K-12 Transformation Framework

Poor funding, lack of accountability, and lax standards mean that even industrialized nations struggle to keep pace with their global peers when it comes to education. But bigger budgets and greater oversight aren’t enough to bridge the gap. It requires a complete overhaul of the entire K-12 education system.

The K-12 Transformation Framework, developed in partnership with Harvard Business School and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, can help schools around the world to fundamentally reorganize, restructure, and rethink how they deliver K-12 education, from access to outcomes.

The framework combines the key drivers that directly impact student outcomes with the enabling elements—such as personalized learning—that create the right context for change.

Not all educational inputs are alike. BCG’s K-12 Transformation Framework defines and enables the advances needed to effectively enable 21st century learning and advance student achievement and graduation rates.

The framework brings together everyone in the local education ecosystem—school operators, businesses, local and national partners—and creates a team that is committed to improving student outcomes. Then it effectively incorporates these six elements that can create the right context for change.

  1. Effective Leadership and Management. Develop programs to upgrade leadership quality and culture in school districts and individual institutions.
  2. Sufficient Resources. Provide adequate funding and robust physical and technological infrastructure.
  3. Abundant School Choice. Enable school choices within and outside a traditional school district, such as charter schools.
  4. Strong Accountability. Create policies to hold states, districts, schools, and teachers accountable for student outcomes.
  5. Rigorous Standards. Set rigorous standards and requirements, such as Common Core.
  6. Sophisticated data and measurement systems. Develop analytics systems that enable better decision making and ensure accountability.

In this video, Spellings talked with J. Puckett, a senior partner and managing director of BCG’s Education practice, about a range of education-related issues.