BACKGROUND:

Santa Fe South Schools is a public charter school district located in Oklahoma City, OK, serving 5000+ PK-12 students across twelve schools. In 2020, two weeks before the COVID pandemic radically altered the lives of students and teachers alike, Santa Fe South partnered with Conscious Schools to begin a radical transformation project of ensuring that all students were graduating at or above grade level. At the time, roughly 6% of SFS students were testing at or above grade level on state and standardized tests. Superintendent Chris Brewster and Chief Academic Officer Marianne Stephens partnered with us, knowing that better was not only possible but mandatory.

DESIGN:

• Strategic planning. After conducing a deep audit of SFS’s instruction, leadership, and talent practices, we designed a multiyear roadmap for improvement.

• Ecosystems of Practice. We implemented a strategic set of research-based instructional leadership practices, which we call “catalysts” to deliberately improve instruction over time. The catalysts include insight practices (evidence driven instructional practices), instructional coaching, instructional circles (teacher teams who meet for professional learning), and professional clinics (workshops and seminars) led by district staff and Conscious Schools leaders.

• Instructional improvement. We established multiple cohorts for teacher training development, including all-staff trainings, and advanced practice training for a “master teacher” cohort of teachers.

• Pipeline development. To date we have designed and implemented training for rising leaders at all levels, including teacher-leaders, Assistant Principals and Instructional Coaches, and sitting Principals. This past year, we added a “Principal Fellowship” program to identify and develop rising school leaders over the course of two-year, job-embedded course of study and practice.

• Turnaround Coaching. We provide direct-to-leader coaching to turnaround an acquired school, improving performance by 5X in 12 months.

RESULTS:

• SFS students improved from 6% proficient at the end of 2021 to 46% proficient by the end of 2024, marking at 6.7X improvement over that time. And we’re not satisfied. In the coming 2-3 years, we aim to double that result, such that 90% of students are at or above grade level.

• The Charter School Growth Fund identified Santa Fe South as one of its three most improved networks nationally, and supplied SFS with over $2 million in grants to continue its growth and improvement.

• SFS expanded from 10 schools to 12, launching a new middle school and taking on a turnaround elementary school. All schools are outperforming their neighborhood peers.

“We simply could not have realized the results that we have without the Conscious Schools team. Nate and his crew have transformed Santa Fe South.”

— Marianne Stephens, Santa Fe South Public Schools CAO