North Dakota’s Experience with the Academy Model: A Successful Replication

Abstract

In this article, professors share how the district/university partnership model thriving at Kansas State University was successfully replicated in North Dakota, and was adapted to match their own department goals. While teacher leadership has become a theme among Kansas State academies, their model was created out of principal preparation efforts. The focus of the North Dakota State University (NDSU) pilot project put a greater focus on teacher leadership from the beginning, so a different set of standards was needed to guide their new program. After much work, the Teacher Leader Model Standards were selected to guide NDSU's Teacher Leader Academy pilot project. The teacher leader standards have seven broad "domains" that describe the scope of a particular element of teacher leadership with "functions" under each domain that provide more specificity of what that domain looks like in practice. As a result of the successful pilot, interest in the model is high. Currently, there are Teacher Leader Academies operating in one urban and two rural North Dakota school districts. The implementation of NDSU's Teacher Leader Academy model also initiated statewide conversations about the preparation and ongoing professional growth of educational leaders.