Teachers, administrators, students and parents from 49 Idaho school districts gather in Boise Monday night to celebrate success stories in the state’s schools. They are members of the Idaho Leads Project. The project is part of Boise State’s Center for School Improvement and Policy Studies. It focuses on leadership with the goal of “creating high performing schools where all students succeed.”
It brings together district leaders to talk about what they’re doing well and how they can improve. Idaho Leads co-director Rodger Quarles says by focusing on bright spots, Idaho’s schools can learn from each other.
“When you say, Idaho is 47 or 48th in the nation in student achievement… there are pockets of excellence or bright spots in our state where we would be in the top ten percent of achievement in the nation,” Quarles says. “But we rarely talk about that. We talk about all the aggregated data where collectively doing poorly.”
Quarles says Monday’s event highlights seven districts and charter schools that show innovation and leadership.
“We highlight everything from Anser Charter who talks about expeditionary learning. That’s their curriculum and approach in their school,” he says. “Lakeland who talks about an operational philosophy, to McCall who is utilizing technology to implement the common core in a meaningful way. Those things didn’t exist before we started and they began participating in the Idaho Leads Project.”
Organizers expect more than 500 people to take part in an informal parade through downtown Boise on the way to the 7:00 event at the Egyptian Theater.
The Idaho Leads project was created more than a year ago with a $3.85 million grant from the Albertson Foundation. The foundation recently gave the project another grant of $2.85 million to continue operating through the end of next school year.