DCPS Leadership Development Team
Essential Beliefs
-
We believe that the most important lever contributing student achievement is teacher effectiveness.
-
We believe that access to high-quality instructional leadership is among the top enabling conditions for teacher success.
-
We believe that educators desire to be great and that it is our responsibility to create the circumstances in which they can flourish and thrive.
-
In pursuit of ensuring that all students have access to strong teachers and school leaders, we believe it is our responsibility to reimagine how we recruit, select, train and develop equity-minded teachers and school leaders who are invested in the theory of the whole child.
-
We believe that our people are our greatest lever for change, and we will strive to ensure they feel valued, respected, and equipped with the skills to lead and maintain personal wellness. We know that a leader that models wellness can in turn establish wellness for students and staff.
Mission
We believe it is our responsibility to recruit, select, develop, and retain equity-minded teachers and school leaders who insist on the integration of social, emotional, and academic learning. We also believe that it is our collective responsibility to create an environment in which we all work relentlessly to eliminate the opportunity gap.
We are excited about the progress we have made over the last several years, namely, DCPS teacher quality is up. It’s one of the greatest success stories in public education! Over the past ten years, we’ve more than doubled the percentage of highly effective teachers and we currently retain 96% of our Highly Effective Teachers. With that kind of increase, you’d expect significant gains in student achievement, and that is what we’ve seen. According to the gold standard of national assessments, the NAEP, once again DCPS is the fastest improving urban school system in the nation.
However, the distribution of teacher quality is still not equal across the district, and we know that there are aspects of our evaluation system that we need to address with an equity lens. Despite being the fastest improving urban school district in the nation, we have a persistent opportunity gap as it relates to achievement disaggregated by race. Additionally, there is an inequitable distribution of school leader effectiveness, particularly with our students and school communities furthest from opportunity. A student in a high poverty school is still 2.5 times less likely to have a highly effective teacher than a student in a low poverty school. That’s the core work we need to address.
The Leadership Development Team is focused on addressing the following core questions for SY 21-22:
-
How do we recruit, select, develop, and retain DCPS top talent to serve and lead all of our schools, especially schools that serve high populations of marginalized students?
-
What shifts do we need to make as a district to ensure that our policies and practices align with Antiracist, whole child mindset in order to meet the needs of our students and school communities?
-
In what way are school leaders a key lever for equity and what development and conditions do they need to lead with equity and excellence?
