Revving+Up+Leadership+to+Support+21st+Century+Teaching+&+Learning

= **//Revving Up District Leadership to Support 21st Century Teaching & Learning//** =

Overview
Current research clearly states that central office transformation cannot be simply a restructuring strategy but must be a new approach to central office work. The interface between district and school is the crux of central office transformation (Honig, April 2010). District leaders will consider the current state of the relationship between central office and schools, and ask how—and how regularly—central office staff ask or assess what kinds of supports schools could benefit from, what supports they actually receive, and how those supports address expressed needs at the school level. Districts have the power and specific responsibility to support 21st century teaching and learning. The issue facing them is how to use their positions of authority to develop and support practices that improve student learning. Economic pressure and demand for better results are forcing districts to change the way business is done. To do so successfully, districts must invest in new ways of working, and that will require revamping existing strategies and dismantling old cost structures. Districts have two choices — do less with less, or take dramatic steps to create a transformed system that generates better results.

Participants will explore current district practices through participation in a District Transformational Leadership Inventory. The following key questions will be considered.
 * Are we adequately investing in our people within the central office to forge the kinds of new school partnership relationships that seem fundamental to districtwide learning improvements?
 * Are we reinforcing those partnership relationships with new work structures and accountability systems that promise to seed and grow learning improvements?
 * Are we providing our central office administrators with the resources and freedom to invent new ways of participating in learning support?
 * Are we engaged in strategic partnerships with external organizations, not only to provide knowledge and other resources to schools, but also to bolster the work of central office reinvention?

Presentation


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