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PRESS RELEASE

For more information contact:
Natassia Pura
Director of Development & External Relations
415/824-6196 x110
npura@partnersinschools.org

Partners in School Innovation Announces New Leadership:
Experienced District Reform Leader to Launch the Strategic
Growth of High-Impact Non-Profit Organization

San Francisco, CA - May 13, 2009 - The Board of Directors of Partners in School Innovation ("PartnersSI") is pleased to announce that Dr. Derek Mitchell has been appointed Chief Executive Officer of the Bay Area school reform organization effective June 2009. Dr. Mitchell has in-depth district reform experience in a range of urban school districts and has worked with some of the most respected former superintendents in the country including Rudy Crew, John Deasy and John Simpson.

Born and raised in Chicago, IL, Dr. Mitchell attended Pomona College in Claremont, CA and later earned a PhD in Educational Psychology from the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. While at UCLA, Dr. Mitchell served as the chief architect and Project Director for the Quality School Portfolio Training Initiative at the Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing (CRESST), a project that pioneered school and district information management systems and data-driven support technologies. After receiving his degree, Dr. Mitchell served as the Director of Technology and Student Achievement for the Oakland Unified School District where he was responsible for addressing equity-related challenges facing the district in assessment, technology and achievement. Subsequently, he served as Program Manager in the District Alliance Program at the Stupski Foundation in California where he managed the foundation's efforts to support district-wide reform in a number of districts across the country, including Jackson Public Schools in Mississippi and the Baltimore City Public Schools System in Maryland.

Dr. Mitchell will be leaving his current position as Executive Director of the Opportunity Zone in Prince George's County, MD, which consists of the district's efforts to instill innovative school options as a core component of district-wide reforms. He has been responsible for a number of departments including New & Charter Schools, Pupil Accounting & School Boundaries, New School Design and Development, and the support and professional development of the principals of the 10 district-wide schools of choice.

Dr. Mitchell joins Partners in School Innovation as the organization prepares to launch a five-year strategic plan for growing its regional presence into national influence by expanding its impact beyond the San Francisco Bay Area. As Gary Steele, the President and CEO of Landec Corporation who serves as PartnersSI's Chairman of the Board, states, "Dr. Mitchell's combination of commitment to performance-based improvements in public schools, his passion for seeking breakthrough gains in teacher quality and student achievement, and his demonstrated leadership successes in urban school districts truly excites our Board of Directors and our staff. We feel very fortunate to have attracted such a dynamic leader."

Those who have worked closely with Dr. Mitchell speak highly of him. "Derek Mitchell is a brilliant educator and a passionate leader. He will build on the strong reputation Partners in School Innovation has established," says Ted Mitchell, CEO of NewSchools Venture Fund, "I look forward to working with Derek in this new role." Similarly, John Simpson, past Broad Award winning Superintendent of Norfolk Public Schools, VA, describes Dr. Mitchell as a "vibrant young leader, relentless in his pursuit for social justice and wholly dedicated to the highest quality education opportunities for all students, especially children too often disenfranchised because of race, ethnicity, poverty and language. He is a strategic thinker who quickly brings focus to the work and is completely approachable, accessible and responsive to internal and external constituents."

Dr. Mitchell succeeds Becky Crowe Hill who, since 2003, has skillfully led PartnersSI through dramatic growth. Crowe Hill was recently selected by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to receive a scholarship to attend the Sloan Fellows Master's Program, a yearlong program for mid-career executives, at the Stanford Graduate School of Business beginning in September 2009. During her tenure, PartnersSI transformed from a high quality service organization enlisting AmeriCorps members to help low-income schools to a high impact leader in school and district transformation. The organization now attracts former urban educators with outstanding track records to the job of improving the quality of leadership and instruction in the most challenging of environments. Since 2005, the organization has more than doubled its budget to $3.3 million and expanded its services from 9 to 18 schools in 3 of the largest urban school districts in the Bay Area: San Francisco Unified, San Jose Unified and Oakland Unified.

Dr. Mitchell expressed excitement over the opportunity to lead PartnersSI into the next phase of growth: "I was drawn to the work of PartnersSI because of their impressive student achievement gains. As a result of the last 15 years of consistent commitment to improving the quality of instruction, PartnersSI is well-positioned where others want to be: where the magic between teachers and children is fostered and supported to yield extraordinary results. I knew PartnersSI was where I wanted to serve as soon as I understood that bringing the PartnerSI model to serve more teachers and students was not just an organizational objective, but also a moral imperative for the staff and the Board." Crowe Hill echoed this saying, "I am delighted that Derek Mitchell will be leading PartnersSI through our next stage of growth. He is a brilliant and inspiring leader who is uniquely positioned to build on our fifteen years of strong groundwork and take the organization to the next level of impact for students of color and students living in poverty across the country."

About Partners in School Innovation

About Partners in School Innovation Partners in School Innovation ("PartnersSI") is an entrepreneurial school improvement organization working to transform public elementary schools in urban, low-income communities. It partners with under-performing schools and districts and enables them to accelerate the literacy achievement of African American and Latino students and English Learners from low-income families. PartnersSI places equal focus on developing the capacity of leaders - teachers, principals and district administrators - to develop the systems that continually improve the quality of teaching in the classroom using a results-oriented approach to organizational improvement. The organization's approach is systemic, strengthening the links between the quality of what happens in the classroom to the school and district level policies, practices and culture that either promote or inhibit the continuous improvement of teaching and learning. On average, schools served by PartnersSI are doubling California's literacy gains on the California Standards Test in English Language Arts.

Since its founding in 1993, PartnersSI has worked in over 40 urban schools and 9 districts serving nearly 60,000 students, teachers and leaders. It currently impacts more than 16,000 students, teachers and leaders. For more information, visit the organization's website at www.partnersinschools.org.