Robin Lake takes a sobering look at what it will take to create a truly personalized learning system.
The Center on Reinventing Public Education is a research and policy analysis center at the University of Washington Bothell developing systemwide solutions for K–12 public education.
Research & Analysis
Network of Civic and Education Leaders
Evidence-based ideasPersonalized Learning at a Crossroads
In 2014, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched two initiatives to support the spread of personalized learning. The Foundation asked CRPE to observe how participating districts and regions were beginning to define and pursue personalized learning and what grantees were learning about how to innovate at scale. Drawn from 450 interviews with 300 teachers, principals, superintendents, and central office staff in 17 cities; classroom observations and student focus groups in 39 schools; and surveys of 908 teachers from the initiatives, the early challenges underscore the difficulty of innovating inside the current system. CRPE suggests four things leaders must do to build a strategic system to support innovation at scale.
Stepping Up: How Are Cities Delivering on the Promise of Public School Choice?
CRPE is mapping results and progress in 18 cities that provide public school choice to families. Using a citywide lens that includes all public school options, district and charter, we look at how cities are doing across three goals: 1) the education system is continuously improving; 2) all students have access to a high-quality education; 3) the education strategy is rooted in the community. Individual city reports, a cross-city analysis, and online comparison tools let education leaders and policymakers see what is and is not working across cities and learn about promising strategies.
Portfolio Strategy
CRPE formulated the portfolio strategy as a problem-solving framework through which education and civic leaders develop a citywide system of high-quality, diverse, autonomous public schools. It moves past a one-size-fits-all approach to education. It puts educators directly in charge of their schools, empowers parents to choose the right schools for their children, and focuses school system leaders on overseeing school success. The goal of the strategy is to ensure that every student has access to high-quality learning options.