Assuring that all Students are Future Ready December 2018

An Online Career Planning and Portfolio Platform Built Upon the Pennsylvania Academic Standards for Career Education and Work

SmartFutures.org Helps 100 Districts and Charters Exceed Future Ready PA Performance Measures An affordable subscription reduces stress for teachers and counselors and provides Future Ready Badges for students

Fact: Pennsylvania is the first state in the U.S. to provide a solid framework for career education benchmarks and mandate its delivery for all students throughout K-12. While Future Ready PA Index is game-changing for championing relevant education in the classroom, many public and charter schools are looking for an effective, user-friendly system to help them comply with federal accountability requirements in 2019 and beyond.

Solution: Smart Futures has engaged with the Pennsylvania Department of Education to guide the development of SmartFutures.org, an online career planning and portfolio platform built specifically to help schools fully implement the Future Ready PA Index benchmarks into their classrooms. Unlike other off-the-shelf solutions, SmartFutures.org uses the Pennsylvania Academic Standards for Career Education and Work as its curriculum blueprint. Smart Futures consults regularly with the Bureau of Curriculum, Assessment, and Instruction to make sure the platform is aligned to fully support the goals of the Future Ready PA Index and to satisfy the Department's compliance and reporting requirements. To keep the curriculum vibrant and relevant, Smart Futures partners with Carnegie Mellon University and other local colleges and universities whose students participate in the ongoing development of its online activities. To its subscribers, SmartFutures.org is an affordable, drop-in Future Ready (339/ESSA/I.D.E.A.) solution that provides a k-12 curriculum aligned to all 23 elements across the four strands of the Career Education and Work Standards that leads to artifact creation, data collection, student badging, and PIMS monitoring and reporting.  The platform is currently being used by districts and charter schools across Pennsylvania through an annual subscription.

The Opportunity: It's not too late to generate substantial artifact evidence for the summer, 2019 reporting period. SmartFutures.org has additional capacity to offer subscriptions to school districts and charter schools, particularly those in danger of not meeting this year's reporting benchmarks. Visit SmartFutures.org or contact David at dmosey@SmartFutures.org to schedule a virtual tour. Be prepared for 2019 reporting -- Subscribe Today

SmartFutures.org Home Page

Happy Holidays to our Teachers, Counselors and Administrators: Introducing The New Future Ready Administrative Portal An easy way to monitor student progress towards Future Ready goals and compliance

The new Future Ready Progress Monitoring and Administrative Platform for teachers and coordinators is now available! The new portal is modeled after the student platform and, as a result, is beautiful, simple and easy to navigate. Best of all it makes monitoring each student's progress and what is needed for compliance visually clear.

Progress monitoring is made easy, and graphic, on the new administrative portal

Teachers and coordinators will like the new, redesigned platform to perform traditional functions like: Viewing online users Creating and manage classes Viewing K-3, 4-5, 6-8, 9-adult activity and skills completion Monitoring progress towards Future Ready PA Index compliance Viewing presurvey results Monitoring subscription status In addition, the new administrative platform provides the following NEW features: Ability to login as a user -- all teachers get their own user account! Ability to create custom data reports An easy to use help desk support and ticketing system

The New SmartFutures.org administrative portal for teachers and coordinators

Check out the Future Ready "What is SF.org?" Video

Did You Know?

2 Magic numbers : To comply with the measures, during each reporting period students need to complete a minimum number of artifacts (numerator) and complete at least 1 artifact from each of the 4 strands (denominator).

Online activities provide the basis for Future Ready evidence collection, badging and reporting -- no evidence uploading is required.

Students earn Future Ready Badges for activity completion; "I statements" show what students know as a result of activity completion.

Smar t Futures .org was created to help schools achieve Future Ready PA and ESSA compliance by simplifying K-12 evidence collection , progress monitoring , and reporting. This mission-focused, non-profit platform is now being used by public schools and charters, online academies, and other schools and youth serving agencies that are looking to satisfy statewide and national career education mandates.

Future Ready PA Index logos and references Copyright © 2018 Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Subscribe for 2018-19 ( See Pricing) and begin awarding Future Ready Badges at your school.

Here's how to begin:

Contact David ( dmosey@smartfutures.org or 412-288-3900) and tell him you're interested in learning more.

Go to www.smartfutures.org and request a teacher's access code; we'll give you 10 licenses to pilot the program yourself or with students. 

Thank you to the following organizations for their continued support of Smart Futures: