Citrus Participates in Education Week Leadership Series

This past Monday evening Citrus County Schools was invited to attend the national leading education publisher, Education Week’s Leadership Series as one of a select number of school districts and its leaders to share about the key role and players in the rollout of college and career-ready standards in classrooms and in particular the role of the principal.

The facilitator of the evening was Education Week’s editor-in-chief, Virginia B. Edwards. The event included representatives from ten school districts around the state of Florida including Citrus.

Education Week reports that, “Recent surveys have shown that while many principals have received some professional development from their districts and states around the higher standards, they require much more if the implementation of these standards is going to succeed at scale.” EW goes on to say, “School leaders report a profound need for more preparation and training around budgeting for the standards, and managing the overall instructional shift; how to evaluate teachers’ use of the new standards during instruction; how to make decisions about teacher professional development; how to coach teachers toward improved instructional practice; and how to integrate the new learning goals into existing services for English-learners and students with disabilities.”

Ms. Edwards began the evening by asking us, “What leadership skills and specific strategies do principals need to effectively manage the overall shift to the new standards and assessments in their schools?” Districts talked about their challenges and then shared their; expectations for administrators, best practices for administrators, their professional development plan and their data which demonstrates success of these implementations. Many districts bragged about moving up one or more school’s grade level in several schools and how the school districts were on the right track. Those shared successes drew Citrus Schools Director of Research and Accountability to lead over to me and share that while it is impressive the successes those districts are having there was only one in the room who not only was a “High Preforming”, “A” district and who had the highest number of individual “A” rated schools, and that was so consistently for seven years- Citrus County Schools.

It was an honor to be a part of this important conversation which Education Week uses to help them in their work in how to best communicate about the issues facing public education.

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