New Designs for School

Breakthrough Schools: New Orleans

New Schools for New Orleans and its coalition partners envision New Orleans transforming from a “C” school system to an “A” system – one that prepares all students for college and career – with effective personalized learning as a key driver. With support from local partners, local educators will implement classroom-, grade-, and school-level pilots that prove personalized learning can accelerate academic achievement. Over time, successful pilots will scale across the city as educators, schools, and charter management organizations adopt effective practices. New Orleans will become a national proof point for what is possible when innovative school models operate within a system built on autonomy, accountability, and choice.

Podcast: Listen to Maggie Runyan-Shefa and Todd Pervis discuss personalized learning at New Schools for New Orleans. Produced by the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation.

The coalition includes three non-profits – New Schools for New Orleans (NSNO), Educate Now!, and 4.0 Schools (4.0) – with the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) and the Louisiana Recovery School District (RSD).

The New Orleans coalition is pursuing three key strategies to implement and scale personalized learning:

1. Nurture the Ecosystem: Coalition members convened communities of practice, collaborating with human capital support organizations and building robust data systems.

2. Transition Existing Schools: NSNO and Educate Now! issued planning grants to existing schools with the greatest potential to drive results through their implementation of personalized learning. Investing in high-potential schools and CMOs to implement personalized learning create local proof points that will be important to the scaling of personalized learning across the city.

3. Launch New Schools: NSNO and 4.0 Schools launched a national competition to source talented aspiring school design teams in an effort to bring rapid innovation and a more diverse set of school options to the New Orleans system. 4.0 Schools facilitates a wide range of training opportunities and prototyping exercises designed to help entrepreneurs refine their ideas and help 4.0 and NSNO determine who is most capable of launching a new, high-quality personalized learning school.

As a result of these strategies, New Schools for New Orleans awarded $1.5m in grants in April 2015 to support personalized learning school models in five local schools.

In August 2017, New Schools for New Orleans announced a second cohort of Breakthrough Schools: New Orleans personalized learning fellows.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Press release announcing April 2015 grant awards

New Schools for New Orleans website

Contact: Alyse Utley, alyse@nsno.org or Cate Swinburn, cateswinburn@gmail.com