Schools & School Systems

The IISC Education Practice:

Partnering with public schools and school systems for equity and excellence

Educational equity is based on fairness and promotes the real possibility of equality of outcomes for a broader range of students.
- Sonia Nieto, pedagogical philosopher and teacher educator

Today’s educators are using a variety of strategies to improve teaching and learning, restructure schools, and transform school systems to bring about educational equity. At the Interaction Institute for Social Change, we strongly believe the most important goal for our educational system today is achieving educational equity, and working towards this goal will be the focus of our work in the coming decade.

Currently, IISC’s Education Practice contributes to the vision of educational equity by building the collaborative capacity of teachers, administrators, staff, parents, students, and community members to support the work of transforming schools. Through network building, consulting, facilitation, leadership development and training, we explore, model, and transfer the skills and tools of collaborative leadership and collaborative planning. As capacity builders, we also license school systems to train our flagship leadership course, Facilitative Leadership®, within their districts. In addition, we serve school districts and their communities by designing and facilitating multi-stakeholder collaborative planning processes with the ultimate aim of eliminating achievement gaps and advancing educational equity.

IISC helped me as a school leader understand how to work most effectively with all stakeholders to maximize the potential of our full group. I was able to learn more skills to be an effective facilitator and leader of complex issues. I was also able to realize some of the more hidden and underlying issues of social change.
Jennifer Fischer Mueller
Deputy Superintendent of Teaching and Learning
Public Schools of Brookline

Skillful collaboration holds an important key to effective and lasting improvement efforts in light of the unique challenges schools grapple with every day, particularly as the work of educational equity deepens:

• The challenge to build the capacity of educational leaders to lead for educational equity.
• The challenge to engage in courageous conversations about race and student achievement
• The challenge to coordinate effective action between and among classrooms, grades, schools, and departments.
• The challenge to effectively partner with parents and the community in which the school’s students live.

The IISC Education Practice has responded to these challenges by bringing IISC’s collaborative and leadership methodologies into school systems, schools, and educational capacity building organizations and by guiding and facilitating the efforts of diverse stakeholders to set direction, develop coherent plans to raise overall student achievement, and build agreements and momentum for change. Using our collaborative methodology, we work with clients to transform the unit of action from the individual to the collective or network, which ensures innovation, inclusion, and impact. Our strategies include:

• Building collaborative networks for concerted action and learning. IISC co-designs and facilitates large-scale processes that allow educational leaders of social change initiatives and convenors of change agents to pull together multiple stakeholders, share best practices, develop more innovative strategies, and increase collective impact on critical educational issues and policies.

• Transferring collaborative skills, tools and frameworks. IISC trains public school staff and staff in educational capacity building organizations in collaborative and facilitative skill development, which enables them to enhance both their own school effectiveness and their work as intermediaries and capacity builders. IISC also serves as an intermediary, providing leadership and collaborative skill-building training to educational leaders.

• Creating alignment within public school systems and between the school system and community. IISC facilitates collaborative processes for public school systems and communities that foster shared responsibility, greater accountability, and achieve better integration and coordination.

Collectively, these strategies enable our clients and partners to develop the ongoing ability to generate appropriate and effective solutions to respond to today’s educational opportunities and challenges.

IISC Education Practice: Examples of Our Work

Public Schools of Brookline The Public Schools of Brookline (PSB) is a respected urban/suburban school system in the greater Boston area. PSB worked in partnership with IISC to 1) build district and school staff confidence and competence in collaboration; and 2) design and facilitate a collaborative system-wide initiative to secure educational equity by working to eliminate PSB’s racial achievement gap. IISC has now been engaged to design and facilitate a strategic planning process for The Public Schools of Brookline.

Boston Promise Initiative The Boston Promise Initiative was one of the 21 Promise Neighborhood grantees chosen for a planning grant in September 2011 by the Department of Education from a total of 339 applicants. IISC designed and facilitated the initial process that resulted in the planning grant and then did the same for the implementation grant. Although the federal funding was not received, the process built alignment across city, state and federal agencies as well as nonprofit service providers, schools and – most importantly – residents. The result is an implementable plan to realize the vision of healthy children achieving academic success from birth through career.

North Carolina Network The North Carolina Network was established to develop systemic strategies for schools and school districts across the state to implement school-based management. The Network’s membership includes twenty-seven school districts, a university, and other nonprofit partners. Through a licensing arrangement, IISC trains NC Network trainers to offer Facilitative Leadership® to its members with the ultimate aim of creating collaborative school cultures for increased student performance.

Center for Collaborative Education The Center for Collaborative Education (CCE) promotes purposeful learning and small, caring communities in K-12 public schools, with a focus on educational equity. IISC worked with CCE staff to design and facilitate a process to gather broad stakeholder input and ultimately craft a reorganized collaborative team structure and decision-making model to better align with the shifting nature of its work as defined by revenue streams and new approaches to partnering with schools. In addition, IISC modeled and trained staff in collaborative leadership techniques.

Citizen Schools and Lesley University - Facilitative Leadership® and Community Building IISC designed this course as part of the Citizen Schools/Lesley University Master of Education in Curriculum and Instruction: Out of School Time. The course focuses on developing the skills for a “21st Century” collaborative, participatory, inclusive leader working in a community setting whose job it is to leverage the wisdom and resources of multiple constituencies. Taking the lead from IISC’s commitment to “the love that does justice,” the course deepens the collaborative skills of leaders by exploring what Parker Palmer calls the “inner side of leadership.” This builds on our belief that the values, beliefs, and intentions that emanate from the heart will have the deepest effect and will profoundly characterize the impact of leaders. During this highly experiential course, participants apply the skills and tools of collaborative action and community building to their work as out of school time professionals, while examining the theoretical underpinnings of each. They leave with a shared language, models, and frameworks that can be immediately applied to their work as out of school time professionals.