California Secondary School Redesign Pilot Program
Announcement
Re: Learner-Centered Collaborative as Lead Agency Partner for Secondary School Redesign Pilot Program
Learner-Centered Collaborative (LCC), a national nonprofit education organization, has been selected by California Collaborative for Educational Excellence (CCEE) to serve as a lead partner on the next phase of California’s Secondary School Redesign Pilot Program (SSRPP), the statewide effort to help California’s public middle and high schools move from compliance-driven structures toward learner-centered systems. Dr. Devin Vodicka, Co-CEO of LCC will lead these efforts on behalf of LCC in collaboration with CCEE.
Building on the strong early implementation and statewide reach of the SSRPP, CCEE is entering a more complex second phase supported by an additional $50 million state investment. This next phase extends beyond adding more LEAs; it must align secondary redesign with the Community Schools Framework, expanded learning, student well-being, family and community partnerships, and the identification of models that can inform statewide practice. As the work grows in scale and visibility, CCEE will maintain implementation quality while clearly documenting progress, lessons learned, and emerging evidence of impact.
LCC’s new role builds directly on work already in motion. LCC was a participant in phase one of CCEE’s SSRPP, working alongside 12 districts across the state. The vision of the SSRPP is that California’s middle and high schools ensure that every learner is known, engaged, supported, and prepared to thrive in a rapidly changing world through deeper, more equitable learning and sustainable school redesign.
Overview
The Secondary School Redesign Pilot Program is designed to support California middle and high schools in transforming learning environments from factory model institutions to rich student-centered environments that develop strong relationships, and drive deep learning ready to be applied to complex, real-world challenges. As the lead agency, the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence (CCEE) will administer the program and work closely with the California Department of Education (CDE), the State Board of Education (SBE), and a network of participating grantees to build capacity, identify promising models, and share best practices statewide.
Through this effort, CCEE and its partners will:
- Ensure every student is known and supported
- Redesign learning for deeper knowledge and skills
- Advance pupil success and equitable outcomes through student-centered learning and personalized supports
- Promote measurable growth in student engagement and learning
- Design sustainable structures to maintain impact over time
This pilot program will accelerate the redesign of California’s middle and high schools by investing directly in established networks of schools already engaged in this work. With new resources, these networks will deepen their redesign efforts, enable additional schools to undertake the redesign process with assistance, operate as demonstration sites, and help document both the practices that produce success and the barriers that must be addressed for transformation to last and spread. At the center of this pilot are the networks themselves; institutions with proven structures and a track record of secondary redesign. Their charge is to lead, model, and stimulate change, offering clear, living examples of how schools can be organized to better serve all students.
Together, this pilot will contribute to statewide learning through peer-to-peer partnerships, documentation of practices, and development of resources applicable across diverse contexts. CCEE will also conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the pilot, with a legislative report due by September 1, 2029. You can access archived informational webinars or visit the RFP page for more details.
We believe EVERY young person deserves to be seen, valued, and supported, and we refuse to accept a system where too many are not. Grounded in our own stories and driven by the students in front of us, we are redesigning schools so that belonging, purpose, and opportunity are guaranteed by design, not left to chance.
Secondary School Redesign Network Pilot Voices: 3-19-26
Learn more about each network by selecting the cards below.
If you have any questions, please contact Leib Sutcher, Assistant Director Secondary School Redesign at [email protected].