June 25, 2026

Dear Educator,

Everywhere I go, I hear the same thing: young people need something different, but changing a system as complex as education feels overwhelming.

Our schools were designed for a different era, and educators are working hard within structures that often make meaningful change difficult. We can’t keep improving around the edges and expect dramatically different results.

What gives me hope is seeing districts innovate from within—listening deeply, co-designing with communities, testing new ideas, learning from them, and scaling what works.

The future of education won’t be built through mandates alone. It will be built by educators, students, families, and communities designing learning that is more relevant, engaging, and human-centered.

Escondido Union School District is a great example of this work, and we just published a detailed impact story sharing the district's school redesign journey. For this week's Bright Spot, I want to share a specific piece of that story that focuses on the power of embedded R&D.

With Gratitude,

The Power of Embedded R&D

Escondido Union School District used a site-based, embedded R&D approach to support school redesign, beginning with a first cohort of schools testing new learner-centered structures in context.

North Broadway Elementary entered the redesign process with a clear problem of practice—declining enrollment—and used R&D cycles to define and prototype a distinct school identity centered on its outdoor learning environment, known as “The Ranch.”

Through iterative design, the school created multi-grade advisory communities called “Round Ups,” where students meet monthly with the same advisor over multiple years, strengthening relationships and mentorship across age groups.

Monthly “Ranch Days” provide choice-based exploratory learning, resulting in 50 new classes in the first year and a marked increase in student engagement.

To sustain and scale the work, North Broadway also tested a distributed leadership model, organizing staff into six strategic teams with shared ownership of the redesign. Design teams have continued meeting in subsequent years, supported by district-wide communities of practice that surface learning, refine implementation, and inform the district’s next redesign cohorts (all schools in the district are engaging in the redesign process within five cohorts spread out over five years).

This case illustrates how embedded R&D enables schools to prototype, learn, and scale learner-centered innovations while building coherence and leadership capacity across a district.

Ready to discover the role embedded R&D might play in your district's evolution? Connect with our team to learn more.

In partnership with Learner-Centered Collaborative, Escondido Union School District co-created a Framework for the Future with its community, then launched a phased, cohort-based School Redesign process. Three years into this journey, we share how this incredible team is making learner-centered education a reality for its 14,000+ learners and the early impact that is already being felt.

Resources to advance your learner-centered practice

🏫 School Redesign Playbook. "School Redesign is not about surface-level innovation. It’s about reimagining the purpose and design of school to align with the science of learning, human development, and the realities of today’s world. This playbook draws on Learner-Centered Collaborative’s work with schools and districts nationwide, highlighting communities that have redesigned school and learning in ways that reflect their unique contexts and aspirations." Explore redesign examples from across the country.

🎥 School Design for Learner-Centered Ecosystems. "In partnership with the Learning Policy Institute, Learner-Centered Collaborative hosted a four-part webinar series that explores how school design can create learning ecosystems where all students know who they are, thrive in community, and actively engage in the world as their best selves." Explore the series.

🎯 Learner-Centered Launchpad. "Explore why learner-centered education is needed now and how to begin the shift by rethinking your role as an educator and how you design the learning environment and community in your classroom." Start learning today.