Education Cities

We believe that all students can succeed if given access to great public schools. We believe that schools can succeed if educators are empowered to make key decisions in their classrooms and schools. And we believe that school systems can succeed when schools operate with autonomy while being held accountable for strong student results. Yet, despite decades of reform, documented best practices, and the efforts of generations of talented educators, superintendents, and central office staff, school systems continue to resist change and often serve children and families poorly. When addressing the challenges of education, simply put: it’s not the people, it’s the system. We want to change these systems to ensure great public schools for all our children.

Education Cities builds the capacity of our members to invest in the growth of great schools, recruit and support talented teachers and principals, engage their communities and advance pro-children policies. We do this in three distinct ways:

• Convening: We bring our members together to define shared challenges, explore solutions, and generate new ideas to improve student outcomes.
• Advising: We advise our members on their efforts to help more families access great schools, and we help non-member organizations apply lessons learned from our network.
• Communicating: We write about trends we see across cities, and promote bold ideas and approaches that lead to better outcomes for children.