EdRedesign Announces 2025-26 Institute for Success Planning Community of Practice
The EdRedesign Lab’s Institute for Success Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Education has announced its fourth cohort of cross-sector teams from around the country joining its 2025-26 Success Planning Community of Practice.
There are fifteen total communities invited to participate in the 2025-2026 Success Planning Community of Practice, including nine communities from cohort three returning for their second year and six new communities representing cohort four. The returning communities are Birmingham, AL; Letcher County, KY; New York, NY (Children’s Aid Society); Oakland, CA; Orlando, FL; Salt Lake County, UT; San Antonio, TX; San Diego, CA; and Toledo, OH. The new cohort four Community of Practice communities are: Flint, MI; Rochester, NY; Tulsa, OK; Union County, SC; Wayne County, NY; and Wilmington, DE.
The multisector community teams include leaders from school systems, health and human services agencies, out-of-school-time and other community- and faith-based organizations, backbone organizations, place-based partnerships, and mayors and other local officials. The cohort two communities of Cambridge, MA; Chelsea, MA; Dayton, OH; Memphis, TN; San Francisco, CA; and Spartanburg, SC, which have completed two years in the Success Planning Community of Practice, will now join EdRedesign’s Success Planning Alumni Network, continuing to receive support from EdRedesign to scale and sustain their local initiatives, serve in an advisory capacity, and provide coaching for new cohort members. The Success Planning Alumni Network will allow leaders of Success Planning initiatives to continue to learn with and from their peers, to share successes and challenges, and to support each other in the hard work of changing practices, policies, and systems serving children, youth, and families to provide them with the supports and opportunities they need to thrive.
Success Planning is a relationship-based approach that connects each child or youth to an adult Navigator who co-creates a personalized plan for action, in partnership with their families and other caring adults. The plan highlights the child’s strengths and needs and identifies supports, enrichments, and other resources to remove barriers, help them thrive, and support their goals. Through a whole-child approach, Success Planning provides a mechanism to ensure every child is known, seen, and heard, has a positive connection to a caring adult, and has agency over their roadmap to success.
"Success Planning is about fostering positive relationships, nurturing potential, and building clear and accessible pathways to success for ALL children and youth. As we welcome the new communities into our network and honor the dedication of our Success Planning alumni, we will continue to walk alongside them and support their efforts to eliminate systems that create barriers and advocate for policies and practices that help to advance progress toward more equitable access and opportunity. Thanks to the support of our funders and the tireless commitment of our local and national partners, we're advancing a movement that's broadening the conception of education and youth development. ALL means ALL," said Tauheedah Jackson, Director of the Institute for Success Planning and Deputy Director of EdRedesign.
With the generous support of the Barr Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Oak Foundation, and The Wallace Foundation, the Institute for Success Planning is accelerating community-driven efforts toward broader personalization by advancing systemic approaches to individualized supports, ensuring all children and youth have clear and accessible pathways to succeed in both school and life.
Success Planning is a complementary strategy to other cross-sector place-based partnership models designed to coordinate and streamline existing resources and efforts. EdRedesign’s Success Planning Community of Practice includes Promise Neighborhoods, Full-Service Community Schools, Blue Meridian Partners Place Matters communities, and members of Communities in Schools, Partners for Rural Impact, Purpose Built Communities, StriveTogether, and William Julius Wilson Institute at Harlem Children’s Zone networks, among others.
The Institute recruits geographically diverse communities for the Success Planning Community of Practice that leverage broader cross-sector place-based strategies to advance solutions to chronic absenteeism, learning differences, and housing insecurity, among others, while strengthening youth voice and family engagement.
The Success Planning Community of Practice is a two-year opportunity, which includes a planning year for design or scaling and a second year for implementation and growth. The Success Planning 2025-26 Community of Practice will kick off with an in-person Summer Workshop at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in Cambridge this July. EdRedesign will provide a structured curriculum to equip cross-sector leaders with practical skills, knowledge, and resources for designing, implementing, scaling, and evaluating effective and impactful Success Planning initiatives.
For communities interested in Success Planning, EdRedesign’s Institute for Success Planning will continue to engage them through its broader learning community, which is open to the field to learn more and engage with other leaders who are advancing personalization.
Visit our website for resources and more information about our Institute for Success Planning.
About EdRedesign
Founded in 2014 by Paul Reville, Francis Keppel Professor of Practice of Educational Policy and Administration at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, EdRedesign provides catalytic support to the cradle-to-career place-based partnership field to drive systems-level change and open personalized pathways to well-being, educational attainment, civic engagement, and upward mobility. To support this growing field to effect transformational change that serves the needs and talents of individual children and youth, our work focuses on talent development, actionable research, our Institute for Success Planning, and our By All Means initiatives. Our mission is to ensure the social, emotional, physical, and academic development and well-being of all children and youth, especially those affected by racism, poverty, and disinvestment.
Contacts:
Julie M. Allen, Director of Strategy and Communications, EdRedesign,
julie_allen@gse.harvard.edu
Sarah Grucza, Interim Senior Communications Manager, EdRedesign,
sarah_grucza@gse.harvard.edu
