Scaling Innovation through Middle Tier and School Leaders in the Dominican Republic

• In Event: Leadership for a Brave New World, PART 2: Fostering collective action for education reform in Zambia and the Dominican Republic

Proposal

Addressing inequities in basic education requires that systems simultaneously manage large-scale implementation and ongoing innovation. These processes might appear diametrically opposed, but the imperative to prioritize both could not be more clear.
Efforts to accelerate early literacy in the Dominican Republic offer valuable lessons on achieving this balance by mobilizing education leaders. More specifically, school and middle tier leaders with urgency for change, a student-centered mindset, and credibility with peers can be instrumental in leading innovation and implementation at scale.
Students in the Dominican Republic post among the lowest reading levels in Latin America. UNESCO reported that in 2019, 73% of 3rd-grade readers and 84% of 6th-grade readers in the country were not proficient (UNESCO, 2023). Challenges to raising literacy performance were exasperated by the COVID-19 pandemic and an 18-month closure of schools.
Starting in 2023 an international organization partnered alongside a local university to strengthen early grade literacy through a dual strategy of scaling national support while piloting innovative practices. This approach addressed distinct, but equally pressing requirements to scale education innovations (The Role of Innovation in Scaling Up Educational Interventions, 2015, Sabelli and Harris). First, there was a need to immediately support instruction and build momentum for the change process. Second, there was also a clear need to identify and codify a more robust set of instructional practices.
The program achieved meaningful results by investing in existing school leaders and middle tier leaders to shape and champion both national training and small-scale pilots. 400 school leaders participated in national literacy training. 80 principals, coaches and district supervisors were then selected as national trainers. With implementation support from the local university, this group has trained over half the principals in the Dominican Republic around a set of core literacy modules. In parallel, a group of school leaders and coaches in six schools launched an intensive literacy pilot to localize and test new practices, which focused on phonological awareness, explicit phonics instruction and support of automaticity. In the first year, 41% of students in the pilot met or exceeded the end-of-year benchmarks versus 9% of students in control schools.
The pilot’s success has galvanized support for continued innovation. Practices from the pilot are being incorporated into the literacy modules utilized in the national training program. A school leader has been recognized by the Ministry of Education and launched a second pilot with a dozen schools in their district. Eyeing broader reforms, the local university is now advocating for changes to how the government supports literacy. This includes a national push for updating TLMs and overhauling teacher training centers.
Our presentation will highlight insights on leveraging middle-tier leaders and how similar approaches can accelerate future adoption and scaling of technology tools. In the Dominican Republic, basic tools such as Zoom and Google Drive facilitated planning, coordination, and dissemination of resources. Looking ahead, we believe there is an opportunity to introduce learning platforms that complement and reinforce the training and support that teachers require to strengthen instructional practice

Author

• Colin Smith, One World Network of Schools