Building and Sustaining Innovative High Schools: Findings from the Opportunity by Design Study

This report commissioned by Carnegie Corporation of New York provides new insights into the process of designing and launching small urban high schools organized around the principles of personalization, mastery-based instruction, and positive youth development. The five-year evaluation by RAND Corporation followed the foundation’s Opportunity by Design initiative, which launched in 2013 in response to a challenge paper that detailed the urgent need to “do school differently” in order to prepare students for postsecondary success.