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LEADS past events

LEADS Annual District Liaisons Work Session
February 11-12, 2008, Stanford University Alumni Center

Additional materials for event participants are available on our password-protected pages.

• Agenda
• Powerpoint overview

For Network members only
• Finding Your Way in a Data-Driven World
• Participant roster

Summary

This one-and-a-half day session was co-hosted by SRN LEADS and the Institute for Research on Education Policy and Practice (IREPP), and held at the Stanford Alumni Center in February. Liaisons viewed selected video clips from Huggy Rao’s 100-Day Plan update conversation with New Haven Unified School District. The clips and questions posed by Huggy to New Haven served as a catalyst for other districts to think about their own updated plans.

Susanna Loeb also spoke with the group on updated IREPP planning. She described the data collection and cleanup phase, and preliminary plans to use district data in a larger case study. Succession planning is an area of interest for many of the district partners, and Susanna provided an overview of succession planning as an example of data inquiry. LEADS and IREPP facilitators then had individual conversations with each of the districts to gather their updates.

SRN LEADS and IREPP hosted a New Orleans-style dinner at NOLA, in downtown Palo Alto, on Monday night. It’s amazing how a few strands of cheap colored beads can transform our studious district liaisons into animated party people! Everyone had a great time.

On the second day, participants divided into four Expert Help Groups to conduct detailed planning for the network as a whole. The groups, co-facilitated by LEADS and district liaisons, focused on:

• Residency planning (Milwaukee, Austin,
and beyond)
• LEADS 2008 Summer Session
• Research Studies in the network
• Technology/Web-based Communication

 

 

"LEADS focuses on a critical arena in school reform, and it is founded on operating principles that promote high quality practice and effective outcomes. First, all arrows point to instruction. The implicit, sometimes explicit theory guiding the work is that districts are there to support effective teaching, and every practice and policy needs to be assessed in that light. Second, it emphasizes the importance of evidence - decisions informed by careful analyses of information - which is so critical and all too rare at both district and school levels. Finally, LEADS stresses the importance of documenting knowledge that can be shared among participants and beyond. We spend too much time re-inventing the wheel in education. Learning about best practices is just as important at the district level as it is at the classroom level, and LEADS participants contribute to as well as benefit from that knowledge base."

— Deborah Stipek, Dean, Stanford University School of Education

 

 

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