Evaluation of the Networks for School Improvement (NSI) Initiative

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Across the United States, educators are seeking effective ways to improve outcomes for more students—including Black and Latino students and those experiencing poverty. One popular approach is networked continuous improvement, where groups of schools collaborate to identify shared challenges, test and refine solutions, and learn from each other’s experiences.

From 2018 to 2025, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation invested over $300 million in the Networks for School Improvement (NSI) initiative. Through this effort, intermediary organizations formed 34 networks—each with around 20 secondary schools—and established school-based teams focused on using structured, equity-centered continuous improvement (CI) processes to improve teaching practices and student supports. The ultimate goal of the networks was to increase the number of students on track for high school graduation and college enrollment.

This study was sponsored by the Gates Foundation, which created the Networks for School Improvement initiative to support school networks working to improve outcomes for all students, especially those furthest from opportunity, including students who are Black, Latino, or experiencing poverty. For more information, visit https://usprogram.gatesfoundation.org/

Why Evaluating the NSI Initiative Matters 

The NSI initiative was one of the largest efforts to scale networked continuous improvement in education, and it offers valuable lessons about what it takes to implement networked continuous improvement at scale, what supports schools need, and how these efforts can impact student outcomes. Understanding what works—and why—can help schools, intermediary organizations, funders, and policymakers interested in pursuing their own networked continuous improvement efforts do so successfully.

What the Research Teams Did 

To capture these lessons, the Gates Foundation funded three independent organizations to evaluate the NSI initiative. RAND studied how intermediary organizations designed and supported their networks. American Institutes for Research (AIR) examined how school teams implemented CI. RAND and AIR jointly examined correlations across these aspects of implementation. And Mathematica evaluated the impact of the NSI initiative on student outcomes.

Together, these studies provide a comprehensive look at how networked continuous improvement was implemented, what supports made a difference, and how these efforts influenced student success.