Willard Daggett

Willard R. Daggett, Ed.D., Founder and Chairman of the International Center for Leadership in Education, is recognized worldwide for his proven ability to move preK-12 education systems towards more rigorous and relevant skills and knowledge for all students. He has assisted a number of states and hundreds of school districts with their school improvement initiatives. Dr. Daggett has also collaborated with education ministries in several countries and with the Council of Chief State School Officers, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Governors Association, and many other national organizations. He serves on several advisory boards, including:

NASA Education Advisory Board – 2008 to present

USA Today (national newspaper) Education Advisory Board

Before founding the International Center for Leadership in Education in 1991, Dr. Daggett was a teacher and administrator at the secondary and postsecondary levels and a director with the New York State Education Department, where he spearheaded restructuring initiatives to focus the state’s education system on the skills and knowledge students need in a technological, information-based society.

Dr. Daggett is the creator of the Application Model and Rigor/Relevance Framework™, a practical planning and instructional tool for determining the relevance of curriculum and assessment to real-world situations. Dr. Daggett’s Rigor/Relevance Framework has become a cornerstone of many school reform efforts throughout the United States.

Dr. Daggett is the author of numerous books about learning and education, textbooks and research studies, reports, and journal articles.

Dr. Daggett has spoken to hundreds of thousands of educators and education stakeholders in all 50 states. His enlightening, entertaining, and motivating messages have helped his listeners to look at education differently by challenging their assumptions about the purposes, benefits, and effectiveness of American schools. Dr. Daggett inspires his audiences both to embrace what is best about our education system and to make the changes necessary to meet the needs of all students in the 21st century.

Preparing Students for the 21st Century

The skills, knowledge, and attitudes today’s learners bring to our schools and the skills, knowledge, and attitudes they will need to be successful in the technological, globally driven world in which they will live and work have changed dramatically. Dr. Daggett will describe what schools must do to prepare students for their future rather than our past.

Leading Change During Challenging Times — Lessons Learned from Our Nation’s Most Rapidly Improving Schools

Three evolving challenges are about to accelerate simultaneously, causing the perfect storm for K-12 education. Dr. Daggett will describe the implications of 1) the Common Core State Standards, Next Generation Assessments, and teacher evaluation systems, and how they will fundamentally change what and how we must teach; 2) the increasing financial pressure that schools will be forced to deal with; and 3) the challenges/opportunities that emerging technologies and tech-savvy students will pose for all K-12 educators. He will then provide a snapshot of how the nation’s most rapidly improving schools provide solutions to these complex challenges.

Creating a Culture of High Expectations

The nation’s most rapidly improving schools have created a culture of high expectations for all students, not simply because of the pending demands of the Common Core State Standards, Next Generation Assessments, and new teacher evaluation requirements, but rather because they understand the need to prepare their students for our increasingly technological, globally competitive society. Dr. Daggett will explain the imperative for high expectations and provide suggestions on how schools can achieve them.

Creating Systemwide Focus on Effectiveness and Efficiency — The Daggett System for Effective Instruction

To improve student performance, especially during times of declining financial resources, the nation’s most rapidly improving schools have found that it is essential to align priorities and initiatives, and work of all levels of the system, from classroom to school to district; around instructional effectiveness. The design of the Daggett System for Effective Instruction incorporates the best practices in these schools and is based on an extensive review of research and a deep understanding of what schools can reasonably afford and reasonably impact. Dr. Daggett will describe the system and specific tools and strategies that schools can use to improve the performance of all students, even during times of declining financial resources.

Preparing for the Challenges and Opportunities of the Common Core State Standards

Over the next few years, schools will face a series of challenges and opportunities that will have a major impact on both students and teachers. Fueled by moving to the Common Core State Standards and, more importantly, new assessments tied to these standards, schools must make a fundamental shift in both what is taught and how it will be taught. Students will be assessed on standards that are far more rigorous and much more applied than in the past; therefore teachers will need to match their instruction to those higher levels of rigor and relevance. Dr. Daggett will lay out why these changes are being made, the impact they will have on curriculum and instruction, and ways that the nation’s most rapidly improving schools develop and use a blueprint to meet the challenges successfully.

Rigor and Relevance for ALL Students

Highly successful schools have academically rigorous curricula that also incorporate real-world relevance. These schools understand that rigor, while essential, is not adequate to lead all students to high levels of achievement. Dr. Daggett will provide an in-depth look at the Rigor/Relevance Framework®, created by the International Center for Leadership in Education, which has become a cornerstone of curriculum and instruction throughout the country and abroad. Two additional Rs, which are also critical to maximizing student success, will be described: relationships between student and teacher, student and student, and teacher and teacher, and opportunities for reflective thought on what is being taught and learned.

Teacher Evaluation – Take Control or Be Controlled

Over the next two years, the most intensely debated issue in and around our schools will be teacher evaluations. Pending federal legislation will require it, governors are calling for it, and the media are embracing it. As educators we can either take control of the teacher evaluation process or be controlled by external demands. Dr. Daggett will highlight essential considerations that will ensure teacher evaluations focus on instructional improvement. Specific strategies to meet school and district goals through a teacher evaluation system will also be identified.

CTE at a Crossroads

For both academic education and career and technical education, the next few years will be “the best of times” or “the worst of times.” The last decade has presented great challenges for all educators, brought about first by No Child Left Behind and now by Race to the Top, coupled with dramatic changes in the workplace. Dr. Daggett will describe how outstanding programs have responded to the challenges by well preparing students for academic and workplace success by making CTE and academic education a seamless system.

Literacy Across the Curriculum

Both the workplace and postsecondary education are demanding higher levels of literacy. This reality is behind the higher expectations that underpin the Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Assessments. Meeting these demands means literacy must become a bell-to-bell responsibility of all educators. Dr. Daggett will describe the nation’s most rapidly improving schools’ best practices for driving literacy across the curriculum.