Look Both Ways: New Framework and Research on Leader Decision-Making Challenges

Posted on June 19, 2018

Dear TLA Friends,

All education leaders interested in scaling innovation face choices about how to lead system change in a way that maximizes benefits to teachers and students.

How do we decide whether implementation should be centralized or decentralized?

How fast should we move from pilot to scale?

Do we prioritize district need or readiness when determining pilot programs?

Today, The Learning Accelerator is excited to release a new framework to help leaders understand and navigate through these types of competing approaches. The framework offers insight into the logic supporting the different choices leaders might make as well as actionable examples of the strategies districts use to enact them.

Based on interviews with 35 district and CMO leaders across the country, as well as a national survey of nearly 100 other education leaders, “Look Both Ways” highlights seven common decision-making challenges and presents real-world examples that show how other leaders managed these tensions.

You can access this research in several ways. For those who prefer to download and print, it’s available as a Creative Commons-licensed white paper. The white paper has details on the project background and in-depth access to the framework and research findings. We’re also offering the content in a web-based and modular format through our “Leadership Design Choices,” a new TLA Problems of Practice series.

We hope that this research-based tool, grounded in voices, insights, and strategies from across the country, offers leaders valuable guidance and helpful waypoints in the work. Thanks for checking it out and for sharing with us your impressions and feedback.

Thank you!

Beth Rabbitt