Teachers and School Leaders

School Improvement, Professional Development, and Research

Overview

The Teacher and School Leader Pillar of the National Center for the Elimination of Educational Disparities (NCEED) prioritizes the role of our classroom teachers and school leaders in today’s schools and highlights effective strategies for recruitment, retention, and career ladder.  We believe that every school is served by teachers and school leaders who impact student learning and build a positive school culture and community.

Goals

  • Partnerships: Establish strong partnerships with local and national organizations and school systems to support our pre-service and in-service teachers and our aspiring leaders.

  • Collaborative Learning: Partner with local school leaders and teachers to idenitfy strategies and initiatives and events to support in-service teachers and aspiring leaders.

  • Resources: Create opportunities for our teachers and school leaders to participate in professional development sessions, seminars, workshops, and problem of practice symposia.

Focus Areas:

School Improvement

Prepare teachers and leaders to alter the trajectories of Black, Latinx, and low-income students

  • Closing achievement gaps among our students and student groups
  • Accelerating learning by increasing academic rigor and expanding advanced level opportunities
  • Preparing students to be college and career ready
  • Increasing financial literacy at the elementary and middle school levels
  • Addressing the whole child & social emotional wellness
  • Increasing extracurricular activities that include music, technology, sports.
  • Providing a sense of belonging/community

Professional Development

Build equity-centered leaders in our schools

  • Student-Centered Leaders: Respect, honor, and build upon the funds of knowledge from students and their ancestors.
  • Systems Thinkers and Change Agents: Examine root causes and disrupt structural inequities of Anti-Blackness across all intersections of historically oppressed identities and create sustained systems that drive change.
  • Shared Liberators: Create a collective culture committed to shared joy, criticality, wellness, and liberation.
  • Service-Oriented Leaders: lead through service to strengthen school ecosystems by building genuine relationships with students, families, staff, community members, and organizations.
  • Reflective Practitioners: plan, study and adapt from lived experiences to refine and develop your own practice and chart out continuous improvement.

Research Areas:

Middle Schools and Black Males and Women in Leadership

  • Principal Actions to improve learning conditions in grades 6 – 9 (6-8 and K-8 schools) and transition grades 6 and 9

  • Recruitment and retention of Black males in the classroom and as school leaders

  • Promotion and leadership roles of women in schools and school systems.