A “Toyota Way” revolution for education
This past year was a critical one for our ongoing efforts to help overcome pandemic learning loss. As the pandemic pushed countless children further and further behind grade level, our school system has remained far too “one size fits all,” delivering grade-level content even though so many children now need something more and different. To solve that problem, we are working with 30,000 students in 150+ schools across the country as part of our Personalized Learning Initiative.
Our work on pandemic learning loss made us realize this sort of “academic mismatch” between what grade-level classroom instruction delivers and what many students need is a more general structural challenge for our schools that undermines most of the education reforms and policies we’ve been trying for decades. We can see, for example, that in Chicago fully a third of all children enter middle school with the math skills of 4th graders.
We recently argued in a Chicago Tribune op-ed with former AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson that America won’t make any progress with our current Fordist assembly-line approach to education, where we just push students along from one grade to the next even if they start falling behind. Far better, we argue, would be for our schools to follow the lessons of the “Toyota Way” and ensure any student who falls behind gets caught back up immediately.
Thank you all for your support in so many ways, large and small, of the work that we and so many others have been doing to try to help society’s youngest and most vulnerable members. We are grateful for your partnership and look forward to that continuing in the new year and beyond. Learn more about supporting our work.
With gratitude,
Sadie Stockdale Jefferson, PhD
Executive Director
University of Chicago Education Lab
The Education Lab is generously funded by:
- A Better Chicago
- Accelerate — The National Collaborative for Accelerated Learning
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- Ben and Chiara Lumpkin
- Finnegan Family Foundation
- IMC
- Ira O. Handler and Mary Ann Baiyor
- Ken Griffin, founder and CEO of Citadel and founder of Griffin Catalyst
- MIT Blueprint Labs Charter School Research Collaborative
- Overdeck Family Foundation
- Vivo Foundation
- William T. Grant
We also receive vital support from our Investors’ Council, which includes Aaron Toppston, Andy McGuire, Anonymous Foundation, Caroline Delaney, Citadel & Griffin Catalyst, CME Group Foundation, Crown Family Philanthropies, John DeBlasio and DeBlasio Family Foundation, Katie Gledhill, Leo Smith, Matt Simon, Michael & Nancy Reinsdorf, Michael Small, Mike Healy, Nancy Mills, Pritzker Pucker Family Foundation, Raymond Iwanowski, Rich Feitler, R.J. Melman, Robert R. McCormick Foundation, Susan Gallagher, and Vivo Foundation.
Media highlights
We were featured in the University of Chicago’s Inside the Lab series, which showcases researchers tackling the world’s toughest challenges. Watch the video and read the Q&A.
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