Five Strategies to Build Forward Together to Upend Inequity and Accelerate Progress
The Readiness Projects Partners
In September 2020 The Readiness Projects Partners posted a blog (When Everything is Different Act Different) in which we acknowledged the opportunities for bold change that could rise out of the disruption. And we announced that AASA, the School Administrators Association, was joining our efforts to launch Build Forward Together, “a new endeavor eschewing a return to ‘normal’ and encouraging all players to Act Differently.”
In November and December, we hosted a weekly series of discussions, work groups, and blog posts designed to “make the invisible visible” — to bring school and community leaders together to have honest conversations about what it would take to achieve this “together” goal. These discussions affirmed what we knew: simple promises to “partner” might inevitably result in some things being better, but truly building forward together means taking serious steps to think and talk differently about our goals and our approaches; see and hear differently from each other and, most importantly, from young people, families and front-line staff; and to act and react differently, not just when we’re sitting at partner tables, but when we’re behind closed doors making decisions about how to allocate the staff or resources we control.
A month ago, feeling concern that disparate efforts to address short-term concerns this summer (e.g., learning loss) will yield disappointing results we can’t afford, Readiness Projects Coordinating Partner Karen Pittman posted a blog suggesting we leverage summer as a down payment on the kind of long-term change. We hope the Build Forward Together Summer Challenge will spark to accelerate progress towards creating the kind of equitable learning and development ecosystems we all aspire to. Karen challenged the consideration of how we can use the inherent flexibility and innovation of summers (not just this summer, but all summers) in balance with a community’s overarching commitment to build schools back better and simultaneously invest in broader efforts to build forward together — to help strengthen and leverage community partners and invest in adolescents in the multiple arenas where they are striving to be success. Karen introduced a simple clover-leaf graphic that links these four goals.
Today, having spent a month with our colleagues analyzing the rich discussions from 2020 and reading the growing number of reports, proposals and frameworks coming out, The Readiness Projects coordinating partners are putting a stake in the ground and introducing five broad strategies that we must attend to as we Build Forward Together. These strategies help all of us — schools, community partners, funders, government leaders, families, and youth themselves — not just do our best to build individual fortresses back better, but to truly reimagine learning and development together. They have begun to prompt leaders to think and talk differently about learning and loss, school, after-school and summer, children and adolescents, families and communities, equity, accountability, and resources. They help spark, organize, and drive action.
Build Back Smarter — Acknowledge learners’ losses while affirming learning ability. Optimize learning environments while prioritizing reconnection.
Build Back Broader — Support complementary learning delivery systems and modalities. Invest in program-level staff and city-level coordinating structures.
Build Back Bolder — Focus on how, why, and with whom learning happens. Respect and diversify learners’ experiences and contexts and adults’ expertise and power.
Build Understanding of Inequity — Equity is the goal, but inequity is the reality. Acknowledging skepticism, take time to get baseline data right in order to truly cover all bases.
Build on Adolescents’ Determination — Embrace adolescent risk taking and leverage the brain science. Create and support alternative success pathways for all adolescents to be competent, connected, confident contributors.
Where you start is negotiable. How fast you move from thinking to acting is negotiable. What is not negotiable is that now is the time to realize the opportunity. Learn more about each of these strategies as we share the work thought leaders are doing interrogate, study, and support them. Identify your community’s goals and your starting point for this work. Find ways to innovate (big or small). Listen to and borrow ideas from other communities. But don’t let this moment pass and wonder what your community might have done.
