Kansas City, Missouri School District is attempting a radical change for the better. And in the process, it is shedding nearly half of its schools.
“Kansas City Superintendent Dr. J. Wm. Covington is doing something that has never been done before,” says Chet Linton, CEO of The School Improvement Network. “With the backing of the school board, he closed almost half the public schools and has set out to metamorphose into one of the nation’s top urban school districts.”
“We need a metamorphosis of education—from the cocoon a butterfly should emerge," said Dr. Covington, quoting from Systemic Change: Touchstones for the Future School (Banathy, B.H., 1996, ed. P. Jenlink)."Improvement does not give us a butterfly -- only a faster caterpillar.”
Kansas City schools will institute School Improvement Network's PD 360, an on-demand professional learning resource for schools and districts. Educators and staff will have access to hundreds of indexed and searchable video segments that present real, best-practice classroom examples and feature respected education experts, such as Michael Fullan, Rick DuFour, Doug Reeves, Rick Stiggins, and others. Educators can find the help they need on nearly every topic, including differentiation, assessment, English language learners, leadership, and more.
The deployment of PD 360 technology will be used for assessment, individual learning plans and classroom observations. Kansas City has customized its use of PD360’s on-demand professional development content by embedding it within its new online curriculum frameworks as well as providing the content to teachers as part of on-going feedback from the new e-walk observation system.
"The real measure of our success will be Kansas City’s success," concludes School Improvement’s Chet Linton."No excuses. Their report card will be our report card.”
