Guiding District Implementation of Common Core State Standards: Innovation Configuration Maps
These Innovation Configuration maps were developed by a task force of Kentucky educators with support from Kentucky Department of Education, Appalachia Regional Comprehensive Center at Edvantia, and Learning Forward to align with the four pillars of Kentucky’s Leadership Networks. They are offered as a model for other states and districts to use to develop their own Innovation Configuration maps to support district implementation of Common Core State Standards, educator effectiveness, and student assessment.
The authors have developed this tool based on Hall and Hord’s Innovation Configuration (IC) map, used to define and quantify implementation practices, against the four pillars of Kentucky’s areas of support identified for successful standards implementation: Kentucky’s Core Academic Standards (KCAS), assessment literacy, leadership, and effective teaching. They have focused specifically on the actions required of Central Office staff across multiple indicators, supporting each of the four areas. There is specificity in detailing what the actions look like as a continuum across five levels, from the “Ideal” set of implementation behaviors to “Not Yet Begun”. This is a helpful tool that can be generalized to states/districts outside of Kentucky, and is agnostic to the standards being implemented. However, it is one-sided in that the focus lays on Central Office staff, without any real discussion about the integration of the other stakeholders necessary in the successful implementation and integration of new standards, assessments, and accountability systems.