At New School San Francisco, learning starts with curiosity. The school believes that when students explore meaningful questions and make connections across subjects and across lines of difference, they achieve at high levels and grow as thinkers, creators, and community members.
Located in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, New School San Francisco serves grades TK-8 through a model that combines academic rigor with inquiry and personalization. Students help generate and investigate big questions that drive their learning across disciplines, integrating academic standards, critical thinking, collaboration, and real-world application.
Founded in 2015 by Emily Bobel Kilduff and Ryan Chapman, New School San Francisco is a diverse-by-design public charter school that draws students from across San Francisco. Its enrollment system ensures that at least half of students come from households that qualify for free or reduced-priced meals, creating a vibrant mix of backgrounds and perspectives. This intentional diversity shapes every aspect of school life — from classroom practices to family partnerships and staff development — building a community where everyone feels they belong.
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New School San Francisco’s approach rests on two pillars — inquiry arcs and individual learning plans — that together create personalized, rigorous learning experiences rooted in curiosity and community.
Professional learning mirrors the same philosophy. Staff engage in inquiry-driven professional development where they collaborate, reflect, and learn by doing. Teaching practices continuously evolve to meet student needs.
For three years straight, New School San Francisco has been recognized as a high-performing school by the State of California.
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(Results for the 2023-24 SY)
As New School expanded to serve more students, it also began to see a greater variation in learning needs. The team noticed that while inquiry-based instruction engaged many students, others, including English learners and students with disabilities, needed more targeted support. Families also expressed concern that pulling students out of the classroom for interventions created stigma and disrupted the sense of belonging central to the school’s model.
In response, the team reimagined its staffing approach. Lead teachers were paired with associate or resident teachers, specialists, or interventionists to co-plan and teach together. This shift allowed for flexible grouping, in-class interventions, and individualized support without removing students from inquiry-rich environments. Adopted before the pandemic and strengthened afterward, this co-teaching model has led to significant growth: In 2023, English learners and economically disadvantaged students improved in math by more than 30 points, while students with disabilities gained over 20 points.
Lesson 2: Build Family Partnerships that Reflect the Community
Early efforts to engage families focused on traditional events like back-to-school nights and parent-teacher conferences. While these were well-intentioned, they didn’t reach every family equally. School leaders realized that meaningful engagement required understanding different cultural norms and creating more varied and inclusive ways for families to participate.
To address this, New School formed family committees to help families navigate educational expectations, expanded multilingual communication systems, and created more flexible opportunities for involvement such as student showcases and family-led presentations that honor different participation styles. The school also established quarterly feedback surveys to assess whether all families felt welcomed and heard. These efforts deepened trust and strengthened the connections between home and school, helping ensure that every family felt they had a voice in their child’s education.
Lesson 3: Measure What Matters Most
Traditional tests alone couldn’t capture the depth of learning taking place at New School San Francisco. Through inquiry arcs, students were conducting complex investigations, making connections across disciplines, and demonstrating understanding in ways that standardized assessments didn’t reflect.
To better measure this kind of learning, the school developed Individualized Learning Plans (ILPs) that capture not only academics but include social-emotional competencies and inquiry-processing skills — core tenants of the school’s model. ILPs give a fuller picture of student growth and ensure that accountability measures align with the school’s educational philosophy. External researchers have validated the approach, confirming that it accurately captures both academic and deeper learning outcomes.
New School San Francisco shows what’s possible when a school places curiosity, community, and belonging at the center of academic rigor. Its story illustrates that inquiry-driven learning can lead to both exceptional results and deep engagements for students and teachers alike. By aligning professional learning with student learning and by treating diversity as a strength to be cultivated rather than a challenge to be managed, New School is preparing a new generation of learners and educators to thrive in a complex and interconnected world.
