Bridging Accountability and Improvement: A Carnegie Summit Presentation by NYKids and NYSED
By, Kristen C. Wilcox and Theresa Billington
NYKids has been studying positive outlier schools (those achieving statistically better outcomes for youth of color and those growing up in poverty) for two decades. One of our consistent findings has related to schools’ and districts’ capacities for improvement. How leaders and educators take stock of youth, family, and educator needs and then adjust their processes and practices in flexible and evidence-informed ways has always stood out as a common denominator.
This is why, I (Kristen) was delighted to partner with NYSED Office of Accountability leaders (e.g., Theresa) and staff as a thought partner and instructional designer of a micro-credential in improvement science for organizations.
In this blog, Theresa and I share some highlights from our Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Summit presentation, delivered in San Diego CA March 25th and we would like to recognize and share appreciation for NYKids’ assistants Jessie Tobin and former postdoctoral fellow Maria Khan for their help with this poster.
Why Bridge Accountability and Improvement?
One of the near-term goals of our NYKids-NYSED partnership has been to increase NYSED staff associate competencies to support school and district-level continuous improvement capacity. In the longer term the goal is to address long-standing equity issues by deepening and spreading continuous improvement capacity from NYSED to schools and districts.
Highlighting the improvement science principle of seeing the system that produces the outcomes, our poster focuses attention on timely and significant shifts in New York state’s accountability system. We focus on one component of the NYSED theory of action – continuous improvement learning opportunities in our Carnegie Summit presentation.
NYSED Mission and Shifts
“The mission of the NYS Education Department is to ensure that every child has equitable access to the highest quality educational opportunities, services and supports in schools that provide effective instruction aligned to the state’s standards, as well as positive learning environments so that each child is prepared for success in college, career, citizenship and in life.”
This iteration of a mission reflects the State’s commitment to creating well-developed, culturally responsive, and equitable systems of support for achieving dramatic gains in student outcomes. It is critical to recognize that a support is only as good as the commitment and fidelity with which it is implemented and there is no singular magic wand that works for improvement in all schools. Therefore, the Department grounds its approach in building capacity for sustainable systems and structures around continuous improvement in schools and districts.
To truly be successful and ensure NYSED staff are targeting improvement strategies to meet the needs of the students we all serve, it requires commitment and shared responsibility from all stakeholders. And for sustained success, it is critical that each layer of the accountability ecosystem share in the responsibility of designing, implementing, and monitoring the progress of improvement levers/drivers intended to improve opportunities for all students to succeed.
As NYSED has shifted the narrative to a continuum of support in which all schools in NYS are engaged in a support model that is grounded in these moves for continuous improvement, NYSED has committed to provide more and diverse opportunities for state associates to learn about improvement science and the research behind it. This is where the Microcredential comes in.
The Online Microcredential Course in Improvement Science for Organizations and What We Have Learned
The course was designed to include opportunities to deepen knowledge of continuous improvement models with an emphasis on improvement science. This version of the course was iteratively developed with feedback from NYSED staff associates to make clear connections between continuous improvement processes and practices and the Office of Accountability’s new framework.
As displayed on the top right corner of our poster, our story of wins and challenges is evolving. We have noted the variability in staff associates’ use of improvement science in their work with district and school leaders and this requires different entry points and opportunities for sharing new learning in the course.
As these state associates’ learning opportunities were designed to support organization-wide learning, implications for the networking of state associates in learning to support continuous improvement are ripe for development.
What is on the Horizon
In recognizing the need to not only support schools as they build capacity for continuous improvement to meet the unique needs of students, a pilot project is planned for district level support to focus on issues of equity and resource allocation to ensure NYS districts have the tools, resources and training they need to support our most vulnerable populations of students. This will create opportunities for larger, high need districts to receive technical assistance from NYSED to build capacity for continuous improvement at the district level.
Thank you for your interest in our poster. Please contact us if you have questions or want more information about NYKids’ direct school improvement support, or if you are interested in microcredential offerings at the University at Albany, please reach out with an inquiry on our website.
