When the second round of proposals from newly formed school networks in Chicago fell considerably short of the first, the Chicago Challenge temporarily suspended its grantmaking and diverted its energy to building the capacity of schools to assess their needs better and create bolder plans. Once it resumed grantmaking, the proposals it received were far more promising. Similarly, when the supply of external partners able to help schools did not meet the demand, the Chicago Challenge added to its agenda the task of building the capacity of external partners.

Few of the portfolios schools submitted for entrance into the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative met its high standards, so the Collaborative provided schools with coaches to help improve their portfolios, encouraging schools to reapply until they were admitted. This investment and process ended up strengthening not only portfolios but also schools. In the words of one teacher, the portfolio review process "was the best professional development experience" she and her school had ever had.

The Rural Challenge employed a cadre of regional "scouts" as it began the search for schools and communities ready to enact its vision of place-based learning. But even these forerunner sites needed help making real the hoped-for partnership between school and community, so the Rural Challenge turned its corps of temporary scouts into a group of permanent, experienced "stewards" able to support and assist these sites.

The Los Angeles Annenberg Metropolitan Project (LAAMP) began by casting a wide net, providing grant support to 28 School Families in the 4,000 square mile Los Angeles basin, encompassing 247 schools and 200,000 students. The learning plans submitted by School Families were equally ambitious. However, this initial emphasis on breadth, LAAMP soon realized, might not yield the substantial and lasting changes it also sought. It began supporting deeper work in a handful of School Families, coupled with a push for all School Families to narrow their focus, concentrating on literacy and one or two other areas.

Within months after Chicago's Challenge grant was announced, the city's educational landscape dramatically changed. A new school reform act imposed a high-stakes centralized accountability system on schools--just as the Challenge set out to deepen the decentralization launched by the city's previous school reform act of 1988, encouraging schools to connect more closely with their communities and personalize their learning environments. Rather than placing itself in opposition to--or aligning with--the new initiative, the Chicago Challenge decided to continue along a parallel track, hoping that its emphasis on teaching and learning and community leadership would eventually dovetail with the city's more centralized efforts. Recently, it has sought out opportunities to engage productively with the mayor-appointed school administration and to publicize its successes.

The New York Networks began with a plan to create a "Learning Zone" -- a deregulated "charter district" within the larger school system -- where in exchange for autonomy, the project's small schools would hold themselves to the highest standards of accountability. A sudden change of school chancellors put this plan in jeopardy. Chancellor Cortines had endorsed the concept; his successor, Rudolph Crew, did not. The New York Networks considered lobbying the state legislature to authorize the Learning Zone, but decided against it. They considered pushing their case aggressively with the new chancellor, but ultimately focused on working collaboratively with him on his own agenda. Recently, Crew announced a plan to create two "demonstration zones" within the city's school system, drawing upon the Networks' original Learning Zone for ideas.