Leadership

Coalition Before Consensus: How Trust and Shared Ownership Sustain Transformation

Rebecca Midles, Nate McClennen

System transformation rarely fails because of a bad strategy. It fails because the relationships needed to sustain it were never built. In this piece, Rebecca Midles and Nate McClennen draw on real district leaders to show what coalition-building actually looks like when the messy middle arrives. From a rural Michigan superintendent who started with the willing to a Kansas City microschool that put students in the design seat, this is a practical and deeply human look at what makes change last.
Leadership

Great Partnerships Are Like Gumbo, Not Fast Food

Guest Author

What does sustainable school improvement actually look like in a large, high-need district? In this piece, researchers and practitioners from East Baton Rouge Parish Schools share how a three-year research-practice partnership, built on shared values, rigorous evidence, and relational trust, moved the needle on math learning for more than 38,000 students. It is a model worth studying for any district leader tired of one-and-done professional development and ready to build something that lasts.
Leadership

Prepare Your People, Protect Your People: Setting the Stage for Successful Change Management

Guest Author

In an era of rising resistance and restrictive legislation, asking educators to take risks without protecting them is not leadership, it is liability. Jennifer D. Klein, author of Taming the Turbulence in Educational Leadership, offers a clear-eyed framework for how school leaders can prepare their people with transformative professional learning, adapt systems to support innovation, and stand as a buffer when opposition arrives. This is the kind of piece that reminds education leaders why the soul of their work has always been human development, for adults as much as students.
New Pathways

Maritime | 253: Project-Based Learning at Port Scale 

Guest Author

By: Deepti Reim The world of work is changing rapidly, requiring workers who can navigate evolving technologies, collaborate across disciplines, and adapt to increasingly complex operational systems. K-12 systems around the country are constantly trying to evolve alongside these changes, transforming Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs to better prepare students for life beyond the diploma.
Ed Policy

Some Student Data Should Never Become Digital

Guest Author

By: Charles Fadel, Center for Curriculum Redesign Adapted from “Cognitive Security Architecture for Student Learning Data”  Schools have been capturing student data for decades, and eventually will also use new applications such as Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) that can adapt to each student’s pace, performance,…