General Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently Asked Questions for Education Leaders
What are Next Generation Learning Communities?
Why should my community become a NGL?
How do NGLs make change happen?
How does Ford Motor Company support NGLs?
How can my community get started?
What are Next Generation Learning Communities?
Next Generation Learning Communities (NGLs) are regional alliances of K–12 schools, businesspeople, postsecondary educators, and community leaders, mobilized to reform education and stimulate local economic development. Ford Motor Company Fund, the philanthropic arm of the Ford Motor Company, identifies and supports communities that want to transform the high school experience around relevance while transforming teaching and learning in the process.
NGLs are guided and supported by the Ford Motor Company Fund, which also sponsors the implementation of the innovative, hands-on Ford PAS Learning curriculum in schools across the country.
Often employing innovations such as career academies, small learning communities, and use of the Ford PAS Learning curriculum, NGLs show students the connection between education and their future success in the world of work.
Why should my community become a NGL?
It takes a community-wide system to change education. Because education affects everyone in the community, and because a broad mobilization of resources and talent is needed to make schools work, effective change requires full community involvement.
The business and postsecondary communities are going to be much more involved in and supportive of what happens in K-12 schools when they realize that they’re investing in a skilled workforce and enhancing community prosperity.
By motivating students to excel in school to strive toward future career success, NGLs deliver:
• Lower high school dropout rates
• More students going on to higher education
• A workforce that is fully prepared to meet the demands of the 21st-Century economy.
How do NGLs make change happen?
NGLs use 12 Best Practices as a roadmap to ensure they are employing all the best practices necessary to promote effective change. These include:
• Establishing a career academy master plan
• Recruiting career cluster entrepreneurs to rally business support
• Setting up a system to monitor continuous improvement of career academies
• Setting up business advisory boards to guide the evolution of career pathways
• Articulating advancement from high school to postsecondary study.
How does Ford Motor Company support NGLs?
NGLs are supported through the guidance and resources of the Ford Motor Company Fund, the automaker’s philanthropic arm. As NGLs develop their community systems and implement change, they pass through different levels of support.
Communities that have successfully organized their shareholders and are collectively ready to coordinate their efforts receive support at the Prospective Level. At this level, a community has achieved some of the 12 Best Practices, with a goal of meeting at least eight best practices within two years. Communities at advanced stages of development receive support appropriate for the Leadership Level. Leadership programs generally have fulfilled all indicators in at least eight of the 12 best practices. Ford Motor Company Fund invites leaders in these communities to mentor prospective level communities.
The Ford Motor Company Fund also supports Mountain Home, Arkansas, as a Leadership Rural Model and Putnam/North Westchester, New York as a Leadership Technical Center Model.
How can my community get started?
Ford Motor Company Fund is leading the way in helping schools incorporate transformative teaching and learning through the Ford Partnership for Advanced Studies (Ford PAS) curriculum in schools and supporting community engagement and redesigned high schools through our Next Generation Learning Communities (NGL) designation program. We invite you to join us in the quest to improve student success in college and careers. Please download the NGL Designations Process document for a full description of how your community can join us.
Apply for your county, city, or town to become designated as a Next Generation Learning Community. This honor brings technical assistance from Ford PAS aimed at achieving sustainable change.
Please contact us to discuss details on any of these ways to support Ford PAS and its programs.
Richard K. Delano
Team Leader, Advisory Council
and President, SMS
P.O. Box 1172
Bridgehampton, NY 11932
Delano@socialmarketingservices.com
631-537-4990