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Emerging Knowledge Forum
Emerging Knowledge Forums
The Annenberg Institute hosts a two-day, invitational forum each spring for some 125 participants – including educators, community leaders, school administrators, researchers, and foundation officers – who bring diverse perspectives but a shared commitment to improving urban education and a willingness to expand their own learning.
Goal
The Emerging Knowledge Forums are designed to bring the best thinking, evidence, and experience on cutting-edge approaches to systemwide capacity building to our partner communities and colleagues. Each Forum showcases innovative programs in several urban communities around the country. Through formal discussions with representatives from these communities, participants gain an understanding of these new approaches; they then have time to collectively explore and build new knowledge about creating whole systems of successful schools. After the conference, participants share this new knowledge across their national, regional, and local networks to help build the collective courage and support necessary for making whole systems of successful schools a reality in our urban districts.
What We Do
Institute staff research and select sites where innovative approaches to building whole systems of successful schools have been developed and are mature and stable enough for lessons to be drawn from both their successful and their less successful elements. The forums include workshop/seminars where participants meet in small-group sessions to develop an understanding of the work of one site and engage in in-depth reciprocal conversation about the strengths, weaknesses, and future possibilities of the site’s approach. Participants and site team representatives are then asked to address a series of questions and challenges designed by Institute staff to consolidate their thinking and push them to think creatively about systemwide reform.
The Institute has conducted Emerging Knowledge Forums since 2004.
March 2009: Buidling Smart Education Systems focus on New Orleans
The 2009 Emerging Knowledge Forum built on the idea of a smart education system, and held it in and focused on a particular site: New Orleans. To provide support to New Orleans, we enlisted the Boston Public Schools, the New York City Coalition for Educational Justice, and the Chicago Community Schools Initiative to serve as “critical friends.” These sites are at the leading edge of these key issue areas: effective use of data, sustaining and developing human capital, cross-sector partnerships and community organizing and engagement.
March 2008: Smart Education Systems Gaining Ground
The fifth forum refined the concept of a smart education system, presented in the fourth forum, and explored how such systems are emerging from a variety of entry points in five featured sites. The Institute described a set of six dimensions it has identified as important to a smart education system, with illustrations from the sites, and invited participants to reflect on what resonated most for their work about the smart education system approach and what posed the greatest challenge.
March 2007: Building Smart Education Systems
The fourth Forum built on the conversations of the previous years to explore the new, and complementary, concept of a “smart education system,” which calls for the coordination or integration of supports and services that promote high-quality student learning and development wherever they occur – at school, at home, and in the community – at home, at school, and in the community – in order to move all students beyond basic skills to proficiency and beyond.
March 2006: Results + Equity + Community > Smart Systems
The third Forum continued the exploration of the three themes integral to creating whole systems of successful urban schools, whether the “system” is a localized network, a set of far-flung but like-minded schools, or a traditional large urban school district.
> Forum Agenda [PDF: 4 pages]
March 2005: Results + Equity + Community > Smart Systems
The second forum took the key themes from the first and broadened their scope to the idea of a “smart system,” a whole community of successful schools that serves all students well. Participants focused on how these three themes interact in the creation of a smart system.
> Forum Agenda [PDF: 3 pages]
March 2004: Results + Equity + Community = Smart Districts
At the first forum, participants engaged in collective learning about three themes – results, equity, and community – that the Institute considers fundamental for creating and maintaining effective schooling.
> Forum Agenda [PDF: 1 page]
Partners & Funders
Contact Person
Michael Grady
Deputy Director
michael_grady@brown.edu
Emerging Knowledge Forums
EKF MATERIALS
Communities Building Smart Education Systems EKF examples.
EKF 2009
Building Smart Education Systems Focus on New Orleans
EKF 2008
Smart Education Systems Gaining Ground
Communities Building Smart Education Systems EKF examples.
>
EKF 2009
Building Smart Education Systems Focus on New Orleans
>
Web site
[Video, site profiles, blog]
[Video, site profiles, blog]
EKF 2008
Smart Education Systems Gaining Ground
>
The Annenberg Institute hosts a two-day, invitational forum each spring for some 125 participants – including educators, community leaders, school administrators, researchers, and foundation officers – who bring diverse perspectives but a shared commitment to improving urban education and a willingness to expand their own learning.
Goal
The Emerging Knowledge Forums are designed to bring the best thinking, evidence, and experience on cutting-edge approaches to systemwide capacity building to our partner communities and colleagues. Each Forum showcases innovative programs in several urban communities around the country. Through formal discussions with representatives from these communities, participants gain an understanding of these new approaches; they then have time to collectively explore and build new knowledge about creating whole systems of successful schools. After the conference, participants share this new knowledge across their national, regional, and local networks to help build the collective courage and support necessary for making whole systems of successful schools a reality in our urban districts.
What We Do
Institute staff research and select sites where innovative approaches to building whole systems of successful schools have been developed and are mature and stable enough for lessons to be drawn from both their successful and their less successful elements. The forums include workshop/seminars where participants meet in small-group sessions to develop an understanding of the work of one site and engage in in-depth reciprocal conversation about the strengths, weaknesses, and future possibilities of the site’s approach. Participants and site team representatives are then asked to address a series of questions and challenges designed by Institute staff to consolidate their thinking and push them to think creatively about systemwide reform.
The Institute has conducted Emerging Knowledge Forums since 2004.
March 2009: Buidling Smart Education Systems focus on New Orleans
The 2009 Emerging Knowledge Forum built on the idea of a smart education system, and held it in and focused on a particular site: New Orleans. To provide support to New Orleans, we enlisted the Boston Public Schools, the New York City Coalition for Educational Justice, and the Chicago Community Schools Initiative to serve as “critical friends.” These sites are at the leading edge of these key issue areas: effective use of data, sustaining and developing human capital, cross-sector partnerships and community organizing and engagement.
>
Web site [video, site profiles, participants, blog]
March 2008: Smart Education Systems Gaining Ground
The fifth forum refined the concept of a smart education system, presented in the fourth forum, and explored how such systems are emerging from a variety of entry points in five featured sites. The Institute described a set of six dimensions it has identified as important to a smart education system, with illustrations from the sites, and invited participants to reflect on what resonated most for their work about the smart education system approach and what posed the greatest challenge.
>
Web site [video, sites, participants, outcomes, readings]
March 2007: Building Smart Education Systems
The fourth Forum built on the conversations of the previous years to explore the new, and complementary, concept of a “smart education system,” which calls for the coordination or integration of supports and services that promote high-quality student learning and development wherever they occur – at school, at home, and in the community – at home, at school, and in the community – in order to move all students beyond basic skills to proficiency and beyond.
>
Forum Agenda [PDF: 4 pages]
March 2006: Results + Equity + Community > Smart Systems
The third Forum continued the exploration of the three themes integral to creating whole systems of successful urban schools, whether the “system” is a localized network, a set of far-flung but like-minded schools, or a traditional large urban school district.
> Forum Agenda [PDF: 4 pages]
March 2005: Results + Equity + Community > Smart Systems
The second forum took the key themes from the first and broadened their scope to the idea of a “smart system,” a whole community of successful schools that serves all students well. Participants focused on how these three themes interact in the creation of a smart system.
> Forum Agenda [PDF: 3 pages]
March 2004: Results + Equity + Community = Smart Districts
At the first forum, participants engaged in collective learning about three themes – results, equity, and community – that the Institute considers fundamental for creating and maintaining effective schooling.
> Forum Agenda [PDF: 1 page]
Partners & Funders
- Carnegie Corporation of New York
- Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
- Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation
- Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives at Tulane University
- Urban League of Greater New Orleans
Contact Person
Michael Grady
Deputy Director
michael_grady@brown.edu
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