The Partnership's Current Direction

The Partnership is working constantly to support school districts as they expand their capacity to improve learning and teaching.

How Are We Doing This?

• By seeking help to provide external resources for school improvement through regional, state and national partnerships with groups and organizations that support high-velocity school improvement.
• By collaborating in funding proposals from districts which focus on building instructional or leadership capacity
• By working with districts to inform the public of the need for high expectations and academic achievement for all children.

Three Pillars of Support for School Change

To assist in the process of change, we support efforts by schools directed at three fundamental areas. These three pillars of support for school change have been found to be particularly effective in promoting the development of teacher and instructional leaders. These are:

• The Glasser approach (a consistent behavioral management system based on the theories of Dr. William Glasser). This approach focuses on building relationships between students and teachers based on trust and respect.
• "Working on the work" based on the concepts of Phillip Schlechty from the Center for Leadership in School Reform (CLSR). This approach focuses staff activities on ways to design better school work for students to do. Teachers strive to relate school work to students' daily lives, to give students engaging work to do and to challenge students to work hard.
• Creation of professional learning communities called "Critical Friends Groups" (in Ohio these are known as Collaboration for Student Success, CSS) to provide teachers and administrators with a "safe" place to examine their own work, challenge their assumptions and ideas and learn new ways to teach.

Focus of Partnership Initiatives & Funding

The Partnership also focuses our funding and staff support on the following:

• Dissemination of learnings from Passages, CHOICES, the Freshman Academy and the SCESC science initiatives (SEEDS and SATURN) and other county and district best practices.
• Support of professional development and leadership training based on those learnings.
• Support for districts to promote high expectations (both in belief and action) for all students
• Support for districts to strengthen professional development for teachers and administrators in the three pillars (Glasser, Schlechty and CSS) to enable across-the-board high student achievement
• Support for districts in scaling-up ongoing and widespread professional development opportunities
  

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