How do you elevate to greatness?
How do you scale impact?
Our specialty is building the capacity of your team to find the solutions for these questions.
Our team and partners are educators and entrepreneurs who have world-class experience helping teams develop and turn solid ideas into high impact solutions for students, schools, districts and communities.
For over 30 years, we have served education clients including foundations, school districts, state agencies, school design organizations, charter schools and regional education transformation intermediaries. Our common bond with our clients is the unwavering commitment and bold ambition to transform public education to better prepare kids to access the best opportunities in life and careers.
In 1992, Ted Fujimoto relocated his technology company, Landmark Consulting Group, and was struggling to find employees that had the skills to work on complex projects. By 1996, in collaboration with the business community and the school district, he co-founded the creation and design of the Napa New Technology High School - a groundbreaking alternative district public high school for struggling students.
This innovative institution embraced a radical approach with no lectures, only workshops and all learning through projects to solve real-world problems. With an intentionally created culture of trust, respect and responsibility, students thrived. Ted's company provided the school with project management protocols and tools, mirroring those used in real-life scenarios. This laid the groundwork for what is now widely recognized as "Project-Based Learning."
The success was evident early on with students so engrossed in their projects that many had to be urged to leave the school building by 7:30 PM. Within the first year, Napa New Technology High School surpassed every other high school in the County in all academic measures - a testament to the power of authentic learning, student engagement and intentional school design.
Napa New Technology High School became a U.S. Department of Education National Demonstration site and has hosted over 22,000 visitors and trained over 232 schools from 6 continents.
Ted then co-founded the New Technology Foundation which utilized inspired methods from Ritz Carlton and other world-class organizations to scale with impact and quality through intentional design, culture and execution-based accountability. It has evolved to what is now known as the New Tech Network - a national school design network with over 350+ schools (mostly public district schools), 20,000 educators and over 100,000 graduates.
Where it began
1996
Today
+350 schools
+20,000 educators
+100,000 graduates
Scaling Impact
Around the same time as the establishment of Napa New Technology High School, Big Picture Learning (The MET) emerged in Providence, Rhode Island. This initiative took an even more radical approach to engage at-risk students, focusing not only on projects but predominantly on learning through internships.
In 1998, Ted Fujimoto collaborated with the Big Picture Learning founding team to formalize the timeless and essential school design elements crucial to the success of their model. Additionally, he played a pivotal role in developing their strategic plan. This collaboration helped propel Big Picture Learning's two schools to a global network encompassing over 275 schools - another testament to the enduring impact of innovative education strategies.
Ted also helped create the pivotal strategic plans for a number of the early charter school management organizations that opened up dozens of schools.
+275 schools
Boosting Performance
The journey to provide a structured approach to improve the quality of established schools started when Ted Fujimoto was asked to develop the overall strategic plan and help launch the California Charter Schools Association with the focus on support services to help the movement grow with quality. He subsequently trained and help build the capacity of the school support teams of 16 other state charter school associations. Landmark Consulting Group oversaw the evaluation of proposals for all Federal School Improvement Grants for the State of Louisiana.
Walton Family Foundation engaged Landmark Consulting Group to work in six states along with the charter school associations to shape a strategy and develop programs to boost the quality of charter schools. This spawned the Elevate Charter Schools improvement program that worked with charter school leaders and boards to understand the obligations of their charter contract and create and/or implement school designs.
The Elevate Public Schools program is designed to help struggling schools redesign and high performing ones to sustain and scale.
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7 states
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17 charter school state associations
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Federal school improvement grant evaluations
Redesign your school to elevate performance
School Design Studio
School Design Studio™ - a groundbreaking approach that transforms schools and reignites educational missions while fostering sustained impact and legacy. Our innovative methodology goes beyond surface changes, reshaping core principles with design thinking to create robust operational protocols for future-proof success. Hundreds of schools have benefited using this methodology.
Overview
Insights from "From Within" Documentary:
The film delves into the real challenges faced by two failing schools in Arkansas and how School Design Studio methodologies sparked profound shifts. Testimonials highlight the power of building trust, enhancing communication and fostering a culture of collaboration among educators, students and families.
Altering your pedagogy can be overwhelming, and at times, it can be difficult to see the benefit of changing your practice at all. Advanced Reasoning In Education (ARIE) has pioneered deeper learning processes and systems globally, embracing diverse cultures. After a decade of influencing 21st-century education and impacting educators and leaders worldwide, Steven Zipkes, the former founding principal of Manor New Technology High School, has expanded his vision of school redesign for creativity, deeper learning practices and systemic change. This transformation turned an idea into a Nationally Recognized, 100% Project-Based Learning STEM School, forming Advanced Reasoning In Education.
Through ARIE Global Project-Based Learning Academies, our trainers, drawing from actual, relevant, 100% PBL classroom experience, share our 21st-century design for deeper learning through interactive, authentic project development.
Unlock the Potential of Every Educator to Teach Students How to Learn
ARIE PBL Academies
Develop Your Organization's Roadmap for Quality and Growth
Strategic Planning
Accomplishments by our strategic planning clients:
$500M+
Philantrophy Funds Received
1,100+
Schools Launched/ Redesigned
1M+
Students Served
We employ a distinctive process that empowers our clients to craft a strategic plan that is ambitious while staying authentically grounded in reality and mindful of the pace of change, people, biases and capacity building.
Consequently, our strategic planning process transcends the conventional and becomes a platform that encourages stakeholders to engage in deeper thinking and understanding, transforming the plan document into a collection of meaningful executable agreements.
Foundations and investors value the clarity, transparency, executability and risk management embedded in our plans.
A few of our clients
Joint Venture Partners
COLLABORATION
ELEVATE PUBLIC SCHOOLS is a joint venture between Landmark Consulting Group, EF International Advisors, Advanced Reasoning Institute and a growing list of collaborators under a unified vision, purpose and pedagogy.
Leadership, Sustainability, Finance, and Strategic Planning
Project-Based Learning (PBL) and Instructional Leadership
