•This paper examines the implementation of the Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBV) Residential Primary School Program in Gujarat to analyze whether a mainstream developmentalist program can be reappropriated to go beyond educational provision and support social transformation.•I trace the empowerment discourses embedded in this partnership through curricular and pedagogical engagements within the KGBV program in Gujarat to examine whether multiple and often competing discourses can be appropriated to address girls’ marginalization.•I posit that programs and partnerships must specifically and systematically address the cultural and institutional forces that work to reinforce inequality and marginalization, but that these perspectives also need large scale popular and political buy-in, in order to realize their dual goals of service provision and long-term social transformation. This article seeks to illustrate how various actors involved in a state-NGO partnership to provide marginalized girls educational opportunities appropriate discourses related to schooling and empowerment in India. It traces the multiple discourses of empowerment underlying the implementation of the Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyala (KGBV) program in the Western state of Gujarat to gain a more nuanced understanding of the influences on educational programs’ ability to support social transformation. I show how these multiple, and often competing, discourses might be appropriated to take into account the systems, structures, and practices that act as barriers to implement reform-oriented practices that perpetuate girls’ marginalization. To do so, I also posit that programs and partnerships must specifically and systematically address the cultural and institutional forces that work to reinforce inequality and marginalization, but that these perspectives need large scale popular and political buy-in in order to realize their dual goals of service provision and long-term social transformation.