Engaging with a network of nearly one hundred District Members and serving 4 million students, The District Management Council (DMC) continues to provide premier consulting services to client districts, host stimulating events for district leaders, publish the best research, experience, and technology solutions educators need to effectively manage their schools. The team, now numbering thirty, hones its focus on the four DMC practice areas - human capital, special education, resource allocation, and strategic planning.

Within the first year of Simsbury Public Schools' membership with DMC, Superintendent Diane Ullman launches an in-depth review of the special education programs in her district. Using systems-thinking and a willingness to challenge conventions, Dr. Ullman was able to drastically improve these services for the district's 4,700 students. Read more in our case study.

The DMC team moves to 70 Franklin Street, Boston, MA, our current location.

Feeling inundated by paperwork and frustrated by insufficient results, Hamilton County partners with DMC to overhaul their teacher evaluation system. Together, they develop Project COACH, an innovative evaluation system focused on developing teachers, articulating performance levels, and providing useful and consistent feedback.

The team spends an extended period of time with the Boston Public Schools in DMC's first-ever Management Institute. Working from the belief that the best way to develop leaders is not to teach leadership and hope for the best, but rather to ask people to lead projects and achieve real performance results, the DMC team designed a professional development program for the leadership of Boston Public Schools. Each leader was assigned a small project with measurable results and provided a support structure of colleagues. The participants, through the innovative program, were able to solve small, short-term problems as well as gain long-term leadership skills. The success of the program prompts Springfield Public Schools to initiate the Management Institute with DMC a short while after.

DMC launches the individual membership option, enabling district leaders to advance their careers through DMC research
and conferences.

The team launches its consulting services and begins working one-on-one with district partners to implement best management practices. DMC also begins its special education practice with the aim of maintaining and increasing special education achievement while reigning in skyrocketing costs.

DMC partners with Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra to implement a Performance Pay Program in the Houston ISD. The result is a transformation from a highly impoverished, underperforming district to an exemplary model of education. By instituting a Pay-for-Performance model, the culture of the district changed in a way that dramatically increased student achievement. Read more about the program's implementation and the results it produced.

DMC launches a conference with a focus on supporting implementation in partner districts, aiming to facilitate a successful transition of knowledge into measurable results.

Superintendents gather with the DMC team in Cambridge, Mass. to discuss how districts can align goals and incentives with district objectives. Participants explore topics including differentiated pay for staff, weighted student funding, and cultures of quality.

Public schools across America find themselves struggling to adjust to changing times. Even as schools increase spending, achievement rates stagnate throughout the country. With the No Child Left Behind legislature increasing the accountability of schools and allowing students to transfer to charter schools if needs are not being met, public schools feel added pressure to deliver. How can superintendents meet ambitious achievement goals in their districts while the costs for maintaining existing staffing and programs continue to increase? Drawing from his experiences in consulting firms, entrepreneurial projects, and various school districts, John Kim begins to develop a vision of a solution.