Over the past decade, Bellwether’s School Health Assessment (SHA) has been a trusted tool for diagnosing K-12 school quality, elevating areas of strength and opportunity, and guiding strategic planning efforts in schools, networks, and districts across the country. We’ve used it in partnership with hundreds of school leaders, helping turn insight into action to build healthier, more effective, and more inclusive learning environments for students.

But a lot has changed since the SHA was first developed. Today’s challenges facing schools have grown more complex, and our collective understanding of what excellence looks like — and what it takes to achieve it — has deepened. External forces such as school funding and enrollment patterns have fluctuated amid rapidly changing federal and state landscapes. And our own approaches have evolved, informed by new evidence-based best practices in the field and countless school site visits nationwide by our growing team, which now brings more than 150 years of combined experience teaching and leading within schools and systems. 

That’s why we’re proud to introduce Bellwether’s School Quality Framework (SQF), which builds on the best of the SHA while incorporating years of cross-sector learning, field-tested tools, and evolving research. The SQF is a comprehensive vision of school, network, and district excellence, and a tool to evaluate, reflect, and improve educational systems in service of that vision and the students for whom it’s designed. 

Within this framework, we define “quality” as a school’s ability to deliver increasingly strong academic, social-emotional, and life outcomes for every student it serves. We recognize that high-quality schools come in many different forms; the SQF is designed to distill what these schools have in common — regardless of model, type, or approach — and to offer an entry point and a clear path for rapid, sustained improvement in any school context.

More specifically, we use the SQF for three interconnected purposes: first, to develop a shared understanding of the current state of schools, networks, and/or districts relative to an absolute bar of quality; second, to identify the core areas of strength and opportunity in schools and systems; and third, to inform smart, targeted strategic planning, improvement cycles, and implementation efforts.

Design approach and framework features

When designing the SQF, we made two high-level shifts to better assist school leaders on behalf of the young people they serve:

1. The SQF more accurately captures the complexity and nuance of great schools and systems through a more detailed articulation of the breadth of their work, priorities, and measurable results. We did this by both creating new dimensions we felt were missing — such as one on organizational purpose — and by relying on our in-house experts to help us more accurately reflect best-in-class practices with existing dimensions, like governance, operations, and finance.
2. The SQF more intentionally centers students and families furthest from opportunity, with the understanding that truly exemplary schools support all students in achieving outcomes that lead to fulfilling lives and flourishing communities. We adjusted many components — and added new ones like those focused on special populations and wraparound supports — in order to reflect exemplary practices designed to meet the needs of students with additional barriers to learning.

These two shifts inform the SQF’s overarching structure, which is organized into nine dimensions of school excellence, each representing a core function of effective schools and systems. Each dimension then breaks down into a set of components — 43 in total — that delineate smaller, aligned bodies of work. These dimensions and components culminate in a student outcomes section that captures the academic, social-emotional, and postsecondary outcomes students should be able to achieve (Figure 1). 

Figure 1: Bellwether School Quality Framework (click to enlarge)

To zoom in further, each component includes a set of success criteria that get precise about what high-quality schools, networks, and districts look like. These criteria come in two forms: core actions (CA), which are the foundational practices, systems, and decisions that strong schools put in place; and progress indicators (PI), which are observable indications of strong implementation and early evidence of success or impact (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Example of Core Actions and Progress Indicators

A closer look at key components we’ve added

The SQF introduces new, critical updates to reflect the evolving needs of schools. Here are a few of our new and updated components:

• Component 2F. Special Populations Support: Explicitly centers inclusive, asset-based practices for students with disabilities, emergent bilingual students, homeless and foster youth, and gifted students — with a focus on both access to rigorous learning and compliance.
• Component 3F. Wraparound Supports: Elevates the role of coordinated, non-academic supports, including mental health, basic needs, and community partnerships, as essential infrastructure for student well-being and success.
• Component 5F. Innovation Leadership: Calls on leaders to foster conditions for thoughtful, mission-aligned innovation, including the use of artificial intelligence, while safeguarding student agency, staff capacity, and ethical implementation.
• Component 7A. Accountability for Success: Strengthens governance expectations for boards — particularly in charter school settings — to use data to drive strategic oversight, hold leadership accountable, and ensure continuous progress toward goals.
• Component 9C. Financial Planning: Elevates the importance of long-term forecasting, scenario planning, and alignment of resources to strategic priorities, helping schools remain both mission-driven and financially resilient.

Putting the framework into practice

Most commonly, the SQF serves as a comprehensive analysis of a school, network, or district as the first phase of a multiyear strategic planning process. In this process, our team conducts a thorough review through a combination of on-site classroom observations; team meetings; focus groups of leaders, staff, students, and community members; and an extensive artifact and data scan. To support reflection and planning, we rate each component using a consistent four-point scale that ranges from “Excelling” to “Needs Improvement,” use these ratings to help school teams identify overarching areas of strength and opportunity, and build shared ownership for implementation.

Throughout this process, the SQF is intentionally flexible; Bellwether can support leaders to apply it at multiple levels and stages of the improvement process continuum, including:

• Conducting a school or network health diagnostic to inform strategic planning.
• Diagnosing and driving targeted program improvement in a key dimension, such as academics, governance, or school finance.
• Building capacity and supporting leadership coaching.
• Aligning teams around shared language and priorities.
• Engaging families, boards, authorizers, and/or funders around performance and progress.

We’ve seen the SQF successfully used in contexts ranging from single-site charter schools to large traditional K-12 districts. One charter management organization in Georgia used the framework to assess alignment between its student success profile and student support systems. Another traditional school district in Texas used it to reimagine its approach to special student populations. In both cases, the SQF offered aligned structure, clarity, and momentum.

Why this matters, and why now

Schools today are navigating a complex mix of demands: academic recovery, student and staff well-being, eroding public trust, technological change, fluctuating enrollment, and financial uncertainty. In this context, the work of school leadership is more difficult — and more important — than ever. The SQF provides a practical, grounded tool to help leaders take stock, make smart choices, and stay aligned to support all students. Strong schools don’t just emerge; they are built day by day, through clarity, coherence, and community.

This is the first post in a series on the new SQF. Over the next several months, we’ll highlight schools and systems using the framework at different stages of their improvement journeys and share practical insights along the way.

To learn more about Bellwether’s School Quality Framework, reach out to Anson Jackson at anson.jackson@bellwether.org or Bill Durbin at bill.durbin@bellwether.org.