Driving MPS Forward

Driving MPS Forward: Let’s Shift into High Gear

The Shift campaign is about moving our schools and district forward to get better outcomes for students. We are heading in the right direction. We don’t need more time; we need more momentum. At our current rate, it will take 15 years or more to reach equity and parity for every student. We need to shift into a higher gear to climb the steep slope toward success and triple our rate of closing the achievement gap.

 

The core strategies of Shift are as follows:

• Instructional Improvement: Define high standards for student performance and implement rigorous curriculum, useful assessments and supports across all grades that align with those standards.
• Human Capital: Redesign the human capital system to strengthen school and district leadership capacity, ensure expert teachers in every classroom and build collaborative teaching techniques.
• High Support Schools: Create and implement turnaround strategies that focus on urgent intervention and dramatic improvement for the lowest-performing schools.
• Accountability: Continue to build accountability systems for schools and central office with clear metrics for monitoring and reporting progress.
• Operational and Fiscal Effectiveness: Redesign operations for effectiveness and efficiency; ensure equitable funding.
• Family and Community Engagement: Engage families, students and external partners in supporting the system-wide core strategies for academic acceleration.
• Enrollment: Establish MPS as the district of choice in Minneapolis due to excellent schools; increase quality seats in MPS, grow enrollment and increase market share by 10 percent over the next several years.