Join WestEd virtually at the eighth annual Carnegie Foundation Summit on Improvement in Education, April 19–28, 2021.
This two-week event brings together a diverse and vibrant community of educators, researchers, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and policymakers dedicated to accelerating improvement in education.
The Summit will span two weeks. The first week, April 19–23, will be focused on pre-recorded sessions and posters that participants can view on demand. Pre-conference courses will be offered as standalone sessions on Sunday, April 25, and the live Summit—expanded this year with an extra day—will run Monday, April 26 through Wednesday, April 28.
Summit On-Demand Week: Monday, April 19–Friday, April 23
Summit Pre-Conference Courses: Sunday, April 25
Summit Live: Monday, April 26–Wednesday, April 28
Check out our schedule of on-demand and live presentations, and we also hope you’ll join the conversation by following @WestEd on Twitter and tagging your insights from the conference with #CarnegieSummit2021!
On-Demand Sessions, Monday, April 19–Friday, April 23
Closing the Teacher Diversity Gap: A Network for California State University Teacher Preparation Programs
Strand: Improvement Networks in Practice
Areas of Focus: Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion, Higher Education
Presenters:
- Virginia (Ginger) Adams Simon, Data and Improvement Coach, Educator Quality Center, California State University Office of the Chancellor
- Melissa White, Project Director, WestEd
This session will tell the story of a new networked improvement community of five colleges of education within the California State University (CSU) system working to close the teacher diversity gap. Members of the hub support team from CSU and partners at WestEd will share how the program design allowed them to stay responsive to fluctuating conditions and to keep equity at the center of the work. Improvement team leads will describe their work in closing this gap within their own unique contexts, what assumptions were disrupted, and what they learned by the self-examination required as part of the improvement process.
Halving the Degree Gap by 2025: Building Improvement Routines in the Powered by Public Initiative
Strand: Improvement Networks in Practice
Areas of Focus: Data & Measurement, Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion, Higher Education
Presenters:
- Jonathan Dolle, Director, Improvement Science, WestEd
- Tia Freelove Kirk, Program Coordinator, The Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities
Powered by Public is a networked improvement community of 130 public universities committed to halving the degree gap between White and historically underserved students by the summer of 2025. In this session, participants will hear about the overall work of the initiative, with a particular focus on three key improvement routines: (1) establishing, collecting, and reporting common data metrics; (2) launching, tracking, and supporting campus-level, equity-focused improvement efforts; and (3) organizing a learning management system around three common problems — teaching and learning, affordability, and holistic student supports.
Live Sessions: Monday, April 26–Wednesday, April 28
Using Simulation Tools to Better See and Improve Our System
Strand: Improvement Science in Practice
Areas of Focus: Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion, Improvement Capability, School Districts
Set/Date/Time: Set 1 | Monday, April 26 | 9:45am–11:00am PT | 12:45pm–2pm ET
Presenters:
- Erica Boas, Improvement Specialist, WestEd
- Rhonda Beasley, Assistant Director of Differentiated Assistance and District Support, Santa Clara County Office of Education
“See the system that produces the current outcomes” is one of the Core Principles of Improvement, yet limits on time and resources for systems investigation constrain the capacity of school and district teams to undertake the intensive, collaborative work necessary to fully understand their systems. Responding to this need, the Santa Clara County Office of Education Differentiated Assistance team developed and implemented a highly effective simulation activity to help school districts see how the variations in their systems produce inequities. Participants will learn about the efficacy of including this type of simulation in their improvement work through hands-on, interactive exploration of the tool.
Beyond the Network: Models of Spread for Networked Improvement Community Learning
Strand: Improvement Networks in Practice
Areas of Focus: Improvement Capability, School Districts
Set/Date/Time: Set 6 | Tuesday, April 27 | 1:15pm–2:30pm PT | 4:15pm–5:30pm ET
Presenters:
- Jennifer Iriti, Research Scientist, Learning Research & Development Center, University of Pittsburgh
- Jennifer Sherer, Research Associate, Partners for Network Improvement
- Toni Smith, Principal Researcher, American Institutes for Research
- Kirk Walters, Director of Mathematics, WestEd
The networked improvement community (NIC) innovation has proliferated rapidly in education as a means to organize for and accelerate improvement. As temporary organizations, how can these NICs extend their impact beyond those who directly participate in network activities? Drawing on developmental evaluations of several NICs, this session provides a framework for classifying possible spread efforts and utilizes a case example from one mature NIC — the Better Math Teaching Network — to illustrate the design and supports for such endeavors and the affordances and constraints of several spread approaches.
A System of Measures Supporting Improvement in Teacher Preparation
Strand: Improvement Networks in Practice
Areas of Focus: Data & Measurement, Educator Development, Higher Education
Set/Date/Time: Set 7 | Wednesday, April 28 | 9:45am–11:00am PT | 12:45pm–2:00pm ET
Presenters:
- Sola Takahashi, Senior Research Associate, WestEd
- Melissa White, Project Director, WestEd
As efforts have mounted to reform how teachers are prepared for their profession, so have calls for measurement that would provide insights into whether teacher preparation programs (TPPs) are producing desired outcomes and making progress toward these outcomes. Included among these calls is a press for more forms of data to inform continuous improvement efforts. However, TPPs are not typically organized to support a continuous improvement approach. This presentation highlights a system of measures that was developed with WestEd to support continuous improvement in teacher preparation programs.
Equity-Driven Continuous Improvement to Address Racial Inequities
Strand: Leadership for Improvement
Areas of Focus: Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion, Improvement Capability
Set/Date/Time: Set 8 | Wednesday, April 28 | 12:00pm–1:15pm PT | 3:00pm–4:15pm ET
Presenters:
- Alicia Bowman, Improvement Specialist, WestEd
- Amber Valdez, Senior Program Associate, WestEd
- Kelsey Krausen, Senior Engagement Manager, WestEd
This session focuses on the conditions, capacities, and practices necessary to support school districts to apply equity-driven continuous improvement to address systemic racism. As evidenced in the report Getting Better at Getting More Equitable, many schools, districts, and county offices of education engage in continuous improvement and equity-driven change as separate activities coordinated by separate teams and offices. However, there are some bright spots in the education system that are beginning to bridge this divide. In this session, participants will learn from the strategies county offices of education are using to sustain equity-driven continuous improvement to address systemic racial inequities.