Projects
Pivot Learning Partners is involved in several on-going school improvement projects within the state.
Below are brief descriptions of our two most ambitious projects in California school districts.
Strategic School Funding for Results (SSFR)
Pivot Learning Partners and the American Institutes for Research (AIR) have teamed up with three California school systems – Los Angeles, Twin Rivers, and Pasadena Unified School Districts – to carry out a project to implement and evaluate the impact of a comprehensive approach to redesign school finance and governance within local school districts.
The project entitled Strategic School Funding for Results (SSFR) has two major goals:
(a) to develop and implement more equitable and transparent strategies for allocating resources to schools within each district, and
(b) to link those strategies to systems designed to encourage innovation and efficiency, and to strengthen accountability for student outcomes.
Within the framework of the SSFR project, the AIR/PLP team provides the data analysis, technical assistance, coaching, training and project and change management support to achieve a transformed allocation and budgeting system and evaluate its success. This four-year project, now finishing year one is supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Institute for Educational Sciences (IES).
Further Reading:
There’s Lots to Learn from L.A.: Policy Levers for Institutional Change (outside link)
"From Resources to Results: LAUSD's Quest for Equity, Autonomy, Transparency and Excellence" (podcast)
(outside link)
April 27th, 2010 - a daylong conference examining the reform efforts taking place in LAUSD during one of the largest budget crises to hit the district. Featuring mutliple perspectives from several education administrators, analysts and experts.
California Collabortative on District Reform:
Fresno-Long Beach Learning Partnership
Pivot Learning Partners is involved in an exciting partnership between Fresno Unified and Long Beach Unified School Districts. A joint effort between the third- and fourth-largest school districts in California, the Partnership seeks to pursue common goals, measure student outcomes, share professional knowledge, learn from each other, and support each other’s progress.
Prompted by dropout rate and inadequate higher education and career preparation for students, these two districts formed a collaboration that aims to
improve student outcomes, accelerate
achievement for all students, and close
achievement gaps by capitalizing on shared
systemic capacity-building across two high-need
districts.
This learning initiative holds promise for other urban school systems, as well, as the leaders from these two districts begin to identify key strategies to improve student performance. Driving this Partnership is an implicit theory of action that as leaders collaborate and learn more about what they must do to improve student achievement, all learning can improve – student learning, adult learning, and systems learning.
Further Reading:
Brief on the Fresno-Long Beach Partnership (PDF)