What is the Standard-Bearer School District Network?
It is a network designed for school district leaders who are committed to a set of guiding principles, and who are seeking a safe place to think, reflect, and learn from one another using tools and resources that support building the capacity of their organizations to support continuous innovation and shared learning.
Why is it called Standard-Bearer School District Network?
At the Schlechty Center, we understand the importance of symbols and how leaders use them to build commitment to the direction of their organizations. In the military, the standard-bearer uses a colorful flag that serves as a symbol for soldiers to keep up with the position of their unit. Their leaders have used the standard or flag to maintain unit cohesion. Historically, in education, the emphasis has been on standards aimed at improving teacher and student performance with little attention to school standards. There is often a lack of cohesion between practice and vision. The focus that has been on school standards has resulted in what Dr. Phillip Schlechty, Schlechty Center founder, described as “one more round of blaming the victim.”
Network guiding principles are grounded in the following core beliefs:
The purpose of schools is to develop in each student the capacity to think and reason, and to ensure that each student develops those understandings, skills, and habits of mind that make it possible to participate in a multiethnic, multicultural society in an information-based global economy.
Schools must become knowledge-work organizations: they must be organized to encourage children to use knowledge to solve problems rather than to passively absorb knowledge to be used at a later time.
Schools should be organized around the work of students rather than around the work of teachers and administrators or the interests of school boards, political factions, and interest groups.
The primary role of the superintendent is to promote the articulation and persistent pursuit of a compelling vision of education in the community, to encourage and support creative leadership at all levels of the system, to ensure that all personnel focus on providing high-quality experiences for students, and to educate the community about education.
Teachers are encouraged to invent work that responds to the needs of students, and teachers are empowered to lead students in the doing of that work; principals are encouraged to be leaders of leaders so that all who work in and around schools are accountable for and committed to the continuous improvement of the quality of work provided. Central office administrators and staff must provide principals, teachers, and students with forms of support that ensure continuing growth and development.
Basic Structure of the Network
These options are fully customizable.
Through years of working with districts and schools, the Schlechty Center has come to understand that significant long-term change in public education is best supported through the efforts of collaborative networks of committed school districts, school leaders, or education organizations.