California’s CORE Districts, one of the nation’s largest educational collaborations, is celebrating 15 years of improving results for students. Together the nine CORE Districts represent more than a million students, thousands of educators and hundreds of schools. I’ve been privileged to serve as CORE’s CEO from its start and witness a number of milestones along the way. As an avid baseball fan, I hope you’ll permit me to share the history on CORE’s evolution and its vision for the future, with a touch of wisdom from baseball’s legends.

The idea of CORE began at a dinner in 2007 when Fresno USD Superintendent Mike Hanson and Long Beach USD Superintendent Chris Steinhauser established a partnership to improve instruction and student learning through their cross-district collaboration, and, in my role as deputy superintendent at the California Department of Education, I would look to provide state flexibility for their work. The idea was grounded in connecting not just schools, but entire systems, so educators from sites and central offices could work together and learn how best to advance teacher and leadership capacity and improve student outcomes. In 2009, as California’s economic crisis forced schools to make major cuts, federal Race to the Top grants promised selected states much-needed funding to improve the lowest performing schools. California, desperate for increased funding especially to support underperforming students, applied twice, and struck out twice. A third attempt put the voices of urban, rural and suburban educators at the forefront, but it also was denied. Through the process, though, districts had built momentum and statewide interest in cross-district collaboration. Plus they had identified some key players across the state with capacity for continuing collaboration across multiple school systems.

In 2010, Fresno, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Sacramento City, San Francisco, Clovis and Sanger unified school districts formed the CORE Districts, and I began my role as executive director. Implementation of the just adopted Common Core State Standards in English and math was underway, and as early adopters these districts recognized benefits and efficiencies of their working together. We knew that improvement depended on central office structures and goals being aligned with the work of school sites. Within a few years, Oakland, Garden Grove and Santa Ana also joined the collaboration. The year 2013 was a pivotal one for the CORE Districts. Eight of the CORE districts applied for a waiver under No Child Left Behind, and they won — becoming the only non-state entity in the country to receive one. This home run, one-of-a-kind, federal waiver shed a national spotlight on the CORE Districts because for the first time, districts and schools, rather than a state, would hold themselves accountable for improvement.

CORE’s work during the waiver years focused on supporting site and central office systems to improve together. We helped measure improvements through a comprehensive, multi-district data system that gave districts and schools the ability to see their progress, systems that at the time were unique to CORE and unavailable elsewhere. The districts and schools also stood apart by using social emotional learning and school culture climate measures, considered to be a promising way to understand school performance. CORE gained national attention for its creation of an academic growth measure, which measured the impact schools are having with students compared to students like them, in schools like them, with performance like them. CORE encouraged the state to consider it as an Innovation Zone to learn how different improvement measures help support learning and teaching. Ultimately, the state phased in its own accountability system and CORE moved forward with its innovative measures. Today, our work continues to serve more schools and districts beyond the CORE districts, through a Data Collaborative, with CORE’s unique measures and data helping schools improve.

As CORE’s waiver ended, we evolved our work toward addressing a challenge shared by all the districts, and implementing evidence-based improvement strategies to solve it. The freshmen experience, known widely as a make-or-break year, became one of CORE’s main efforts. Since 2019, CORE’s Breakthrough Success Community has helped 38 high schools across the state increase the number of African American and Latinx students on track to graduate and enroll in postsecondary institutions. CORE’s network serves schools where on average more than half of the students start 9th grade off-track for graduation and postsecondary success. Since the launch, thousands of students have shifted their trajectory from off-track to on-track by the end of their freshman year. The on-track rate has increased by double digits. The percent of Ds and Fs has decreased by 12 percent. The impact for African American and Latinx students is even more significant in many schools. The work is evidence that when educators have ownership and dedicated time to work together on solutions, their ideas move beyond one site and throughout CORE networks.

In addition to the continuing success of CORE’s learning networks, we are focusing on future-forward challenges. Nearly 50 million young people attend public schools across the country, with 6 million youth attending public schools in California. With 90 percent of our nation’s youth in public schools, public education is still the strongest tool we have to build generations of engaged citizens, innovators, critical thinkers and future leaders. But the 1870s architecture and model of schooling developed during the Industrial Age was not built to deliver on a promise to provide all children with equitable opportunities to thrive as individuals and to be prepared for success in fulfilling and economically sustaining careers that require continuous learning and upskilling. So, with our 15 years of learning and improvement experience, we have begun a new journey into the future with CORE Schools, a 10-year commitment to create secondary education systems that truly meet the diverse needs and aspirations of today’s 9-12th grade students, families and the educators who facilitate their learning.

Rick Miller is the CEO of CORE Districts, a nonprofit organization formed by several large California school districts in order to provide the infrastructure for multi-district collaborations.