Sponsored by IBM and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO)
Brought to you by the Reinventing Education Change Toolkit ( www.reinventingeducation.org) project.
By Stan Litow, Vice President IBM Corporate Community Relations and President IBM International Foundation
 Educational improvement is hard work and a real challenge, and no large-scale challenge can be met without effective leadership. IBM has been partnering with schools and school districts for 10 years through our global Reinventing Education program, and these partnerships have borne out the importance of leadership effectiveness in bringing about positive school change. This is why we created the Reinventing Education Change Toolkit, which is based on the work of Rosabeth Moss Kanter and our experience with school leaders in states and school systems around the U.S., and why we are spreading the word about successful leadership and the Change Toolkit project through this monthly leadership e-newsletter.
We believe that the Change Toolkit is one of the most effective online resources for educational leadership development available today. It contains world-class content on leadership and organizational change, is designed to facilitate collaboration (including online polling of team members, threaded discussion, and file sharing), and is available to anyone working to improve pre-K to 12 education. All you need to do is register to have full access to the Change Toolkit Website and all its resources. ( Learn more about the Change Toolkit )
The Change Toolkit already has more than 3,500 registered users from 50 states and 23 countries around the world. Among other successes, it is the foundational strategic planning tool being used as part of a $4.7 million U.S. Department of Education grant in Colorado, is an integral part of leadership training state wide for Superintendents in the state of Georgia, and it was the centerpiece of two executive education programs for school leaders at Harvard Business School.
The Change Toolkit is part of IBM's long-term commitment to educational improvement. Since 1995, our Reinventing Education program has provided more than $75 million in services, equipment, and cash to school systems in 25 U.S. districts and 10 countries around the world. These are multi-year projects that focus on some of the most challenging issues in educational improvement, from creating one of the first K-12 data warehouses in Broward county in 1995, using Riverdeep Learning Village to increase parent and community participation in Charlotte, NC, or, in 2002, helping forge collaborative partnerships between the Memphis City Schools and eight institutions of higher learning to build on the district's efforts to transform the pre- and in-service training of teachers. These projects have enhanced school-level decision making, extended the school day and improved professional development for faculty. Most important, multiple independent evaluations have documented substantial improvements in student achievement. ( Learn more about Reinventing Education )
To each grant site, IBM has contributed more than just money; we've dedicated our world-renowned researchers, educational consultants, and our technology. Through these contributions, we are finding new ways for technology to spur and support fundamental school restructuring and broad-based systemic change, all designed to raise student achievement by supporting the devoted efforts of our partners in schools and districts around the world.
We hope this newsletter is a chance to share experiences and success stories and to learn from one another. In this newsletter we hope to highlight the successes that we discover not only in our own work, but in yours as well.
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