Abstract
The Bay Area School Reform Collaborative (BASRC) was invented in 1995 as an ad hoc intermediary organization. It was created in response to a national challenge from philanthropist Walter Annenberg and his half-billion-dollar gift to American public education. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation responded with $25 million to support the creation of a San Francisco Bay Area regional education reform initiative. BASRC was charged with the goal of stimulating and supporting education reform in the Bay Area and working to close the achievement gap among students of different race and language backgrounds. During its 10-year history, BASRC pursued its mission by making grants to support schools’ reform work and establishing a regional collaborative of member schools, districts, support organizations, and funders. BASRC’s reform efforts proceeded in two phases. During Phase I of its work (1996–2001), BASRC funded 86 “Leadership Schools” in 6 Bay Area counties. By the fall of 1999 the initial $50 million had been matched by $62 million more in public and private funds.1 During Phase II (2001–2006), BASRC invested in reform efforts in four focal districts and featured coaching as a reform strategy. The Hewlett and Annenberg Foundations provided $40 million in funds and other sources contributed a total of about the same amount. Throughout, the Collaborative’s signature reform tool was the school-based Cycle of Inquiry, in which teachers used student data to assess and plan for instruction.
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- 1.
BASRC’s regional membership also included an additional 146 Membership Schools, 40 districts, and several regional school reform support organizations and foundations which participated without funding.
- 2.
See McLaughlin and Mitra (2004).
- 3.
Initial conceptions of intermediaries featured them as mediating structures linking “the individual in his private life and vast institutions of the public order” (Berger, 1976; Kerrine & Neuhaus, 1979, p. 10). Subsequently, intermediaries’ roles extended to include inter-institutional and inter-organizational transactions of various sorts.
- 4.
Wildermuth (1995).
- 5.
BASRC termed individuals and organizations providing technical assistance to BASRC schools “support providers.”
- 6.
BASRC District Administrator Survey – 1998, 2002, 2004.
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Jaquith, A., McLaughlin, M. (2010). A Temporary, Intermediary Organization at the Helm of Regional Education Reform: Lessons from the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative. In: Hargreaves, A., Lieberman, A., Fullan, M., Hopkins, D. (eds) Second International Handbook of Educational Change. Springer International Handbooks of Education, vol 23. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2660-6_5
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