Launched in 2004, the Children’s Cancer Network fashion show features children dealing with cancer and their siblings. 36 | FRONTDOORS MAGAZINE BY MICHELLE JACOBY Arizona’s “Permission Granted” initiative is giving educators the freedom to reimagine how students learn W alk the East Valley Institute of Technology campus on any given afternoon and the traditional classroom is nowhere to be found. Chefs plate dishes, automotive students work beneath lifted cars, and nursing students run simulations. The clock on the wall? Almost beside the point. That’s exactly how EVIT Superintendent Chad Wilson likes it. He is part of a quiet but powerful shift in Arizona: a move toward measuring learning by mastery, rather than “seat time.” Launched in early 2026 by Center for the Future of Arizona and the Arizona Institute for Education and the Economy at Northern Arizona University, with support from the national nonprofit KnowledgeWorks, the Permission Granted initiative delivers a liberating message: Significant flexibility to reimagine education is already written into state law. FROM IDEA TO ACTION “Permission Granted is about how we help Arizona schools use the flexibility they have to better support student success,” said Amanda Burke, Ed.D., executive vice president of CFA, who has spent nearly 17 years working at the intersection of education policy and practice in Arizona. “It’s about helping Arizona move from flexibility on paper to real change for students.” The initiative gives educators two practical tools to make that happen. The Policy Primer translates Arizona’s education statutes into plain language, spelling out exactly where schools have room to rethink scheduling, staffing, dual enrollment and instructional time. The Innovation Guide pairs that policy clarity with real-world examples from 11 Arizona Beyond the Bell NEXT DOORS

school systems already putting these flexibilities to work. The idea is to move educators from a mindset of “we can’t” to “we already can.” “What we consistently hear from Arizonans, over two decades of survey research, is that they want every student to have access to a high-quality education that prepares them for what comes next,” Burke said. “And they’re open to doing things differently.” Peter Boyle, CFA’s senior director of education and a fourth-generation educator who spent six years as a school principal, is overseeing the rollout across more than 75 Arizona districts. He sees four common barriers to change: not knowing what’s possible, not being sure it’s allowed, not being able to picture what it would look like, and lacking the push to act. Permission Granted, he says, is designed to remove all four. “If these resources just live online or collect dust on a bookshelf and are not catalyzing action, then we haven’t succeeded,” Boyle said. Just two weeks after the launch, more than 150 partners attended a convening co-hosted by CFA and the Arizona Institute for Education and the Economy to dig into the plan. “That’s a great first signal that there’s an appetite from the field for this type of work.” MASTERY OVER MINUTES Wilson illustrates the “seat time” flaw by showing a student who struggles in high school geometry but excels in EVIT’s construction program. “The issue wasn’t that he couldn’t understand math,” Wilson said. “It was that the way he was being taught math wasn’t most conducive to how he learns it best. He learns contextually, based on application, not just regurgitation.” That realization has shaped everything Wilson has done at EVIT, including a decision that raised a few eyebrows. He moved away from traditional admission criteria, such as minimum GPAs and disciplinary records. Enrollment has since soared from 2,300 students to 9,000. And those students who would previously have been turned away? In the first year of open enrollment, they performed comparably to their peers. “Just because a student has less than a 2.5 GPA doesn’t mean they’re not going to flourish here,” Wilson said. “Why would we not open that opportunity for them?” FINDING THE ON-RAMP When Wilson came across Permission Granted, he recognized something familiar. “It was wonderful to see not only other strategies that others are using, but also to see that we’re not the only ones looking for them,” he said. “Sometimes in education, you go out on a limb and think, ‘Am I the only one out there?’ And then you realize there’s this body of work being done through CFA, through NAU, through all these big agencies that are supporting the approach we’re wanting to take.” EVIT now offers pathways leading to associate degrees in surgical technology and registered nursing, with more in the pipeline. This is a pathway that matters not just for credentials, but for students who arrive not seeing themselves as college- bound and leave thinking differently. “There’s a lot that we think can’t be done until we realize it actually can,” Wilson said. FRONTDOORS MAGAZINE | 37