Resource: Community As Strategy

This piece sheds light on how to unite fragmented efforts into a movement of leaders across the country effectively tackling a complex problem, each in their home region or state. We tell this story through Accelerate ED, a community of 25+ regional sites from across the United States systematically building pathways that accelerate all students–especially those furthest from opportunity–to college degrees and meaningful careers. For the past four years, Education Strategy Group (ESG), with support of the Gates Foundation, has been entrusted with designing and nurturing Accelerate ED in ways that built a more inclusive field around the accelerated pathways movement, cultivated its leaders, distributed power to diverse actors, scaled effective policy and practice, and honored local context.