Available Public Goods for K12 Regional Partnerships and Education Practitioners
About the Tools:
Horizons Regional Partnership—supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—has helped build the structure and momentum needed to connect partnerships across Washington. Through this network, regional teams share best practices, analyze data, and collaborate on strategies to improve post-secondary transitions. The partnership also provides technical assistance, data infrastructure, and structured time for teams to reflect on barriers and design systemic solutions.
What these efforts offered wasn’t a new mission, but a catalyst. They encouraged partners to shift from isolated programs to bigger, system-level questions: How do our policies align? Where do students encounter breakdowns? And what would it look like to coordinate action across an entire region, not just within individual institutions?
To support this work, the partnership used three assessments along with a facilitators guide to support administration:
Helps partnerships understand how well the backbone organization supports regional work. It highlights strengths, gaps, and next steps for improving coordination and collaboration.
Focuses on how the partnership functions overall—its shared purpose, participation, relationships, structures, and decision-making.
Examines how partnerships use data to support students, including data literacy, systems, coaching, and the role of Local Data Intermediaries.
Provides General Guidelines for administering the assessments. The process follows a modified Delphi method to encourage self-reflection and align group consensus. These guidelines build on past experiences to enhance efficiency, engagement, and accuracy in data collection. While we provide a recommended approach, Local Monitoring and Learning Evaluators have the flexibility to adjust the methodology to fit regional needs. Use your expertise and understanding of local dynamics to maximize participation and meaningful insights.
Facilitation Guide
Sign up to download a copy of this guide.
These tools were designed to help partnerships understand how they work together, where they are strong, and where they may want to grow. They are not performance evaluations; they are reflective tools that support learning, planning, and continuous improvement.
How You Can Use This Tool In Your Region:
Administer assessments with a modified Delphi approach
Reflect on self-assessment actions
Analyze key opportunities within partnerships
Create regional plan to strengthen collaboration
Align efforts across educacton
Public Dissemination: We introduced these assessments at WERA 2025 during the session Learning Across the Gaps: Using Data to Strengthen Regional Collaboration and Capacity in Uncertain Times. All three assessments are available as free, public tools for any region working to strengthen post-secondary transitions, along with a facilitation guide to support their use.