As Baltimore City Public Schools started its continuous improvement journey, improvement leaders adopted a “mindsets first” orientation, prioritizing building improvement dispositions to fundamentally change the way work was done within the organization. We hypothesized that, by designing tools to apply and reinforce improvement mindsets, people’s improvement habits would grow. Some of the district’s most successful tools include training on improvement dispositions, a tool to develop a theory and measures, and PDSA lab notebooks. Initial qualitative data gathered from district staff supports the district’s hypothesis – specifically, consistent application of the improvement tools by teachers led to growth in their improvement mindsets.
