Susan Colby, The Bridgespan Group; Kim Smith, New Schools Venture Fund; Jim Shelton, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

The Bridgespan Group, NewSchools Venture Fund, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have been working individually and collectively with a wide range of school development organizations to increase the number of high-performing centers of learning. Through this work, we have sought answers to persistent questions of how to replicate the successes and raise the quality of U.S. public education.

In the process, we have identified two levers that play critically important roles in determining how quickly and consistently successful schools and design models can be replicated. One is the degree of managerial responsibility, support, and control the organization chooses to exercise. The other is related to specificity of school design.

Leadership’s choices about each will affect not only how quickly the model can be deployed, but also the human and financial capital required – and ultimately the likelihood of achieving consistent high-quality results. This paper examines the school development landscape in the context of these levers, with examples of organizations that have chosen different paths with different tradeoffs and outcomes.