A State-Wide Collaborative
Our Vision
CORE Districts work together to dismantle inequities in education so every student can thrive.
Our Mission
Through innovation, continuous learning, data, and research, we collaborate to transform education systems for equity and excellence.
About Us
CORE Districts is a California based education nonprofit organization, founded in 2010, that leverages the collaboration of nine, large, urban school districts to drive systems change. Our work to build educators’ improvement capabilities, share data, and develop network strategies so that schools and districts can learn from each other is nationally recognized.
We Believe
We believe that ALL students have a right to thrive in our education systems, and that because every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets, we must focus our work at the systems level.
We believe that we need to learn our way into improving existing processes and practices, and designing new ones, where needed.
We believe that work to design and improve education systems must center the student experience and the wisdom of the educators who facilitate their learning.
We believe in a moral imperative to extend
the impact of our work for the benefit of all students, and to share our learning, and effective tools and resources with all schools.
CORE’s Superpowers
Extensive Reach
The students in CORE Districts are 30% of California’s student population. Work that we do in our districts reaches significant numbers of students and educators. Our proof points happen at scale.
Power of the Collective
CORE Districts is a collaborative of nine of the largest urban school districts in California. This provides us with unique leadership and leveraging power in practice and policy.
Integrated Systems Approach
Rather than implementing isolated reforms at individual schools, we recognize that the entire system must change to address the challenges holding students and educators back. Our approach focuses on full-scale transformation, including a critical rethinking of the role of district central offices.
Drivers for our Theory of Action
Center Equity
We focus our work on students who are least well served in our current system, to close gaps in access, opportunity and achievement, for the benefit of ALL students.
Focus on Human-centered Systems
We pursue durable systems change and recognize that this requires support for changes in processes and also behaviors. We know that transformational change is necessarily relational. The human story matters at all levels of the system. We know that small changes can have radical impact.
Learn
We learn our way into knowing what to do. We go where the learning takes us. We recognize that effective improvement is a team sport – things get better when we collaborate and learn together.
Our Theory of Action
If we
stand with the students education has failed the most, collaborate with communities and educators to learn and lead together,
and transform systems to be equitable, human-centered, and built for the future,
Then
we will disrupt inequities, strengthen today’s schools, and design new systems that truly meet the needs of young people,
So that
every student can thrive – with the power, purpose, and preparation to shape a better world.
CORE’s Origin Story
Some of California’s largest urban districts saw that the existing education system wasn’t designed to meet the needs of today’s students.
So they chose a different path – to collaborate, innovate, and lead change together.
CORE was created to build the shared capacity needed for lasting improvement.
CORE’s Throughlines
Collaboration among large districts is a powerful force for systems change.
Data, research, innovation, and continuous improvement drive lasting impact.
Real accountability requires multiple measures and local ownership.
School-level progress endures only when district systems evolve to sustain it.
In our next chapter, we will leverage our assets:
Catalyst – through its deep commitment to collaboration & partnership, CORE has demonstrated its ability to spark and fuel far reaching, innovative change.
Systems focus – we maintain a focus on durable change in education systems, recognizing that school improvement is unsustainable, absent aligned, supporting central office systems
Improvement know-how – we have the practical expertise, skills, tools, methods & strategies required to drive meaningful, sustainable improvement in school & district processes & systems.
Courage to be bold – CORE is unafraid to challenge the status quo & tackle the things in the too hard bucket.
Holistic coherence know-how – we have the practical expertise to build capacity for large urban districts to become learning organizations & achieve organizational coherence.
Data Systems Design – we are experienced in building custom data systems to capture actionable data to inform data-driven decision making & improved student outcomes.
Our next chapter:
CORE Schools
Designing Future Forward Secondary Education Systems
In response to the “Perfect Storm,” the CORE Districts have made a ten year commitment to:
- understand the secondary education systems that are currently in place,
- discover what outcomes students want,
- assess whether we currently have the right designs in place to get there.
