The Center

The purpose of The Center, housed at Mississippi Bend AEA 9, is to develop Iowa’s capacity to leverage learner-centered, personalized, and competency-based ecosystems as pathways to future readiness.

The Center is a coalition of educators with a Leadership Council that supports local implementation of learner-centered, personalized, and competency-based practices. Members create tools/processes and offer free resources on the website to help make the shifts easier and more sustainable by using current research and innovative designs that model UDL/SDI and current practices in the field of personalized learning.

The statewide work the Center supports includes the following:

• Iowa's College and Career Ready Definition
• Area Education Agency Compact's Postsecondary Success Pledge
• The Governor's Future Ready Iowa Initiative
• AEA PREP (Postsecondary Readiness and Equity Partnership)
• Iowa Digital Learning Plan

The Center is made up of passionate educators and partners from around the state, including those who are members of:

• Area Education Agencies (representatives from each AEA)
• Local Education Agencies (districts and schools, including administrators, teacher leaders, and teachers who partnered in the Iowa CBE Collaborative and/or those with an interest to grow in our identified areas)
•  Institutions of Higher Education (University of Iowa, Drake University, Kirkwood Community College, Eastern Iowa Community Colleges, Simpson College)
• Future Ready Iowa
•  School Administrators of Iowa (SAI)
•  Iowa ASCD
• Iowa Jobs for America’s Graduates (I-JAG)
• Iowa STEM Council
•  Business/Community
• Student groups

Together they put students at the center as co-designers and co-owners of their learning; they are a center of resources, expertise, training, and innovation in the area of personalized ecosystems; and they will keep Iowa at the center of the shift to a learner-centered paradigm.