Over the past five-plus years, educators across the network have embraced shared goals and strategies through the RISE by 5 frameworks. These goals and strategies serve as the foundation for our collaboration, and we work to implement strategies with fidelity to advance student outcomes. In addition to pursuing these consistent goals and strategies over time, we also seek to refine our efforts based on new data, needs, and learnings through a commitment to continuous learning and improvement. It’s not enough to repeat the same playbook every semester and school year. Instead, we are a learning community, and we look for ways to learn and grow based on what’s working and what’s not.
One reason why we do rigorous, formal, scaffolded continuous improvement work is to build mindsets and adopt practices around data-driven improvement. This year, the RISE Network is excited to bring in Dr. Michelle Pledger, an expert in equity-driven continuous improvement in education, to launch this important work during her keynote session on Wednesday, November 17th, 2021 from 3:00 – 4:30 PM. She will inspire us to adopt an intentional approach to improvement as individual educators, as teams, and as a collective network. Dr. Pledger will bring promising examples of this method in action from her work across the country and will help us see the potential impact on our students if we redouble our commitment to concerted improvement efforts. All RISE educators are invited to RSVP here.
Building from Dr. Michelle Pledger’s keynote, during Day 2 of our two part Fall Convening, Postsecondary and Freshman Success school teams will examine Quarter 1 data and collaborate across the network to formally launch our continuous improvement work for the 2021-22 school year. These 90 minute sessions on November 18th will infuse ideas and practices connected to continuous improvement and allow teams to quickly turn those ideas into actionable, data-informed focus areas for concerted growth over the remainder of the year.
We believe that navigating the improvement journey is a shared endeavor, and the continuous improvement efforts that schools pursue are intended to complement existing efforts, allowing teams to have an additional layer of support for addressing key barriers to student success. By scaffolding RISE support through our cross-network learning opportunities, we are encouraging schools to be leaders of their own improvement. After launching this important work during our Fall Convening, enabling teams to have a foundational understanding of the importance of this work and the tools to assist them, we encourage schools to take the driver’s seat on this journey, utilizing RISE support when necessary and documenting their progress along the way.