Beginning in Summer 2018, UIC Center for Urban Education Leadership began a collaboration with the leadership of Michigan City (IN) Area Schools to incorporate professional development for continuous improvement of school and district administrative leadership practices and school outcomes for Michigan City’s 11 elementary and high schools. The MCAS principals and district leaders engage in monthly Networked Improvement Community (NIC) meetings to use cycles of inquiry to plan, implement, assess, and improve school capacity for teaching and learning in their schools, PreK-12. Principals collaborate with the UIC hub to identify specific EOY outcomes in organizational and instructional practices, as well as student outcomes, to which principals and UIC agree that the project should be held accountabMle.
The MCAS central office is developing capacity to support Principals who create or modify instructional leadership teams to more routinely and effectively: a) identify problems of leadership and instructional practice that they believe are significant for improving learning outcomes, including problems that reside in wider school culture, climate, and organizational routines; b) engage ILTs in cycles of inquiry at the school level to address those problems of instructional practice. UIC and the district central office also collaborate to assist principals in engaging ILTs in implementing cycles of inquiry for instructional improvement, using both the UW CALL survey and the Internal Coherence Framework Rubric (Forman, et al, 2017) to support data-based inquiry into high-leverage problem solving. As an example of leading organizational change that will have strong potential for informing cycles of inquiry on instructional practice, Principals and Instructional Leadership Teams collaborate to implement Instructional Rounds to gather information on instructional practices in each department.