Innovation and inclusion by design : reimagining learning, remembering Brown

Abstract

“For too many American students, high school is a time of disengagement that fails to put them on a path to college and career success...Preparing young adults for success requires a different educational experience than it did even a generation ago” (US Department of Education, 2013). Responding to abysmal levels of college and career readiness, high dropout rates, and persistent racial and socioeconomic outcomes gaps, President Obama calls for seismic changes in our nation’s approach to high school. Simultaneously, as we near the 60th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education our nation’s schools are regressing: students of color across the nation attend hyper-segregated schools where poor conditions and lagging outcomes are magnified. This Capstone explores my leadership challenge as a Resident in Denver Public Schools: to design and lead community-district school design process and make progress towards an innovative and inclusive new high school, Denver’s first new comprehensive high school since the 1980s. I frame this work around three adaptive challenges: changing beliefs about learning and school design, shifting institutional roles to promote collaboration and distribute leadership, and addressing historically significant issues of integration across neighborhood and racial boundaries. My research and analysis focuses on creating the enabling conditions in which community and district partners could address these challenges. I conclude that carefully constructed learning roles, environments, and experiences can achieve progress toward the long-term outcome of innovative and inclusive high schools. I also grapple with the difficulties and ambiguities of challenging institutional authority, fostering trust, safety, and learning, and sustaining capacity for collective action.