Future Ready Schools – New Jersey: A Collective Impact Success Story
Abstract: As Future Ready Schools - New Jersey (FRS-NJ) (FRSNJ.org, 2019) has developed, the key elements of collective impact (Kania & Kramer, 2011; Kania & Kramer, 2013; Kramer & Pfitzer, 2016) and the NSF elements of collaborative change (NSF, 2018) were employed to help make the program successful. This article will present how the Collaborative for Leadership, Education, and Assessment Research (CLEAR) (Lipuma, 2019) works with these elements of community engagement. As the backbone organization facilitating partnerships at various levels, CLEAR fosters shared vision and collective impact in this voluntary program to promote best practices for technology in education that is becoming a model for state leadership programs across the United States. The paper will begin with the work of CLEAR and FRS-NJ to set the stage. It will then review the key elements of collective impact and collaborative change in light of the FRS-NJ case study. Then, the paper will discuss the particular aspects of the transition from FRS-NJ’s establishment into a fully functioning organization. Next, the specific outcomes to date will be presented along with planned next steps and a discussion of the effort’s results.