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Demonstration Schools & Districts
The Demonstration Districts and Schools have been carefully chosen to meet the criteria for Arizona Leadership Project and to complement the goals in AZ LEARNS, the Arizona accountability system. The Demonstration Districts/Schools were selected from the state’s lowest-performing schools as indicated on the Arizona Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS) student assessment. This resulted in state intervention by Solutions Teams that recommended specific leadership, school, and class improvements. The schools represent the metropolitan areas of Phoenix and Tucson and the Navajo Nation. They exhibit characteristics common among urban settings—chronically low student performance, poverty, low parent education levels, non-standard English usage, and drug and alcohol abuse. The selected schools have high numbers of Hispanic and Native American students, historically achieving well below standards. In order to establish a critical mass for sustained work throughout the state, the Demonstration Districts/Schools have been clustered into three geographic areas. Each cohort includes at least two districts and six schools. This allows for collaboration among the districts in the regions and maximizes use of resources required for the intensive coaching and support outlined in the proposal. The regional cohort configuration establishes a base for an ongoing network of districts, schools, and support providers beyond this grant. In addition, we have invited three intermediate agencies to work in this regional configuration in order to provide a link between the state level and districts. The Navajo Nation, the City of Phoenix, and the Office of the Pima County Superintendent of Schools have joined as partners to improve school results and conditions of leadership. Each of these agencies has significant influence in the communities of the Demonstration Districts/Schools. Together with the Arizona Leadership Project Team, they can align community-school expectations and resources and contribute to building a coherent system in which state, district, school, and classroom leaders can work and schools can improve. The AZ LEADS partners (Arizona Leadership Project Implementation Team) and the Demonstration Districts/Schools are colleagues focused on moving each of the schools toward identified student learning targets. In order to ensure that the work in this project addresses policy needs in the state and practical needs in the districts and schools, WestEd, the regional lab partner, conducted a survey of 45 potential partners. Results provided information on the types of relationships and content of the activities that both state leaders and practitioners felt was needed to improve student learning. AZ LEADS partners have made a commitment to the Demonstration Districts and schools not to add another layer to their already filled plates, but to bring fresh ideas and perspectives, build needed skills and experiences, surface new resources, clear pathways, and put together mutual interests for improving student learning results. Collaboration with the Demonstration Districts occurs in the following ways:
Members of the AZ LEADS initiative and their colleagues are committed to work in collaboration with the Demonstration Districts/Schools to ensure that each school makes sufficient progress on their Solutions Team recommendations and improves the quality of leadership, teaching, and student learning results. This collaboration provides clearer expectations for schools about expected progress, stronger infrastructure and support for change, improving conditions for leaders’ success and an interactive venue where politics meets practice. Specific collaboration activities for Demonstration Districts/Schools are described in each of the Breakthrough Ideas, especially Breakthrough Idea #3. These activities not only contribute to creating a Arizona Leadership Project network of schools during the grant period, but also provide products, models and infrastructure to be applied throughout the state in the future. |