Our goal of transforming education to a world of learning that reaches every student is an ambitious one. To concentrate our resources and be effective, we developed a model for our work that starts with high schools and moves out through communities and states. Our approach builds on our history and expertise, provides a timely solution to an urgent problem and creates a foundation for change.

“I believe the current administration will increasingly come to depend on organizations like KnowledgeWorks that have the depth and proven experience to provide critical leadership in high school innovation.”
— Former U.S. Sec. of Education Richard Riley

Why start with high schools?
High schools are an ideal point from which to leverage a national transformation in education because progress in high schools can move the whole education system forward.

• Ripple effect: Because high schools fall in the middle of the kindergarten-to-college pipeline, changes there have a powerful effect on the whole system. Also, high schools are often the flagship of the local education system, so they can be effective proving grounds for innovation.
• Greenhouses: High schools provide the perfect environments for new ways of learning to take root. Teenagers are by nature experimental and innovative, and they’re old enough to make real contributions. What better place to nurture new approaches that teach through collaboration and discovery?
• Fork in the road: High school is a turning point that can decide a young person’s fate. Far too often, the experience is profoundly irrelevant and alienating to today’s teenagers. Failing these students condemns them to compromised lives and shortchanges our society. We simply have to do better.

What’s more, KnowledgeWorks brings extensive on-the-ground expertise to the job of changing high school education. For more than a decade, we’ve been developing and implementing approaches to high school that prepare students to thrive in a dynamic future.

Why aren’t high schools enough?
Transforming America’s high schools is important and powerful work. But we can’t focus on high schools alone. Isolated pockets of change can’t survive – and can’t do what needs to be done.

To meet the demands of the volatile and fast-moving world of tomorrow, we must structure all aspects of our education system around the needs of the learner. And we must build systems that can sustain these new learning environments.

That’s why we act as a catalyst for national transformation, building the capacity for change within communities and states, and creating conditions that allow innovation to survive and to spread.

We won’t rest until the future of education reaches every student.