Build System Capacity

IRRE Supports

Every IRRE site team includes a member of our senior management team who can provide the perspective of our long experience and knowledge of education reform in diverse contexts. In addition, every team includes a site manager, who typically resides in or near the district involved. Working with school and district personnel, these two people oversee and coordinate the various expert teams. They are also the key contacts for district leaders, state departments, and private investors.

IRRE provides three related sets of supports to ensure strong and long-term effects on student academic commitment and achievement:

• The right start: Initial discussions with district and state leaders lead to a customized and unified plan that lays out how IRRE, the district, and the state (along with private investors where available) will work with each other and partner schools to achieve specific outcomes over a given period of time. A solid plan that represents mutual agreement means clarity on what each party will provide, how delivery on commitments will be measured, and targets for measuring overall progress, and provides a defined process for making course corrections.
• Sustainability: Once the plan is in place, IRRE works with school and district staff to implement selected strategies and to build the capacity that will sustain and strengthen these strategies past IRRE’s intensive involvement. Leadership retreats, on-site coaching, and apprenticeship training during regular site visits grow site staff’s ability to move the reform forward themselves. IRRE also provides teleconference check-ins and problem-solving sessions to help leaders at all levels of the system monitor, support, and intervene to support FTF implementation.
• Expansion: Whenever possible, IRRE works with a local entity — be it the state, district, nonprofit organization, or some combination — to develop a team of local educators who can support additional districts and schools in implementing FTF core strategies. IRRE staff offer seminars for local teams on each of the FTF core strategies, arrange field observations at local and national reform sites, and develop apprenticeship and co-leadership opportunities with IRRE staff at existing reform sites.