Across the country, education leaders are redesigning their schools not because it is easy but because it is necessary.
1. Students' needs and engagement demand it.
In examining engagement across the San Marcos Unified School District, TK-12, Dr. Andy Johnsen realized that middle school was the place where learners were becoming disproportionately disengaged. Redesigning school was a means to meet middle school students where they were in their development and to make school more engaging for them, knowing that each school site would need something different. That autonomy was integral to a sustained redesign effort.
2. Educators want to reignite their passion for teaching
Dr. Laura Philyaw, former Assistant Superintendent of Escondido Unified School District (CA) and current Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services at National School District (CA) saw that educators were working harder than ever but that student engagement and the overall student experience was not improving.
3. Leaders see gaps between aspirations and current structures.
In 2013, Dr. Devin Vodicka was the superintendent of Vista Unified School District. During that time, one school in particular had a very poor reputation in the community. Devin realized they needed to look at school redesign to reimagine what was possible and do what was best for learners and learning. The founding principal of this reimagined school, Eric Chagala, came in to support educators in a redesign process to move away from failing intervention programs (that were actually causing more challenges than solutions) to focus on creating a school where learners could thrive. Read more about the VIDA Redesign story here.
Similarly, as a parent and school leader, Dr. Tyler Thigpen realized there was a discrepancy between the competencies and skills he wanted his own children to develop through their K-12 journey and the daily experiences they had in school. He wanted to shift from a teacher-centric approach that yielded compliance to a school experience that helped learners develop agency and positively impacted the entire school community. This was the start of creating The Forest School.
4. Leaders are compelled to move from isolated innovation to systemic transformation.
School redesign takes a systemic approach to ensure meaningful transformation that doesn't just live in one classroom, or even one school if operating within a larger district. At Escondido Union School District, Superintendent Dr. Luis Ibarra has led the district to develop a five-year plan to redesign all schools in the district using a cohort-based strategy. Each year, from 2023-2026, a new cohort of four schools kicks off their school redesign journey by creating an action plan.
By 2027, all schools will be at different phases of their redesign implementation journey and learning from each other along the way. This initiative, taken on as a way to transform the district and bring to life their Framework for the Future, has resulted in meaningful change across the district at a pace and scale that honors each learning community's self-assessed readiness for change. Learn more about Hidden Valley, a middle school that has gone through the school redesign process in Escondido USD.
