OUR WORK

We lead partners in work that advances systemic change and educational equity. We take very seriously the responsibility of supporting and engaging systems to best serve every young person in their care.

OUR WORK…

  • Co-creates systems change interventions that improve conditions, experiences, and outcomes for students by centering equity

  • Creates hubs for design thinking and strategic organizational change

  • Leverages relationships and influencers to catalyze action that benefits historically marginalized and underserved communities

  • Our work achieves equity in education through continuous improvement and program design that actualize substantive and measurable improvements.

  • We envision a world with redesigned educational systems that center equity and accountability in order to truly uplift the health and wealth of the communities they serve.

  • Equity-Centered, Systems-Focused Continuous Improvement, combined with program design.

OUR APPROACH

What distinguishes our approach from other continuous improvement practices is our consistent centering of equity and focus on systems in our CI process.

To our partners who acknowledge the persistence of ineffective practices and have long yearned for real change, our equity-focused services offer practical methods and tools that result in the cultural shift and measurable improvements necessary to realize their dreams of justice.

For our clients and partners who are skeptical of the idea that achieving equity is possible, but curious and willing to try, we offer insights, experiences, and results that uncover and interrupt the status quo and challenge limiting assumptions.

For over a decade, our partnership experiences have shone a light on the barriers to change. During this time, we have honed our thinking around a concept we coined Mutual Accountability (MA). MA recognizes that diverse perspectives require common language, definitions of the problem, and definitions of success as precursors to the uncomfortable conversations that light a path to change. The intent of MA is to frontload the recognition that this work can be difficult, but also that we’ve seen that working together and through discomfort can help us get to the work that actually needs to happen. We acknowledge all of this as a precursor to and throughout a CI process.

We add value by holding an unbiased stance while posing critical, data-supported questions and fostering improvements in education for the most historically underserved young people.

WHAT IS CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT?

  • Collectively define what specific problem we are trying to solve. Engage key participants early and often.

  • Not “what works”; It is what works, for whom and under what set of conditions.

    Aim to advance efficacy reliably at scale.

  • See how local conditions shape current outcomes and processes. Make your hypotheses for change public and clear.

  • Embed measures of key outcomes and processes to track if change leads to improvement in outcomes. Anticipate unintended consequences and measure these too.

  • Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA): learn fast, fail fast, improve quickly. Failures are not the problem; that we fail to learn from them is.

  • Embrace the wisdom of crowds. We can accomplish more together than even the best of us can accomplish alone.