On Monday Bellwether rolled out a new name and a new brand.
Today, we publicly launched our new Beta by Bellwether initiative - and the early stages of the first Beta project: Assembly.
Assembly seeks to create equitable systems of education in which students can access a diversity of learning experiences, services, and supports that encourage their well-being, ensure mastery of knowledge and skills, and enable them to pursue their interests, talents, and goals. Families with means already have disproportionate access to these opportunities through supplemental and out-of-system learning, creating a “shadow inequity” in how, where, and when students learn. Rather than the back and forth about this, we think there is a way to assemble a better education for students - equitably - and we're getting to work to figure out how.
In The 74, I write about the what and the why of Beta - and what we're hoping to accomplish with Assembly:
Each Beta project will produce bold ideas for the field and ultimately share tailored solutions with entities and partners best positioned to drive them forward, including education and community leaders, policymakers, advocates and service providers — or some combination thereof. We will develop this work by bringing together a group of experts with diverse takes on the problem as well as different backgrounds, experience and perspectives on it. By tackling issues this way, we hope Beta will provide a path toward resolving enduring challenges as a sector. Like so many, we’re exhausted with reflexive partisanship — not every problem has an exclusively Democratic or Republican solution to it. We’re hungry to come together in search of new ideas and equitable solutions are not just theories, but can be put in place to improve schooling now.