The Center for Education Reform salutes all those folks beyond the Beltway who have written laws on the back of a napkin, worked tirelessly to persuade lawmakers to pass those laws, created schools, written standards, and generally challenged the conventional wisdom in the interest of making schools work better for all children. These are YOUR Action Heroes, and here are their stories.
January 2007
Action Hero: Kevin W. Riley, Ed.D.
As the principal of Mueller Charter School, Dr. Riley has led his staff toward significant and powerful organizational change. Among those changes:
• He re-wrote the school’s charter petition to reflect one, clear, child-centered mission: to get 90% of the students to grade level.
• He led through the turmoil of a staff that chose to eliminate the teachers’ union.
• He devised a governance process that involved stakeholders in truly authentic decision-making: including budget, salaries, working conditions, text selection, calendar, schedules, personnel, etc.
• He designed a student monitoring system that fosters resiliency in students and coordinates services to families.
• He led staff in a professional development program that has given all teachers a strong foundation in the elements of research-based powerful teaching, including the capacity for leveraging summative and formative data to engender significant academic gains for children.
• He has shared strategies with other schools through participation in workshops and conferences and by publishing Mueller's promising practices in professional journal.
• He has recorded the successes and challenges of Mueller's last 7 years in a recently completed book entitled The Lights of El Milagro: Lessons on Organizational Change from a Turn-Around Charter School.
The result: in a school of 950 children, where 95% are children of color, 85% are Latino, 75% qualify for free or reduced lunch, 60% are learning English as a second language, Mueller Charter School has gone from an Academic Performance Index (API) of 520 to 733 – one of the highest gains in San Diego County.
