It takes a village to prepare students for a changing workforce, build civic engagement, and help educators solve big problems.
That’s the driving idea behind learning ecosystems, place-based strategies that encourage collaboration between schools, employers, and community organizations like libraries, universities, and museums. The aim: to extend students’ learning beyond school walls and give educators an opportunity to work with professionals in other sectors to rethink what happens within their buildings.
A new National Commission on Learning Ecosystems hopes to identify what works in these partnerships—which are typically fostered by nonprofit organizations that serve as intermediaries—and develop recommendations to help communities encourage collaboration in sustainable and meaningful ways. The commission, announced in February and led by the think tank New America, will bring together educators and supporters of 12 existing ecosystems around the country.
“We’ve learned so much from the science of learning and development about what kind of environments students really need to participate in their education in an active way, get excited about the challenges ahead of them, and dig in and solve problems,” said Lisa Guernsey, New America’s senior director of birth-to-12th-grade education policy.
“It’s really about recognizing how many assets are already on the ground in neighborhoods and communities,” she said.
Helping schools engage with their communities
Supporters of the model frequently cite Remake Learning, a Pittsburgh-based collaborative of 1,000 organizations—including school districts, libraries, museums, universities, businesses, artists, after-school programs, and tech professionals—that launched in 2007 and has since inspired the development of more than 40 similar ecosystems around the world.
Conversations that led to the organization’s creation came after the release of the iPhone, when education, business, and community leaders in Pittsburgh saw the potential and pitfalls technology might present for students.
“It was a period of rapid change in the world around us as people were navigating this new technology and what it meant for teaching and learning,” said Tyler Samstag, Remake Learning’s executive director. “We wanted to leverage our community to help young people become creators, rather than just consumers.”
Remake Learning regularly convenes members to brainstorm opportunities for collaboration and solutions. It also organizes task forces around target areas like personalized learning and civics education and offers rounds of “moonshot grants” to allow members to pilot big ideas.
Changing how students learn
The strategy has yielded results.
In 2021, the 900-student California Area school district in Coal Center, Pa., used a $70,000 moonshot grant to develop an optional, experimental competency-based learning program for K-12 students that eschews conventions like traditional lesson plans, letter grades, and age-specific classrooms, a project later covered by Education Week.
The program, also known as Moonshot, tailors personalized learning plans around students’ academic goals and individual interests—everything from K-pop to African foods. Students can opt to use the competency-based approach instead of a typical class for a range of subjects, including social studies, science, computer science, and art. They can opt in for every possible subject or pick just one or two and they can move back to conventional classes after a quarter if they aren’t comfortable with the approach.
Another member of the network, the Northgate school district in Pittsburgh, worked with a regional health care provider to transform an abandoned hospital, allowing small businesses to lease space while providing on-site internships and hands-on STEM projects for students.
“It’s the manifestation of what happens when organizations are in the same spaces, dreaming together, and finding ways to work together,” Samstag said.
At the Seneca Valley school district north of Pittsburgh, leaders worked with the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh to design a new elementary school building with engaging, interactive design elements often used in museums. The building has features like movable walls, flexible learning spaces in hallways, and plenty of natural light.
Other schools in the area have paired students with entrepreneur mentors and challenged them to design startup organizations to solve the world’s problems; partnered with universities to expand teacher pipelines; worked with scientists to engage parents in STEM lessons for students; and developed high school transcripts that include relevant out-of-school activities like volunteering.
Exploring what makes learning ecosystems work
The new national commission will explore what makes such collaboration strategies work and how to ensure they are more than just a “flash in the pan,” Guernsey said.
Helping schools draw on community assets may also give them resources to engage students at a time when budgets are tight and federal funding is uncertain, she said, and bringing organizations together can also help bridge ideological divides in communities.
In its first year, the commission will explore strategies used by its members in rural, urban, and suburban communities to identify what makes them successful, including how intermediary organizations are created and structured.
In its second year, the commission will develop recommendations. Those might include suggestions for state and federal policymakers to encourage place-based collaboration and ideas for measuring success, Guernsey said.
“We are very aware that this is going to look a little different in every place, but there still will need to be infrastructure that allows these connections to happen,” she said.
