Educators can, and will, upgrade schools and deepen learning.

Mission Statement

The UK Center for Next Generation Leadership is a powerful network of students, teachers, leaders, and communities committed to upgrading educational systems to reimagine the learner experience of every student.

As part of a national student-centered learning movement, implemented locally, we partner with schools and districts to redesign learning, teaching, leadership, and research to create and sustain innovation.

Raison d’être

• To upgrade education through innovation in learning, teaching, and leadership to deepen the learner experience for every student in the Commonwealth. As part of the learning systems upgrade, we value and create equitable learning opportunities for all students.

• To cultivate a national network of students, teachers, leaders and communities engaged in professional learning, leadership development, collaboration, outreach, and research that creates and sustains innovation and authentic systems transformation. 

• To transform the transition experience and equitable access to postsecondary learning through the development and implementation of an innovative early college model in partnership with networked high school teams.

Our Theory of Action: Defining the Upgrade

• Equity of Opportunity Systems that prioritize and redesign for equity of opportunity that remove traditional barriers and assumptions while offering culturally relevant, inclusive, and holistically supportive models. 

• Portrait of a Graduate Clear and detailed community agreements around the broad outcomes to be achieved by ALL learners as defined by the Portrait of a Graduate.

  • These outcomes include mastery of rigorous academic content, thinking critically and solving problems, communicating effectively, learning to learn, and developing academic mindsets.

  • In order to fully implement the Portrait of a Graduate, school leaders rely on clearly articulated competencies, learning progressions, and cooperative agreement about learner performance over time.  

• Deeper Learning Pedagogies steeped in inquiry, that ensure ALL students engage in authentic work, including “outside of the walls” learning experiences (i.e. internships, etc.) 

• Student Agency, Empowerment, and Voice High levels of student agency and empowerment where student leadership, voice, and choice abound.

• Performance Assessment Structures Utilizing assessments for learning through performances, defenses, exhibitions, and other ways in which students can make public their work on the deeper learning tasks in which they engage.

• Educator Agency, Empowerment, and Voice  Professional Learning Cultures where teachers are valued as lifelong learners, designers of student learning opportunities, and leaders of the overall learner experience.