Our Origins

The experience of turning around Locke highlighted the enormous challenges faced by teachers and school leaders tasked with preparing the most at-risk students for college in just four years. As a result, Green Dot developed a middle school strategy with the purpose of providing students with a seven year pathway to college and accelerating attainment levels among incoming high school freshman. We opened our first middle school in 2010 and continue to open middle schools alongside our high schools to provide students with earlier pathways to success.

Meanwhile, we looked at a future beyond Los Angeles. For years, other states and districts had sought Green Dot’s advice in turning around struggling schools. After careful analysis of the national landscape, we chose to pursue offers to open schools in Tennessee and Washington State. In Tennessee, the Achievement School District (ASD) is an ambitious project that invites highly-effective operators to turn around the lowest performing 5% of schools in the state; the majority located in Memphis. ASD provides an opportunity to be a leader in a wide-scale, systemic reform effort that expands Green Dot’s potential impact well beyond our own schools and students. Meanwhile, Washington, as one of the most recent states to adopt new charter laws, represents an opportunity to work within a charter landscape founded on the learning and best-practices of twenty years of national education reform. Both regions allow Green Dot to fulfill its core mission to improve educational opportunities for all.