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Photo: NGLC grantee Montessori for All, Austin, TX

Engineer

Scientist

Journalist

Teacher

Far-off career dreams? Maybe.

But right now, these are authentic learning roles, being deeply practiced by students in next gen learning schools.

Why not learn in ways that spark deep curiosity, engagement, and reasons for skill-building?

Why not all kids -- not just the privileged ones?

Why not now? Especially now?

Why Not Now? Especially Now?

Introduction to NGLC’s Thrive Network

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Urgency

Inadequacy and inequity of our K-12 system starkly revealed by COVID
Shared commitment to take deep and real action, finally, on racism and social justice

Understanding

Returning from massive disruption to co-design a different, far better New Normal
Once-in-a-century federal investments in public education

Opportunity

Advances in the science of learning and development
Growing consensus on redefining success & 21st-century learning

Why Right Now:

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ALL Students: We want education that is relevant and engaging and that prepares us for the century we live in!! Is anyone out there listening?

MANY Organizers of District Communities of Practice: We want to do much deeper work with our districts -- and they do, with each other. If only there were an alliance of provider-partners to help us. This is the moment! Is anyone out there listening?

Who Wants This?

SOME School Districts: COVID and George Floyd disrupted us and we are not going back. We want to transform learning and schools with peers we trust, supported by -- please! -- a coherently aligned array of providers. Is anyone out there listening?

MANY Providers of Next Gen Learning Services: We want to find ways to multiply our impact. We need an aggregator of aligned practitioner demand, and a set of aligned partners to make our work more whole. Is anyone out there listening?

SOME Funders of Education Reform: Where is the big idea that could spark and sustain real change in schools? Where is it? Is anyone out there listening?

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A national network of school district communities of practice, activated by:

The need to go big:

250 districts, >2,000 schools, >1,000,000 students by 2023-24
Potential to quadruple by 2025-26

The urgency to transform:

A commitment to the three imperatives you see at right

The value of peers in cohorts of trust:

Leveraging the power of close communities of practice—including those that formed in response to COVID-19

The power of coherence in outside support:

An alliance of providers, coordinated and aligned around the three imperatives and the communities of practice structure

What We Are Building:

URGENT SOCIAL PURPOSE

Redefining Success around the Integration of

Next Gen Learning and Social Justice

ALIGNING THE WORK OF ADULTS

AND THE IMPACTS OF SYSTEMS

Replacing contradiction and obstruction

with symmetry and enabling

The THRIVE Network

The Alliance for Liberatory Next Gen Learning

DESIGNING

FOR POWERFUL LEARNING

Enabling all students to develop

the knowledge and life/work skills

they need to thrive and contribute

in the 21st century

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“I see the gap between what our schools are doing and what they should be doing, to help our students grow and work towards a safe, healthy, equitable world. COVID has helped me—and our community—see that gap more clearly than ever.”

Core Process Design: How Districts Can Be the Change They Envision for Kids

WHY & WHAT

HOW

WITH WHOM

Core Convictions:

The THRIVE Imperatives

“Our people and our systems are not set up to undertake transformational change successfully. We need to use a different playbook than the one we’ve used for decades -- a playbook that is aligned with the kind of change we see as urgently needed.”

“We cannot and should not do this alone. We need a strong, trusted community of peers to do this with, supplemented by ed leaders like me who are transforming learning successfully and have useful guidance to offer.”

“We want and need to work with high-capacity providers -- but we don’t have time to stitch all of their offerings together. Nor should we: can they not talk to each other and collaborate to provide a more coherent, aligned set of services to change-minded districts like ours?”

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Core Convictions:

The THRIVE Imperatives

Fellow Travelers: Deep, Nested, Supported Thrive Network Communities of Practice (TCPs)

Core Process Design: How Districts Can Be the Change They Envision for Kids

Aligned Supports: Alliance of Partner Providers (in development)

WHY & WHAT

HOW

WITH WHOM

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Through existing Communities of Practice (CPs) or newly created CPs, district teams engage in multi-year change with the Thrive Network.

A Big Vision for All / An Agile Journey for Each

The Thrive Network’s through-line is its Big Vision, marked by 3 imperatives: Urgent Social Purpose, Designing for Powerful Learning, Aligning Adults and Systems
The vision is big, but each district’s journey is “agile”—pursued in attainable, inclusive, imaginative, iterative steps as demonstrated by the Transformation Design exemplar school districts

Go Together, Go Far / Many Paths, Many Maps

CP facilitators foster the close, trusting relationships with peers that accelerate adult learning and the spread of innovation
Each district is supported to create its own roadmap, assisted by an alliance of providers, tailored in priority dimensions of district transformation: Redefining Success, HR, Curriculum & Instruction, and more

How It Will Work: A Matrix Approach

NGLC Brings It All Together:

Recruit, align and support alliance of providers to assist CPs and districts with coherence and flexibility
Recruit existing CPs, establish new CPs and match with facilitators and providers
Coordinate the matrixed co-design and co-delivery of programming and supports, within and across the CPs
Lead R&D, resource curation, program evaluation, and ecosystem-building efforts for the Thrive Network

The THRIVE Network

The graphic on this slide illustrates our thinking about how our pair of overarching themes—Big Vision/Agile Journey and Go Together, Go Far/Many Paths, Many Maps—will come alive in the design of the Thrive Network and the supports it offers participating districts and schools.

Big Vision is reflected in the three imperatives—Urgent Social Purpose, Designing for Powerful Learning, Aligning Adults and Systems—that shape all of the work going on in the Thrive Network communities of practice. This is the basis for the entire initiative and the essence of the whole graphic.

Agile Journey reflects our recognition that for school districts, pursuing the Big Vision effectively means many small but meaningful steps, more than dramatic leaps. The transformation route for each district, much like the learning and personal development route for each child, will be full of fits and starts and surprises and detours, hopefully useful ones. That’s why this graphic is a matrix, rather than a single roadmap. There is no single roadmap for districts to follow.

Launching and sustaining the agile journey toward the big vision is a tough challenge for any school district, and extraordinarily difficult to accomplish alone. That is where Go Together, Go Far comes in and is why the Thrive Network places such emphasis on communities of practice as a central element in its overall design. (Communities of practice are the gray vertical bars in the graphic.) When surrounding ecosystems, most of your peers, and many of your stakeholders and school board governors are at least skeptical, if not actively obstructing efforts to bring about significant change, it becomes tremendously important to link arms with peers who are seeking to move in similar directions. It is through these cohorts of deeply trusting relationships that district, school, and community leaders find the allies, co-designers, sounding boards, and critical friends they need in order to deepen and sustain their effort to transform. They are better off going together if they really want to go far.

The Thrive Network organizes technical assistance and partner-provider assets and capacities by priority dimensions suggested by Transformation Design research and NGLC’s years of catalyzing and tracking next gen learning schools nationally. Priority dimensions will be collaboratively developed with partners, as shown (in draft form) through the yellow horizontal bands in the graphic).

The programming for all of the communities of practice, to be co-designed with partners, will be shaped by the Big Vision/three imperatives—Urgent Social Purpose, Designing for Powerful Learning, Aligning Adults and System. Some supports might efficiently be designed and provided for all birds-of-a-feather—say, the IT directors—across all of the communities of practice in the Thrive Network. But as we observe above, there will not be one roadmap for every participating district to follow.

Instead, participating district teams, with support from partner-providers and NGLC, will create their own Agile Journey, customizing their Thrive Network participation to best enable them to transform the learning experience in their own districts through particular steps designed to advance the Big Vision. Districts will apply their refreshed visions and growing change-catalyzing capacities to redesign learning, applying the Transformation Design practices:

Activate: Activating change agents around a co-developed, shared purpose
Build: Building inclusive, iterative, and imaginative operating cultures in the course of redesigning key elements of student learning
Embed: Ultimately, leveraging the innovation culture to fundamentally change systems and policies that obstruct or fail to support the transformed learning and redefinition of success for students.

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Thrive Network communities of practice (TCPs):

Cross-district “Home TCP”

Leadership team
Nested job-alikes

Cross-network Cycles of Liberatory Design and Inquiry

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Partners Work with NGLC to Assemble a CP

New CPs Form Through RFP Process

Existing CPs (or Subsets) Apply to Join Thrive Network

Three Ways Thrive Network

Communities of Practice (TCPs) Can Form:

Existing CPs:

Regional or interest-based
Districts, CMOs, or schools
Run by current CP managers or can request CP management by Thrive
Examples: MAPLE, SSSuccess, UPenn

New TCPs by Application:

Regional or interest-based
Districts, CMOs, or schools
Applicants respond to RFP
Likely to be funder- or partner-originated
Example: Harvard Ed Labs TCP Gathering Districts Committing to Childrens’ Cabinet + Transformation Design

New TCPs by Invitation:

Regional or interest-based
Partners originate and invite participating districts, CMOs or schools
Example: Envision TCP Leveraging Performance-based Assessment Aligned with Graduate Profiles

HOW TCPs FORM

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Stage 2: Liberatory Design Cycle A / Piloting

[Topical TCPs; may also be Home TCPs]

CPs/districts then choose to go deeper by focusing on 2 topical strands over the remainder of the academic year [or by co-designing their own sequence, intensity, timing/duration]

Liberatory Design Cycles are a series of topical design sprints that allow districts to go deeper and make progress towards individual goals
Each Design Cycle may consist of a consultancy protocol, unconference, and job-alike subgroupings, among other things
Districts get to learn with other districts outside their Home CP
Multiple vetted technical assistance providers facilitate content for each cycle
Design Cycle A elongated for additional learning and application time, as well as reflection

Kickoff

A Year within Thrive Network: Co-Designing Your Transformation Design Journey

Q1 (usually Fall)

Q2 (Winter)

Q3 (Spring)

Showcase: Presentation of Learning

Stage 1: Roadmapping

[Home TCPs]

Every district participates in a shared touchstone experience

Introduction to Transformation Design
Identify/refine your true problem(s) of practice
What is your change idea?
Where do you want to be at the end of this experience?
What’s your roadmap?
Relationship-building with the Home TCP & Nested TCPs

Stage 3: Liberatory Design Cycle B [Topical TCPs; may also be Home TCPs]

Transforming Student Learning

Changing Mindsets on Student Learning
Practices in Deeper Learning
Personalized Learning
Competency-based Learning
Real World Learning

Strategizing for Systemwide Change

Community/board/ leadership agreements
Matching Strategy to Local Context & Capacity
Enlisting Local Partners
Building & Sustaining Consensus for Change

Building a Safe & Healthy Culture

Social-Emotional Learning
Mental Health & Trauma
Inclusion & Belonging
Advisories and Circles
Adult Culture & Student Learning Symmetry

Building

Community & Family Engagement

Engaging Diverse Families
Connecting Family Engagement to Student Learning
Communication Strategies

Redefining Student Success

21st Century Skills Assessment
Student Pathways & Progression
Graduate Profiles
Habits & Wayfinding
Grading
Formative Assessment

Developing the Full Spectrum of Evidence

Understanding the Spectrum of System & Student-Centered Evidence
Strategies for Piloting and Adopting
Using Evidence to Drive Decision- Making

Becoming Transformation- Ready

Transformation Design Framework & Liberatory Design
Engaging Stakeholders & Enabling Change Agents
Parent/Student Voice
Full spectrum of evidence

Designing for Equity

Opportunity Gaps
Supporting Marginalized Students
Culturally Responsive Practices
Special Education
English Learners
Summer Slide

Technology Tools and Roles

Technology Access
Edtech Procurement & Adoption
Data Interoperability
IT as Learning Enabler
IT as Culture Setter
Open Educational Resources

HOME TCP-LED

NESTED TCP-LED

Next Gen Professional Learning

Adult Culture & Student Learning Symmetry
New Approaches to Professional Learning
Distributing Leadership & Coaching
Skillful School Leadership

Liberatory Design Cycle Topics

Optional Add-Ons

[Districts or Home TCPs]

To Year 2

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URGENT SOCIAL PURPOSE

ALIGNING ADULTS AND SYSTEMS

DESIGNING FOR POWERFUL LEARNING

NESTED TCP-LED:

BUILDING A SAFE & HEALTHY CULTURE

NESTED TCP-LED:

NEXT GEN PROFESSIONAL LEARNING

NESTED TCP-LED:

TRANSFORMING STUDENT LEARNING

NESTED TCP-LED:

DEVELOPING THE FULL SPECTRUM OF EVIDENCE

NESTED TCP-LED:

TECHNOLOGY TOOLS AND ROLES

HOME TCP

How the “Home” Thrive Communities of Practice (TCPs)

Spawn “Nested” Communities of Practice

HOME TCP

HOME TCP-LED OPTIONS FOR DESIGN CYCLES:

BECOMING TRANSFORMATION-READY
STRATEGIZING FOR SYSTEMWIDE CHANGE
REDEFINING STUDENT SUCCESS
BUILDING COMMUNITY & FAMILY ENGAGEMENT
DESIGNING FOR EQUITY

The graphic on this slide illustrates our thinking about how our pair of overarching themes—Big Vision/Agile Journey and Go Together, Go Far/Many Paths, Many Maps—will come alive in the design of the Thrive Network and the supports it offers participating districts and schools.

Big Vision is reflected in the three imperatives—Urgent Social Purpose, Designing for Powerful Learning, Aligning Adults and Systems—that shape all of the work going on in the Thrive Network communities of practice. This is the basis for the entire initiative and the essence of the whole graphic.

Agile Journey reflects our recognition that for school districts, pursuing the Big Vision effectively means many small but meaningful steps, more than dramatic leaps. The transformation route for each district, much like the learning and personal development route for each child, will be full of fits and starts and surprises and detours, hopefully useful ones. That’s why this graphic is a matrix, rather than a single roadmap. There is no single roadmap for districts to follow.

Launching and sustaining the agile journey toward the big vision is a tough challenge for any school district, and extraordinarily difficult to accomplish alone. That is where Go Together, Go Far comes in and is why the Thrive Network places such emphasis on communities of practice as a central element in its overall design. (Communities of practice are the gray vertical bars in the graphic.) When surrounding ecosystems, most of your peers, and many of your stakeholders and school board governors are at least skeptical, if not actively obstructing efforts to bring about significant change, it becomes tremendously important to link arms with peers who are seeking to move in similar directions. It is through these cohorts of deeply trusting relationships that district, school, and community leaders find the allies, co-designers, sounding boards, and critical friends they need in order to deepen and sustain their effort to transform. They are better off going together if they really want to go far.

The Thrive Network organizes technical assistance and partner-provider assets and capacities by priority dimensions suggested by Transformation Design research and NGLC’s years of catalyzing and tracking next gen learning schools nationally. Priority dimensions will be collaboratively developed with partners, as shown (in draft form) through the yellow horizontal bands in the graphic).

The programming for all of the communities of practice, to be co-designed with partners, will be shaped by the Big Vision/three imperatives—Urgent Social Purpose, Designing for Powerful Learning, Aligning Adults and System. Some supports might efficiently be designed and provided for all birds-of-a-feather—say, the IT directors—across all of the communities of practice in the Thrive Network. But as we observe above, there will not be one roadmap for every participating district to follow.

Instead, participating district teams, with support from partner-providers and NGLC, will create their own Agile Journey, customizing their Thrive Network participation to best enable them to transform the learning experience in their own districts through particular steps designed to advance the Big Vision. Districts will apply their refreshed visions and growing change-catalyzing capacities to redesign learning, applying the Transformation Design practices:

Activate: Activating change agents around a co-developed, shared purpose
Build: Building inclusive, iterative, and imaginative operating cultures in the course of redesigning key elements of student learning
Embed: Ultimately, leveraging the innovation culture to fundamentally change systems and policies that obstruct or fail to support the transformed learning and redefinition of success for students.

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Supported

For TCPs preferring to self-manage and use Thrive Network supports a la carte

($+options)

Guided

For TCPs seeking or needing an explicit program to initiate and/or deepen efforts to transform schools, learning and student outcomes

($$$)

Not All CPs Are the Same: Matching Thrive Network Supports

with the Needs of Different Communities of Practice

For Example:

Existing district transformation cohorts like those funded by Barr, Bush, and other regional funders
Strongly established CPs that want access to Thrive Network supports, like Deeper Learning Dozen

For Example:

Existing CP seeking to quickly amp up its members’ intensity and design for transformation, e.g. MA regional collaboratives, CA Scaling Student Success
New TCPs forming in response to an NGLC RFP, perhaps in conjunction with a funding or provider-partner

WHAT THRIVE OFFERS TO ED LEADERS

SB: A little more on our thinking with regard to CPs in Thrive -- or TCPs, as we’re calling them.

- We want to recognize people are coming to us with different levels of readiness and with CP cultures and support structures already in place. Some TCPs will want the full-boat, guided Thrive Network experience (we’ll show you what that looks like) -- they don’t have time or experience to design this and manage it, but they are committed to the three imperatives.

- Then there are already existing CP’s that may not need as much guidance. That’s where I could see PPSS or PoAG participating. They don’t need a CP manager and they’ve already built a reasonably strong culture. But I would love to have access to the aligned set of partners, and the resources and tools that would be on the Thrive Network platform, and the experience/wisdom of other CP managers I could share with and learn from.

- Meanwhile, I could see our participating districts, say in PPSS, really loving to have access to those resources too, and to the option of participating in a Thrive Network liberatory design cycle on a reform dimension of high interest to them; and to the prospect of being connected to another district or district in another CP that is working in super-aligned ways, or that has great lessons/experience to offer.

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Guided

Supported

TCP Supports & Activities

MULTIPLE SUPPORT OPTIONS

Access to all online TN resources, guides	Y	Y
Participation in all TN-wide virtual offerings	Y	Y
TN support for next gen CP management	Option	Y
TN/Ptnr CP management	Option	Y
TN programming: standard LD (Liberatory Design) cycle participation	Option	Y, included in Year-long Journey
TN programming: custom LD cycle	Option	Option within Journey
TN programming: standard 1-year journey	Option	Y, or custom
TN programming: custom 1-year journey	Option	Y, at higher $$
TN programming: custom 2-year journey	Option	Y, highest $$

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Thrive Network alliance of partner providers:

Aligned on the three imperatives
Aligning services where needed
Certain partners supporting the leadership TCPs
Others offering services to Home TCPs (or individual districts) ... and/or across the whole network

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I see the gap between what our schools are doing and what they should be doing, to help our students grow and to work towards a safe, healthy, equitable world. COVID has helped me—and our community—see that gap more clearly than ever.

To transform, here’s what I need most:

Coherently organized help to make the case for change, create a viable pathway for our schools, and make steady progress along that pathway, building on strengths we already have.
A strong, trusted community of peers to do this with, supplemented by ed leaders like me who are transforming learning successfully and have useful guidance to offer.

I rediscovered the value of a close peer network in facing up to the pandemic. I wouldn’t even consider undertaking this level of change without a strong community of practice to do it with.

Why This Works for Me:

School & District Leaders

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Why This Works for Me:

Leaders of Existing Communities

of Practice

I know our school district members; I understand what they need.

It would be so valuable to connect with a larger network to provide them with what I can’t offer on my own—and to embolden us to rally around a vision that stretches us all.

The network would help me draw on capacities and expertise from an array of providers, access exemplar schools and districts, and coordinate deeper levels of support across the range of needs.

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Why This Works for Me:

Providers of Next Gen Learning Services

In this moment of unprecedented opportunity, I am asking:

How might I contribute my talents and skills (and those of my organization) to help the greatest number of highly committed communities have the greatest possible impact for public education, social justice, and our nation’s youth?

A coordinated effort with other like-minded but differently focused providers could provide more flexible and targeted support to school districts while helping me expand my business model.

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Why This Works for Me:

Funders of Transformational Education Reform

I see this as a moment of unprecedented opportunity to make a difference—for schools, for kids, for social justice, for our collective future. Public education in the U.S. is at a crossroad. For most kids, will the new normal feel exactly like the old normal? I worry that for many, it may actually feel worse.

To help districts and schools transform:

All of us—funders, providers, practitioners alike—need to think differently about how we can do this together, in a substantial and coherent way… without insisting that everyone must walk the same path and do it at the same pace.
We must find ways for schools and districts to build on strengths they already have, within contexts that are unique to them.
We need a big-tent approach that allows me as a funder to be part of something big and impactful, while fulfilling our own geographic and strategy priorities.

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How We’ll Design This to Work for Them All:

NGLC has built itself for this moment, by fostering and coordinating coalitions of partners and co-developing, over ten years with thousands of next gen educators, assets within each of the three imperatives.

Activating Purpose: Deep research on updated, broadened definitions of student success for the 21st century and lessons learned on activating new graduate profiles effectively

Four years of focus on social justice, DEI, and ways schools can design for liberatory next gen learning to enable a just and equitable democracy and a healthy, sustainable world

Transforming Learning: Integrating the five core elements of next gen learning; informed by the bedrock-solid Science of Learning and Development; and reimagining assessment as a vital support for learning of all kinds

Reimagining the Change Process: Groundbreaking R&D to develop the discipline of Transformation Design -- what it looks like when schools and districts decide to be the change they seek for kids

Aligning Partners: Wide experience and capacity in complex partnership initiatives as a collaborator and as designer and orchestrator: NGLC Regional Funds, Assessment for Learning Project, Next Gen Professional Learning Project, What Made Them So Prepared, This Is Our Chance!, All in This Together

Building Cohorts of Trust: A decade of capacity- and insight- building about effective design of and support for practitioner-led communities of practice

Enlisting Broad-based Support: Extensive national networks of reform-minded educators and providers; widely-read and nationally-recognized publisher of reports, blog posts, and other resources

Designing Major Initiatives: Catalyst for educator-led transformation since 2011, through nearly $100 million in grant funds awarded via competitive challenge-based invitations to the field to fundamentally reimagine itself

The THRIVE Network

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You’re a district that wants to embark on or deepen a journey to transform schools, learning, and student outcomes:

Link arms with a current, high-trust community of practice you are part of and join this Network!
Contact us to indicate your interest in joining a new community of practice, organized by geography, community/ district type or size, or central focus.

Talk to us about how the Thrive Network could squarely serve your needs; introduce us to your members, and consider joining the Network this coming winter.

Meet with us to talk through the Network’s partner-provider model, which we are currently developing. Our goal is to ensure that the Thrive Network works for every participating stakeholder in terms of impact, IP, service-quality and coherence, and revenue.

You’re a support-provider with relevant vision and capacity and want to significantly expand and deepen your impact:

You run a community of practice composed of districts or charters and would like to radically deepen and focus that partnership:

What You Can Do

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Urgency. Opportunity. Understanding.�It’s time for all of us to Thrive.

Timeline:

Q3-Q4 2021: partner-provider alliance development, other R&D
Q1-Q2 2022: recruitment
Q2-Q4 2022: launch of initial Communities of Practice (CPs)

Finances:

Seed funding: Carnegie Corp. of NY
$400K/yr per CP incl’ all costs;�25 CPs by 2023, $10M total from grants and district fees
Grant Need: $2.5M 2022; $5M 2023; >$5M 2024, all matched by district fees

Contact:

Andrew Calkins, Co-Director: acalkins@nextgenlearning.org
Dr. Carlos Beato, Co-Director, after 7/2021: cbeato@nextgenlearning.org

J O I N U S .

URGENT SOCIAL PURPOSE

Redefining Success around the Integration of

Next Gen Learning and Social Justice

ALIGNING THE WORK OF ADULTS

AND THE IMPACTS OF SYSTEMS

Replacing contradiction and obstruction

with symmetry and enabling

The THRIVE Network

The Alliance for Liberatory Next Gen Learning

DESIGNING

FOR POWERFUL LEARNING

Enabling all students to develop

the knowledge and life/work skills

they need to thrive and contribute

in the 21st century

The Carnegie Corporation of New York has supported the development of NGLC’s Transformation Design initiative since its inception in 2018 with grants totaling $1M. The first two phases of this initiative have been devoted largely to the R&D that has established Transformation Design as a change-catalyzing discipline in public education. The Thrive Network represents the third phase of that work -- the national roll-out designed to incorporate and apply everything NGLC and our partners have learned. A Phase 3 grant from CCNY is in progress, for consideration by the board at its September 2021 meeting.

Those CCNY grant funds, coupled with Phase 2 funds and additional org-dev support from the Barr Foundation, will support NGLC’s staff and operational costs over the two years that are associated with the launch of the Thrive Network, along with the continuing development and spread of Transformation Design. The investment by CCNY is catalytic; it will allow NGLC to not only design, launch, and support the Thrive Network but also to catalyze significant additional funding from both district fees and philanthropic investments.

The business planning scheduled for this summer and fall will ensure that the business model for the Thrive Network aligns with the co-designed program. The business plan will include a budget to match the co-designed programming, a pricing strategy for district fees, menus of investment options for funders, and an operations structure with associated costs.

The growth and sustainability of the project rests on the following considerations:

Every school district in the country is receiving federal funding with few conditions attached that ranges up to one-third of their annual operating budgets. These funds are available to expend on purposes like the work envisioned in this proposal through September 2024. We anticipate a tiered pricing model by district size, level of service provided, and other factors. But, on average, district fees might be approximately $20,000 per year, with more personalized supports available for an additional fee.

Philanthropies are searching urgently for promising ways to help public education use the inflection point of this moment effectively. To reach our initial goal of 25 communities of practice by Fall 2023, serving as many as 250 school districts, we will need to raise $5M annually from philanthropy to match $5M in district fees, beginning that year (2023). We anticipate that funders may sponsor specific communities of practice tied to their investment strategies or regional focus or may contribute to a pool of funds to expand and grow the Thrive Network’s reach, size, and impact.

We see this work unfolding over the next five to ten years, constantly adapting and expanding as we go. Grants provided to NGLC in 2021-22 will provide us with the catalytic funding we need to generate many millions more in investments for liberatory next gen learning powered by Transformation Design over the course of that time period.

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Photo: NGLC grantee Montessori for All, Austin, TX

Engineer

Scientist

Journalist

Teacher

We have gifts.

We have dreams.

We have plans.

We have potential.

We need school to help us learn. And to love wanting to learn our whole lives long.

We need school to help us grow. And to make our world a better place— beginning today.

We want to make a difference. We want to contribute.

We want to thrive.

Why This Works for Us