Innovative Schools

Most schools teach through a lecture-based model designed to achieve a narrow goal: improved ELA/Math test scores. Students are bored and unmotivated: by high school as many as 40-60% of students become chronically disengaged from school (Klem & Connell, 2004). Achievement suffers (only 53% of high school graduates are college and career ready), and students lag in skills employers value most, like critical thinking and problem solving (“Are High Schools Preparing Students…”; It Takes More than a Major…).

Student-centered approaches to teaching and learning can accelerate mastery. SAGA Innovations, an Overdeck Family Foundation grantee providing high dosage tutoring to high needs students, was able to reduce the black white achievement gap by almost 50% in one year–and lead to higher grades across subjects.

Multiple studies have found that students who engage with experiences that develop social-emotional competencies earn more course credit, higher grades, and higher standardized test scores (Durlak et al., 2011).

Learning is most effective when content is meaningful and relevant, when adults build caring relationships with their students, and when students are in classrooms that foster a sense of belonging and a growth mindset (Duke et al., 2017; Dweck, 2006; The Science of Learning, 2016; Quay, 2017). Recent Overdeck-supported studies by researchers in the Mindset Scholars Network showed that 9th grade students with stronger reports of growth mindset earned higher core course GPAs than students reporting a more fixed mindset (Hennessey, 2018a). A second study found that math teacher messaging that supported growth mindset, belonging, purpose, and affirmation explained roughly 29% of the variance in student test score growth, exceeding the predictive power of established classroom practice inventories (Hennessey, 2018b).