Center for the Future of Arizona

Educationtransforming education in Arizona has always been at the forefront of cfa's efforts, as the success of young arizonans is critical to the Future of our state. Our programs prepare great school leaders, create career-connected pathways, and reimagine learning so schools can support every child.arizona 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. In the spring and summer of 2023, cfa, alongside az cyber (continued on sch o) initiative, launched cyber camps in tucson and phoenix for 10th-12th grade students interested in the high-demand cyber industry. Over 100 students gaining real-world hands-on experience in the growing high-wage, high-need cybersecurity industry. Cfa launched an innovative virtual internship model with the work based learning alliance (wbla) for high school students. Over 150 students from across the state completed up to 100 hours of paid work gaining valuable skills and exploration, each working in teams of five students per employer. the model provides invaluable experience fostering necessary skill attainment, including independence, confidence, problem-solving, critical thinking, time management, and more while eliminating geographical barriers for students and resource barriers for employers. To ensure Arizona's career-connected pathways meet the diverse needs of students and their families, the aptp student voice project prioritized gathering insights directly from those it aims to serve throughout the 2022-2023 school year. By engaging westwood high school students and parents within mesa public schools, alongside students from chandler-gilbert community college, the project emphasized the importance of understanding varied perspectives and experiences in pursuing education and training during and after high school. This approach and engaging a broad cross-section of the community has been critical in shaping education and career guidance that resonates with students' real-world aspirations and family's expectations.arizona personalized learning network: cfa's Arizona personalized learning network's (apln) transform pathway continues to provide support and training to school districts and charter networks ready to shift policies and practices in support of personalized learning in maricopa, pima, santa cruz, and yuma counties, impacting more than 55,000 students. In spring 2022, cfa expanded apln to provide schools with new ways to engage in personalized learning, introducing the launch pathway to provide targeted and deeper technical assistance for school teams ready to shift traditional teaching and learning practices to improve outcomes for all students on their campuses. Twenty-eight teams with over 150 educators participated in the initial launch cohort, with twelve new teams joining in 2023.beat the odds school leadership academy: since 2016, cfa has provided executive leadership training to current and aspiring school and district leaders across Arizona through the beat the odds school leadership academy (bto academy), an evolution of cfa's first-ever original program beat the odds. Cfa continues to expand the bto academy to serve more school leaders across the state, focused on serving schools experiencing significant impacts from the covid-19 pandemic. Since 2020, the bto academy has experienced a year-over-year participant increase of 39%, impacting an additional 90,000 students across the state.

Workforce developmentworkforce initiatives are crucial to empowering individuals in securing meaningful employment opportunities and helping businesses succeed and contribute to Arizona's economic growth in a rapidly evolving job market. Cfa combines education, training, and support to strengthen Arizona's workforce development system and help workers build skills to benefit them throughout their careers.retailworks az: the retail sector employs more than 320,000 arizonans and is the fourth largest workforce sector. It is often the first job for youth and where they can acquire critical (continued on sch o) employability skills. Retailworks az is working to build a thriving ecosystem to assist front-line retail workers to reach their full potential through acquiring skills and certifications fostering supportive talent management practices among employers to make it easier and faster to move up the retail career ladder and build a pipeline of skilled talent for the state. In early 2023, cfa influenced the addition of the retail sector as a priority sector for Arizona through the state-level workforce Arizona council. This has had a significant impact as cfa has championed the retail sector, which has become a priority sector in Arizona since the launch of retailworks az in 2017. Using the aspen institute quality/good jobs framework, retailworks az continued convening over 20 retail employers to explore the adoption of attributes in the quality/good jobs framework, a multi-system approach addressing unemployed and underemployed workers in rural Arizona. Cfa also continued the statewide expansion of the national retail federation's industry-recognized credential and training programs to upskill job seekers and workers. In partnership with the nrf, cfa hosted quarterly learning circles to introduce new resources and share best practices around delivering the curriculum with collaborators across the state. In partnership with the asu trusted learner network and with the support of funding from walmart, cfa has been working on developing a learning & employment records (lers) platform named "my skills pocket." This platform enables learners to store all their credentials, including learning and employment records, badges, training completions, awards, and degrees, in one place. My skills pocket gives a full picture of learners' professional accomplishments with insight into the valuable skills they accumulate through day-to-day work allowing jobseekers to obtain good jobs that fit their hard-earned qualifications. Workforce leadership academy: in april of 2023, cfa launched its southern Arizona workforce leadership academy, a 10-month professional development program provided in partnership with pima community college and the aspen institute economic opportunities program. the southern Arizona academy is designed to improve local economic mobility and workforce development efforts. the selected fellows strengthen their networks, enhance their leadership, and create innovative solutions to the challenges workers and businesses face in southern Arizona. the academy is made possible with support from thomas r brown and the burton family foundation.

Civic healthcfa is committed to improving Arizona's civic health by strengthening civic engagement and empowering leaders to shape their communities and the state's Future. Arizona civic life partnership: cfa partnered with the Arizona Center for civic leadership at the flinn foundation to strengthen civic life in Arizona. Last year welcomed national leaders from the bipartisan commission on the practice of democratic citizenship, out of the american academy of arts and sciences, to host a series of events with Arizona civic leaders. the events expanded the (continued on sch o) commission's prior engagement with arizonans in the phoenix area to inform its national report and recommendations. This follow-up event was a key development in our efforts to become a hub for state and national partners to convene, collaborate, and multiply impact on civic health. the event has already resulted in ongoing collaborations, including cfa joining a new national cohort of organizations advancing civic collaboratory models where the network shares projects or initiatives and the rest of the group offers not workshopping or critique but hard commitments of help and support.school participatory budgeting: in 2016, cfa partnered with phoenix union high school district, asu participatory governance initiative (pgi), and the national participatory budgeting project to launch the nation's first school district-level school participatory budgeting (spb) program. Spb is an innovative approach to equipping, engaging, and empowering our rising generation to be active and informed participants in civic life. In the spring of 2023,34 schools participated in spb vote days, where students learned democracy by doing spending real dollars on real projects like playground equipment, bathroom beautification, more seating with shade, and more made possible with support from the steele foundation. This included the roosevelt school district (rsd) engagement, where nine schools completed the pilot process, engaging students as young as kindergarten to vote to improve their schools. Research shows individuals who participate in civic life, for example by voting, have greater access to opportunity and well-being, and policies are more responsive when everyone is engaged. At martin luther king jr. Elementary school, second graders on the steering committee led the voting process for their fellow students to select a winning campus improvement project. the school received its new playground equipment, and students enjoy playing soccer and basketball, ring toss, and hopscotch.

Arizona progress metersto measure our collective progress in areas critical to achieving the Arizona we want, cfa created the Arizona progress meters, which include 80+ metrics to support policymakers and community leaders' data-driven dialogue, decision-making, and action. In the 2023 fiscal year, cfa continued to build out and evolve the Arizona progress meters, ensuring they remained responsive to what matters most to arizonans. Ongoing enhancements make the tools more accessible so leaders across the state can utilize them to drive community-relevant action on arizonans' priorities. Combined with survey research insights, data from the Arizona progress meters also contributed to productive community conversations, helped inform evidence-based policies and action, and led to expanded partnerships this past year. Examples of impact:a custom dashboard for Arizona's education retention taskforce cfa's data initiatives team is a trusted resource supporting leaders across the state with research and data exploration. In 2023, the Arizona governor's office asked cfa to evaluate pay data for teachers and other occupations essential to the state's education system. Leveraging the same data that informs the teacher pay metric in the Arizona education progress meter, the team built a custom dashboard allowing exploration of thousands of different occupations' salaries at various career stages compared to other states and the nation. the task force used this data to strategize and develop solutions. the dashboard was widely referenced and one of the most visited pages on cfa's website.improvement in inequitable attainment outcomes with state of black Arizona cfa's long-standing partnership with the state of black Arizona (sbaz) results in many opportunities to leverage our data and insights into addressing racial equity concerns for african americans. Built around the state's achieve 60 goal, sbaz, cfa, and education forward Arizona collaborated to assess postsecondary attainment in the african american community informing sbaz's plans to improve equity in the attainment rate.cfa's powerful data visualization tools built around a strategy to provide partners and communities with data tools and resources to move Arizona forward, cfa's data analysis and visualization platform, domo, was leveraged to create a new dashboard visualizing the Arizona board of regents' college-going and completion data. Previously unavailable to arizonans, this dashboard provides critical information on how well high school graduates are doing at enrolling in postsecondary education and completing a credential within six years. This data is essential to understanding how prepared students are for college, whether students value postsecondary education and barriers in place. Using the same tool, cfa updated its Arizona education and jobs progress meters to provide enhanced visualizations, filtering, and a better user experience.