Since 2000, a central strand of the Aspen Institute’s Education Program’s work has been an ongoing professional development seminar and peer-learning forum for the superintendents of some of America’s largest and most complex urban school districts. These semi-annual seminars, which typically bring together 10-15 superintendents are intensive, structured conversations using data and case studies to focus on individual and cross-district strategies to meet the major challenges confronting urban school leaders.
For the last several years, the retreats have been organized around system-level questions regarding human capital and educator quality: How do districts attract, develop, and retain the talent they need? How do they know what’s working in their systems and what’s not? How can school systems better organize to support great instruction?
At the superintendents’ request, we have built four additional networks of senior leaders within these urban districts:
- Chief Academic Officers Network (CAO)
- Chief Financial Officers Network (CFO)
- Urban Literacy Leadership Network (ULLN)
- Urban Math Leadership Network (UMLN)
Each of the networks meets twice a year, sometimes alone and sometimes in conjunction with one of the other networks (e.g., CAOs and CFOs meet together in January; CAOs meet separately and with the math and literacy teams in June). Each meeting is focused on a discrete set of issues and challenges that cut across the districts. Substantial background readings are
