The Better You Get, The Better You Can Get

Case Study: Maine Township High School District 207 (Park Ridge, Ill.)

How a high school district focuses on increasing capacity for growth and change to function as a true learning organization

A student population that is growing more diverse and poorer is not an uncommon story we in education hear today about districts around the country. Neither is the fact that this puts increased pressures on educators to meet so many disparate student needs simultaneously.

What is an uncommon story, though, is a response to such changing demographics that focuses less, for example, on the specifics of differentiation and response to intervention and more on a far bigger picture and far more transformative goal: always grow capacity to be better.

This was how the leaders and educators of Maine Township High School District 207 chose to respond to its changing student population, with great and inspiring success.