Our Partners: School Districts

The Ball Foundation Education Initiatives (EI) partners with mid-sized urban school districts. The purpose of these partnerships is to foster and sustain literacy improvement for every student through whole systems change.

Using a rigorous cycle of design, implementation, and feedback, EI and a partner district co-create professional learning experiences that will impact professional practice and student achievement. The content of this professional learning includes processes and structures to promote organizational learning and connectedness.

EI and the district collaboratively design professional learning experiences to reflect an understanding of complex systems and current research about how humans learn. EI models this understanding by putting into practice seven principles of organizational learning and change:

  • Build shared purpose
  • Create adaptive solutions
  • Build on assets
  • Access the capacity of stakeholders
  • Use inquiry to guide practice
  • Attend to content and process
  • Work in systemic ways

Designing learning experiences in accordance with these principles builds the district’s own understanding of complex systems and how humans learn.

Partnership learning experiences build individual and collective competencies and organizational capacity for literacy instruction and support for literacy instruction in six areas described within the Framework of Competencies for Professional Practice:

  • Effective, research-based literacy practices
  • Continuous professional learning
  • Collaboration to support literacy learning
  • Engaging families to support student literacy learning
  • Using data for instruction and organizational improvement
  • Building and acting on shared purpose for advancing student literacy

It is not enough to learn about these six areas. Learning must improve a district’s instructional, organizational, and leadership practices in order to impact student achievement.

In order to accomplish this, every partnership strategy works toward three outcomes:

  • Applying professional learning in one's practice
  • Taking agency and responsibility for the work
  • Connecting to people, knowledge, and resources throughout the district

By working on these three outcomes simultaneously, EI builds the capacity of a school district to constantly transform itself to deliver results—sustained literacy improvement for every student—even in the face of changing needs.

The current work of Education Initiatives (EI) is focused on one partnership with the Rowland (CA) Unified School District (RUSD) in Southern California. Rowland is the place where EI is implementing and testing various components of The Ball Design for Sustaining Literacy Improvement for Every Student Through Whole Systems Change.

For more information about the Rowland partnership, please read "Rowland Unified School District and The Ball Foundation Collaborate to Increase Student Achievement," in the Fall 2008 issue of Review newsletter.

Continue reading: The first two years (2006-2008) of the RUSD partnership.

Previously, The Ball Foundation supported three major partnerships: Springfield (Illinois) Public School District 186; Northview Public Schools in Grand Rapids, Michigan; and the Chula Vista (California) Elementary School District. Other information about EI's previous work can be found in the history pages.

Continue reading: The impact of Ball Foundation's previous partnerships.