June 2010
Seeking to invest in innovation
The U.S. Department of Education is offering more than $650 million to encourage innovation in America’s schools, and the ESC is looking to bring some of that help to Central Ohio.
The Investing in Innovation, or i3, program received more than 1,600 applications over several categories and grant sizes. The ESC of Central Ohio applied in two areas, one for $30 million and another for $5 million.
Our largest proposal is an expansion and sustainability plan for the ESC Instructional Coaching Initiative, which is primarily for buildings in “school improvement” status in the Columbus City School District.
The ESC developed the Coaching Initiative with three partners:
- The Ohio State University and former College of Education and Human Ecology Dean David Andrews developed the coaches’ protocol for meetings with content teachers.
- Nationwide Mutual Insurance developed the data tool for all assessments (local, state, formative and summative) to be linked to the state content standards, district pacing and curriculum guides, and teacher lesson plans.
- The Ohio Department of Education funded the initial Coaching Initiative.
Our role thus far has been to provide ESC staff, who provide the instructional coaching leadership by monitoring, training, scheduling, hiring, and supervising the coaches.
Moving forward we would expand the protocol and build in specific content-area interventions for early childhood. Our goal would be to have research-based, district-wide content interventions for grades PK-3, ensuring every youngster would enter third grade on grade level, on an IEP or enrolled in a specific intervention that is part of the What Works Clearinghouse.
The ESC’s second application would expand the data tool in this project and incorporate specific improvements for serving students with disabilities within the initiative.
Our plan would offer this opportunity to any district in our footprint over time with an ideal to share our learnings and programming with any school who needs assistance with instructional coaching for early childhood populations.
More than $6 million has been pledged by private and public providers to support the initiative’s success. The Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company has invested its technology into a new nonprofit Learning Circles, a 501(C) (3) that will focus on building a longitudinal data system for school improvement.
All i3 grants will be awarded by September. We will keep you informed of any updates.
In Service to Children,
Bart Anderson