Issue link: http://educator.cta.org/i/882783
involved in research projects with the National Science Foun- dation because of ILC." Perhaps most significantly, funding and policy have changed in some districts as a result of negotiation and ILC work. For example, the Madera Unified Teachers Association bargained with Madera Unified to fund educators' professional develop- ment, with key training from ILC. In the ILC digital professional learning community on the website Collaboration in Common, ILC member and Madera Unified middle school science teacher Linda Tolladay recently marveled at progress made in the span of three years since she and a colleague started with a single ILC workshop. "Today our entire district teaching staff went to workshops provided by 70 or so teachers in our district," Tolladay wrote. "Tomorrow they will do it again. Teacher-driven change is taking root in our district." " Taking root" means ILC work has gotten traction and become an integral part of the local educational culture, as in Madera. In other areas, ILC members are in positions to write professional development into policy, or into the contract. "e 'educator teaching educator' model lends itself to some of the basic principles of organizing," Heins says, "and compo- nents of the ILC project engages members to invest in their profession and take the leadership to define what is needed in their classroom." SCOPE's Snyder mentions several other examples of ILC Since fall 2014, the Instructional Leadership Corps has served over 77,000 educators representing more than 2,000 California public schools in at least 445 districts. The ILC midyear conference in Irvine in February 2017. " ILC establishes that teachers are not the problem but rather an essential part of the solution." — JON SNYDER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, STANFORD CENTER FOR OPPORTUNITY POLICY IN EDUCATION By the Numbers Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive: • 84 percent of ILC attendees report a positive shift in their professional work. • 87 percent of attendees agree that the ILC workshops are valuable or extremely valuable. 20,000 2014–15 11,823 2015–16 2016–17 40,000 60,000 80,000 77,774 48,474 55 O C T O B E R / N O V E M B E R 2 017 Jon Snyder