The 2025 RAPSA Forum is centered around advancing inclusive education and redefining success for opportunity youth. This year’s sessions are organized into five key strands, each focused on equipping educators and advocates with tools, insights, and strategies to create meaningful change.
To help you plan your experience, here’s a sneak peek at what each strand offers — along with examples of sessions you can look forward to at the Forum:
Leadership in Times of Change
This strand aims to connect policymakers, educators, researchers and practitioners to share insights, experiences, and innovations that promote improved outcomes for At-Promise students.
Sessions in this strand include:
Counting What Matters
Presenter: Javier Guzman
Alternative schools need to develop the skills to tell their stories well. Often, we are solely using the metrics that have been imposed on us. This paints an incomplete picture that lacks complexity and nuance. To be more accurate, truthful, and rigorous in our storytelling, requires us to count what really matters. In this session, we will delve into strategies that help us reframe and message our work to our communities and the broader public.
Making it Make Sense: How a Coalition Built Clarity, Credibility, and Momentum for Opportunity Youth
Presenters: Sean Hughes, Gina Plate, Taylor Toledo
How do you align a statewide coalition with deep expertise, diverse member organizations, and a bold vision for Opportunity Youth? In this session, leaders from the Opportunity Youth Schools Coalition (OYSC) will share how they built a strategic communications foundation that centers OY while amplifying the unique value of its members. From brand clarity to messaging for influence, you'll walk away with insights on how language, visuals, and voice can drive systems-level impact. Attendees will participate in a live messaging exercise to apply key principles to their work.
Nationwide Alternative Accountability
This strand aims to promote and advance our collective understanding of high-quality accountability systems in alternative education by exploring innovative approaches and alternative frameworks that create meaningful performance metrics for schools serving At-Promise students.
Sessions in this strand include:
Policy Exchange: Innovations in Alt Ed / From the Schoolyard to the Statehouse
Presenters: Annie Marges, Erica Stavis, Korinna Wolfe
Join us for a dynamic, solutions-driven ideas exchange where district leaders and authorizers from across the country share policy innovations in alternative education. This session offers a rare opportunity to explore what's being piloted on the ground — from school-level initiatives to state policy shifts — and how local experimentation is informing broader systems change. Whether you're scaling a policy, refining a pilot, or just beginning to explore new pathways, this exchange is designed to spark collaboration and inspire actionable next steps.
Monitoring What Matters: Framework for Strengthening Implementation and Accountability
Presenter: Babatunde Ilori
Most school systems don’t fail because they picked the wrong strategy—they fail because they never checked if it was actually happening. This session introduces a practical framework for monitoring implementation quality in real time.
Participants will learn how to define key actions, track progress with consistency, and build systems that drive adult behavior and student success before outcomes slip. Walk away with tools to make monitoring meaningful, actionable, and focused on what matters most.
Policy & Advocacy
This strand aims to bring together educators, researchers, policymakers, to better understand the complexities of state, local, and federal education policies that impact schools serving At-Promise students, and to share insights and effective strategy for advancing education policy, that ensures equity, access college and career pathways for At-Promise students in alternative school settings.
Sessions in this strand include:
Rewriting the script: How a state policy collaborative is changing the rules of high school alternatives
Presenter: Ashlie Denton
Inappropriate and restrictive state policies often stand in the way of high school alternatives’ efforts to implement student-centered approaches. This session will share learnings from a national collaborative—funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and led by Education Northwest—focused on transforming state policy on high school alternatives. Learn more about how our collaborative facilitated coalition-building and case-making for policy change, and walk away policy examples and tools to support your policy change efforts.
Why County Boards of Education Matter in Getting Better Outcomes for Students in Juvenile Halls and Community Schools
Presenter: Dr. Yvonne Chan, Vina Lefkovitz, David Patterson
Learn about the critical role County Boards of Education play as the oversight body and School Boards of Record for Juvenile Hall and Community Schools in CA. This panel will discuss the roles of County Boards and County Superintendents, share what tools and leverage County Boards have in strengthening oversight and improving student outcomes. Get introduced to the new statewide Association of County Boards of Education(ACCBE), and how that organization is advocating for, equipping county board members as good stewards, creating partnership and spotlighting innovations that can improve outcomes for at promise students. We are interested in hearing from students, advocates, staff of Alternative Education programs, on how ACCBE can advocate for reforms in CA for juvenile justice and alternative education, to improve student outcomes and create a greater focus on prevention, diversion, early warning systems, early intervention and expanded opportunities for students in our schools.
Teaching for Progress
This strand aims to engage practitioners, researchers and policymakers around high-leverage instruction, student engagement, transformative pedagogy, supportive learning environments, work-based learning, and CTE that foster student engagement and drive improved educational outcomes for At-Promise students.
Sessions in this strand include:
Closing the Comprehension Gap: Develop Language Comprehension, Expression, and Critical Thinking for All Learners
Presenter: Erika Blackwell
To engage in a communicating world, students must effectively comprehend language. Many curricula treat comprehension as a byproduct of background knowledge and vocabulary. This results in disadvantaged students being left behind. Participants will learn how the imagery-language connection, aligned with the Dual Coding Theory of cognition, is foundational to helping all students meet their potential. Instructional strategies will be introduced to develop imagery for listening and reading comprehension, vocabulary, language expression, and critical thinking.
Diverse Classroom Intelligences: How to Foster a Positive Impact (and Results) in the Classroom
Presenter: Renee Abdullah, Kevin Cataldo
In this thought-provoking and practical workshop, participants will explore Howard Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences, critically examining the diverse ways students learn and process information. Through pointed, interactive, and engaging discussions, educators will leave with a deeper understanding of the intelligences, and how they influence student engagement, motivation, and academic success. Participants will be equipped with proven strategies to recognize and support multiple intelligences in their teaching, whilst fostering an inclusive and effective learning community.
Youth Innovation and Workforce Transformation
This strand aims to convene policymakers, researchers, educators, advocates, and practitioners to explore innovative education policies that promote equitable access to workforce development programs for At-Promise students.
Sessions in this strand include:
Alumni Lab: Pivoting from Uncertainty to Opportunity
Presenter: Pagee Cheung
Through an intensive cohort-based workshop series, Alumni Lab helps opportunity youth gain entry to workforce development programs that lead to financially sustainable, personally meaningful careers. Alumni Lab helps students identify career paths that are appealing to them, and rediscover their confidence and sense of purpose that allows them to be successful.
UCLA Center for the Developing Adolescent: Leveraging Developmental Science to Support Economic Agency in Young People
Presenter: Dr. Andres Fuligni, Natalie Saragosa-Harris
UCLA CDA is embarking on a new, multi-year initiative to share insights from developmental science relevant to supporting economic agency among young people as they enter adulthood. We aim to promote a broader understanding of the science of adolescent development for the ages 16 to 25 as a unique period of opportunity to connect our young people with developmentally appropriate supports at home and school, in the community, and the workplace to help them enter adulthood with the agency to build a meaningful, engaging, and secure economic future. Our focus includes efforts in college preparation and completion, career and technical education, dual enrollment, job training and advancement, mentorship, durable skill building, and benefits access. In this session, we will share our emerging work in this area and look to make connections with policymakers, advocacy organizations, and young people who are focused on improving systems that impact the transition to adulthood.
As you explore the conference strands, consider which areas align most with your goals and the impact you want to make. No matter which sessions you attend, you’ll leave with tools and inspiration to better serve your students and communities.
Join us at the RAPSA Forum 2025 on November 3–5, 2025 at the San Diego Mission Bay Resort in San Diego, CA. Don’t miss your chance to connect, collaborate, and contribute—register today to secure your place at this inspiring event.
