Whose Innovation? Philanthropic and School-Based Visions of High School in the XQ Super School Competition

Author

Brett G. Murphy, The Graduate Center, City University of New YorkFollow

Date of Degree

2-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Urban Education

Advisor

Rosa Rivera-McCutchen

Committee Members

Michelle Fine

Judith Kafka

Subject Categories

Curriculum and Social Inquiry | Education Policy | Race and Ethnicity | Secondary Education

Keywords

philanthropy, innovation, high school, design, small schools, technology

Abstract

The XQ Institute, funded by Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective, launched a design competition in 2015 to find the most innovative high schools in the country. Their goal was to spark a movement that would revolutionize secondary school in the United States, a system they claimed was 100 years behind the times. Called the Super School Project, the winning ten teams each received $10 million. While XQ claims that the best ideas about high school reform come from communities and student voice, they also have funded selective ideas about “innovation,” including computer-based personalized learning. The organization’s efforts have grown in the past eight years, but, to date, there has been almost no scholarly attention given to XQ and a relatively small body of research on the most recent wave of education philanthropy more broadly.

In this dissertation, I focus on the original Super Schools competition to uncover what vision of innovation XQ is promoting, both explicitly through their publicity materials and implicitly through an analysis of the schools they selected and the narrative about education reform they have created around them. I begin with a discourse analysis of XQ’s media materials to understand their ideas about innovation and what ideologies they support, particularly as they relate to race, class, and technology. While most research on education foundations stays at the macro level, I zoom in on one Super School, Da Vinci RISE High School in Los Angeles, to see what how these ideas play out in practice and how the students, families, and educators who are a part of these schools and communities conceptualize, imagine, and practice “innovation” in education. I argue that XQ has developed a narrative about innovation that emphasizes individual school fixes like flexible and hybrid schedules, project-based curriculum and computer-based personalized learning software. They use their Super Schools as models of these ideals and rely on media production to promote often racialized stories of individual uplift to demonstrate how these schools can help all students gain access to the jobs of the future in a largely tech-driven world. XQ’s vision of innovation not only ignores larger historical and systemic factors related to student achievement and well-being but also runs counter to what people within RISE think, feel and experience. The alumni, teachers, staff and community partners I spoke with for this research stressed care and resources as the cornerstone of their school and shared the successes and challenges of starting a school for students who are navigating multiple systemic inequities. Their version of innovation, particularly any conversation about money and funding, is largely absent from XQ’s presentation. Instead XQ presents a new version of an old philanthropic idea: individual schools of dedicated, smart people with the right ideas can solve for education inequity and give every child the learning experience they deserve.

Recommended Citation

Murphy, Brett G., "Whose Innovation? Philanthropic and School-Based Visions of High School in the XQ Super School Competition" (2025). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6149