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IllinoisCSI: Lessons in leadership
It is so exciting to see your
team win! When you know their
story—the hard work of team-
building, the hours of practice to
perfect their craft, and
overcoming failure and defeat
along the way—seeing them win
is even more gratifying.
The Illinois Center for School
Improvement (Illinois CSI) was
created by the Illinois State
Board of Education and
American Institutes for
Research to provide intensive
support to districts with
underperforming schools. In the past 4 years, our
“team” of Illinois CSI staff members has been happy
to share the winning strategies we have learned in
our work with school
districts in efforts to
transform systems to
deliver a better
education for
students.
The heart of what
we do is support an
Intentional System
of Continuous
Improvement—
we assist districts as
they engage in a long
-term process of
improving teaching
and increasing
student achievement.
The continuous
improvement
planning cycle
includes prioritizing
needs, planning for directed improvement,
implementing a focused plan, monitoring the progress
of adult practices and student performance, and
evaluating the results. Paramount to our work in
transforming education systems are the collaborative
leadership structures that infuse rich data and include
feedback loops at every level to monitor effectiveness
of district and school improvement plans.
We have learned valuable lessons along the way.
For instance, we have seen that a superintendent’s
vision comes to life through a focused plan, such as a
strategic plan or district continuous improvement
plan. This focused plan must be informed by
examining data from a needs assessment to prioritize
the areas needing the greatest improvement. Only
through this data-informed examination can districts
determine school improvement goals and create
objectives to achieve these goals.
Districts must then strategically monitor the
implementation of their plan by identifying the specific
data on student performance and teaching practice
they want to collect, as well as the tools to collect and
analyze these data.
The role of the district leadership team is to deeply
implement its district or school continuous
improvement plan and ensure that horizontal and
vertical communication structures are in place to
monitor and enhance each step in the plan, shown
graphically below.
Our data show that this leadership approach is a
winning strategy for our team. Ninety-three percent of
the districts receiving our coaching supports
participate in our District Leadership Team Learning
Network, Research
Forums, and
Principals
Institutes, which
have helped them
make
enhancements to
their district
improvement plans
since the original
design of their
plans. They have
put in place
research-based
tools and
processes and
adopted a data
culture to run their
systems more
efficiently based on
data and feedback
collected in our internal evaluation. Because of the
communication, feedback, and monitoring of their
plans, our districts are now working to ensure the
alignment and strategic design of their plans. This
process exemplifies how a continuous improvement
process is not just a plan written on paper—it can
come to life as part of the culture and climate of
excellence in a district.
We look forward to continuing to “team up”
with our districts toward the goal of delivering an
education system that meets the professional needs
of educators and benefits all students to manifest
our vision of high-performing districts, high-
achieving students.
Betheny Lyke, Ed.D.
Executive Director
Center for School
Improvement