Our Approach

Leaders will participate in convenings to build capacity to advance Oregon education system improvement at the State, regional, and local levels.

The approach includes two programming components:

SENSE MAKING:

Build shared understanding of the State education system and how it helps and hurts regional and local level education systems.
Connect dots between education goals, funding, spending, & accountability.
Connect dots between what’s happening in schools today and what needs to happen to drive education excellence to make Oregon a national leader in 10 years.
Safe space to talk about problems and collectively make sense of root causes.

Cohort-based labs with a group of 10-18 local education leaders in each cohort.
Each cohort will select one aspect of the education system to focus on based on key issues that emerge from Sensemaking. Example issues include: State School Fund distribution, estimating costs of meeting students needs, supporting effectiveness, coherence and efficiency in State administration, State education goals/focus, and more.
Cohorts will develop policy or practice recommendations that may be integrated in a 10-year plan for education system improvement. A policy development protocol will guide this work.
This is not about “just” throwing new money at our problems or creating new grant programs. It’s about fundamentally restructuring the education system with short-, mid-, and long-term actions with local and regional actions to complement State actions.