Challenge Success

Organization Overview

Challenge Success is a non-profit school reform organization affiliated with Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education that works to improve K-12 student well-being, engagement, and belonging through our School Program, Research and Surveys, and Workshops. Our unique approach is grounded in research about effective education and healthy child and adolescent development, engages and educates all stakeholders in the school community, and focuses on elevating the voice and perspective of all students. While many other organizations address student needs after problems arise, we offer upstream solutions that help to create systems within schools where students are engaged, healthy, and thriving. 

Challenge Success is led by a small, multidisciplinary team of educators, researchers, mental health professionals, and youth development experts. 

Our Mission

Challenge Success partners with school communities to elevate student voice and implement research-based, equity-centered strategies that improve student well-being, belonging, and engagement.

Our Vision

Our vision is that educational systems value each student for their unique identities, assets, and individual definitions of success and effectively prepare them for the variety of opportunities and challenges they will encounter in school and beyond.

Our Commitment to Equity

Challenge Success continuously examines and revises our work and seeks to disrupt patterns of inequity to further well-being, belonging, and engagement for each student, especially those for whom identity, culture, or socioeconomic status has resulted in barriers to access and success. We believe:

• Change starts with self, including active self-reflection to notice our own implicit biases and recognize how our lived experiences influence our perspectives and decision-making.
• All students, families, and communities have assets to build on and sustain.
• Centering design on those most marginalized by the current system benefits all students.
• Approaches to change must be systemic, context-based, and targeted at policies and practices.