In 2017, the South Bend Community School Corporation began a partnership with the Harvard Data Wise Project to engage all of its schools in collaborative data inquiry to drive continuous improvement in teaching and learning for all students. Our presentation will highlight the learning path for district level administrators, school leaders, and teacher teams across the district, including successes, challenges, and lessons learned. The session will be presented as a case study, providing insight into how the district began this work, engaging teams from all schools, and building capacity of central staff to serve as coaches and facilitators. The session will also highlight early progress, as well as obstacles to progress, providing educators with opportunity to ask questions and make suggestions.
Carolyn Chen works with district leaders to identify priorities and challenges for professional learning, and to help design learning paths that engage educators in meaningful development. Her work has focused on urban teacher preparation and the talent pipeline -- attracting, developing, and empowering educators -- and in building deep and sustained relationships between districts and organizations to better serve students.
Dr. Rob Wessman founded Koru Strategy Group in 2014 to help education systems around the world implement research-driven practices with three outcomes in mind: better schools for students, higher professional satisfaction for educators, and greater public value for communities. In addition, Dr. Wessman is a regular teaching team member at the Data Wise Leadership Institute at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and has adapted improvement frameworks to the unique needs of system leaders. He is a veteran teacher and led a school transformation grant at a Title One High School in Salt Lake City, Utah, prior to his doctoral work at Harvard. Dr. Wessman can be found on Twitter at @rwessman.
Darice Austin-Phillips serves on the district leadership team of the South Bend Community School Corporation and has played an integral role in rolling out Data Wise to the 30+ schools in the district.