At Distinctive Schools, academic rigor and success are the highest priorities driving our instruction every day. This year, we are investing deeply in new, targeted approaches and strengthening our academic leadership so that every student receives the high-quality, personalized education they deserve. We are thrilled to welcome new academic leaders—Angela Sims as Chief Academic Officer and Kelli Easterly as Managing Director of STEM—who will spearhead the design and implementation of high-impact strategies across our network.
On top of new academic team leadership, Distinctive Schools is already laser-focused on innovative academic support for students and teachers alike to elevate academic growth and success. Here are three academic spotlights that illustrate how we are shifting practice in service of learning this year:
Building Foundational Literacy with K-2 Phonics Walks
Effective literacy instruction starts with a strong foundation in phonics, which is critical during the K-2 years when students are learning to read the skills necessary to later read to learn. To rapidly enhance instruction and boost student mastery, we launched K-2 phonics walks. This means our Director of Literacy Christina Camacho observes classes and provides real-time, bite-sized strategies that teachers can immediately implement. 
This initiative focuses heavily on shifting instructional practice to ensure students do the lifting by using manipulatives (like letter tiles) to build and blend words, a technique essential for orthographic mapping—the process where a student connects letter sounds to words without cognitive overload. Our classrooms are already seeing evidence of success in subsequent walks, with a positive shift in student engagement and active use of manipulatives. This concentrated effort means that our youngest learners are building the critical decoding skills they need to become confident readers.
Uplifting Learner Agency through Math Choice Boards
We believe that high rigor and learner agency can—and must—go hand-in-hand. This belief in student success—combined with our Network Math Specialist, Instructional Coaches, and school leaders driving a deep focus on math this year—serves as the foundation for a key new initiative: math choice boards. This innovative and hyper-relevant resource, developed by Network Math Specialist Christy Krier, is now rolling out network-wide for all K–8 classes. These boards are designed to solve critical classroom challenges like disengagement, work avoidance, and surface understanding by repositioning students as active thinkers, not just performers. By offering agency, the choice boards also help to reduce math anxiety and increase student confidence as they take control over their own learning journeys.
The choice boards provide students with a carefully curated list of diverse learning resources aligned to Tier 1 standards and explicitly connected to academic rigor. Instead of a one-size-fits-all lesson, students are emboldened to select the path, tool, or activity that best suits their learning style and addresses what they need in that moment, while still demonstrating mastery of the objective. By offering multiple pathways to the same rigorous learning objective, we are successfully elevating both the challenge and the ownership in every math lesson.
Targeted Support through Small Group Interventions
Our commitment to All Means All requires a robust and responsive Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS). This year, our school leaders, alongside the MTSS Academic Team including Dr. Maria Freeman, worked toward streamlining and intensifying our focus on small group MTSS interventions with K–3 students through specialized MTSS walkthroughs. This process is highly structured: it begins with a specialist modeling a lesson for teachers, followed by dedicated prep time for teachers to plan their own version, which they then use immediately while administration observes. This method allows teachers to learn in the moment, receive precise, actionable feedback, and quickly improve their practices. Our MTSS Leads are receiving rigorous training by Dr. Freeman, using data to effectively implement these high-impact programs and interventions across our network.
By prioritizing highly targeted, small-group instruction, every student receives the personalized learning support they need. These small groups allow teachers and specialists to work intensively with students on specific academic, attendance, or behavioral gaps identified through data. The emphasis is on immediate, impactful support, and we are already seeing swift results in student performance and engagement. This shift means our interventions are truly personalized and effective, quickly moving students toward grade-level mastery.
What’s Next for Personalized Learning
These three spotlights—phonics, math, and MTSS—are all leading toward our next major initiative in personalized learning: Distinctive Schools Learner Profiles. Every child will have a profile that serves as a dynamic map of their unique educational journey. These profiles go beyond test scores to capture the whole student: what they like to learn, what they are interested in, and how they learn best. This comprehensive view helps teachers know their students more holistically, fostering stronger relationships and enabling highly personalized instruction. Our Learner Agency Working Group is currently leveraging templates and AI tools like Playlab and Gemini to generate these initial profiles. Ultimately, the Learner Profile will be a powerful tool for students themselves, helping them set goals for themselves and take control of their own educational journey, making them confident co-creators of their academic success.
Stay tuned for more updates as we roll out this exciting new step in personalized learning!