New Designs for School
New Designs for School

We’ve all had the experience of truly purposeful, authentic learning and know how valuable it is. Educators are taking the best of what we know about learning, student support, effective instruction, and interpersonal skill-building to completely reimagine schools so that students experience that kind of purposeful learning all day, every day.

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Primary Contact Name:
Mary Moss
mmoss@charlottelabschool.org
Award Date:
April 2014
Grant Type:
National Planning
Start Date:
Fall 2015
Startup Type:
New School

School: Charlotte Lab School
Grades Served: K-8
Location: Charlotte, NC
Operator: Charlotte Lab Schools
Operator Type: Charter
Setting: Urban
Students at Start: 280
Students at Capacity: 460

Hallmark Feature: Authentic learning in a lab school

  • The vision of Charlotte Lab Schools, a new charter management organization, is to create a true lab school where students, teachers, and neighborhood partners work in collaboration. The school experience will value authentic learning, individualization and personalization, global awareness and bilingualism, metacognitive skill development, and innovation.
  • The blended and project-based learning academic model for the first school will involve learning labs, real-world applied “consulting engagements,” bilingual language immersion, and a focus on STEM and literacy.
  • The academic model will be supported by a teacher training partnership with Boston’s Northeastern University as well as the development of a new student data tracker tool.
  • CLS intends to become an incubator for talent and innovation in the Charlotte area, training innovative educators to create up to 20 schools serving 10,000+ students within 10 years, and promoting innovation in the district.

Photo by jbarreiros (Flickr: [1]) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons