20 RI High School Teams Received XQ+RI Planning Grants
Efforts represented all corners of the state and a broad range of innovative education ideas.
20 public high school community teams were awarded planning grants of $25,000 in the groundbreaking partnership of XQ+RI: Rhode Island’s XQ Challenge.
XQ+RI continues to be the state’s first-of-its-kind partnership with XQ, the nation’s leading organization dedicated to reimagining high school education so every student succeeds – no matter their race, gender, or ZIP code. XQ+RI is engaging communities to create student-centered schools that prepare all young people for the future.
Community-Driven Design
Learn more about the XQ+RI Challenge Journey through the following infographic!
Click the graphic to view a full-size PDF version in your browser.
The XQ+RI challenge supported community teams to redesign school environments so when students graduate, they are prepared and empowered to be inventors of their own learning paths, careers, and adult lives. School design teams from across the state engaged students, families, community and higher education partners, as well as district educators, in their efforts. Phase 1 of this process began with a series of XQ+RI Design Days, and culminated in submitting a Planning Grant application. Phase 2 continued with convenings and trainings for the 20 teams awarded the Planning Grant leading to the submission of the Implementation Grant Application in January 2020.
Questions about how to get involved? Contact ReimaginingHS@RIDE.RI.GOV.
Learn more about XQ+RI Design Camps
WHO WAS ON THE DESIGN TEAM?
The XQ+RI process included school design teams that were composed of a broad set of stakeholders including students, families, community and higher education partners, as well as district educators.
- Core Project Team: This is the group of 4-5 individuals who were responsible for driving forward the process. Their responsibilities included building a plan, monitoring progress, coordinating across other groups, synthesizing iterations of the design and generally ensuring the conditions are in place for this process to be successful.
- Community Design Team: This broader group of 6-12 individuals is a diverse collection of stakeholders responsible for advancing the design. They sought out inspiration, engaged others, regularly met to synthesize learnings and generate ideas, brought those ideas back into the world to test, and got feedback.
- Community Stakeholders: Many individuals in each system played critical roles in the creation or implementation of your design. This might include additional educators, parents, students, and community members.
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
School Design Teams awarded the planning grant participated in six convenings (Design Camp) that were focused on helping each team develop their ideas through an engaging process while building their final Implementation Grant application. Below is a brief description of the XQ+RI Design Camps:
OVERVIEW OF XQ+RI DESIGN CAMPS
August 2019 Core Project Team Convening 1
Focus:
- Building Coalitions of diverse stakeholders in your community.
- Creating a plan, timeline, and structures to manage the work.
October 2019 Core Project Team Convening 2
Focus:
- Investigating local context through empathy interviews, conducting an educational opportunity audit, seeking inspiration from unlikely places, digging into current research on teaching and learning, and more.
December 2019 Core Project Team Convening 3
Focus:
- Student experiences, clarifying elements such as curriculum, schedules, staffing, space.
- Running short pilots to learn what works and what needs to be tweaked.
January 2019 Core Project Team Convening 4
Focus:
- Building the roadmap to implement your plan.
- Exploring best practices in managing change and innovation and reflecting on what conditions for innovation you will need to strengthen to support your journey.
- Creating and reviewing strong implementation grant application.
Contact ReimaginingHS@RIDE.RI.GOV for more information or questions.
XQ+RI OVERVIEW
- XQ Institute: Rhode Island's partner in this challenge has built a series of helpful resources for anyone interested in reimagining their high school. Several broad categories are provided to guide the user experience.
- XQ Design Principles
- XQ Learner Goals (English) / XQ Learner Goals (Spanish)
- XQ Learner Outcome Area
- Educational Opportunity Audit: Design Teams that were awarded a Planning Grant underwent an Educational Opportunity Audit that combined information about student experience, school practices, and system policies to create a comprehensive audit report.
- Getting to Know Our Students and Our School: A reflection guide used at Design Days to support a team to use RI Data Snapshot Data to ground the vision process.
- Envisioning a School Built for the Future: This tool supports with pulling everything together and getting one more step closer to your school vision.
The XQ+RI User Guide is a step-by-step guide to help rethink high schools across Rhode Island. It also provides a deeper dive into the "Discover Modules".
XQ:RI has been sponsored and supported by the following partners:
Archived: 2019-2020 Project Timeline
PHASE 1 PLANNING GRANT
- March 2019: XQ+RI Design Days
- April - May 2019: Teams worked on planning grant applications
- May 24, 2019: Planning Grant Applications were due
- June 2019: Planning Grant winners were announced
- July - December 2019: Planning cohort teams worked on implementation grant applications
FEBRUARY 2020: IMPLEMENTATION GRANT APPLICATIONS WERE DUE
PHASE 2 IMPLEMENTATION GRANT
- XQ + RI Design Days August 2020 - January 2021
- August 15-16 (Thurs/Fri): Core Project Team Convening 1
- October 10-11 (Fri/Sat): Core Project Team Convening 2
- December 6-7 (Fri/Sat): Core Project Team Convening 3
- January 27-28 (Mon/Tue): Core Project Team Convening 4
FEBRUARY 2020: IMPLEMENTATION GRANT WINNERS WERE ANNOUNCED!
Contact ReimaginingHS@RIDE.RI.GOV for more information or questions
“This is an exciting moment to be a leader in education in Rhode Island,” Angélica Infante-Green, Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education, said. “I am deeply impressed by the depth of planning contained in these proposals, and by the teams’ willingness to take bold action to improve outcomes for students. I am also impressed by the diversity of this list, both geographically and in terms of student populations.”