consider things that they think they can't do because of who they think they are. That's obviously something we wanna eliminate altogether and we wanna support students' positive identity growth. Can you detail the identity cluster requirements? So that's a great question. I'm gonna ask you to, I guess, oh, do you want me to just go through and call some of those out maybe is what you're, by the requirements, the standards. And if I'm getting that wrong and I'm going the wrong way here. So in identity- Sorry, I'm just wondering if those identity, so right now we have to like keep track of the career pathway, for example, which students have chosen career pathway. We have to keep track of things like for the College of Career Readiness Initiative, there's several things, GPA, work experience, so on and so forth. Is that something that would be required? Great question. So no, this does not add to the College of Career Readiness Indicator data requirements. So that is a great question. What it should do though, is it should make that ninth grade career, the career pathway identification for individual students. It should make that an easier to accomplish, more robust process after you, if you've implemented the PACE framework from sixth grade through twelfth grade. Or again, particularly thinking about high school districts and elementary districts. And again, as a high school district, if I've got students coming to me now where they've been working through this, I'm not starting from scratch with that ninth grade and still trying to hit that CCRI indicator. And so, but this is not at the moment, as far as I know, going to add any elements to our CCRI data collection. At the moment, we wanna make sure where there's an acknowledgement at the state level. And again, it wasn't ISVI that created the idea behind the CCRIs necessarily on, it's certainly on their own. I mean, it's legislative and it's part of the plan for the Feds for our ESSA plan. But we know there's a challenging, there are challenging components to that data collection. Some are not so challenging students grades, what their test scores are, but other like multiple consecutive summers of employment, like that is a much more challenging thing. The schools have traditionally not collected. So this does not add to that. That's a great question. Emily's got her hand up. Emily, I'm gonna ask you to hang on one second there. So can you phase in year by year of the plan, overall plan, so by eighth grade, students will flow through the process? So ultimately Charles, I can't ultimately answer this question. This is a great question that you've asked. So the idea being, could we start in sixth grade and ninth grade in the 25, 26 school year? And then as that class moves through, they're getting bigger and bigger experiences. From a school improvement, a school change perspective, that makes a lot of sense to me. With some of the language in the slides is direct from the law. You've also got access directly to the law. And as we get more information, we'll certainly share that out. But that's not when I can fully answer right now. Emily? Yeah, I just wanted to kind of respond a little bit to the data collection question. So PACE has never been something that, the implementation of PACE has not been about tracking each and every one of these components, but rather as a kind of tool for coordinating, communicating and offering a holistic suite of supports and information and experiences to students, right? All about preparing them for college career and life, right? And so I dropped a link in the chat years ago, we did a crosswalk of the PACE framework with the CCRI and with the College and Career Pathway endorsement, just to kind of show how all these pieces are aligned, right? So if a student were supported to complete all of the components of PACE and their district, they would probably meet the qualifications for a College and Career Pathway endorsement, right? So they're all kind of related. And so that might be a helpful resource, even though you don't have to report out each of these component parts in PACE, the legislation just contemplates that districts would just commence implementation of the framework, right? It's not like Jason noted, there's rulemaking that'll have to kind of come out of that, but essentially you're just kind of indicating to Izby that you're going forth and implementing, right? And so it's not about the data collection for the individual PACE components in the same way that the College and Career Readiness indicator or applying to be eligible to offer a College and Career Pathway endorsement involves. Thanks, Emily, absolutely. And I appreciate Emily dropping in the crosswalk document there. And again, just for those of you people coming from some very different perspectives, that's a different crosswalk than the SEL standards, for example. Again, that's something we specifically look at in multiple workshops that we've conducted this year and it's something we can continue to pull apart and unpack moving forward. Other comments, questions that you wanna share at this point that you think might help others wrap their heads around this, because I'm anticipating that for many of you here today, you're either going to be the one for your district who then turns and leaves some feedback for the agencies or you're going to turn and engage a group at some point this week in your district. Could be a curriculum team, could be principals, could be counselors, could be all kinds of people in sharing a little bit about this as a almost like a train the trainer, a leader of leaders model, and then sharing some feedback from that group with the agencies through the form. And either of both of those is great. The critical thing, again, is the agencies are absolutely looking for feedback at this point here. Well, this is still new and in draft format. So any other comments or questions? Okay. So the public comment, this is very simple. If you're like, oh, I've never done public comment before. Have you filled out a Google form before? Probably most school districts, that's pretty common. So this is that simple. The comment period is open through next Tuesday. So we've got a little over a week and that's why we picked today. We wanted to give ourselves enough time to get the word out about sharing this information out and then also still have districts to have enough time and to offer their feedback. And in some cases maybe to talk with other districts, for example, a high school district to engage their elementary districts and say, what do we think about this? And then still offer some feedback. So a couple of things I wanna call out here. First of all, one of the things I've heard specifically from multiple people at multiple agencies is they wanna know that the tool will be useful to teachers in practice, counselors in practice, other educators at the building level to do something with students and families with. And so if the tool in its current form, either the language, the wording, the structure, if you have ideas that could make it more useful for teachers, counselors, principals, other educators involved in this work, that is very much feedback that the agencies want. And then like any kind of public comment, if you think something's missing, certainly please offer that. If you think something's confusing, please offer that. And if you have an alternative wording, that's always wonderful. And if you think there's something great, you just wanna call that out, like we never would have thought of that, but wow, we see how relevant that would be for our students and families, call that out. People who work in these roles at the state agencies hear a lot of our concerns from the field and they don't always hear a lot of our gratitude from the field. So it is an opportunity to shout something out that you think is really great there. So it is a simple form, it is a Microsoft form. And you fill this out, it is linked here. We will drop the link into the chat as well. I'm gonna do that right now. And you can fill this out between now and March 21st. But again, please don't put this off too long where you're like, I'll do it, I'll do it, I'll do it. And then it doesn't get done. It's really important that the agencies get as much feedback as possible on how to make this as useful for students. And again, I wanna stress the agencies are asking for that, they are seeking this out. And so thank you all for being here to learn about this and then be able to offer that. And so I've got some links at the end of the slide deck to subscribe to our newsletter and connect with us. But that is what we have here around this. And again, we can certainly stay on and answer other questions to the degree we have answers or you can kick around ideas about this that you may have. And otherwise, thank you so much for joining us. And we hope everybody has a great week this week.