ED LINK-12
Educational Leadership Information Network K-12

Ed Link Sites

The Educational Leadership Information Network K-12, known as ED LINK-12, was established in 1986 under sponsorship of the Division of Professional Development, College of Education and Human Services, Wright State University. Ed LINK-12 was established with the objective of initiating a field-based organization designed to provide information and technical assistance to school districts in southwestern Ohio; the focus being school improvement. Key ingredients of this network include: flexibility -- being responsive to needs of the participants; collaboration -- equal participation and shared governance; interaction -- promotion of personal encounters between all participants; eclectiveness -- diverse approaches by encouraging collaboratively developed support strategies; and interlacing -- bringing together local, state and national resources.

ED LINK-12 is a field-based organization designed to provide information and technical assistance to school districts in Ohio with focus on school improvement. It strives to serve its clients through disseminating promising educational practices/models and providing support/linkage between WSU and the public school sector.

Research related to network dynamics is used as a basis to lead participants in strategic planning processes. This helps participants understand that networking promotes collegial environment necessary to generate and sustain shared purposes of the networks. These purposes are classified into four categories: 1) Reality: the fit of information disseminated into the real world contexts of recipients; 2) Utility: the extent to which information is viable in guiding application; 3) Knowledge Transfer: the intensity of contact between disseminators and receivers; and 4)Exchange: the degree of emphasis upon two-way communication.

The aim of ED LINK-12 is to preserve quality of interaction within individual networks; and this is accomplished by structuring each to fewer than fifteen school systems composed by similarities in size; demography; geography; and themes/concerns. These common features create a chemistry among the school systems for maintaining and reinforcing common purposes. Experience with ED LINK-12 results in valuable lessons in terms of what an organization must commit to a networking program. In addition to expected tasks, Wright State's Division of Professional Development continues to commit time to maintain dialog/communications between meetings because decisions are made on a consensus basis; and it is imperative that network participants attend meetings with sufficient information to make decisions within a common frame of reference. School network decision making is accomplished directly with superintendents as part of roundtable activities. Effective decision making is accomplished through limited, carefully constructed agendas for these meetings that are typically devoted to school improvement issues and network maintenance.

ED LINK-12 is heavily involved in planning for school improvement by providing collaborative inservice training support and coordinating district-wide professional development for 48 school systems. The areas that ED LINK-12 serves has a combined student enrollment of 210,520 with 675 administrators and 13,880 teachers. Meetings/workshops/conferences that are specifically designed for elementary, middle/junior high/secondary teachers, curriculum directors, guidance counselors, maintenance supervisors, transportation supervisors; secretaries; superintendents; business managers; technology directors; treasurers are sponsored with topics including proficiency testing; inclusion; outcome-based education, negotiations; character education; and school funding/grant writing. The four networks within ED LINK-12 are Middle Cities, West Central, Southwest Region and Southeast Region and the combined number of meetings supplied is 125.

Networks hold strong potential for establishing new and innovative working relations between K-12 and University education. ED LINK-12 offers substantial impact by providing forums through which K-12 and University participants may effectively address school improvement.

Immediate goals of ED LINK-12 are to develop network identification through individual meetings on problems, needs and responses related to school relationships and to foster interschool visits and other forms of communication. It develops group expectations/problem-solving abilities through identifying and highlighting earlier successes, evaluating and sharing problems and ideologies of groups related school efforts. It identifies and develops group resources by creating a pool of resources from each school, keeping the resource pool current, and encouraging network members to make direct contact with resources. Each network has authority to make decisions about activities, involvement, location of meetings, agendas, and how to benefit from these processes.

In summary, the purpose of ED LINK-12 is to identify and disseminate promising practices and programs employed by schools which relate to instructional quality, career incentives and staff development; to provide technical support to schools throughout the development, implementation, evaluation, cycles associated with program development; and to provide a linkage to regional and national resources and encourage networking among schools throughout the networks. ED LINK-12 is constantly expanding its commitment and programs in a need assessed by its network members.