Our Mission
Partners in School Innovation’s mission is to transform teaching and learning in the lowest-performing public schools so that every student, regardless of background, thrives.
Overview
Partners in School Innovation (Partners) accelerates, strengthens and sustains improved teaching, learning and achievement in under-performing public schools and districts.
Founded in 1993, we currently serve over 1,600 teachers and 30,000 students in more than 65 schools across 8 districts and 4 states. We aim to work ourselves out of a job, transforming under-performing districts to narrow the achievement gap and ensure that today’s students at high risk for dropping out of school have access to opportunities to succeed in school and life. We do this by building the capacity of teachers and leaders through shoulder-to-shoulder support an average of 3.5 days a week over a 3-5 year period. Applying a continuous improvement approach, our work focuses on:
- Strengthening leaders’ abilities to focus on student outcomes and align school resources
- Creating an integrated system for teacher professional learning, and
- Building a strong core instructional program
Since its inception, Partners has worked alongside teachers and leaders in multi-year partnerships in more than 80 public schools and 15 districts. Partners schools regularly demonstrate achievement gains while partner classrooms become more vibrant places to teach, learn and grow. In 2012, we brought our proven school transformation model to Battle Creek, Michigan with the support of a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Since then, we have scaled our impact to Grand Rapids (Michigan), Albuquerque (New Mexico) and the Mississippi Delta while deepening engagements across three districts in California.