Joseph G. Sassone, as School and District Improvement Senior Facilitator at WestEd, is responsible for developing the capacity of schools to transform systems in ways that improve educational outcomes and advance equity.
Sassone facilitates a student-centered transformation model for comprehensive school improvement. Currently, he is working with the Division of Performance and Accountability at the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) to utilize WestEd’s Four Domains for Rapid School Improvement with comprehensive and targeted schools.
Previously, Sassone served as the Senior Director of School and District Services at WestEd, where he led complex transformational projects with schools and districts that had been persistently low-performing in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nebraska, New York, and Wisconsin. His most successful project was with the Creighton Elementary School District in Phoenix, Arizona. When Creighton began a turnaround process in 2008, it was a struggling, underperforming district. The state had designated the district as “failing” and eight of its nine schools as “underperforming.” By spring 2011, the percentage of students who met or exceeded proficiency in reading had increased from 48.5 to 68 percent and all the schools were performing at state standards. Within three years, student achievement exceeded expectations, and the school district itself had transformed the way it operated.
Recently, Sassone co-authored a peer-reviewed article published in the Journal for Leadership and Instruction, “Accelerate, Don’t Remediate: An Instructional Framework for Meeting the Needs of the Most Vulnerable Students after COVID School Closures.”