As superintendent, I committed to empowering my principals to lead, develop accountability, and employ/analyze attitudinal and statistical data to make data-driven decisions and recommendations. This is one example where principals were empowered and coached to lead a district-wide stakeholder team to explore the effectiveness, responsiveness, and value of assessments used by the district. As a result of a yearlong effort in collaboratively developing a district strategic plan, we learned that students across the district identified their number one academic concern was that many students were experiencing completely different curricular and assessment outcomes in different sections of the same high school course. This was concerning because students enrolled in different sections of the same course were being instructed and graded entirely differently and without structured course team planning.
In addition, we learned that very few to no curriculum cycles existed for departments to establish course team planning and to employ common assessments for aligning curriculum between same course sections. Consequently, I empowered one of the district’s principals to lead a stakeholder assessment committee to make recommendations to the district office for addressing assessment practices and embedding equity in assessments (this became a component of our Curriculum and Instruction goals as well as an equity goal). This coaching experience enabled my principal to engage in and develop professional learning with stakeholders and later implement authentic differentiation of professional learning with staff across the district to better support the use of assessments for all students.