Why

OURAPPROACH

 

Our approach to assist the nations most challenging and lowest performing school districts is based on the Coordinated Execution Framework for Education (CEFE), a proprietary methodology. The thinking behind our approach is to simplify the process for educators to: organize the right minds, to drive the right conversations, with the right tools that support realistic outcomes. Our approach came about because of the positive impact of coordinated care in healthcare; we began to look at what makes this successful and realized that our 5,000 lowest performing school districts are gravely sick, and they all require large doses of collaboration from well-meaning, and diverse stakeholders in a tightly structured way.

 

Our CEFE methodology forces a more innovative and deeper way to engage people in the problem solving and execution process, which is critical to achieving turnaround that is sustainable. Low-performing districts tend to imbue a culture that tolerates and in many cases, accepts low-performance or half-baked execution of programs.  What makes the CEFE methodology relevant to transforming the nation’s lowest performing schools, centers on these core attributes:

  • Accelerate action that is decision and results-driven (not activity-driven)

 

  • Eliminate cultural fear and tightness (people can’t excel when afraid to speak up)

 

  • Demand clarity and understanding (people can’t do, if they don’t know or fully understand the issue or problem)

 

  • Build internal capacity to execute (people are forced out of their comfort zone of expectation and gain confidence to deliver on bigger responsibilities)

 

  • Raise the collective accountability of the ecosystem of stakeholders rather than placing blame on one or a few (people have more skin in the game to advance strategies while those with the “wait and see” mindset are out of the game)

The common success trait with high-performing districts across the board is diverse-thinking teams of people who are having different conversations all the time to execute better to improve performance. Schools that fail to meet AYP for three to six years in a row deserve, and the community should expect, original thinking and not accept the status quo of more of the same.