School Design
What Do We Mean When We Say School Design?
Students deserve school experiences that are rigorous, engaging, and relevant—preparing them for success in an ever-changing world. And teachers deserve experiences that are dynamic, rewarding, collaborative, and sustainable.
And yet, the way schools are typically organized—in rigid one-size-fits-all models—don’t support the evolving needs of both students and educators. And too often, schools layer new programs and supports on top of outdated models rather than redesigning them to meet today’s needs.
Through nearly two decades of research and practice in strategic resource use in K-12 schooling, Education Resource Strategies (ERS) has found that schools that create transformative student and teacher experiences that accelerate learning and achievement do so by intentionally organizing their resources, structures, and practices around a clear, research-backed vision of student success.
And while the specific approaches may vary from school to school, and may change over time to meet evolving needs, we see high-performing schools consistently organize around a common set of school design principles that unlock more flexible, personalized, and responsive learning environments for students and educators.
What Are the Key Principles of School Design?
Through our research and study of high-performing schools and systems, we’ve identified six key school design principles that leaders organize around. Click the tabs below to learn more about each of the design principles.
High-quality, student-centered course offerings, curriculum, and instruction
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One-size-fits-all course content and sequences follow rigid subject standards and are delivered in-person during traditional school hours.
At the secondary level, courses aren’t integrated with or sequenced toward meaningful college- and career preparation.
To
Meaningful, engaging, and relevant learning experiences that align to grade-level standards and are designed to build academic and non-academic competencies.
At the secondary level, course sequences lead to credits and credentials tied to postsecondary opportunities. Students have more agency to align experiences to their interests and goals.
What does this look like in schools?
- Ensuring all students receive grade-level, engaging, and culturally relevant curriculum and instruction across all subjects, with specialized student supports as needed to ensure equitable access
- Using curriculum-aligned formative and interim assessments to monitor individual student progress and make necessary adjustments
- Designing flexible, student-centered course offerings, experiences, and pathways that create meaningful college- and career-readiness opportunities and supporting students in choosing options aligned to their interests and goals
- Using technology, partnerships, and other staff to expand opportunities to m earn credits inside and outside the school day, including (e.g. internships, work-based learning, virtual and/or evening school options)
How can districts support?
- Adopting one or more HQIM curricula (and aligned assessments) with rationale and clear expectations for educators to use them
- Defining content-specific instructional visions and aligned strategies, and working to build school-team alignment on what excellent instruction looks like
- Using a content-specific instructional observation tool to assess and improve the instruction
- Creating system-level continuous improvement structures to learn how schools are implementing and using curriculum, aligned assessments, and identifying centralized supports needed to support
- Creating policies to support equitable access to partnerships and college- and career- aligned learning opportunities. This can include ensuring compensation for students’ work-based learning, providing transportation, and defining clear expectations for, and supporting access to, prerequisite requirements for advanced coursework
Resources to get started
Hire and organize diverse, collaborative, and supported teaching teams
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Teachers have the same role and workload, regardless of experience, expertise, assignment, or interest. They work in isolation with few opportunities to collaborate; professional learning is ad hoc and disconnected from the teacher’s day-to-day work and evolving needs.
To
Teams of teachers with deliberate combinations of skills share the work of planning, teaching, and supporting students’ academic success and social-emotional well-being. Roles are defined to match teacher expertise and interest. Teams play a critical role in supporting job-embedded professional learning using high-quality instructional materials, alongside instructional coaching.
What does this look like in schools?
- Creating teams of educators who share the work of planning, teaching, and supporting students’ academic and social-emotional well-being
- Assigning educators to differentiated roles that target expertise to where it’s needed most and vary over the course of an educator’s career
- Creating time in teachers’ schedules for instructional planning, supported by content experts, that includes ongoing curriculum review, lesson preparation, and student work analysis
- Embedding growth-oriented professional learning into educators’ days, including ongoing collaboration and mentorship structures, topic-based professional learning, and individual coaching and feedback routines
How can districts support?
- Developing an educator compensation system with differentiated educator roles and pay structures, including instructional expert roles
- Providing early career support to novice educators to accelerate growth and support retention
- Developing an evaluation system to provide valuable and accurate data, including educators’ impact on student learning
- Providing funding to schools that embed assumptions about time for collaboration, pay and release time for teacher leaders, and allow schools to reallocate and assign roles to fit their teaming and assignment needs
- Embedding time in the calendar for out-of-school and job-embedded content-focused professional learning for teachers
- Providing timely, accurate data on teachers (including certification, experience, and evaluation data) to inform differentiated support and leadership
- Creating feedback structures to ensure the training, support, and guidance align with the needs that schools and their teams are identifying
Resources to get started
- Reimagining the Teaching Job & Examples from the Field
- Connected Professional Learning for Teachers in High School and Elementary School
- Toolkit: Connected Professional Learning for Teachers
- Finding Time for Collaborative Planning
- Sustaining High-Quality Instructional Coaching in a Challenging Budget Environment
Optimize and differentiate instructional time and attention
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Students and teachers work within rigid blocks of time and group size, organized by discipline, and utilized the same way throughout the year, regardless of subject or student need.
To
Blocks of time throughout the day, and staffing, can be used flexibly to serve multiple purposes, and can shift throughout the year; group sizes and blocks of time vary to match content and student need.
What does this look like in schools?
- Assigning staff and designing schedules to support mastery of content for all students, including additional (and/or flexible) time and smaller-group settings based on prioritized subjects, grade levels, and/or student needs
- Using technology, partnerships, and other staff to expand opportunities to provide additional time and attention in and outside of the school day
- Designing schedules to provide specialized support to students with disabilities and multi-lingual learners while maximizing access to grade-level instruction in inclusion-based settings
How can districts support?
- Ensuring schools have support, prototypes, and sufficient flexibility to adjust staffing, schedules, and budgets to design schedules to meet instructional time priorities
- Ensuring that instructional time allocated per subject aligns with recommendations/guidance offered by the curriculum
- Providing data systems with timely, accurate data on student progress, which teaching teams can use to make decisions about how to adjust instruction and student groupings
Resources to get started
Integrate relationships, advising, and wellness supports
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Few structures for developing meaningful adult-student relationships or engaging in post-secondary planning. Students’ additional physical, mental, and socio-emotional needs are met in ad-hoc ways
To
Time and structures for relationship-building are embedded in the day, including frequent touchpoints to help students develop SEL skills, explore and affirm their identities, and connect their interests to post-secondary goals. Students have access to a network of supports to meet their whole-child needs
What does this look like in schools?
- Creating schedules, student and teacher assignments, and differentiated teaching loads that enable relationships and connections between educators and other students
- Embedding time in schedules for educators and support staff to meet regularly to identify students’ and families’ needs and link them to effective services
- Leveraging community partners to expand systematized physical, social-emotional and mental health supports to students and families who need more intensive supports
- Creating structures to provide ongoing guidance and advisory to students to support them “to-and-through” post-secondary readiness
How can districts support?
- Creating a network of partners and providers that schools can choose from that support their schools’ specific needs
- Identifying high-quality curricular materials for SEL and advising that support the intended outcomes for each
Resources to get started
Transformative school leadership
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School leaders are accountable for instruction, operational management, talent management, and compliance, with little guidance, direction, and support. They define the school’s vision in isolation from the school community, disconnected from student and teacher experiences, and without structures to implement and monitor that vision over time.
To
School leaders are trained, supported, and empowered to build leadership teams in their schools that share responsibility for setting, implementing, and monitoring the school’s instructional vision. Leaders are protected from compliance-oriented tasks not directly related to student learning and wellness.
What does this look like in schools?
- Cultivating a shared understanding of the school’s instructional vision with all staff, built on high expectations, teamwork, and shared accountability for student outcomes
- Building and supporting leadership teams that distribute instructional and leadership responsibilities to optimize talent, skill, and interest
- Creating time and structures for rapid cycles of continuous improvement of key priorities across the school
- Creating structures and routines to build a positive and inclusive schoolwide culture where students feel seen, safe, and supported
- Using a variety of roles, structures, and venues to create ongoing/frequent opportunities to engage families and communities in school-based decisions
How can districts support?
- Creating processes and supports to build the capacity of school leaders to be accountable to their schools’ instructional goals and outcomes
- Developing sustainable and diverse educator and school leadership pipelines that support the selection of high-quality candidates
- Designing a school planning process and calendar that enables school leaders to align resources to desired experiences and needs in an ongoing, flexible, and supported way
- Supporting an integrated continuous improvement process to monitor both school and central level investments and outcomes to ensure resources are targeted to the highest-impact investments
Resources to get started
Leverage partnerships and technology
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Teachers facilitate most or all credit-bearing learning experiences. Schools work in isolation from the community’s broader network of resources, and technology sits “on top” of existing learning structures and resources.
To
Schools work with a mission-aligned set of partners integral to delivering credited student learning opportunities and wellness support within and outside of the school day. Technology is used to enhance, optimize, and expand learning opportunities and wellness support where appropriate.
What does this look like in schools?
- Contracting with partners for a variety of key instructional or wellness roles, to provide services at a lower cost and similar or better quality than school-based staffing. At the secondary level, this includes dual-enrollment courses, work-based learning opportunities, and career pathway learning sequences that would otherwise be difficult to offer, given staffing and expertise
- Designing schedules that enable partnerships to occur in predictable ways and support students’ direct engagement with industry professionals and partners during the school day.
- Creating structures and routines to coordinate and share work with partners—shared data systems, community advisory bodies, dedicated coordinator staff, and explicit collaboration structure
- Integrating technology into instruction in coherent, curriculum-connected ways to expand students’ access to content and/or provide more individualized support to students
How can districts support?
- Building a network of community-based partnerships, organizations, and technology supports that enable schools to leverage additional resources to implement their school strategies and vision
- Implementing flexible scheduling, crediting, and policies that allow schools to leverage partners and technology to support credit-bearing learning opportunities
Resources to get started
What Makes a Strategic School Schedule?
Designing a strategic school schedule means strategically reorganizing existing resources (people, time, and money), rather than simply layering on new resources while rolling over the same schedule year after year. In this moment of financial difficulty and uncertainty, that makes the school schedule is an especially powerful lever for change.
Leaders should start by defining clear priorities, such as expanding access to priority courses, creating more time for teacher collaboration and professional learning, or improving course access and delivery for multilingual learners and students with disabilities.
Then, leaders must make the tough, but deliberate decisions and tradeoffs that will keep the process anchored in what’s most important for students and educators.
Strategically redesigning the number and length of periods or instructional blocks throughout the day, for example, can have a large impact on your scheduling priorities.
Key School Design Resources
Redesigning the High School Experience
By redesigning high schools, district leaders can re-engage students, improve teacher experiences, and foster connections between schools and communities. Get started with our vision for the future of high schools and supporting tools and resources.
Strategic School Redesign Guides
These guides provide concrete guidance for district leaders looking to invest in high-impact strategies like high-dosage tutoring, expanding postsecondary opportunities for high schoolers, and professional learning and collaboration for teachers.
Budget Hold’em for Schools
What’s the “return on investment” in your elementary or high school’s budget? Play Budget Hold’em for Schools to explore options that balance investments and savings with a focus on the real bottom line—student performance.
Want to Enable Strategic School Design In Your System?
Whether you need to redesign your course schedules or take a critical look at your planning calendar, we’re here to help. Learn more here, and fill out the form below to start the conversation.