Learning at Full Scale: Lessons to Shape What’s Next for Nevada

What if the very policies designed to shape our education systems are unintentionally keeping young people from stepping fully into their futures? That question lingered for me as state and district leaders gathered for the State Policy Roundtable at the FullScale Symposium in New Orleans in late October, where examples from North Dakota, Kentucky, and Shelby County showed what is possible when policy, practice, and community priorities align to empower future readiness.

As Nevada looks ahead, particularly with the opportunity to redesign accountability under SB460, these conversations offer timely lessons for shaping what comes next.

1. Learning from Other States: Redefining Readiness and Accountability

North Dakota and Kentucky stood out not just for what they say, but for what they do. North Dakota’s Choice Ready framework and Kentucky’s United We Learn initiative that has spanned three state superintendents are redefining how success is measured by centering readiness, engagement, and contribution alongside academic growth. Their models elevate local voices and bring accountability closer to the ground, treating it as a tool for connection rather than compliance.

For Nevada, these examples affirm that our Portrait of a Nevada Learner already reflects what communities value: collaboration, adaptability, purpose, and critical thinking. The next step is ensuring those values come alive in how we measure and celebrate learning. Imagine regional design teams defining what “readiness” means in their own communities, or narrative dashboards that tell a fuller story of growth through data, artifacts, and student voices.

When accountability honors local context and community voice, it becomes more than a scorecard. It becomes a story of who our learners are becoming.

2. Incentivizing Local Innovation: Making Flexibility Real

A clear message from the symposium was that flexibility must be more than a promise on paper. Kentucky’s “defenses of learning,” where students present capstones or portfolios at key transition points (grades 5, 8, and 12), are powerful examples of assessment that is rigorous, relevant, and deeply human. In Shelby County, one student who raced cars outside of school presented a defense of learning that uniquely connected academic and durable skills. Giving young people the space to share their learning in authentic ways that are valued by the system shows that career pathways can be both technical and transformational.

Nevada is already home to educators building similar experiences in CTE programs, IB schools, and rural districts. What is needed now are the structures to support and scale them. That could mean launching pilot programs for competency-based capstones aligned with the Portrait of a Learner, or creating regional collaboratives where educators co-design performance assessments that reflect local priorities and workforce needs.

When policy truly enables innovation, classrooms shift from test-prep environments to spaces of discovery, pride, and ownership.

3. Building Capacity and Support: Sustaining Innovation Over Time

Sustaining innovation requires more than inspiration. It demands infrastructure and intermediary capacity. A recent Getting Smart blog, Trust & Transformation: Why Local Intermediaries Are the Key to Education’s Future, by Rebecca Midles and Doannie Tran, highlights how organizations anchored in local context serve as the connective tissue between state policy and classroom practice. As the Center for the Future of Learning sits at this intersection in our own state, it was encouraging to learn from other intermediary leaders at the FullScale Symposium about how they navigate politics, build community momentum, and support educators through shifting contexts. Simply, as Midles and Tran wrote: “...intermediaries succeed when they act as connectors, not controllers, when they lead by building trust, shared ownership of change and they often hold a vision for a region or a state that outlasts any one administration or era.”

For Nevada, this insight suggests several potential concrete moves:

• Create a state policy innovation lab where districts can test ideas together with state support and intermediary structure. This is already beginning to take shape within the Nevada Future of Learning Network. 

• Invite legislators and policymakers into authentic learning experiences so they can see firsthand what competency-based, student-centered education looks like.

• Invest in ongoing professional learning for district and school leaders that focuses on systems transformation rather than compliance.

• Align efforts across education, workforce, and higher education agencies to build a seamless vision of future readiness.

  
  

Lasting change happens when leadership, policy, and practice align, and when educators are supported to learn, lead, and innovate for the benefit of our system and learners.

Looking Ahead

Nevada stands at a pivotal moment. With the Portrait of a Nevada Learner setting a shared vision and new accountability design work underway, we have the opportunity to create a system that measures performance and also inspires it. By learning from others, incentivizing innovation, and building sustained capacity, we can design a public promise worthy of our learners. It can be a system that ensures every Nevada student knows their strengths, can demonstrate their learning, and sees themselves as ready for the future.