Welcome to A Grand Bargain’s website – a unique online resource for district officials, state policy makers, and education reformers. This site accompanies A Grand Bargain for Education Reform: New Rewards and Supports for New Accountability (Harvard Education Press: August, 2009) and is part of Operation Public Education (OPE)'s effort to assist policy makers and practitioners interested in implementing comprehensive school reform. A Grand Bargain offers a simple but powerful quid pro quo: carefully targeted investment in return for fundamental education reform. This site is designed to provide policymakers and practitioners with the knowledge, skills, and tools they need to sustain fundamental change.

Drawing on the expertise of nationally recognized school reform leaders, OPE has developed an ambitious framework that is characterized by new forms of evaluation and compensation, meaningful opportunities for career advancement, and data-driven, job-embedded professional development for all educators. A Grand Bargain sketches this framework for school reform, which consists of individual components that fall under one of three pillars: The New Reward Structure, Support for Educators, or Piloting the Framework. In this realigned system, new forms of accountability are introduced, but they go hand in hand with new forms of professional development to help educators succeed in their instructional tasks. Read more about the OPE framework.

Efforts to undertake reform of this nature are currently underway across the country, but this type of systemic change is incredibly challenging. It is our hope that this website will help to catalyze reform by equipping districts with the resources they need to sustain improvements. On the site, you’ll find:

• Overview pages, which discuss the key principles and individual components of The New Reward Structure, Support for Educators, and Piloting the Framework.
• Component pages, which provide an overview of and rationale for each individual component of the framework, specific recommendations, pertinent research and publications, helpful websites, and tools for implementation.
• Case study pages, which highlight the key elements and most useful resources of a variety of state’s, district’s, and organization’s work on each component.