Empowerment Support Organization

Overview

Empowerment shares the fundamental belief that decisions about how to educate students should be made as close as possible to those who work with them – principals in collaboration with their school communities.  Such key decisions include broad authority over educational programming and curriculum, discretion over budgets, a significant role in selecting and evaluating the dedicated administrative team that supports each school, and the chance to decide what customized professional development is best for an individual principal and his or her staff.

The support provided to each of the over 500 Empowerment Schools is localized, relevant, and practical.  The 22 Empowerment teams work hard to understand what works and does not work for their schools in order to develop the right supports and to advocate for the policy changes that make sense. As a network of schools, principals select a core team to provide support, guidance, advocacy, and coaching as determined by the needs and goals of their schools. By affiliating with a network of schools, selecting their Network Leader and the Network Team, and by providing regular feedback about the Network Team, principals are assured that those who support them are held accountable and have the skills and knowledge to ensure excellent performance.

Evidence that Empowerment network teams are meeting the needs of their principals is reflected in the most recent Principal Satisfaction Survey results.  95% of principals were very satisfied or satisfied with the support provided by Empowerment.  Nearly 50% of our network leaders were rated at 100% satisfaction by their principals with 94% of Empowerment network leaders receiving 90% to 100% principal satisfaction.  Additional data on Empowerment can be found on our 2007-08 data summary and 2008-09 profile. 

Our Growth

Since 2004, Empowerment has grown from its roots as the Autonomy Zone (4 networks, 29 schools), to the first year of Empowerment (14 networks, 332 schools), to its current size (22 networks, 535 schools). 

To address the increased size of the organization, Empowerment reorganized.  We felt that the reorganization was necessary to allow us to continue to know our schools and networks well, and support them better, both educationally and financially.  We reorganized in ways that we believe will:

• deepen our efforts in support of meaningful student achievement, and make clear the distinctive organizing principles and beliefs of the organization. 
• implement Empowerment’s belief that great work can happen through strong professional relationships in smaller groups;
• continue our policy of devolving more funds to the schools and reducing the amount spent on central administration. 

While maintaining Empowerment’s belief structure as the unifying factor, we divided Empowerment into two affiliated, yet autonomous school support organizations (SSOs):

Empowerment Schools Association (ESA) and

Empowerment Schools Organization (ESO)

The beliefs that originally grounded the work of Empowerment continue to guide both ESA and ESO (supporting meaningful student achievement, developing strong professional relationships, and building collaborative learning communities).  Empowerment’s voice is significant, not just due to our numbers (35% of the city’s schools), but because of the thoughtful and creative policy initiatives we have pioneered over the past five years.  By remaining connected by our history and beliefs, there is strength in speaking with one voice as we continue to advocate for our students and schools.

ESA and ESO differ in the same ways networks differ from each other.  These variations emerge from the needs of schools, network team members, and the professional relationships that have developed over time.  We support and encourage this type of differentiation because such customization enables network teams to provide schools with quality support.

The networks within each Empowerment structure are as follows:

 

How We Support Schools

As an Empowerment School, the support received is customized, practical and in alignment with each school’s mission.  Empowerment teams listen, observe and then work to develop the right supports, and to advocate for policies that make sense.  As part of a network of approximately 25 schools, principals select a network team to help them manage the demands of the system and to provide support, coaching and advocacy related to all issues from instruction to accountability to budget management.  The job of the Network Team is to support schools with all their instructional and operational needs so they can achieve or exceed their accountability targets. 

Under the leadership of the Network Leader, the Network Team provides expertise in areas of instruction, achievement, business services and special services.  There are two team models within Empowerment.  The Empowerment model provides a core group of, at least, four professionals who work in support of the network’s schools, and in conjunction with the Integrated Service Centers (ISCs).  The other model, referred to as Children First Network (CFN), provides a group of 12-13 professionals who perform functions previously handled by an Integrated Service Center (ISC) and also includes those services provided by the Empowerment model. There are currently twelve Children First Networks (CFNs) in ESA and ESO.

Schools can choose to organize and conduct professional development internally or in collaboration with other schools in their network. They can receive support from Network Teams, or use devolved funds to partner with professional development providers of their choice.  Network Teams help schools make these decisions, coordinate network level professional development, and help principals find outside vendors based on the needs of each school’s faculty and students. Empowerment schools currently have partnerships with Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, AUSSIE, ATLAS Communities, CUNY Math in the City, Schools Attuned, Long Island University, New York City Writing Project at Lehman College, Facing History and Ourselves, NCREST, and many other well known professional development partners.

Instructional support

Empowerment has recognized from its inception the importance of an instructional focus.  The Empowerment School Intensive introduced school-based inquiry teams as an innovative professional development model using the accountability tools.  This evolved into the Children First Intensive, which has been implemented citywide.  Based upon the belief that teacher engagement in school-based inquiry empowers teachers, Empowerment is working to reach the goal of 90% teacher participation in school-based inquiry teams or collaborative learning communities.

Network teams work closely with principals and key faculty leaders to provide coaching and professional development tailored to the needs of each school. Network Teams provide targeted instructional support on a wide range of topics from accelerating literacy development to differentiating instruction to developing facilitative leadership skills.

Last year, we developed an Instructional Framework, designed as a set of questions, to focus and strengthen the dialogue between the school and the network team on improving instruction.  Empowerment network team members formed the core of the workgroup that developed the new Quality Review rubric.

Special-needs services & youth development support

Team members supporting special services provide professional development and guidance on promising practices for the instruction of special needs students, including special education students, English Language Learners, and the lowest-performing students within a school’s population, as well as special education regulations.  Additionally, special services personnel advocate for special needs students including referral, placement, and service delivery for these students and assist schools in building capacity in the area of compliance.

This personnel also ensures that resources, support, and guidance related to all youth development issues are available. This includes crisis intervention, safety, attendance, and counseling, in addition to providing and/or arranging professional development for school staff related to youth development topics. 

Operations support

Team members focused on operational support work with schools to provide comprehensive, specialized support related to business and operations functions such as budgeting, contracts, grants, procurement, human resources, and facility maintenance.  Additionally, these team members provide schools with guidance, resources, and problem solving techniques in order to assist them in increasing their operational and administrative capacity and autonomy.

Accountability/data support

ESA and ESO are the only school support organizations with over three years of experience in supporting schools with the accountability metrics. Network Teams work closely with schools to analyze student performance data (both quantitative and qualitative), interpret and design periodic assessments closely tied to each school’s curriculum, and prepare schools for their Quality Review.

Team members are available to support schools by assisting them in making the best use of tools such as Quality Reviews, Progress Reports, ARIS, and mining and making effective use of achievement data to drive the school’s progress.

Feedback from Principals

In the most recent Principal Satisfaction Survey, 95% of principals were satisfied or very satisfied with the support provided by Empowerment:

 “Education is a battle for the future of our city, and a struggle on behalf of the very lives of our children.  Empowerment allows leaders who are closest to the battle to set objectives, to identify strengths, to select the tactics and to deploy troops.”  Patrick Kelly, Principal, The Urban Science Academy

“The Empowerment initiative has allowed us to work with other like minded schools to support our work.  One example is the work we have done on authentic assessment, developing our own assessments (DYO) that allow us to know our students well as readers, writers and mathematicians.  Another example has been being able to pool our resources to provide quality professional development for our staff.”  Naomi Smith, Principal, Central Park East II

Price

A core principle of Empowerment is that, whenever possible, money should not be spent on behalf of schools, but rather each school community should determine how its budget is spent. The cost of becoming an Empowerment School, which includes all related support and advocacy, is approximately equivalent to the cost of one paraprofessional.  

The Empowerment option is $27,000 per school, which includes all of the support and services described above.  Network principals may collaborate and make the decision to share expenses for additional resources such as professional development or team members.

Empowerment is designed to serve all types, sizes, and levels of schools. There are no specific programs, curricula, professional development, or other practices that a school must adopt to be an Empowerment School, nor are there any mandatory expenses for such items.

For More Information

ESO
Anthony Conelli, Chief Education Officer - aconelli@schools.nyc.gov
Nigel Pugh, Deputy Chief Education Officer - npugh@schools.nyc.gov

ESA
Vincent Brevetti, Chief Education Officer - vbrevet@schools.nyc.gov
Jan McDonald, Deputy Chief Education Officer - jmcdonald4@schools.nyc.gov

335 Adams Street
Brooklyn, NY, 11201

Phone: (718) 923-5200
Fax: (212) 923-5145
Email: empowermentschools@schools.nyc.gov

Additional information can be found in our 2008-2009 Empowerment Brochure

View a list of Empowerment networks and Empowerment schools.

View printable profile data.

Note: ESA and ESO offer Children First Networks. View additional details and a list of networks