Colleagues and friends,
A key goal of The Learning Accelerator’s five-year strategy is helping education leaders respond to urgent challenges while also making meaningful progress towards more personalized, competency-based, and holistically developing school models for the future. Doing this requires embracing a “both/and” mindset, making choices that effectively address what can feel like competing needs and tensions. Getting to these solutions requires thinking differently about using existing resources to achieve new results.
In 2024, we launched several new initiatives aimed at one such area of tension: effectively measuring and addressing learning acceleration. Can we offer more personalized support, such as tutoring, at the very core of a kid’s school day, rather than at the margins of it? Can we effectively increase rates of reading and math mastery while also increasing other outcomes valued by students, parents, and educators, such as engagement, well-being, and (dare we say it) joy?
The answer to these questions is, undeniably, “yes.” We’ve seen it in classrooms and systems nationwide, where communities have worked with intention, commitment, and creativity to make change. We had the privilege of learning alongside nine such communities this year, and I’m excited to share two new reports our team has developed by studying them. These reports highlight how nine public schools are driving rigorous academic goals and broader student aims. They’ve set new visions and leverage innovative approaches like competency-based measurement, technology-supported instruction, and uncommon community partnerships alongside more traditional means.
I hope you’ll find them as interesting and inspiring as we do.
Yours in partnership and curiosity,
Beth Rabbitt, Chief Executive Officer (she/her)
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