Harnessing Time as a Lever to Advance Equity

Abstract

Discourse on education leadership at the district level often contends with the importance of cultivating, allocating, and evaluating the use of resources in alignment with priorities. While public discussions often focus on monetary or physical resources such as funding, staffing, and facilities, districts and schools must attend to the broad range of resources that impact learning, teaching, and leading, including abstract resources such as system coherence, instructional consistency, culture, and relational trust. This capstone focuses on my journey as a doctoral resident in the Superintendent’s office to support Cambridge Public Schools (CPS) in its efforts to improve the use of one of its most valuable resources—time—in alignment with its articulated priorities for improvement. Over the course of my residency, my understanding and shaping of the problem of practice both broadened, to encompass a more holistic view of ways in which Cambridge can provide more, better, and differentiated time, and sharpened, to focus on the specific needs of Cambridge’s most vulnerable youth: How can CPS collaborate with stakeholders to establish the conditions that provide educators and partners with more, better, and differentiated time to meet the diverse academic and developmental needs of Cambridge’s students, particularly those of its most vulnerable children and youth? This Capstone examines my work to shepherd the development of an action plan to address this problem of practice. I present evidence on time utilization practices in education as well as frameworks for developing, generating support for, and advancing big change ideas. I describe how I sought to build shared understanding of the challenges, opportunities, and potential solutions. I share how I translated this information into an actionable and digestible proposal for improvement that reflected the diverse and often competing perspectives of CPS stakeholders. Applying various frameworks, I analyze the successes and challenges of my efforts and offer implications for my own leadership development, CPS’s work ahead, and the education sector at large.