EXCELerator™ Educators Discuss Leadership Skills
“We are a collaborative community of schools working toward the same vision,” said Mike Riley, College Board senior vice president for College Readiness Systems, setting the tone and framing the work of the EXCELerator™ Winter Leadership Colloquium held Feb. 20-22 in Orlando, Fla., which was attended by 100 educators from the five EXCELerator™ School districts across the country. The EXCELerator program serves urban school districts by implementing College Board programs, tools and support services designed to prepare more American high school students for postsecondary success. The project is part of an effort launched
in 2006 through a $16 million investment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
“We don’t claim to have all the answers,” acknowledged Riley. “However, leadership is not just about inspiring hearts and
minds; it’s about problem solving.” The challenging task at hand, he said, is to develop strategies for “honest-to-goodness collaboration,” so that meaningful body of knowledge can be made available to promote college readiness for all students. The College Board, said Riley, wants not only to make sure that “a lot more students will have the opportunity for college,” but also to contribute in a significant way to understanding how that occurs.
Educators gathered from Chicago, Denver, Washington, D.C., Tampa and Jacksonville (Fla.) to discuss successes and challenges, share ideas with College Board staff, explore program sustainability, fine-tune their skills in using EXCELerator tools
and develop strategies for implementation. Other sessions on the
two-day agenda focused on communications, instructional support, SpringBoard®, assessment and counseling.
In the session, “Using the Tools for Implementation: Data Review and Analysis,” Lori Mei, executive director of research and accountability, College Readiness Systems at the College Board, shared composite and district-specific data related to Advanced Placement Program® course offerings, enrollment, representation and test scores. Discussions centered on increasing the number
of students taking rigorous courses, analyzing patterns of performance by different student populations and determining appropriate strategies for increasing AP enrollment and improving AP performance. Examining a school’s data and understanding patterns in that data, Mei explained, is not the end of the story.
In fact, she said, “it’s the first step in knowing how to modify and improve programs and services that increase the likelihood that students will succeed academically and be better prepared
for college.”
Pat Laws and Ann Ganzert, EXCELerator Schools consultants
from North Carolina, joined Natasha Groetsch, senior director of
College Board Standards for College Success™, to lead the session “Building Rigorous Instruction: Planning for the Curriculum Alignment Institute.” Preparing for summer curriculum work was the focus of the group’s activities. According to Laws, this preparation process — which involves reviewing curriculum alignment institute modules, feedback collection forms and the Learning Schedules rubric — “is the real, guaranteed path to
better instruction.”
Riley closed the session, saying, “This is pretty big stuff we’re trying to accomplish, but the vision is worthy of our commitment.”
  
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