Nontraditional and Out-of-School Learning

Our Work

New learning models are emerging and growing, and more families are gaining access to learning outside the traditional public school system — often supported by public funds through education savings accounts (ESAs), vouchers, or tax credit scholarships. These trends present a pivotal opportunity to shape how the ecosystem of options evolves and to support innovation, access, and quality.

Bellwether’s work blends enthusiasm for approaches that have the potential to create transformational change, a commitment to ensuring all students have the opportunity to benefit from new ideas, and a clear-eyed view on the importance of building and responding to evidence. We work with learning providers, private schools, foundations, policy and advocacy organizations, state agencies, and others to provide a wide range of services, including:

Policy Development and Analysis: Our team analyzes policies that enable or hinder students’ access to a full range of nontraditional and out-of-school learning options, from private school choice policies to zoning laws to transportation. Our work helps ensure that those positioned to influence the policy environment have the resources they need and actionable recommendations to move forward.

Strategic and Growth Planning: Our team supports the growth and financial sustainability planning of organizations who drive nontraditional and out-of-school learning. We work with private schools as well as other learning providers, such as microschools and summer school, after school, and tutoring programs. We also work with intermediary organizations, digital wallet providers, family support organizations, and scholarship granting organizations.

Ecosystem, Market, and Landscape Assessment: Our team has a 360-degree view of this corner of the education sector, including the work of funders, advocates, and operators, among others. We help partners understand how to create a dynamic ecosystem that offers all students access to the learning options that suit their needs — as well as the policy, political, and other constraints they must navigate.

Measurement and Continuous Improvement: Our creative and adaptive approaches yield a more complete picture of what an ecosystem of high-quality options looks like, what families are looking for, and what students are learning.

Our Impact

Toward Equitable Access and Affordability: How Private Schools and Microschools Seek to Serve Middle- and Low-Income Students: In this pre-pandemic publication, we explored emerging models of private schools and microschools, with a focus on affordability and program design and provided insights about these trends to the field.

Public Money, Private Choice: In this field-facing analysis, we analyzed trends in the policy design of ESAs, including student eligibility, funding levels, and oversight provisions so education stakeholders could get a better idea of who was being served by ESAs.

Assembly: We authored a series of publications about how families unbundle educational experiences from both within and outside traditional schools to better inform the field about this individualized approach to learning experiences.

National Student Support Accelerator: We partnered with the National Student Support Accelerator, a program of the Systems Change Advancing Learning and Equity (SCALE) Initiative at Stanford University, to build the Tutoring Quality Improvement System to assess the quality of tutoring programs and support the adoption of evidence-based practices to improve quality. 

Diocese of Little Rock Catholic Schools: We developed a strategic plan for the Arkansas Diocese of Little Rock Catholic Schools that positioned the network for increased impact by capitalizing on the LEARNS Act, a new ESA program in the state.

Our Team

Mary K. Wells
Co-Founder and Senior Partner; Nontraditional and Out-of-School Learning Portfolio Lead

Evan Coughenour
Partner

Kelly Robson Foster
Senior Associate Partner

Anson Jackson
Senior Partner

Lauren Miller
Partner

Juliet Squire
Senior Partner and Head of Emerging Approaches