The Thinking Differently Series harnesses our benchmarking research to target strategic, high-impact solutions for district pain points. It seeks to enhance educational outcomes, effectiveness, and efficiency by supporting schools and districts as they engage deeply with examples from high-performing systems and apply tailored tools and protocols to examine their practice. These learning opportunities transform innovative ideas into practical strategies to promote continuous improvement and innovation in educational practices.

Through a structured three-step process—Look In, Look Out, and Look Around—you’ll learn what strategies leading systems are implementing in regard to the use of time. You’ll explore how time is being used to support learning, increase student agency and personalization, and improve conditions for teachers.

Following this exploration, you will audit your practices with structured protocols and self-scoring rubrics which will lead to the identification of areas of interest for innovation. You’ll then test out the impact of different strategies on their schools to better understand how thinking differently could enhance their goals for students.