In 2002, Rich DeLorenzo established the Re-Inventing Schools Coalition (RISC) as a nonprofit organization, along with Wendy Battino and Rick Schreiber. A diverse board of directors was invited to work side by side with the small RISC staff. 
Prior to the creation of RISC, DeLorenzo was assistant superintendent, and later superintendent, of Alaska’s Chugach School District and one of the key leaders who was instrumental in developing a radically different approach to education in this rural and historically challenged district. DeLorenzo led the district as it applied for and subsequently won the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.
Battino and Schreiber were part of the core district team that dedicated hundreds of hours to developing, applying, and continually improving thematic units, tools, assessments, and instructional approaches, which ultimately were central to the Chugach district’s award-winning model.
The processes, tools, and systems of change that had been developed in the Chugach School District were refined, expanded, reconstituted, and formalized into what become known as the RISC Approach to Schooling. The RISC organization was created to help address requests from other organizations, and to garner additional support for RISC’s standards- and performance-based approach to keep the movement alive.
The name RISC was chosen deliberately. Schools and districts that would adopt the RISC philosophy would take risks in transitioning to a system fundamentally distinct from the grade-level, age-based, time-driven traditional approach to education.
For more details about the history of RISC, see Delivering on the Promise: The Education Revolution.
