Executive Director, School Reform Initiative
The School Reform Initiative supports schools to become better places for every learner by inspiring educators to improve teaching and learning so that every student receives what they need to develop to their full academic and social potential. We are searching for a committed and effective leader to serve as Executive Director. Reporting to the Board of Directors, the Executive Director maintains overall strategic and operational responsibility for SRI’s staff, programming and execution of its mission.
We seek an Executive Director who fully embraces our mission of making schools more equitable and excellent places for all students to learn, as well as someone who is able to take SRI to its next phase of development. Candidates will be relationship-driven, equity-focused, and possess a clear understanding of organizational development/change, financial acumen, and a track record of achieving organizational success.
Leadership in SRI requires skills in four key areas:
- Organizational viability in matters of operations and governance
- deliver effective administration of SRI’s operations
- engage, energize, collaborate and communicate with affiliates, funders and other equity mission-minded organizations
- hire, supervise, develop and retain competent, qualified staff
- enhance organizational development, including strategic thinking and planning
- promote SRI’s image by being active and visible in the community and by working closely with other professional, civic and private organizations
- maintain and support a strong Board of Directors, engaging board involvement with strategic direction
- Fiscal responsibility in matters of business and finance
- uphold the fiscal integrity of SRI, including submission to the Board of a proposed annual budget and monthly financial statement which accurately reflect the organization’s financial condition
- provide sound fiscal management that ensures maximum resource utilization and maintains SRI’s positive financial position
- Developmental stewardship in matters of resources and communications
- secure and expand funding sources to support existing and future programming
- establish external presence to cultivate strategic and robust relationships with potential funders, key decision makers, and like-minded equity organizations to advance SRI’s mission
- in partnership with the Board of Directors and staff, develop, implement and communicate SRI’s strategic vision among key partners and stakeholders
- support grant writing efforts
- deepen and refine all aspects of communication – from web presence to external relations with the goal of refining marketing strategies
- serve as an ambassador for SRI internally and externally, inspiring others to make schools more equitable places for students to learn
- Fidelity to mission in matters of programming and practices
- understand and enact SRI’s mission to ensure that every child succeeds in school, regardless of their external or internal, social or cultural contexts
- articulate our mission to multiple audiences
- enhance organizational capacity to support and evaluate educators as they develop excellent and equitable instructional practices
This is a full-time position with a twelve-month contract, including a retirement package, generous paid time off, and a heath care stipend. SRI is moving toward offering health, vision and dental benefits to full-time employees in the coming year. The salary range of this national non-profit leadership position — $85,000 to $95,000 — will be aligned with nonprofit salaries, commensurate with experience and negotiated with the SRI Board.
How to Apply
Applications including a resume and letter describing your interest and qualifications for this position should be sent to: Pat Norman, Chair, SRI Board of Directors at pnorman@schoolreforminitiative.org. If you have questions or need additional information, please contact Pat Norman.
More information about SRI’s mission and history may be found below.
An initial review of applications begins in late September with first round interviews to follow. Finalists are expected to present to the SRI Board of Directors and affiliates during our annual Fall Meeting (November 8-11). The anticipated start of the position is December 2018.
SRI Mission
A History of the School Reform Initiative
SRI Mission
SRI creates transformational learning communities fiercely committed to educational equity and excellence.
WHY we exist as an organization
School Reform Initiative supports schools to become better places for every learner by inspiring educators to improve teaching and learning so that every student receives what they need to develop to their full academic and social potential.
WHAT we do
- We teach educators how to engage in and facilitate complex, challenging, and sometimes, difficult conversations about teaching and learning, with increasing independence;
- We build the capacity of adult learners in schools to manage the complexity of teaching and learning;
- We create conditions that support educators to enact a vision of teaching and learning that serves every child well.
HOW we do this
- We model and teach the skills, habits, and dispositions of collaborative, reflective practice
- We create transformational learning experiences for adults in schools
- We remind educators why they chose education in the first place
- We invite educators to tap into and value the collective experience and expertise they hold
- We support educators to become mutually accountable for their colleagues’ success and the success of every child they serve
- We practice structured conversations and other tools and resources to access, engage, and sustain conversations about equity that lead to action
SRI Guiding Principles
SRI believes that the achievement of educational equity requires educators to engage in a continuous process of collaborative transformational learning through which they:
- Become mutually accountable to continually improve practice for the benefit of every learner
- Engage in reflective discourse and public, collaborative examination of the work learners produce
- Challenge their assumptions and biases about equity and identity and how they are enacted in practice
- Know learners well and engage them in relevant, meaningful and demanding work
- Become culturally proficient practitioners
How We Got Here: A History of the School Reform Initiative
The seeds of SRI were sown long before the organization was formally established in 2009. Twelve educators gathered in Chicago in 1994, invited by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform to rethink what professional development for educators might look like. Tired of the status quo, they envisioned a new way to think about professional development that truly focused on engaging teachers in defining what might improve student learning (Dunne, 2000). At the time, the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University was just emerging under the direction of Dr. Ted Sizer. With the generous support of the Annenberg Institute, this group of practitioners from Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) schools was charged with designing educator professional development that built on the unique context of each school and the strengths of the educators within the environment, all with a focus on improving teaching and increasing student achievement. It was from this effort that the principles and practice of SRI critical friendship first took form and were used to create a unique approach to professional learning communities. This initiative to support these ideas of SRI critical friendship among educators was known as the National School Reform Faculty (NSRF), a program of the Annenberg Institute of School Reform.
The first coaches’ institutes took place in the summer of 1995 with approximately 88 coaches from 70 CES schools participating. The schools were invited to apply and were intentionally selected to be diverse in both their locations and their student populations. This first group of facilitators/coaches committed to take what they learned back to their schools. Each facilitator/coach began an intentionally designed pathway to creating a professional learning community dedicated to improving teaching and learning through collaboration, reflective dialogue, and making their practice public — and worked with that group for at least two years. This early design was based on the findings of researchers who were doing cutting edge work on the relationship between learning communities and student achievement, including Milbrey McLauglin, Joan Talbot, Judith Warren Little, Fred Newmann, Anthony Bryk, Karen Seashore Louis, and Linda Darling-Hammond. Similar institutes have been held all over the United States as well as internationally, every year since 1995.
From the beginning, these intentional learning communities utilized structures and processes, called protocols, to assist educators in giving and receiving feedback on their practice, with the improvement of student learning at the center of the work, and are led by a skilled and experienced coach or facilitator. These strategies are designed to look at student and adult work through an equity lens, removing typical excuses and/or barriers (home life, perceived ability, etc.) as the reason students are not succeeding, and instead focusing on the design, content, and implementation of curriculum and instruction as well as the assumptions underlying such actions and beliefs.
In 2000, the National School Reform Faculty needed an existing organization to serve as its fiscal agent, and the Harmony Education Center in Bloomington, Indiana took on this role. NSRF became a program of the Harmony Education Center, with its own independent Accountability Council to help govern the decisions affecting NSRF. During the scale-up years, with limited foundation funding, NSRF needed to develop new ways of staying fiscally sustainable. Seminars of new facilitators continued, and the annual Winter Meeting brought together new and experienced educators, immersing them in the work of SRI critical friendship. A new fee-for-services model was developed to more intentionally support schools and districts interested in redesigning their professional development practices, with an eye towards equity, collaboration, deprivitization of practice, and reflection.
In 2008, the Accountability Council made the courageous decision to establish a nonprofit organization to gain greater control over the operation of the program its members developed. After several months of negotiations, the decision was eventually made to leave Harmony Education Center and operate as a fully independent nonprofit organization. Wanting to establish its own identity, the School Reform Initiative (SRI) was born. The original authors and developers of the work, including Gene Thompson-Grove as well as the Accountability Council, all of the current and former Co-Directors, and most of the National Facilitators, supported the decision and made the move with SRI to develop a new organization with a mission to “create transformational learning communities fiercely committed to educational equity and excellence.” In those first years, SRI’s part-time director Frances Hensley along with one full-time staff member and a dedicated board of directors worked tirelessly to build and expand on its foundational work to develop a comprehensive system for creating transformational learning communities. Since SRI’s beginning, the Bay and Paul Foundation has provided generous support enabling SRI to expand staff, put in place a fully elected board, develop a long-term plan for sustainability, and a robust community of SRI affiliates.
In 2012, the Board hired its first and current full-time Executive Director, Kari Thierer. Kari spent the first two years navigating SRI through a lawsuit brought on by Harmony School Corporation over the use of SRI critical friendship terminology. Under Kari’s leadership, that legal dispute proved fruitful in helping SRI become a truly mission-driven organization with equity now firmly at the center of our national offerings. Kari has also helped SRI move from its organizational infancy into its adolescence by carefully building SRI into a sustainable non-profit, one that allows us to continue to support a growing national community of educators while remaining steadfastly committed to our mission. We are at a point in our organizational development where we are steadily increasing national contracts and expanding fee-for-service offerings. SRI now has a vibrant research initiative to nourish its knowledge and expertise, an articulation of its core practices, and an expanding set of tools and services.