We began by supporting reform initiatives at the school level in San Francisco Unified School District. In 2000, we determined that our most effective contribution to education reform would be to work at the district level to promote whole systems of excellent schools. To that end, the foundation embarked on the development of a knowledge base about district reform by working directly with district leaders.

From 2001 through 2007, the foundation partnered with 17 districts nationwide in the District Alliance Program. The program focused on providing management assistance, leadership networks and grants to support these districts in raising student achievement.

Spending an average of three years in each system, we saw some of our districts make student achievement gains, with significant improvement in a subset of districts. The districts also made noteworthy advances in organizational effectiveness in such areas as human resources, accountability, finance, curriculum and instruction, and communication. In addition, the district leaders made great strides in their own development through networking, coaching and thought partnership.

The insights we gained from this experience led us to conclude that an integrated, system-wide approach focused on district leadership development is critical in order to transform districts in their entirety so that all children attain high levels of success. This learning was formative in the development of the foundation’s new strategic direction, which emerged from an intensive assessment of our work to date in 2007. We will continue to work with large districts and our mission will remain the same, but our approach and methods will change. At present, we are engaged in research and design to define and outline the specifics of these changes. We expect our planning phase to extend through 2008 and our implementation to begin in earnest in 2009. Read more about our current work in Initiatives.