Where Real-Time Redesign Originated: Always Ready for Learning Strategy Lab

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, The Learning Accelerator, along with Bellwether Education Partners, created a new networked learning community focused on equity and resiliency called the Strategy Lab. The nine-month, pro bono, cohort-based learning experience supported seven school systems in their reopening planning in the fall and winter of 2020 through expert support and targeted coaching before engaging in a process to make real-time, meaningful, and lasting improvements to teaching and learning.

The reality of the pandemic forced us to creatively design the cohort experience as we worked with districts. As back-to-school turned into back-and-forth-to-school, keeping a tight grip on school system leaders' attention, we pivoted away from rigid, long-term strategic planning to a more flexible, rapid-cycle design thinking process. In doing so, we had to flexibly build the process as we went, being responsive to the challenging realities our school systems faced every day. Through all-cohort collaboration sessions, weekly project planning and coaching meetings, and inspiration panels, each school system successfully piloted strategies to make their schools more resilient and equitable.

The Real-Time Redesign toolkit reflects the process our Strategy Lab school systems used for targeted, short-cycle improvement in the midst of the pandemic. It has been updated to be accessible and feasible for any school system or individual school to follow on their own, benefitting from the examples of the Strategy Lab districts’ work.

Austin Independent School District

Austin, TX

• Problem of Practice: How might we cultivate a learning environment where all students have clear, co-created goals and steps to achieve them?
• Piloted Solution(s): Using a grade interview protocol with sixth graders in one middle school to deliver instruction in service of students’ goals.

Cedar Rapids Community School District

Cedar Rapids, IA

• Problem of Practice: How might we provide relevant, standards-aligned feedback to students so that every student reaches mastery?
• Piloted Solution(s): Building student reflection and goal-setting into lesson and assessment cycles in a middle school social studies classroom.
• See Case Study

Indianapolis Public Schools

Indianapolis, IN

• Problem of Practice: How might we organize our central office to best support culturally relevant, rigorous, and equitable teaching and learning?
• Piloted Solution(s): Aligning foundational instructional levels to smaller groups of first-grade students in order to differentiate instruction and assess foundational literacy.

Mastery Charter Schools

Philadelphia, PA & Camden, NJ

• Problem of Practice: How might we build a blended model that fosters achievement and independence in our high school students?
• Piloted Solution(s): Integrating ISTE- and CRT-aligned instruction into lesson plans for a small set of high school technology/elective classrooms.
• See Case Study

Monterey Peninsula Unified School District

Monterey, CA

• Problem of Practice: How might we increase flexibility and personalization to build a sense of belonging and connection within the context of our labor and policy constraints?
• Piloted Solution(s): Facilitating a design sprint with students and teachers from two freshman classes at a district high school to codesign solutions to improving belonging/ connectedness and implementing related prototypes.
• See Case Study

Phoenix Charter Academy

Chelsea, MA

• Problem of Practice: How might we support educators’ implementation of our student-centric model of teaching and learning to accelerate academic progression?
• Piloted Solution(s): Refining and codifying the district’s mentoring program, the Primary Person Model, to increase engagement and academic progress for students with greatest potential for engagement.

Renton School District

Renton, WA

• Problem of Practice: How might we create consistent, district-wide grading guidance that focuses on mastery and meaningful engagement?
• Piloted Solution(s): 1) Identifying with teachers and administrators the low-hanging, systemic improvements to grading to implement immediately; 2) Codesigning with students and teachers new grading approaches to test and scale for long-term change.