District Leadership for Excellence and Equity Advanced Certificate Program
Through this course, leaders will learn how culture, curricula, and instruction make a powerful difference in schools that achieve equity and excellence. District leaders will form a clearer image of the transformation they want to inspire and support as they assess the extent to which their schools’ culture, curricula, and instruction resemble those found in very high-performing schools. District leaders will learn strategies for communicating expectations and for providing support related to those expectations in ways that maximize the likelihood that school leaders will improve their schools’ culture, curricula, and instruction in ways that advance equity and excellence. As part of this course, district leaders will participate in one of three opportunities to visit classrooms in a high-performing urban school. By the end of the course, participants will have a clearer perspective of how schools under their supervision will need to improve in order to advance equity and excellence in learning results.
Through this course, district leaders will support the school leaders they supervise in developing/strengthening a coherent educational improvement system that advances their school’s progress toward equity and excellence. District leaders will support campus leaders in engaging key stakeholders in assessing their school’s educational improvement efforts and conceptualizing a coherent system that will improve the school’s culture, curricula, and instruction for all demographic groups of students. Specifically, district leaders will guide their school leader colleagues in pursuing a planning process that 1) increases clarity about the critical academic standards all students need to master, 2) defines common assessment tools and strategies to be employed, 3) strengthens teacher collaboration in ways that improve the initial instruction (tier I instruction) provided to students, 4) develops timely, effective, and powerful intervention and enrichment strategies, and 5) ensures that all stakeholders (including students, parents, and teachers) are likely to feel both valued and capable throughout all system components. As part of this course, leaders will participate in a Zoom-based micro-lab with district leaders who support or have supported high-performing urban schools. The micro-lab will highlight how district leaders helped their schools achieve equitable and excellent learning results through the establishment of coherent educational improvement systems.
Through this course, district leaders will engage the school leaders at their school in understanding how their school culture might be strengthened in ways that promote equity and excellence. In particular, district leaders will support school leaders as they engage key stakeholders in defining a few key actions for strengthening school culture for diverse groups of students and for all school personnel. As part of this course, district leaders will conduct a phone or Zoom interview with a district leader from a district with a school that won the America’s Best Urban School Award. The focus of the interview will be the leadership practices that influenced the development of a positive transformational culture 1) for all groups of students and 2) for all school personnel.
Through this course, district leaders will engage school leaders in understanding how curriculum and instruction at their schools might be strengthened in ways that promote equity and excellence. In particular, district leaders will guide school leaders in enlisting key stakeholders in defining key practices they will commit to master in ways that promote deep understanding among all students and advance the pursuit of equity and excellence. As well, district leaders will support school leaders in designing, implementing, and refining plans in ways that are most likely to result in the continuous improvement of the specific instructional practices they commit to addressing. As part of this course, district leaders will participate in one of three opportunities to visit classrooms in a high-performing urban school. As part of this course, leaders will review and analyze video-recorded lessons from real urban schools. The recordings will highlight the distinctive teaching practices that promote equity and excellence in classrooms.
Through this course, district leaders will engage the school leaders at their school in understanding how their school culture might be strengthened in ways that promote equity and excellence. In particular, district leaders will support school leaders as they engage key stakeholders in defining a few key actions for strengthening school culture for diverse groups of students and for all school personnel. As part of this course, district leaders will conduct a phone or Zoom interview with a district leader from a district with a school that won the America’s Best Urban School Award. The focus of the interview will be the leadership practices that influenced the development of a positive transformational culture 1) for all groups of students and 2) for all school personnel.
Get notified about new articles, events, insights, and opportunities.