Capacity Building

Capacity building is a holistic approach to district, school or program improvement that begins with needs assessment, builds internal leadership, and leaves a program with the tools, resources, and processes necessary to effectively sustain their own continuous improvement process. School Readiness Consulting works through a collaborative cycle with districts, schools, and organizations to leverage existing resources and develop quality improvement systems unique to the needs of the children and adults within them. Our consultants’ capacity building work includes individual schools such as Howard Road Academy and the Arts and Technology Academy; and school districts like District of Columbia Public Schools and Little Egg Harbor New Jersey Schools.

Building your district, school or organization’s capacity might include processes such as:

Developing a shared vision
Intentionally hiring and training staff
Leadership and coaching development
Continuous quality improvement, and
Developing protocols for supervision and teacher observation.

Past and current capacity building projects include:

Arts and Technology Academy: School Readiness Consulting has worked with the Arts and Technology Academy to move towards and integrated, developmentally appropriate and rigorous early childhood program in preschool through second grade. We have developed classroom observational measures based on the school’s mission, developed professional learning opportunities for early childhood teachers, and worked collaboratively alongside the lower school principal and head of school to team coach at the classroom level and lead an early childhood learning community. Read more about our work with the Arts & Technology Academy.

Howard Road Academy: Howard Road Academy approached School Readiness Consulting in the Fall of 2010 to help achieve a vision of excellence in their early childhood programming. SRC consultants facilitated a visioning session with teachers and administrators to discover how Howard Road Academy’s strengths could best be used in this effort. We observed in all early childhood classroom using research-based measures of classroom quality. Our consultants then developed a series of leadership and administrative discussions and activities, targeted professional development opportunities and classroom based coaching to address the growth of teachers and administrators. Read more about our work with Howard Road Academy.

Other examples of work we have done in this service area include:

For more information on capacity building, please contact info@schoolreadinessconsulting.com.