Partners Stands Out as Education Community Leader at Carnegie Summit 2024 with Multiple Presentations

One of the preeminent institutions forwarding the vision of the power of education is the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. There are many ways to get involved with such a robust organization, and one with which Partners in School Innovation engaged was their annual Carnegie Summit, held in San Diego, CA from March 24-27, 2024.

“The Summit provides for those new to improvement, opportunities to learn about the productive use of improvement principles, networks, and supportive methods and tools; for those already engaged in improvement, opportunities to present their progress in sessions and at poster receptions; and for all attendees, a space for learning about practices that are resulting in measurable improvements and achieving ambitious goals for students.” - Carnegie website

For 2024, we not only had several of our team members attend but we were also honored with the recognition of being a Community Leader, defined as one who plays “a pivotal role in creating an exceptional community experience for Carnegie Summit 2024 attendees.”

By partnering with Carnegie, our team was able to deliver highly-attended and engaging presentations about the school transformation work we’ve done side-by-side with our educator clients and share proven, equity-driven practices that strengthen leaders. Here’s what we shared this March.

Photo of Partners in School Innovation team members Allie DeRosa, K. Kaaekuahiwi, and Erin Howard in front of a projector screen showcasing their session’s cover slide.

Session: "Embracing Courageous Vulnerability To Disrupt The Rigidity Of Continuous Improvement"

Presented by K. Kaaekuahiwi, Supervising Improvement Partner; Allie DeRosa, Senior Improvement Partner; and Erin Howard, Improvement Partner.

Participants engaged in a roundtable discussion to unpack “mirror work” (deep self-reflection around equity stances) and go through an iterative process to practice and examine courageous vulnerability. These dialogues created opportunities for attendees to reimagine solutions to educational equity challenges that Black and Brown students face in school. With that greater understanding, attendees began grappling with meaningful ways to address educational inequity and foster improved learning outcomes. Our session facilitators fostered iterative dialogue aligned to research-based evidence and research trends on courageous vulnerability, relational trust, and collective action.

Photo of Partners in School Innovation team members Paula Espinoza and Uchenna Lewis standing in front of a detailed poster showcasing their multilingual learner work.

Close-up photo of the poster titled “Tools that Build the Equity Lens of ROCAs (Results Oriented Change Agents)” that showcases the multilingual learner work that Partners in School Innovation has done.

Poster: "Supporting Multilingual Learners: Gotta Have the Right Tools for the Job" 

Presented by Uchenna Lewis, Supervising Improvement Partner, and Paula Espinoza, Senior Improvement Partner.

Viewers learned how educators are using two sets of tools to support multilingual learners (MLLs) in an elementary school district in San Jose, California. One set of tools is used for building educators’ capacity to create an anti-bias, anti-racist (ABAR) environment and integrating that work with English language development (ELD) instruction. The other set of tools is for documenting the experiences of MLLs so educators can assess whether efforts to improve ELD instruction are having their intended impact. Viewers were invited to consider how they could use the tools in their context.

Photo of Partners in School Innovation CEO Derek Mitchell, Carnegie Networked Improvement Science Managing Director Barbara Shreve, and High Tech High GSE President Ben Daley in front of a projector screen showcasing their session’s cover slide.

Session: "Learning across boundaries: Building community for equity-focused improvement" 

Presented by Derek Mitchell, CEO, Partners in School Innovation; Barbara Shreve, Managing Director and Senior Associate, Networked Improvement Science, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; and Ben Daley, President, High Tech High Graduate School of Education.

Ensuring every young person is supported to learn and thrive requires working across boundaries of roles and institutions in ways that are not yet common practice in education. Improvement science, by design, values diverse forms of expertise in the quest to deeply understand problems and to design effective solutions. However in practice, building diverse, equity-focused coalitions in which different voices are engaged and valued is often challenging.  In this session, participants explored what enables and supports this kind of boundary-crossing collaborative learning and shared ideas about how to catalyze and sustain coordinated action to build an equity-focused, continuously improving field.

Session: "Turning Challenge into Opportunity"

Presented by Partners in School Innovation CEO Derek Mitchell and CORE Districts Chief Improvement Officer Juli Coleman for Network for School Improvement (NSI) organizations.

Derek and Juli discussed how NSI organizations partner, collaborate, and or combine to produce efficiencies and become more powerful than the sum of their parts. Organization senior leaders were invited to come and discuss models or mergers and collaborations from which others could learn, and to workshop ideal combinations of the participants’ various capabilities and support to districts.

Smiling Partners in School Innovation team members take a selfie outside on a sunny day.

We had an amazing time at Carnegie Summit 2024 in San Diego meeting with and learning from other conference attendees. It was so energizing to be in such a vibrant and diverse community committed to improvement in education. 

Thanks to everyone who said hello when you saw any of us - K. Kaaekuahiwi, Chris Thorn, Erin Howard, Uchenna Lewis, Derek Mitchell, Allie DeRosa, and Paula Espinoza. We’re looking forward to connecting with everyone again in 2025!

Photo of the Partners in School Innovation team at Carnegie Summit 24 standing in front of a large welcome banner, dressed in business casual attire and sporting conference lanyards.