Bringing Educators, Leaders, and Policymakers Together
Events for the passionate changemakers working to improve educational assessment and accountability.
Great work is never done alone. Our events provide an open space for great discussion, idea sharing, collaboration, and inspiration among a wide range of leaders, thinkers, and practitioners in the field – all with a shared commitment to improving outcomes for students.
The 2026 Reidy Interactive Learning Series (RILS)
September 24 @ 8:15 am – September 25 @ 12:15 pm EDT
Career Readiness: Defining and Measuring What Matters for the Future of Work
Rapid economic and technological change has intensified concerns about whether K–12 systems are preparing students for life after high school. Employer reports of skill gaps, declining confidence in traditional college pathways, and deep concerns about the influence of artificial intelligence (AI) have elevated career readiness as a central goal of public education.
Against this backdrop, state and local education agencies face fundamental questions about how to measure career readiness. These questions include:
- What constitutes rigorous and comparable college- and career-ready expectations?
- What role should industry-recognized credentials play?
- How should cross-cutting “durable” or employability skills be assessed, if at all?
- How is AI likely to reshape both the definition and measurement of readiness?
The 2026 Reidy Interactive Learning Series (RILS) centers on a guiding question:
How should measures of career readiness evolve to support students’ preparation for meaningful work and life pathways?
RILS 2026 aims to help states, districts, charter organizations, and partners make informed, responsible decisions about monitoring career readiness in ways that support all learners while mitigating well-documented risks. These risks include unintended tracking, inequitable expectations, misalignment between measures and intended uses, and the misuse of weak indicators for high-stakes accountability.
True to RILS tradition, the conference will be highly interactive, offering opportunities for participants to share experiences and engage with peers alongside presentations and panels featuring district, state, and national experts.
Whether you are a state, district, or school leader—or support others in these roles—the conference will deepen your understanding of how career readiness has been defined and operationalized across contexts, illuminate tradeoffs among measurement approaches, and provide practical guidance for selecting and using indicators responsibly. Our broader goal is to move beyond surface-level metrics toward coherent, defensible approaches to measuring what truly matters for students’ futures. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
We can’t wait to see you in beautiful Portsmouth, N.H., on September 24-25, 2026!
Hampton Inn & Suites Portsmouth Downtown
23 Portwalk Place
Portsmouth, NH 03801 United States
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Hampton Inn & Suites Portsmouth Downtown $299/night group rate available through Aug. 22
The Brian Gong Colloquium
This annual colloquium is named in honor of Brian Gong, the Center's Co-Founder and former Executive Director. Our aspiration for this internal event is to foster the intellectual curiosity, innovative thinking, and respectful discourse that Brian models. Our staff focuses on a topic that may be outside of their expertise but is likely to have a significant impact in our field of work. We spend one year gathering information on the topic, and we invite experts to join us for the colloquium to share information and engage in discussions.