Building Change Agents: How JCPS is Driving Lasting Change
Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) was grappling with challenges in teacher retention and professional development, compounded by the broader need to innovate educational practices to better serve a diverse student population. The overarching vision was to embed deeper learning and equity into the educational process, ensuring students emerge not just academically proficient but as fully engaged, capable citizens. This vision encompassed the following key strategic goals:
Implementation of the Backpack of Success Skills: JCPS sought to ensure every student was equipped with essential success skills, honed through real-world applications. This initiative was a shift towards assessments and learning experiences tailored to meet students' unique needs and potentials.
Curriculum and Equity: The district focused on overhauling its curriculum to enhance equity, ensuring that learning materials and experiences were inclusive and acknowledged the contributions of all community groups.
Addressing Learning Loss: The disruption caused by the pandemic led to significant learning loss across the district. JCPS aimed to mitigate this through revised educational strategies, incorporating personalized learning to meet diverse student needs more effectively.
This overall success of these strategies was contingent upon building the educator's knowledge, skills and mindsets to create classrooms and experiences that were aligned with these approaches- and that required new skills.
Jefferson County Public Schools Kentucky
The Challenge:
Why Change Was Needed
Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) was grappling with how to effectively implement a district strategic objective to implement high-quality deeper learning systemwide as an excellence and equity strategy. The district had developed a Backpack of Success Skills to ensure every student was equipped with essential success skills, honed through real-world applications. This initiative was a shift towards assessments and learning experiences tailored to meet students' unique needs and potentials.
While an effective deeper learning office existed within the district, the ability to provide deep capacity building was limited by time and resources. JCPS was looking for a more comprehensive solution. Equally important was a need to provide meaningful incentives for educators to participate deeply over time to build their knowledge, skills and leadership.
The Solution:
In response to these challenges, JCPS (CAO and team, Deeper Learning team) collaborated with 2Revolutions and Spalding University to offer the Certificate in Competency-based Education, with the option to earn an M.Ed. in Teacher Leadership, to over 200 educators across the district. This program was designed to focus on learner-centered practices both in content and delivery, allowing educators to learn about, while learning within, a learner-centered model. In a district as large as JCPS (~100,000 students), the objective was to build a set of teacher leaders who could spread change within buildings throughout the district.
The Impact: Measurable Results
Educators from 85 schools have participated in the program, representing 51% of all schools in JCPS
98% of those who finished the program agreed or strongly agreed that as a result of the program:
“I have the knowledge to become a lever of change in my classroom, building, or system”
“I have the mindset to become a lever of change in my classroom, building, or system”
“I have the skills to become a lever of change in my classroom, building, or system”
Leader Perspective:
“This program has very much impacted my job. I know that my role as instructional coach gives me the ability to have an impact on other teachers and leaders in my building.”
—High School Instructional Coach in JCPS
“I really felt like my mindset and vision of learning has shifted for the better due to this program. This program has allowed me to create large transformational shifts in practice at my school.”
—High School Instructional Coach in JCPS
Educator Perspective:
“This program has changed the way I teach. I am not the same teacher I was when I started this program. I have been in traditional programs and those programs had no transforming effects on my craft. The things I learned in this class I am carrying with me beyond the classroom and beyond the time I have spent in the program. Also, my students have been transformed. I have seen test scores grow in ways that I can attribute to information I learned and implemented as a result of this CBE program. My students are enjoying having more say in their learning as well.
—Elementary school teacher in JCPS
What We Learned: Takeaways
Empowerment and Impact: A professional learning experience that is responsive to the current teaching context empowers educators with practical skills and confidence to make immediate changes in classroom practice- and educators are excited to share the ways that those changes positively impacted student engagement and learning outcomes.
Agency in Learning: Adult learners need to unlearn how to learn in order to learn differently- shifting from a compliance-based approach to learning to one where they are at the center of the process. By allowing educators to experience a more learner-centered model, they develop greater empathy for what it will take to create learner autonomy within their own classrooms.
Sustained Inspiration and Leadership Growth: When provided with the opportunity to intentionally develop leadership skills, educators see themselves- and their ability to effect change- differently. By growing capacity across a broad range of skills, the program can create a critical mass of change agents within a system, allowing the work to spread more naturally from within.