Mercury Corps, the world's 5th largest international relief and development agency, is at a turning point. The nonprofit's opportunities to grow and serve a larger number of beneficiaries are unprecedented. By looking at the unique relationship between headquarters and over 40 country offices, explores the question--is Mercury Corps well positioned to effectively and efficiently manage these new growth opportunities.
Describes ongoing systemic reform efforts in the Chicago Public Schools. Introduces the concept of "differentiation and integration," a managerial approach emerging in public school systems that couples "differentiated" treatment and support for individual schools with efforts to "integrate" the work of all schools and the district's central offices around a coherent improvement strategy. Participants have an opportunity to diagnose the circumstances in the 617-school district that drive CPS leadership to manage through differentiation and integration in order to improve student and school performance at scale. The discussion will enable participants to evaluate the district's actions to date; analyze key roles, structures, and functions that facilitate effective differentiation and integration; and identify major challenges to strategy execution.
Examines the Aldine Independent School District's (AISD) efforts in 2005 to sustain and accelerate significant increases in student performance achieved during the preceding decade. Highlights the school district's managerial challenges posed by higher state standards, performance gaps within AISD, and the district's historically decentralized approach toward the implementation of reforms at the school level. Looks at organizational alignment or coherence, leadership, and managing performance gaps across various field units.
Illustrates efforts to increase student achievement through data-driven decision making in a large urban public school district. Demonstrates the challenges and results associated with how the district uses data at the central office to measure districtwide performance toward strategic goals and at the school building level to tailor instructional strategies based on a diagnosis of student needs.
Describes ongoing reform efforts in the area of human resources at the School District of Philadelphia. Portrays the challenges and opportunities facing the district's new senior vice-president of human resources, Tomas Hanna, as he attempts to reinvent the district's existing, and primarily "transactional," human resources department into a group that can lead and execute a districtwide human capital management strategy. Provides the opportunity to evaluate Hanna's efforts to date and diagnose critical tasks going forward.
The PELP Coherence Framework is designed to help district school leaders identify the key elements that support a district-wide improvement strategy, bring those elements into a coherent relationship with the strategy and each other, and guide the actions of people throughout the district in the pursuit of high levels of achievement for all students. The Framework is intended to help school district leaders effectively implement their strategy by strengthening coherence among actions at the district, school and classroom level, and ultimately, improve student performance at scale. Achieving high-performance at scale--in every school, for every student in a district-- is an imperative for school systems given today's heightened accountability environment. The framework emerged out of interactions with hundreds of U.S. public school leaders eager to identify ways to better organize and manage their complex organizations. Although it resembles models used in the business and nonprofit sectors, the framework was designed to fit the unique context and challenges of managing in public education.
San Diego City Schools embarked on an ambitious, districtwide reform effort to improve student achievement in 1998. Examines the role of resource reallocation in supporting the district's reform strategy, highlighting how resource allocation choices and processes affect organizational coherence and strategy execution. In the fall of 2003, the district leadership contemplates making substantial changes to its resource allocation system in response to a serious budget crisis and mounting internal and external pressures for change.