Louisiana partnerships

Instruction Partners is a nonprofit organization dedicated to excellent instruction for all students. We work shoulder to shoulder with school, system, and state leaders to catalyze instructional improvement and accelerate student learning, organizing our efforts around the following questions: 

• Are students showing up?
• Are students connecting?
• Are students given worthy work?
• Are students doing the work?
• Are students learning? 

Before COVID-19, we helped school and system leadership teams strengthen instruction and accelerate student learning through side-by-side observation of practice, academic strategy consulting, and teacher and leader capacity-building. Since the pandemic, we have worked to orient leaders to the current context, clarify priorities and goals, reorganize their work to operate in light of new demands, determine how to measure success, build and execute a plan, monitor progress, and continuously improve the effectiveness of the work through capacity-building. Examples of recent efforts include:

• We released the Continuous Improvement Toolkit, which offers educators practical resources for supporting improvement efforts this year. We are working on a Reconstruction Framework to be released in 2021.
• We published guidelines for Effective Distance Learning Practices, offering actionable strategies educators can leverage to maintain high expectations for students while ensuring they have access to high-quality instruction during distance learning.
• We embarked on an interview series called Rethinking Intervention, where we speak with content experts, researchers, and leading practitioners about what does and does not works to intervene effectively and accelerate student learning

Given the substantial instructional and operational shifts necessitated by the pandemic, we work closely with partners to identify aspirations and goals that have relevancy and meaning during this time of unprecedented change. These aspirations serve as a clear focus for instruction and culture, responding to the core priority areas of 1) planning for the needs of priority groups of students, 2) supporting all students’ emotional needs and unfinished learning needs, and 3) advancing and preserving student learning no matter the scenario.

We work with leaders through cycles of improvement to observe teaching and learning, make a practical plan for improvement, develop teacher and leader capacity to carry out the plan, and support follow-through. 

Instruction Partners is also the leader in leveraging the power of high-quality curriculum to drive instructional progress. In 2019, we launched the Curriculum Support Guide, an open-source, comprehensive framework and practical set of tools and resources to help systems avoid the pitfalls that can often come with new materials adoption.

Instruction Partners and Louisiana Schools