By: Elizabeth Chu, Andrea Clay, Ayeola Kinlaw, and Meghan Snyder
Elizabeth Chu is the executive director of the Center for Public Research and Leadership (CPRL) at Columbia University. Andrea Clay is a director of legal strategy and policy at CPRL. Ayeola Kinlaw is CPRL’s cofounder and an independent consultant. Meghan Snyder is a director of research strategy and policy at CPRL. Together, they are the authors of The Learning Hive: Leading Collective Innovation to Transform Education Systems (Teachers College Press, 2025).
In New York City, a consortium of high schools grew their graduation rate by 14 percentage points in four years to 90%, well above the city average. In California, schools in High Tech High’s CARPE College Access Collaborative made remarkable gains in college access and enrollment, boosting financial aid applications by nearly 20 percentage points in five years and increasing college enrollment at a time when the rate was falling nationally. And the state of Mississippi, once ranked among the lowest in the nation for its literacy rates, is now 9th.
What do each of these systems have in common that has contributed to these successes? They each transformed their systems into what we at the Center for Public Research and Leadership (CPRL) at Columbia University call learning hives.
Detailed in The Learning Hive, our new book published by TC Press, learning hives offer an innovative approach to governance—how to set strategy and align it to goals, how to implement and improve, and how to share and support widespread, high-quality application of knowledge. Learning hives undergo transparent and deliberate learning about how to get better.
Today’s complex education challenges require a new approach not only to what we are doing in classrooms, schools, districts, and statehouses, but to how we are doing it. It’s the “how” that helps us understand why different school systems can use the same strategies and curriculum, and get wildly different results.
As school systems grapple with persistent gaps in student learning, looming budget cuts, teacher shortages, the ever-evolving needs of their students and communities, and diminishing trust in public institutions, it’s critical to move away from business as usual. The top-down decision making commonly seen in a rules-bound bureaucracy might work in some contexts. At CPRL, our research and experience working with leaders across the K–12 education sector have found that meeting the needs of every student in complex public school systems requires more flexible, democratic ways of operating.
Grounded in the theory of Evolutionary Learning, learning hives are what you might imagine: dynamic, coordinated communities, relationships, systems, routines, and practices that drive creative exchange, learning, and innovation, and that treat daily work as an opportunity to improve. You can see this design in the DNA of High Tech High’s CARPE network. Staff at every level ground their work in a collectively developed theory of action: that tackling FAFSA completion, the college application process, feelings of collegiate belonging, and summer melt are key levers for improving college enrollment and retention. Hives across the network test, learn from, and adapt the theory and practices. Improvement teams of administrators, teachers, other school staff, students, and community members—found at every school—surface, test, and refine ideas of how to improve college access outcomes. Across the network, school teams are paired based on common challenges which they then discuss, learn from, and work to solve together in facilitated working meetings. Network leaders coach school teams to guide practice and learn how the network strategy is being adapted to serve local needs. That learning is then shared across schools.
These hives blur the line between deciding and doing so that the organization can nimbly adapt to challenges and changes in conditions, learn from successes and failures, and progress toward shared aims more quickly. Every member of the hive has the agency and the responsibility to find and take on challenges in ways that enable both daily ground-level experimentation and broader discovery and improvement. To continue the hive analogy, they swarm problems, innovate, and pollinate learning. Learning hives embody a democratic approach to managing and sharing knowledge—they are “learning as doing” through experimentation and action, rather than through more static “knowing” and transfer of expertise. This learning at CARPE spurred changes in programming at the High Tech High schools in the network, which resulted in a rise in college enrollment rates at the schools. In 2022, their rates were the highest in San Diego County (Taketa 2023).
To determine what policies and practices work, for whom, and under what conditions, learning hives harvest the right data to monitor and improve. Every month, the Mississippi Department of Education’s literacy coaches collected quantitative data (such as from screeners) while also carefully documenting the coaching and instructional support each school needed. They would then share that data with school, district, and state leaders to inform policy and practice. Based on their learning, they made strategy adjustments like combining teacher and administrator training and providing coaches to school leaders. On the school level, families were involved in data collection as part of the ongoing measurement, development, and adaptation of individualized plans for each child who was behind in reading, which made it possible to identify and address reading problems early. Measurement was seen as a learning tool that holds everyone accountable to each other, to the students, and to shared goals.
Of course, it would be difficult to impossible to sustain this work without an effective leader at the helm to enable participatory decision-making that propels innovation—what we call a learner-in-chief. Superintendent Alan Cheng and his team members at NYC’s Consortium, Internationals, and Outward Bound Public High School District embody this leadership approach. Across the district, Cheng and his team foster a culture of collaboration, learning, innovation, and problem-solving. He has shifted the balance of power so that everyone is learning together. To Cheng, the work is about “principals learning that it’s perfectly okay—and in fact highly encouraged—to say, ‘I know even less than you about this, and we can learn together.’” You can see evidence of this leadership in the dynamic network of learning spaces that he and his team have designed, such as principal–coach pairings, problem-focused learning pods, and school-based improvement teams. Cheng also prioritizes building the capacity of every member of the team and school community to take this inquiry-based approach. He makes it “safe to fail” by celebrating risks and treating setbacks as chances to learn (Edmondson 1999).
Through all this, Cheng leads with humility and optimism. “I think leadership at its very best sometimes can be invisible,” Cheng says in our book. “A big part of being a leader is to be able to create … a sense of belonging and a sense of belief that we all can make a really big impact.”
In addition to the impressive improvement in graduation rates, the district under Cheng’s leadership has identified new approaches to adolescent literacy assessment and support, developed student- and staff-designed AI tools that enable deeper learning, and found new strategies for career exploration starting in 9th grade.
Making systemic change can be daunting. Cheng and other learners-in-chief show us what’s possible. It can start by setting a vision with a community, shifting mindsets (such as to value difference, rather than treating every student the same), and acknowledging that authority can be multidirectional and that learning is done best through collaboration. The Learning Hive offers tools and case studies for putting this approach to work in any context.
