Change Agents

The high-stakes accountability climate that teachers, leaders, and school districts faced with the ratification of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 2001 (No Child Left Behind) has, by most accounts, failed to engender meaningful improvements in many of our schools, especially those serving marginalized students and families. A combination of poor resources, funding, and over-reliance on high-takes standardized testing all but ensured that most schools would lack the funding, staffing, and training necessary for improving student outcomes. And while high-stakes accountability is no longer the political football it once was, many schools continue to fail their marginalized students precisely because they continue to operate within an analogous framework and fail to recognize the many systemic issues that have plagued marginalized communities for over a century. Nevertheless, some schools successfully serve their students where others fail. By focusing on sustainable changes and improvements rooted in improvement science and research-based tools, which are successfully employed in numerous other schools, educators across the country have found a way through the many roadblocks and challenges that would otherwise frustrate their best efforts. Founded in 1993, the San Francisco-based Partners in School Innovation (PISI) has helped underperforming schools and districts in 22 school districts and eight states solve their most pressing issues--