Design 9th grade to start—and keep—students on track to post-secondary success
CORE’s Breakthrough Success Community supports schools and districts in transforming 9th grade into a powerful lever for long-term student success. Grounded in research and refined through practice, network participants get the data, coaching, and collaborative tools needed to help more students stay on track, belong, and thrive from the start.
How It Works: The 5 Drivers of 9th Grade Success
Through targeted change packages, embedded coaching, and shared learning, the Breakthrough Success Community helps schools and districts improve grades, attendance, belonging and long-term outcomes that once seemed out of reach.
Address Chronic Absenteeism
A key barrier to student success is poor attendance. To address this, CORE has partnered with the Raising Attendance and Improving Student Engagement (RAISE) Network, which aims to reduce California’s chronic absenteeism rate. Chronic absenteeism is a widespread challenge districts are tackling largely independently, and this network provides an opportunity to align efforts and share knowledge across districts. Over the next five years, the network will scale rapidly, bringing in thousands of schools to implement the evidence-based practices developed through continuous improvement work. RAISE aims to reduce California’s chronic absenteeism rate in half, from 1.2 million chronically absent students to 600,000, by 2029.
California Math Curriculum and Instruction Network
CORE Districts and the National Coalition for Improvement in Education at the High Tech High Graduate School of Education facilitate 2 cohorts of the California Math Curriculum & Instruction Network (CMCIN). These fully grant-funded initiatives support district and school teams to unpack the 2023 California Math Framework, build systems for long-term instructional improvement, and adopt and implement high-quality math materials. Through participation, teams engage in convenings, action periods, and “go and see” opportunities to clarify visions for math instruction, analyze curriculum options, design professional learning aligned to research-based practices, and develop systems to measure progress through continuous improvement. With fully funded, in-person convenings and travel reimbursement in San Diego and opportunities to learn from successful districts nationwide, the network provides a structured pathway for districts to transition toward inquiry-based, student-centered math instruction while building aligned plans, professional development systems, and curriculum adoption processes.
CORE Schools (Closed Network) – Future Forward Secondary Education Systems
California’s secondary education system was designed in 1894—for a world of horse-drawn streetcars, not AI. Ten white men created a model to prepare white, college-bound boys for life in the 19th century. That model, reinforced by the 1906 Carnegie Unit, still defines learning as seat time—not understanding, mastery, or relevance.
Today’s students face a world that is far more complex—and far less forgiving. Yet they’re navigating it with systems built for a bygone era.
Eight converging forces have created a perfect storm:
- A shrinking population
- Rising ideological divisions
- A youth mental health crisis
- Chronic underfunding and funding inequity
- Rigid regulations
- Exponential advances in technology
- Pandemic-compounded disparities
- Natural disasters that disrupt learning
Education systems are overwhelmed, fragmented, and failing too many. When multiple system failures happen at once, we risk a full-system breakdown.
We cannot tweak our way out of this.
It’s not enough to redesign individual schools—we must reimagine the entire system of secondary education. We are 125 years behind. The next decade must be about catching up—boldly, systemically, and together.
In collaboration with Transcend Education and the National Equity Project, in this closed network, four of CORE’s nine districts have begun a new journey into the future with CORE Schools, a ten-year commitment to co-create future-forward secondary education systems with local communities. Designed for a fast-changing, deeply complex world, we also need education systems that prepare young people to thrive – academically, socially, emotionally, and civically – by being deeply human, highly personalized, and rigorously relevant to their lives, communities, and futures. We are working to cultivate the gifts of every learner and prepare every young person in every community to contribute to a rapidly changing society.
