It’s Not Enough Just to Reimagine the Education Sector. We Have to Rebuild It.
Beta by Bellwether is an initiative that jump-starts action by designing big solutions to education’s toughest challenges.
Through a process that brings together the usual and unusual suspects, Beta accelerates the development of new ideas, delivers them to the field, and models a new way forward for the sector — creating blueprints and tools that help leaders across the country build an education system that better serves all young people, particularly those from systemically marginalized communities.
The Beta Approach
We identify big challenges facing the sector and tackle them through a five-step process.
1. Build an inclusive fact base:
We synthesize existing research, data, and viewpoints from across the sector to create a shared understanding of the Challenge.
2. Convene a diverse conversation:
We work with an Advisory Group representing a range of viewpoints to dig deeper into the Challenge.
3. Surface equitable solutions:
We stress test bold, actionable solutions — with a focus on dramatically better outcomes for systemically marginalized young people.
4. Communicate to a broad coalition:
We share our analysis, solutions, and tools within the education sector and beyond to build momentum for lasting change.
5. Ensure effective implementation: We partner with school systems and organizations across the sector to refine solutions on the ground and spotlight successes.
Why Beta?
The education sector needs fresh ideas — but it’s not equipped to develop those ideas, or to absorb, implement, and scale innovation.
Driven by larger political forces, we’ve become polarized on the ideological right and left; admired problems instead of solving them; and kept parents, practitioners, policymakers, and researchers spinning in separate silos.
Beta helps address these structural problems as it develops the vision, coalitions, and blueprints for the future of the sector. It’s an approach rooted in informed debate between leaders who are willing to be bold, wrestle with different perspectives, and respond to evidence.
Read more below from Bellwether co-founder Andrew J. Rotherham on the vision for Beta.
Beta Projects and Initiatives
Admission
Admission explores how to create a more equitable and effective system of postsecondary pathways, especially for systemically marginalized communities.
Assembly
Let’s give young people and families what they need to assemble a K-12 educational experience.
Eduwonk
Andy Rotherham starts viewpoint-diverse conversations that separate the signal from the noise about the most important issues in education on Eduwonk.com.
Stocktaking
Bellwether’s stocktaking series helps the education sector separate signal from noise and move toward a shared fact base on timely issues.
Join the Conversation
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