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As a global pandemic interrupted purposefully designed systems of testing and accountability, we are left with critical questions: How does the underlying theory of standards-based accountability and its foundational goals of equity and transparency hold up decades later? What do key stakeholders need from these systems now? Given what we’ve learned from decades of successes and failures, how should these systems continue to evolve in the face of mounting political opposition?
Bellwether's series takes a step back to examine the past, present, and future of modern school accountability systems. We've also added three short resources to help state policymakers, advocates, and school and district leaders apply the lessons and ideas from these briefs to their work. Read the newest brief and takeaways at the link below:
Families, teachers, and communities all have varying perspectives on what the school year can and should hold for students. School leaders need to balance these voices in decision-making through effective and authentic stakeholder engagement.
When EightCities.org first launched in 2018, it documented the stories of leaders in school systems across the country working to drive rapid improvement in student achievement by empowering school leaders, providing families with multiple school options, and replacing persistently low-performing schools with high-quality options. While each city’s path looked a little different, they all deployed a common suite of strategies and achieved measurable progress for their students.
The reaction to these stories has been incredible, helping to make EightCities.org Bellwether's most-visited publication of 2018. There’s a real appetite for tangible examples of how communities can make significant and systemic improvement for kids — a desire that is even more urgent after the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools across the nation.
So in 2020, Bellwether is offering an enhanced and updated version of EightCities.org. Learn more about the new site features by clicking below:
The coronavirus pandemic will have a profound, lasting impact on students, particularly those who are already marginalized. This includes students in foster care, those in juvenile detention facilities, or those experiencing homelessness. Schools, districts, nonprofit organizations, and other partners play a critical role in ensuring that systems of care support young people who need our help the most.
With school opening just weeks away in many parts of the country, leaders need a detailed level of support — and a plan — to start the school year in the midst of a global pandemic. Our complementary new resource includes all of the components of a reopening plan, offers questions school leaders should address, and links to concrete resources and examples of completed plans as guides.
More than 400,000 youth are currently in foster care in the United States, many of whom experience significant obstacles in their lives, ranging from frequent transitions between homecare placements and schools to unmet physical and mental health needs. Youth in foster care experience a number of common obstacles in accessing school choice: lack of transportation to remain in their school of origin, narrow definitions of sibling preference that leave out children in foster care, and insufficient information available to adults in their lives.
Many charter schools and networks have demonstrated game-changing results for low-income students and students of color. And many are eager to extend their impact to benefit more students. Typically, schools and networks have extended their impact by expanding enrollment to serve more students or replicating their model and opening new schools.
However, expansion and replication are not the only ways to reach more students.
Schools and education organizations need good information about their programs to understand what works, for whom, and why. Obtaining and acting on that information, through program evaluation, is what transforms good organizations into great ones.
But when organizations support underserved students, it is especially important to design and implement evaluations with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in mind.
Postsecondary education dramatically increases the likelihood of employment and economic success. But many young people, especially those furthest from opportunity and from underserved communities, are not accessing postsecondary pathways or realizing the benefits that come with a degree. To disrupt this inequity, we must better support students to identify, pursue, and complete college.
The recent killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless other Black people, often by law enforcement, have added momentum and renewed urgency to longstanding efforts to rethink and perhaps eliminate the relationship between police and schools. This two-page resource is designed to aggregate and amplify the existing work of advocates, researchers, community organizers, and students in order to offer practical questions and next steps for school and district leaders considering a reevaluation of schools’ relationship with law enforcement.
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