Eric Gordon

The work I do: I was appointed Chief Executive Officer of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District in June 2011 after serving as the district’s Chief Academic Officer for four years. I am responsible for the leadership and daily management of Cleveland’s 35,600 student school district.

In July 2012, I led a citywide coalition to develop Cleveland’s Plan for Transforming Schools or The Cleveland Plan which has resulted in dramatic improvement in academic performance over the last decade, including a 29 percentage point gain in graduation rates to a record 80.9%.  Following years of decline in post-secondary enrollment for CMSD students despite the increasing graduation rates, I then led a city-wide coalition in bringing Say Yes to Education to Cleveland that, for the next 25 years, will make CMSD students eligible for full-tuition scholarships upon graduation. After launch of the Say Yes scholarships, CMSD saw its first increase in postsecondary education enrollment in five years, from 44 percent to 49 percent.   

My connection to the work of Student Achievement Partners: Through my ongoing work as a member and former officer of the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS), I have worked closely with CGCS and SAP as the Materials Alignment Toolkit was being developed. The Grade-Level Instructional Materials Evaluation Tool – Quality Review (GIMET-QR), in particular, is an important resource to ensure that school districts are choosing high quality instructional materials at each grade level while simultaneously ensuring a coherence to a larger instructional framework systemwide. I accepted the invitation to become a member of the SAP Board because I believe the resources and materials SAP creates are critical to ensuring school systems across America are thinking coherently about their instructional framework.

The perspective I bring to this Board: I have dedicated my life’s work to educating urban youth and bring that commitment to improving education for students, particularly students who have been traditionally marginalized in our urban communities. My more than decade of service as a leader of an urban district allows me to contribute my knowledge of how to create a coherent framework for deep learning and to help close the “knowing doing gap” as SAP continues to develop and distribute high quality professional learning, instructional planning, and classroom resources.