OUR WORK - Partners in School Innovation

LETTER FROM THE
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Dear Friends of Partners in School Innovation,
Twelve years ago Partners in School Innovation (PartnersSI) began its
quest to eliminate the achievement gap between low-income students
of color and their more affluent peers. Today our commitment to closing
the gap remains steadfast, while our ability to impact it has continually
increased as we sharpen our knowledge of what it takes to transform
chronically low-performing schools into thriving learning environments.
The evolution of our school improvement approach has been fueled by
our experience inside schools, where we have learned how to effectively
influence the most powerful levers for school improvement. In the
following pages, you will not only see the progress we made in the last
year, but also understand its connection to respected research, twelve
years of site-based learning, and a fierce determination to close the
achievement gap.
In 2004-05, we strengthened our continuous improvement model by
increasing emphasis on teacher collaboration, data-driven instruction,
and results-oriented leadership. As a result, schools in each partner district
made compelling gains in the numbers of Latino, African American, and
English language learner students reading at grade level. For example,
the number of African American students reading at grade level more
than tripled at Webster Elementary School in San Francisco in our first
year of partnership.
Further, teachers at Grant Elementary School applied our approach to learn
new teaching strategies for English language learners. This contributed to
a 19 percent increase in the number of students reading at grade level
over the three years of our partnership compared to a 9 percent increase for
their peers across California.
Based on our impact, districts have expanded their partnerships with
PartnersSI. In San Francisco, we piloted a leadership network in which we
trained Instructional Reform Facilitators (teacher leaders) from the 30
lowest performing elementary schools to lead a continuous improvement
approach in their respective schools. The success of this work led to a
similar network for the principals of these schools in 2005-06.
Our strength as an organization has also grown. In recent years, we
added significant programmatic expertise to our staff and made great
strides toward a sustainable funding model. In the last four years, we
increased earned income by 156 percent with a 60 percent increase
between 2004 and 2005.
2 | Innovation.Improvement.Impact.