Center for the Future of Arizona

Educationarizona pathways to prosperity: cfa continues to create seamless college and career pathways that enable more young people to earn degrees and credentials in high-demand industries. This included digitizing the possible futures career exploration curriculum for grade 6-8 students, partnering with Arizona department of education, pipelineaz, and the Arizona business education coalition in the development of myfutureaz, a new career exploration and planning platform for grade 6-12 students across the state, and piloting a distributed advising approach for high school students to advise their peers on dual enrollment opportunities. (continued on sch o)arizona personalized learning network: cfa advanced student-centered learning with k-12 partner districts through a series of inquiry labs showcasing promising practices for implementing personalized, competency-based learning at the systems level. District leaders, school leaders, and teachers shared concrete strategies and made action-oriented commitments to implement and scale learner-centered models of education.beat the odds school leadership academy: cfa launched 5 new bto academy cohorts to provide executive leadership training to more than 100 current and aspiring school and district leaders across Arizona. Cfa also made refinements to the design and delivery of the bto academy based on a program evaluation conducted with the mary lou fulton teachers college at Arizona state university.

Workforce developmentretailworks az: cfa expanded beyond maricopa county to launch new retail employer networks in yuma and sahuarita to support the needs of retailers and workforce development while bringing education and training to retail workers. the expansion into these communities is especially important because retail is a leading industry in many rural and remote parts of the state. Within maricopa county, cfa implemented innovative upskilling projects, including a partnership with bashas and the national immigration forum to pilot a six-week esl curriculum contextualized to retail for employees. (continued on sch o)workforce leadership academy: in partnership with the aspen institute economic opportunities program (eop) and walmart's support, cfa successfully launched our first-ever workforce leadership academy in the greater phoenix area, focused on strengthening and building the capacity of the leaders who guide workforce development in Arizona. Academy fellows collectively developed a series of recommendations for long-term sustainable solutions to address workforce challenges in Arizona, including improving job quality and increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace, that they are now working to implement through their own roles and organizations within the broader workforce system.

Civic healtharizona civic life partnership: cfa partnered with the Arizona Center for civic leadership at the flinn foundation to strengthen civic life in Arizona. A key milestone was the creation of a civic health steering committee comprised of 15 leading Arizona civic organizations to complete a plan for set of strategies, objectives, and opportunities for a coordinated approach to civic renewal statewide. This work is pivotal to the partnership's commitment to building stronger, more vibrant civic health shared public value and essential to our ability to realize the Arizona we want. (continued on sch o)school participatory budgeting: cfa continued to expand high-impact civic education in k-12 schools, where students "learn democracy by doing" by participating in spb steering committees, developing proposals, and voting to fund improvement projects that build stronger school communities. Innovations this year included collaborating with the sunnyside unified school district (susd) and the Arizona secretary of state's communications staff to present a new voter education module for students, featuring information about how the elections process works, how to become a registered voter, and where to access trusted information.

Arizona progress meterscfa partnered with the Arizona department of education, Arizona board of regents, and education forward Arizona to enhance the Arizona education progress meters, including new features to analyze education outcomes by all demographic subgroups and geographies, which is critically important in addressing equity within the education system and improving student outcomes for students of color and those from low-income families.cfa helps communities and leaders leverage Arizona progress meters to advance data-driven dialogue, decision-making, and solution-building. As an example, this year, cfa worked with the state of black Arizona to develop their volume v: driving local investment in black arizonans report. Cfa was instrumental in providing data and collaborating with the state of black Arizona on the community outreach activities that informed the report development. the report, released by state of black Arizona in october 2021, is intended to be a catalyst for positive substantive change regarding the policies, infrastructures, and resources that impact the Arizonan black community.