Our Work · Education Practice

The work between the plan and the classroom.

We help districts close achievement gaps and meet their goals. We shift the mindsets of the people responsible for getting them there, and we coach those leaders through for the long haul, with the tools and training to make change last.

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Educators collaborating in a small group session

Who we serve

We work at the system level.

Our education work happens where decisions about people, structures, and resources shape what happens in every school: districts, county and state offices, and the organizations that support them.

Core practice

K-12 Districts

Superintendents, cabinets, and central office teams navigating improvement plans, new initiatives, leadership transitions, and the change fatigue that comes with all three.

System partners

State & County Offices

Education agencies and county offices building the capacity of the districts they serve, through technical assistance, networked improvement, and program evaluation.

Institutions

Higher Education

Colleges and university systems navigating restructuring, leadership transitions, and change efforts that keep stalling, grounded in our founder’s experience in higher-education systems leadership.

Ecosystem partners

Education Partners

Career and technical education organizations, foundations, and nonprofits that support schools. The partners working alongside districts to improve outcomes.

What we do

Engagements that move systems.

Every engagement is customized, but the work tends to take these shapes. In all of them, we stay through execution: tools, training, coaching, and leadership support included.

Strategy & Systems

District Improvement & Action Planning

Diagnostic-driven strategic plans and concrete action plans that central office and school leaders actually use.

Central Office Transformation

Reshaping how the central office works, including the shift from compliance to customer service for the schools it supports.

Change Management for Initiatives

Curriculum adoptions, reorganizations, new programs, managed so staff adopt the change instead of waiting it out.

Leadership

Executive Coaching

Confidential, one-on-one coaching for superintendents, cabinet members, and senior agency leaders.

Leadership Development and Convenings

Cohort experiences for principals, district leaders, and the teams around them. Retreats and convenings designed and facilitated to produce decisions, not just discussion.

Governance and Accountability

Board governance, leadership accountability structures, and the decision-making frameworks that keep district and school leadership aligned and effective.

Learning & Improvement

Professional Learning

Professional learning designed around what leaders, certificated staff, and classified staff actually need to change practice. Job-embedded, evidence-based, and built so staff leave with something they can use the next day.

Improvement Science

Disciplined inquiry cycles and networked improvement, grounded in the Data Wise Improvement Process, that turn stubborn problems of practice into measurable progress.

Instructional Design

Standards-aligned units, learning experiences, and materials built for how teachers actually teach and how students actually learn.

Assessments and Audits

Organizational Readiness Assessment

A diagnostic examination of whether your systems, structures, and leadership capacity are in place to support the change you are trying to make. Built to inform what comes next.

Culture and Climate Assessment

Surveys, interviews, and observational analysis that give leaders an honest picture of what staff, students, and families actually experience. Focused on the conditions that determine whether improvement lasts.

Special Education Program Audit

A ground-up examination of your programs, practices, staffing, and compliance. Gives leaders a clear picture of where the system stands and a concrete path forward built entirely around what your organization needs.

Case studies

What the work looks like.

County office · Improvement infrastructure

Building improvement infrastructure across a county office

Work supported by our team included helping a county office of education and multiple districts develop Local Control and Accountability Plans and build the internal capacity to implement them. Over a 12-month engagement, the work supported the development of data teams, improvement cycles, and professional learning communities across several districts in the region. At the close, district teams owned the inquiry processes and could run them without external facilitation, and the county office had a repeatable model it has since extended to additional districts.

District · Professional learning

Professional learning on behavioral response

A California school district engaged First Water to design and facilitate professional learning on hate-motivated behavior for all site administrators and middle school teachers. The engagement was anchored in the district's LCAP goals and grounded in California Education Code, Title VI, and the district's own policies and regulations. The session used First Water's I3 Framework, three levels of interruption operating simultaneously: interrupt your own thinking, interrupt the current incident, interrupt the system for the future. It was designed not as a one-time training but as a foundation for ongoing administrative accountability. Participants left with a shared framework and a common language for responding in the moment, and the district adopted the approach as the basis for its ongoing response protocol.

District · Leadership & culture

Multi-year leadership development and culture work

A California school district engaged First Water over multiple years for leadership development and culture work with district and site leadership. The engagement combined executive coaching, facilitated learning sessions, and organizational development support designed to build leadership capacity at every level. Work included 360 feedback processes, coaching using the Leadership Circle Profile® and Immunity to Change frameworks, and professional learning agendas aligned to the district's strategic priorities. Over the engagement, leaders moved measurably on their 360 reassessments, and the district built an internal leadership pipeline that no longer depended on outside facilitation.

Foundation · Stakeholder engagement & culture

Stakeholder-informed culture and leadership work for a foundation

A foundation engaged First Water to understand its stakeholders and strengthen the leadership teams carrying its mission. The work began with stakeholder outreach and a culture assessment, surfacing what staff and partners were actually experiencing. From those findings, First Water designed tailored professional development for the leadership teams and built a concrete action plan to respond to the stakeholder survey inputs. The result was a clear, prioritized set of commitments tied directly to what stakeholders said, with leadership equipped to carry them forward.

Contact

Ready to move your system forward?

Tell us what your district or agency is working through. We’ll bring the questions that get underneath it.