Students in our educational system have had too many barriers thrown in their path toward success. We started California Education Partners (Ed Partners) in 2010 to ensure school districts tap the insight and expertise of professionals working in those schools and systems to surface solutions to set up students to thrive.

Ed Partners staff members have worked at every level of school systems and know how to partner with administrators, principals, teachers and families to remove unfair barriers standing in the way of our students. 

Together, we walk through a change-making approach that surfaces the challenges facing district staff, identifies their root causes and tries out new approaches. And we do this while ensuring schools and districts have partners who encourage, inform and challenge them along the way. The structure and rhythm we provide helps districts maintain a disciplined focus on improvement, builds a collaborative community of peers to spark new insights and practices approaches they will use again and again. 

To create meaningful change, districts need to secure research evidence to guide their decisions. Ed Partner’s Research Practice Partnerships arm matches district leaders with researchers to together produce research-based evidence on the pressing needs of local schools and districts as well as the field. This branch of our work serves as a connector between district leaders and researchers in California to close the research-practice gap in the education sector. 

When districts embrace a learner mindset and engage in intentional collaborative, continuous improvement, they see real results for students. And with a new set of skills, trust, credibility and connections, school leaders are ready to apply this approach to confidently approach challenges across their districts.