Strategy Regeneration
The Story of Our Network
The Partnership has grown to become a generative social impact network of 500-700 individual partners from over 250 organizations and 20 foundations committed to a shared vision, values and goals to 1) protect and remodel public education; (2) advance education equity and racial justice; and 3) promote an affirmative vision for learning grounded in the science about children’s holistic development. The network includes organizers, advocates, communicators, researchers, students, educators, funders, system and union leaders. We increasingly center the perspectives and voices of grassroots young people and communities of color in remodeling public education and encourage our partners, including funders, to do the same.
To date, partners have aligned on strategies to shape affirmative narrative and policy/systems change agendas through collaborative media and policy products, and via relationships and alignment among partner-driven communities of practice to strengthen capacities. For example, the longest running work group, Shared Story, has established the Partnership as a central place in the field for shared strategy on narrative change, able to be both responsive and set an affirmative vision over time. In recent years, we set three priority issue areas: education resourcing, community schools, and strengthening and diversifying the educator profession. These priorities have activated the network more fully by integrating narrative, policy, and place-based strategies via the production of playbooks, stories, OpEds, and more to create a ripple effect across the field.
During its first 6 years, the Partnership has demonstrated a ‘proof of concept’ that field leaders and organizations value this unique social impact network grounded in a shared vision and values. The commitment to shared strategy by partners has been critical in setting priorities and led to a network-wide commitment in 2016 to explicitly center racial equity in all work. Our evaluation (2019-2020), Key Places Strategy Refresh (2020-2021) findings, and data from the Strategy Regeneration process (2022) all strongly affirmed that the Partnership network has added value through building relationships anchored by alignment on values and strategy, as well as through collaborative production. Partners engage because the network is responsive to their needs.
The network has created or curated an array of assets for the field: over 100 stories, playbooks, and frameworks based on our vision and values related to key issues in remodeling the public education system. More importantly, connections and relationships across the field have been developed, leading to the formation of working groups on broad questions (e.g., changing the narrative), or specific issues (writing group focused on public communications for Community schools). This in turn has increased potential for growing shared strategy and additional production across the network.
Why we are a network
The Partnership has organized and structured itself as a network, as opposed to a coalition or an organization. Fundamental and lasting change for complex systems requires not only individual organizations and coalitions working to remodel parts of the system, but also stable, sustainable entities that hold a shared vision for the whole system. In particular, networks of values-aligned groups and people can align on strategies that a single organization or group may not be able to take on. This is more than a theory: if we look across major shifts in public education historically in the U.S., it has been powerful networks, sometimes part of larger social movements, that have driven significant, systems-level change.
The Partnership is unique in that it was intentionally designed as a network that would live into its values. Here are some principles that guide our network’s evolution:
The whole of the network is more than the sum of its parts. We design and operate the network in a way that values the entirety of the system and creates conditions for abundance, resilience, and impact to emerge from the interdependent contributions of all team members, funders, and field partners. Together, we recognize the complexity of the deep interdependence among network partners.
There is collective power in a decentralized and distributed network structure. Living ecosystems are not centrally controlled and organized by one individual or singular hub, and we continually aspire to emulate this in our work. A decentralized network is critical to advancing anti-racism, anti-colonialism, actionable equity, democratic practice and models of meaningful learning. Resources and functions are distributed throughout the network so that partners are power-holding decisionmakers.
Generational changemaking occurs within ever-changing conditions. We set our network up in form and function to respond to and create change in the educational field, maintaining a dynamic balance with constant, responsive change. We hold a bold, affirmative vision for the very long term and have shared values in place to get us there.
Exchange and diffusion are key to network and partner health. The health of the network is dependent on the health of its partners. We create the conditions for partners to grow and thrive in conjunction with the health of the network. We understand limits in capacity to use, create, and share network resources. We regenerate to improve and make resources and information accessible through critical relationships between and among partners at all levels of the field.
Purpose of Regen
To better understand the Partnership’s strategy regeneration, it’s helpful to review how the network has evolved over the years. The visual above animates network growth and energy as different groups and focus areas gained momentum at particular times:
- 2014 – 2016: New Models Working Group
The Partnership first emerged in 2014 as a small group of funders and field actors who gathered under the banner of the New Models Working Group. In 2015, staff were hired to begin stewarding the network. Partners formed the Launch Phase Strategy & Advisory Groups to set intentions for a network strategy. In 2016, the network adopted the name Partnership for the Future of Learning and the vision and values paper Updating American Public Education.
- 2017 – 2018: Strategy Strands
The organic growth of the network continued through 2017 and 2018 as the Strategy Strands (Shared Story, Shared Policy, Key Places, and Shared Systems) became more active and the primary vehicle for network collaboration and action. Alongside this work, the network formalized its governance structure. A Steering Committee of funders and field leaders was established to guide network development. A Strategy Council representing a diverse cross-section of the network formed to deliberate strategy and budget priorities.
- 2019 – 2021: Network Priorities
In 2019, the Teaching Profession joined Community Schools and Education Resourcing as a network priority. Recognizing the interest and energy pouring into these priorities from Partners themselves, the network affirmed these priorities as an organizing principle for the network. - 2022 – 2023: Strategy Regeneration
By 2022, Network Priority groups reached (and in some cases surpassed) the engagement levels of the Strategy Strands, indicating momentum and deepening network activation around those issues. During this period, the Partnership began a multi-year process of Strategy Regeneration to set the network’s course for the next 2-3 years. More than 165 partners engaged deeply in the process, considering questions and advising on decisions that would shape the structure and function of Partnership’s next evolution.
Since the Partnership’s official launch in 2016, the external political, economic, and social context has progressively shifted in critical ways. There have been profound shifts resulting from social and political unrest driven by divisive tactics to center identity issues, including race, gender, class, sexuality and geography as wedge issues to politicize and privatize public education. At the Partnership’s outset, public schools were not embroiled in such overt cultural/political battles requiring partners to fully defend racial equity and the institution of public education itself.
Additionally, COVID-19 has had horrific and destabilizing effects on young people, families, and educators. We all hold stories of tragic loss, suffering, and dislocation, and the cumulative effects and long term fallout remain unknown. The pandemic made plain that public schools are essential to young people’s and families’ holistic needs, and that educators must be deeply valued and well supported. It also has further unmasked how public education overall remains poorly designed to equitably and meaningfully support young people. The Partnership’s larger goal to protect and remodel public education has never felt so important and pressing.
Timeline and Process
In 2022, we focused energies on a Strategy Regeneration (“Regen”) process designed to affirm or refine the network’s core purposes, and re-set near term (next 2-3 year) strategies and supportive structures that could accelerate collective action across the network in this fluid and fraught historical moment. Goals of Regen were to:
- Build on what’s working well, including how to capitalize on our built assets;
- Increase network partners’ collective momentum and power by growing alignment on strategies and tactics; and,
- Grow partner ownership of the network itself through participation by a large number of partners in the Regen process.
Understanding Our New Network Model
Our galaxy is a complex, interconnected system created from the convergence of diverse individuals and organizations.
Our network has formed as different people and organizations discover connections in purpose, vision, and values — aligning further by coming into relationship through the gravitational pull of trust we create through intentional relationships, engagement, and collaboration. In our network, emerging ideas, initiatives, and programs can be born from the collaboration and exchange of knowledge between different partners.
As our galaxy grows and evolves, it has developed a range of formations around strategies, working groups, and priorities. Galaxies constantly change and evolve, and new features can form like planets, moons, stars, and solar systems.
Similarly, a network necessarily and regularly evolves by embracing emerging ideas while building on the strength of our work to date in the form of our Regen process. We are creating and continuing flows of work, partnerships, and initiatives — all in support of the future of public education.
Partners wanted to double down on our primary reason for existence and reaffirmed our purpose as a network — to powerfully lead together towards a stronger and more equitable future for public education as a public good. Our existing priorities will take shape as three work groups, alongside a new work group for a breakthrough in the future of public education. Each of these groups is like a planet that partners can locate themselves on, find a sense of home and familiarity based on topics most relevant to your work, find new and known neighbors who reside there as well, and travel freely to other groups. These work group “planets” may vary in size. Some may have 30 members, others 100 or more, while others may start smaller and then grow. Of the four work groups growing out of Regen, the Public Education Breakthrough Work Group is like a Sun, existing as an energizing body and animated by the other work groups, all in orbit together.
While some of our past work groups based in strategies have shifted, the Shared Story circle will continue as the “Story Circle,” but reorient purposefully towards our shared goal of defending and supporting public education, becoming a supportive moon in direct orbit with Public Education Breakthrough Work Group, to support the animating purpose of the network as a whole.
Meanwhile, emerging or temporary work will take place in Exploratory Groups, moving bright and fast like comets for rapid response work or the creation of a network product like a playbook. They may be folded and integrated into existing work, dissipate when the work is done, or continue moving through the sky.
And as a galaxy concerned with the future, the network has governing and coordinating bodies of people who represent a wide range of interests throughout the network. These are like guiding stars that provide a strong sense of navigation, with special teams who gain a high level vantage point in order to keep the network moving forward, running smoothly, and continuing to evolve. There will be increased energy towards internal network infrastructure, information dissemination, and information shared, as well as dedicated external Communications processes as part of a Media Center. These are like satellites that help information flow throughout and beyond the network.
Next Steps – Choose Your Path!
What do these updates to the network model mean for how our partners connect and engage in the network? There are many different ways partners can ‘choose their own adventure’ for how they move as a part of the network. Partners are provided with additional information in Spring – Summer 2023 to regenerate their participation in the network.
Ad Hoc Conversations
Ad hoc conversations between partners in the network enable partners to give leadership to imagining and inviting others to participate in conversations on topics of common interest on an ad hoc basis. These require limited staff team support. Increased Communications infrastructure will help partners discover connections that drive ad hoc conversations.
Exploratory Groups
Exploratory groups assemble partners who wish to explore issues or strategies that are not the primary focus of Work Groups. These are among the Partnership’s principle containers for peer learning and exchange. They may, if there is sufficient interest, energy, and resourcing, evolve into near-term actions or responses among collections of partners, or in time into priorities held by Work Groups. They may align partners around a common strategy or catalyze production activities, but are not facilitated by stewards towards this express purpose. Insights from and outputs of Exploratory Groups feed directly into Work Groups. Unlike Work Groups, individual Exploratory Groups can be formed without requiring an ongoing, longer-term commitment.
In Person Convenings
The network is returning to regular in-person and virtual all-network convenings. Convenings are staffed events to which all partners are invited. Convenings and ad hoc conversations ensure ample opportunities for curated as well as serendipitous partner connection, relationship-building and ideation across the network.
Work Groups
Work Groups are formal bodies organized around priorities, composed of partners committed to elaborate core strategies, activation and co-creation of products. There will be four work groups in the new network model:
- Public Education Breakthrough
- Advancing Community Schools
- Strong and Diverse Educator Profession
- Equitable and Adequate Education Resourcing
Questions Remaining
Implementing Strategy Regeneration will be a work in progress for the coming months. There remain outstanding questions that we will take up through the Strategy Council and other bodies in 2023 and beyond, including:
- How do we assure sufficient resourcing of groups who would like to take more leadership and give more time to the network, but do not have the people or funding to do so?
- How can we best work through power dynamics stemming from having funders who may be in a position to tip network activities towards their own institutional priorities, and at the same time be forthright about supporting them to manage their institutional pressures and demands?
- How do we best set tables of equal voice and power for funders and differentially resourced field partners that increases trust and relationship that can lead most powerfully to shared strategies?
- Where do we need to take next steps in tending to power dynamics related to race, gender and other categories of difference, and how, enabling us to move healthily in solidarity?
The years to come promise to be exciting and productive as the network is now beginning to implement these shifts. Our network is a unique and critical component of field infrastructure, and it could not have advanced to this point of development and impact without you. Thank you!