Partnership Playbook Let's Partner

The Opportunity

THE OPPORTUNITY FOR TRANSFORMED SCHOOLS

At the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, we believe opportunity and achievement gaps are a social justice issue and that change must come from within traditional public school systems.

If you are a district leader, school operator, educator, or education advocate, you already understand the reality facing low-income students and students of color concentrated in high-poverty schools. Even schools with the most dedicated educators and administrators experience the challenges of being under-resourced and in need of more support to implement coherent instructional and operational systems that aid educators and enable students to achieve at a high level.

At the Partnership, we have seen these realities firsthand and believe that transforming schools – rather than closing them or turning them over to charter operators who work outside public school systems – is possible when system leaders focus on capacity building and advocacy and orient themselves to be in service of schools. 

WHAT IS THE PLAYBOOK?

The Playbook explores what we’ve learned, identifies the challenges we’ve experienced, and highlights what works in order to empower all students with a high-quality education.

Our organization was created over a decade ago to close opportunity and achievement gaps by transforming a network of high-need schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LA Unified), the nation’s second largest school district. After assuming the challenge to develop a school transformation model with programs that could be replicated and sustained at scale by LA Unified, we are now committed to sharing our learning with other districts, just as we have learned from so many others across the country.

We believe our model can be applied broadly in urban public school districts across the country, and so we have created this Playbook to be accessible to a wide variety of stakeholders: district leaders, civic leaders, the philanthropic community, education non-profits, community-based organizations, and others. It is our hope that education leaders will use this Playbook to make equity a priority and focus on building systems that support schools as a unit of change.

“I have seen firsthand the turnaround in schools after the Partnership comes in, and how the community is inspired to make a difference. It’s real, you can feel it. This is a great model for collaboration and empowering communities.”Mónica García
Board Member
Los Angeles Unified School District
Open-source

The Playbook is a free public resource that shares our learning and best practices and offers practical implementation steps for other districts to adopt in their own contexts.

Collaborative

Districts, funders, and educational equity advocates can benefit from our learning and work side-by-side with us to refine what works for high-need schools and school systems across the country. 

Scalable

In describing our experience as an in-district, non-profit school transformation organization, the Playbook demonstrates scalable school transformation solutions.

We invite you to learn more about ways we can support you in this work.

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Our Approach