NATIONAL PRINCIPAL CERTIFICATE FOR EQUITY AND EXCELLENCE
Through this course, leaders will learn how culture, curricula, and instruction make a powerful difference in schools that achieve equity and excellence. School leaders will form a clearer image of the transformation they want to inspire and support as they assess the extent to which their school’s culture, curricula, and instruction resemble those found in very high-performing schools. As part of this course, 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 school culture, curricula, and instruction at their school will need to improve in order to advance equity and excellence in learning results.
Through this course, leaders will develop/strengthen a coherent educational improvement system that advances their school’s progress toward equity and excellence. Each leader will engage 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. Each leader will guide their school’s planning process in a way 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 leaders from high-performing urban schools. The micro-lab will highlight how leaders helped their schools achieve equitable and excellent learning results through the establishment of coherent educational improvement systems.
Through this course, leaders will engage key stakeholders at their school in understanding how their school culture might be strengthened in ways that promote equity and excellence. In particular, leaders will enlist key stakeholders in defining a few key actions they will undertake to strengthen school culture for diverse groups of students and for all school personnel. As part of this course, leaders will conduct a phone or Zoom interview with a leader from 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, leaders will engage key stakeholders (especially teachers and instructional leaders) at their school in understanding how curriculum and instruction at their school might be strengthened in ways that promote equity and excellence. In particular, leaders will enlist key stakeholders in defining one or two 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, leaders will support stakeholders 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, 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, each leader will reflect upon the progress generated throughout the prior four courses. Specifically, each leader will consider the extent to which they have developed a critical mass of stakeholders who are committed to strengthening the school’s culture, curricula, and instruction and building a coherent educational improvement system in ways likely to advance equity and excellence. Each leader will be asked to reflect upon the four leadership challenges that often frustrate school improvement efforts. Leaders will identify sources of resistance and consider leadership strategies that can be helpful in responding to the resistance. As a part of this course, participants will participate in the America’s Best Urban Schools Symposium during which they will have opportunities to interact with leaders from schools that achieve remarkable results for every demographic group served. The course will culminate in the development of a leadership plan for advancing school improvement efforts in the 2021-2022 academic year.
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