Institute to help ramp up educational improvement

FRANKFORT, Ky. - The Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) has been selected to join with the U.S. Education Delivery Institute to enhance its process for driving progress and delivering results in the P-12 education arena.

The institute is working with Delaware, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York and Tennessee on P-12 and postsecondary education issues to help them set targets, plan strategies, monitor data and solve problems related to the implementation of reforms. There is no cost for Kentucky to join the project.

Sir Michael Barber, founder of the U.S. Education Delivery Institute and former chief advisor to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and institute CEO Kathy Cox met Friday in Frankfort with KDE staff to share insights on “deliverology,” a systemic process to drive progress and deliver results in education. Barber and Cox provided tools and ideas so that KDE can create its own delivery unit.

Barber and Cox also presented information to officials in the Kentucky Cabinet for Education and Workforce Development, the Education Professional Standards Board and the Council on Postsecondary Education.
“In the course of history, when the U.S. has been at its most powerful and generous, the world has prospered,” said Barber. “With the huge challenges facing us globally in this century, we all need the U.S. to be at the top of its performance in terms of educating its young people to be problem solvers.”

The U.S. Education Delivery Institute (EDI) is a non-profit organization that helps implement change in public education. EDI’s mission is to develop the capacity of system leaders in P-12 education and higher education to define and deliver on their academic vision — setting and reaching goals that increase the number of students who graduate from high school college- and career-ready, then enter and succeed in college.

EDI supplies a set of tools and a framework for leaders to deliver on their big goals, so that intent at the system level ultimately translates into impact at the student level. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Carnegie Corporation of New York have provided core support to launch the organization and to enable delivery work.