Lindsay Unified School District in California’s Central Valley is a beautiful rural farming community, where orange, olives, and pistachios are primary crops. While it’s a vibrant community, Lindsay also faces significant challenges, particularly when it comes to poverty. Tulare County — where Lindsay is located — is the second most impoverished county in the nation, and Lindsay is the fifth most impoverished community in the state of California. One hundred percent of students receive free or reduced lunch, almost 10 percent meet state and federal standards for homelessness, and about one-third are English language learners.
Over the course of the past decade, Lindsay Unified has experienced significant growth when it comes to student outcomes, thanks in large part to Superintendent Tom Rooney and his dedicated team, a highly engaged community, and deeply invested local and national partners. During this time, the district has completely reimagined outcomes for students by transforming its culture to align with a “future-focused strategic design” which prioritizes a personalized, performance-based system.
This district- and community-wide transformation has remained consistent for years and has yielded tremendous results for learners. Lindsay’s high school graduation rate is now 96 percent — up from 67 percent more than a decade ago — 75 percent of learners attend college after high school, and more than half of learners attend a four-year college or university.
While this growth is a tremendous testament to the dedication, collaboration, and innovation present across Lindsay Unified, education leaders may wonder how this model might provide applications for other school districts eager to implement sweeping, district-wide changes. How might other forward-thinking leaders and districts take learnings, insights, and approaches from Lindsay Unified and apply them to their own districts and communities? During the League of Innovative Schools Fall 2024 Convening, more than 100 superintendents and district leaders from the Digital Promise League of Innovative Schools gathered in Lindsay to answer this question.
The League plays a pivotal role in driving educational transformation by bringing together district leaders from across the nation. Through its biannual convenings, the League fosters collaboration, facilitates knowledge sharing, and promotes the adoption of best practices to accelerate innovation in education. Site visits, like the one to Lindsay Unified, are a key component of the League’s convenings. These immersive experiences offer members the opportunity to gain firsthand insights into cutting-edge practices, forge connections with like-minded educators, draw inspiration from the work of others and share in their successes, and identify actionable steps to implement transformative change in their own districts.
Lindsay Unified Learners on “Team Empower” led League leaders through a day of site visits to experience and witness the district’s innovative teaching and learning first-hand.
“I will be connecting with several members on their takeaways from the convening and how we can work together on next steps in our respective districts,” one League member shared in reflecting about their “next steps” coming out of the convening.
In Lindsay, these school visits put the district’s learners in the driver’s seat. Throughout the day, League members toured multiple learning communities in small groups led by learner leaders in the district’s “Team Empower,” learners at each learning community who serve as ambassadors to the district’s performance-based system and as tour guides. Through these visits and the eyes of these learner leaders, League members identified common, consistent characteristics present across learning communities that make Lindsay’s learning environment so unique. Three key themes emerged across League members’ reflections.
League members shared one word that they would use to describe the Fall 2024 Convening in Lindsay, California. Terms like “inspiring,” “empowering,” and “thought-provoking” all rose to the top.
For Lindsay Unified, putting learners at the center is not just a phrase used by district leadership; it is a district-wide approach that is embodied and carried out by all members of the community, including learners, educators, leaders, and families. In practice, the district’s performance based system looks like:
During the site visits, League leaders observed and spoke with learners at all levels about their self-directed learning journeys, which are largely powered by technology.
League members witnessed learners as young as the kindergarten level engaging in self-directed learning around reading and mathematics at their own pace, guided by their learning facilitators. “I was inspired by their student-centered, competency-based approach. The learning was timely as we will be undertaking some ‘reimagining’ work in our district,” reflected one League member.
At the high school level, this learner-led approach is largely evidenced by the various career and technical education (CTE) pathways available to learners, including education, agricultural science, design, visual, and media arts, business and finance, and more. “The pathway model at the high school was most inspiring to me. We are working on a redesign of one of our high schools, and this model will give our team some solid food for thought,” another League member shared.
From the moment League members entered the outdoor “hallways” of Lindsay Unified’s learning communities, they were immediately met with learners’ powerful use of technology as members of the district’s “Team Empower” guided League members through their “Empower Learning” platform. For the majority of League members, this unique learning management system — and learners’ consistent, comprehensive use of it at all levels — stood out as one of the most innovative aspects of the district’s work, as it enables learners to track their progress toward mastery of specific academic competencies over the years. One learner, for example, shared, “I’m a senior now, and I can look back on what I learned in kindergarten.”
“I loved Empower. It allowed [learners] to take ownership and agency for their education and learning,” one League member reflected.
Learners on Linday Unified’s “Team Empower” walked League leaders through the “Empower Learning” platform, an all-encompassing online tool which enables learners to track and adjust their individual learning journeys over time.
Another League member shared how seeing the powerful use of an LMS like Empower is particularly useful when embarking on their own district’s journey in leveraging similar technologies: “We are starting these conversations [around an LMS], and it helps to see process and product models.”
Apart from a district-wide platform to help learners track and take ownership over their own learning, Lindsay Unified’s approach to technology usage closely aligns with Digital Promise’s K-12 Digital Equity Framework, a set of principles and guidelines designed to ensure that all students have equitable access to digital learning opportunities.
For years, a key part of Lindsay Unified’s journey to make their shared, community-driven strategic vision a reality has been language. Over the course of the past decade, the district adopted new language to better reflect its reimagined culture, desired outcomes, and shared goals: students became learners, teachers became learning facilitators, classrooms became learning environments, and schools became learning communities.
During the convening, League members witnessed the power of this shift in language directly from learners and learning facilitators. For one League leader, Lindsay’s “all-in approach to terminology” was the most inspiring aspect of the district’s work. The shared language also contributed toward learners’ owning specific cultural norms within their own learning environments. “Students creating the class norms and expectations at every level and living into the norms was very evident in every class,” one League member shared.
League leaders were able to see how each learning environment across Lindsay Unified visually demonstrated and reinforced the ways in which learners and learning facilitators had contributed toward a positive, shared culture.
League members also experienced how strong community-wide “buy in” of the district’s shared vision bolsters its culture. In addition to the learners in “Team Empower,” the district has developed “Lindsay Leads,” which consists of “certified and classified staff, administrators, parents, and board members who serve as trainers, coaches, and consultants to intentionally and strategically support, empower, and motivate other educational entities to transform their systems to learner centered models.”
One League leader noted this community-driven approach to the district’s journey of transformation: “The entire system [is] built as a result of listening to the people.”
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