This is the story of how Pasadena Unified School District (PUSD) is creating sustainable high school reform. PUSD, through a set of district leadership practices, thoughtfully built the capacity of and sense of ownership among essential stakeholders to design, implement, and support a system of Linked Learning pathways. Though firmly anchored by…

Traditionally, challenges such as how to sustain district reform, how to build a leadership pipeline, how to create an integrated project, or how to best intervene with struggling students would be resolved with a team of "experts" developing a solution in isolation of the stakeholders involved. By contrast, design thinking centers on the…

This brief describes distributive leadership, shares an example of a California district using this practice to implement reform, surfaces potential challenges, and offers questions to consider. Successful reform can go beyond a single classroom or school, and outlast an individual. Successful, ongoing reform initiatives exist and they are…