Cultivating Leaders for Equity: The Carnegie Foundation's Improvement Leadership Education and Development Initiative

• In Event: 77.016 - Preparing Leaders for Continuous Improvement: Addressing Systemic Educational Inequities Through Preparation Partnerships

Abstract

Objectives

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to describe the theoretical perspective and overarching program theory of action for a national initiative focused on nurturing practice-preparation partnerships between universities and districts through engagement with networked improvement science. Specifically, the paper describes the Carnegie Foundation’s Improvement Leadership Education and Development (iLEAD) initiative, which supports partnerships between universities and districts that are preparing leaders to engage in continuous improvement work.

Theoretical Perspective

Persistent disparities in learning outcomes and opportunities among students from different racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups have compelled an expanding number of leaders to use improvement science to address “wicked” problems in education (Bryk, Gomez, Grunow, & LeMahieu, 2015; Langley et al., 2009; Lewis, 2015). With roots in management theory (Deming, 1993), improvement science employs disciplined inquiry to solve a specific problem of practice (Langley et al., 2009; Shojania & Grimshaw, 2005). For the past ten years, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has been at the forefront of enacting improvement science principles in education through networked improvement communities, or NICs (Bryk et al., 2015; Russell, Bryk, Dolle, Gomez, LeMahieu, & Grunow, 2017). Positive outcomes from Carnegie-supported NICs and other networks continue to build confidence in the viability of this new approach and its ability to redress longstanding inequities.

Program Theory of Action

A growing number of universities have begun integrating NICs as a key component of their leadership preparation programs. Many have joined forces with districts to provide their graduate students hands-on continuous improvement experiences. To support these efforts, the Carnegie Foundation launched iLEAD in 2017 with funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. A competitive application process resulted in a network of eleven partnerships, representing a mix of private and public universities and urban and rural districts across ten states.
iLEAD seeks to build the infrastructure necessary to prepare leaders to effectively engage in place- and problem-based continuous improvement work, including:

● The analytic infrastructure, where improvement science presents a grounding set of principles, methods, and tools;
● The content infrastructure, where iLEAD provides the vehicle to address critical field-based problems important to LEAs;
● The relationship infrastructure to promote inter-organizational working; and
● The political infrastructure to facilitate and manage the spread and take-up of ideas at the LEA, IHE, and partnership levels.

In its inaugural year, the community co-constructed a theory and corresponding indicators surrounding the development of problem-based, workforce-centered, and locally-focused partnerships.

Significance

For many years, sustainable solutions to complex education problems have eluded leaders, practitioners, and researchers alike. With heightened focus on continuous improvement, universities are increasingly turning to improvement science tools and approaches, including NICs, to help cultivate agile, adaptive, and responsive leaders with the know-how necessary to remedy the gaps in learning outcomes and opportunities we continue to see among the most vulnerable student populations.

Authors

• Manuelito Biag, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

• Camila Velasquez, Carnegie Foundation