Led by two national Superintendents of the Year with stellar records for lifting expectations and raising performance to meet them, the Global Partnerships Schools’ team works with schools and school districts to ensure students are ready for the challenges they will face as adults, not simply for the next round of state tests. Academics are at the heart of the work, but Global Partnerships Schools helps districts and schools prepare students to live and work in a world marked by falling boundaries and growing cultural and economic connections.
Global Partnerships Schools works with schools across the continuum of performance:
- For schools where achievement lags, Global Partnerships Schools helps introduce structures and tools that support highly effective teaching and learning, deploying on-the-ground experts to work with principals and teachers to change practice and improve results quickly
- For schools “on the bubble,” where many students may be mastering the basics, Global Partnerships Schools helps educators dive deeper into best practices and hone their schools’ capacity to harness the arts or the latest advances in research on the brain and learning
- For the highest achieving schools, Global Partnerships Schools helps ensure continuity in their good teaching and learning through knowledge management and connects them to schools around the world as a means to benchmark their work globally, where their graduates will compete
Across its supports to schools and districts, Global Partnerships Schools integrates key drivers of the most impactful teaching and learning:
- A global view, both in terms of the performance expectations against which US schools must measure up as well as the place US students must play in the world as adults
- The power of technology to engage students
- The important role of parents in learning
- Leadership by districts, by principals and by teacher leaders
- Supports that act like broad spectrum medicines, addressing remediation + intervention + mediation + acceleration
Connecting Communities Globally
A small number of cities and school districts with visionary leadership understand the globally imposed imperative for schools to improve. They are connected enough economically to appreciate that solutions can come from all corners of the globe. They seek to strengthen their links to like-minded communities. President Obama and other national leaders have sent a clear signal about the need for global competitiveness and standards. With its global reach, Global Partnerships Schools is positioned to create links between US communities and partner communities abroad based on similar needs or problems.
The Essential Element – Strong Leadership
It starts at the top – that’s how the saying goes. In this case, high expectations and the performance to match them began with the leadership of superintendents and school boards. Global Partnerships Schools’ team of seasoned school leaders works with superintendents and schools boards to forge a shared vocabulary around needs and school change and to align around a common vision for improvement and success. Global Partnerships Schools assists in creating strategic plans and performance metrics to measure results, in auditing policies and teaching and learning to address weaknesses and in engaging parents and communities.
For more information about District and School Services, contact Joseph Garcia at (919) 942-4483 or jgarcia@gps.us.com
