EdLeader21

EdLeader21 is a nationwide professional learning community for school district leaders focused on implementing a variant of deeper learning (core academic content, plus critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity). This grant would enable it to develop a performance assessment system to improve teacher, school, and district practices; to provide deeper learning-aligned capacity-building opportunities for EdLeader members that are focused on Common Core implementation; and to support evidence-based district analysis and transformation through its STEP21 self-assessment rubric, online tool, and peer review process. This grant is aligned with the Program’s objective to support field building by expanding the group of school leaders committed to deeper learning, and to support the "assessment literacy" of using testing data to inform deeper learning instructional practice reform.

This proposed grant would fund a project of EdLeader21, a new nationwide professional learning community for school district leaders focused on implementing deeper learning for all students. The network will emphasize critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity skills. In its first few months, EdLeader21 signed up forty-four districts serving 600,000 students in twenty states. Its grant work will concentrate on (1) piloting new assessments to measure deeper learning outcomes, and (2) developing a rigorous process to certify districts that have achieved high-quality implementation of deeper learning. EdLeader21 uses a complementary theory of change to the one embedded in our strategy. Instead of relying on policy change to promote the adoption of deeper learning, EdLeader21 aims to build demand for deeper learning and share implementation tools among education leaders on the ground who are committed to deeper learning, regardless of what the policy arena asks of them.