About Us


Background & Purpose

School and district leaders, community members, education nonprofits, and funders share a strong interest in improving student outcomes and school conditions. But decades of effort and billions of investment dollars have long evidenced the challenges with sustaining even effective programs that improve student outcomes.

Informed by decades of experience working within educational organizations and in external supporting roles, Pivot Learning’s CEO Arun Ramanathan noticed patterns in organizational conditions among low-performing school districts. In June 2018, Pivot Learning convened district leaders, state administrators, and education researchers to explore these concerns and identify a set of important organizational domains for initiating and sustaining changes that support student achievement and growth. Throughout 2019 and 2020, researchers at Pivot Learning piloted hundreds of indicators that educators, community members, and families could use to regularly track their school district’s progress in these areas. The organization also began prototyping versions of a data visualization tool for California, Idaho, and Massachusetts, though the current version reflects data only from California.

Over the next two years, researchers from Pivot Learning built the District Readiness Index (DRI) database by reviewing literature for validated measures associated with important school district conditions; piloting and refining data definitions and collection strategies; and ultimately collecting and assuring the data quality. 

Guided by five data collection principles, researchers identified data points that are: 

  1. Actionable, so district leaders can leverage insights from the DRI and make meaningful changes at their district. 
  2. Publicly accessible, so district partners and community members are able to easily access this information year to year. 
  3. Evidence-driven, so all audiences can trust that these features matter for district success. 
  4. Standardized, so district leaders can benchmark progress over time. 
  5. Collaborative, so district leaders, parents, and key partners can work together for sustained organizational improvement. 

Researchers also consulted potential database users including school district and other education leaders, community organizations, and parents of schoolchildren to ensure the DRI’s usefulness and relevance.

Although the District Readiness Index was incubated at Pivot Learning, in 2022 the organization merged with UnboundEd to become the largest equity-focused K-12 education professional development organization in the United States. Pivot Learning and UnboundEd are 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations. For more information about us, please visit www.pivotlearning.org and www.unbounded.org.


What is District Readiness?

We define district readiness as the capacity for an organization to initiate and sustain changes that facilitate improvements in a select set of outcomes. Learn more about this concept in our companion report.


What can I do with this information? 

Researchers have compiled publicly available school district data in new and innovative ways so school districts and stakeholders can: 

  • See at a glance how districts across California perform on these measures
  • Identify district strengths as well as areas for improvement
  • Compare districts and gather ideas for solutions
  • Broaden district priorities and focus areas

Learn more about our methodology


Contributors

In addition to the many educators, parents, and family members who shared their time with us as we refined the tool, the following organizations have been integral to the development of the District Readiness Index. On behalf of Pivot Learning, we thank each of them for their thought partnership and leadership in education.

  • California Collaborative for Educational Excellence
  • Families in Schools
  • Innovate Public Schools
  • Labor Management Initiative
  • National Council on Teacher Quality
  • Opportunity Institute
  • Parents for Public Schools
  • Policy Analysis for California Education

Funding

This project has been generously funded by the Stuart Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Albertsons Companies Foundation, The Lynch Foundation, and the Dirk and Charlene Kabcenell Foundation. On behalf of Pivot Learning, we thank them for their investment and input on this innovative tool.

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