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Lectures & Roundtables

Kahan

SRN/LEED roundtable on school and district redesign

"Charter Management and Intermediary Organizations:
Innovations for School and District Redesign"

Discussion Highlights

April 21, 2006

For more information, contact: Elle Rustique Forrester

SACRAMENTO — On April 21, 2006, the School Redesign Network at Stanford University and Linking Education and Economic Development (LEED) hosted a roundtable discussion titled "Charter Management and Intermediary Organizations: Innovations for School and District Redesign."

Attendees included representatives from the Bay Area Coalition for Equitable Schools, the Great Schools Workshop, Green Dot Public Schools, Edgenuity, EdVisions, New Technology Foundation, Congregations Organizing for Renewal, Sacramento City Unified School District and Oakland Unified School District. Our dinner guest was Richard Kahan, the President and Founder of the Urban Assembly, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating small public college-preparatory high schools in underserved neighborhoods throughout New York City, Richard Kahan described several key strategies that have enabled the creation, success, and sustainability of the Urban Assembly's "family of schools." Among them:

  • Principal Leadership. Recruiting and carefully selecting school principals who are strongly committed to the Urban Assembly's mission and school design features.
  • Professional Networking. Providing active support to principals -- fostering communication and scheduling monthly meetings for principals to come together as a professional network.
  • Strategic Partnerships. Forming a wide range of strategic partnerships with businesses, colleges, universities, news groups, and sport teams -- for student internships and mentoring, and to support different schools' curricular themes.
  • Positive Public Relations. Actively engaging the media -- investing time in the education of journalists to encourage positive and informed reporting.

Kahan emphasized the importance of having strong principals and building-level leadership in Urban Assembly schools, describing principals as "stars of the universe." Other key strategies that he noted for sustaining Urban Assembly schools were the professional support of educators across the schools; the formation of a variety of business, community, and education partnerships; the involvement of media and nurturing individual relationships with political, business, and community leaders over a long period of time. Kahan described the result of such relationships as providing the "ultimate insurance policy" against undue criticism and risk of closure.

Attendees at the roundtable, representing a range of organizations and districts engaged in the creation and redesign of schools, participated in a lively discussion following Kahan's talk, sharing their strategies and experiences with school and district redesign. These included the use of various data in making the case for school changes and public relations campaign s to build community support for school redesign. Among the common challenges faced were:

  • managing the overall change process;
  • recruiting, supporting and retaining effective leaders and principals and
  • sustaining consistent progress during changes in district and /or school leadership.
  • Several charter management organizations that have expanded nationally described the challenge of working in different local contexts. Issues involved in the start-up of new schools included:
  • the placement of new schools within a campus of existing schools and/or small learning communities,
  • the development of governance structures for large building complexes,
  • defining the role of building councils
  • and establishing other processes to help support communication, leadership, and accountability across schools.

Addressing LEED's role in Sacramento as an intermediary between the community, schools and the district, Akili Moses Israel, LEED Interim CEO and Director of School Redesign, described the need for multiple measures of school quality, noting a role for intermediaries in helping different audiences to understand the features of a good school. Additionally, Olivia Ifill-Lynch, Director of Professional Learning at the School Redesign Network, described the role of intermediaries as leverage agents in maintaining sustainability and helping to prevent setbacks in school and district redesign.

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time to think

Summer institutes at Stanford give participants precious time to learn, exchange ideas with colleagues and simply to think. As one previous event participant put it, The issues and theories raised here were so right on to my roles as an educational leader. You all gave me a chance to slow down, research, reflect, and put names on things so I can re-organize. This made me accept ownership and reinforced my own personal commitment to doing whats best for children. After a very rugged year, this felt like being on a retreat. I know this will impact me professionally and personally for the remainder of my life and career. The experience was truly priceless for me.

 

 

© 2007 SRN LEADS