WHAT IS THE SCHOOL LEADER'S ROLE in sustaining school reform?
And what "habits of mind & heart" help school leaders guide
successful school change over time?
These questions (& others) are answered by dozens of
successful education leaders from across the country in "The
Role of Leadership in Sustaining School Reform: Voices From
the Field" (July 1996). The full text of the report is
available in our Online Library at:
http://www.ed.gov/pubs/Leadership/
BELOW ARE EXCERPTS from the report. The first excerpt looks
at "key dimensions of leadership for sustaining reform." Two
others present a few of the many direct quotes from school
leaders. The final excerpt is a list of "ideas for assessing
success in...creating a school culture that could sustain
change after the leader leaves & building meaningful school
partnerships."
NOTE: This report is the culmination of a project directed by
our 1994-95 principal-in-residence, Adel Nadeau. It was
written by Mary Leighton. Please note that opinions in the
report don't necessarily reflect positions or policies of the
U.S. Department of Education.
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Excerpts from "The Role of Leadership in Sustaining
School Reform: Voices From the Field" (July 1996)
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Key Dimensions of Leadership for Sustaining Reform
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FORUM PARTICIPANTS CAME UP WITH HUNDREDS of different ways to
identify key dimensions of leadership for sustaining reform. Their
responses fall into five general categories:
* Partnership and voice. Effective reform leaders cultivate a
broad definition of community and consider the contribution
that every member can make to helping children meet
challenging standards. They hear the voices of many
stakeholders -- families, businesses, and other groups and
institutions. Their ability to develop plans that reflect the
legitimate influence of others draws in many authentic
partners, whose personal convictions as well as community
spirit energize participation. They look for evidence of
widespread participation in important aspects of change.
Establishing partnerships and listening to a chorus of voices
are leadership skills that permeate many aspects of reform.
* Vision and values. Effective reform leaders are dependable
and committed "keepers of the dream" of student success
generated by faculties, families, and the community. They
know that realizing the dream hinges in part on applying
certain agreed-upon values to decision making. They know that
the dream is continuously evolving and that it belongs to
everyone. In different ways they ask themselves daily: does
this decision help realize the dream?
* Knowledge and daring. Effective reform leaders develop
relevant information bases and cultivate human resources to
minimize failure while encouraging risk taking. They study,
count, send staff to workshops, bring in experts and mentors,
consult their own insight and experience, and in a hundred
other ways increase capacity to make good decisions. Then
they step into the unknown and encourage staff to do likewise.
Their risks are carefully calculated to push the boundaries of
what is known and commonly done without threatening long-term
success.
* Savvy and persistence. Effective reform leaders know how the
system works and they can take a lot of flak (if they must).
They know how to interact with the central office, the local
community, and others outside the school. They know how
certain school structures nurture or discourage attitudes and
behavior. They can put up with resistance inside or outside
the building, but they eventually find ways to win
cooperation. They are good managers. They monitor their
understanding of the nature and operations of systems, and
they maintain a network of supporters to lean on in times of
particular stress.
* Personal qualities. Effective reform leaders put to good use
an array of personal qualities that many feel may be innate,
but are often underutilized. A well-developed sense of humor
was often mentioned as a priceless asset. Leaders use
language that signals their understanding of human variation
and the ways their own gifts can be used well.
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Quotes from School Leaders
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BENNETTA MCLAUGHLIN, PRINCIPAL of Mt. Diablo (CA) Unified School
District says:
Lately I've been thinking a lot about a comment one of my
teachers made to me about three weeks ago. She said, "We've
been talking. What we want to do next year is coach each
other. We've gone to all the conferences on multi-age
classes, and we haven't found anyone who knows as much as we
do ... We can do our own training--we can learn from each
other ..." She described a plan for coaching that the
teachers had devised. I was elated because I believe that
coaching is one of the highest forms of learning. Then I
began to reflect on how the staff had come to this place in
their thinking...
For five years, we have been learning together via various
means. We meet monthly for discussion of research and staff
development sessions led by teachers. The reading specialist
has weekly 30-minute "coffee conversations" about language
arts, and teachers drop in. Recently, as part of her mentor
project, the specialist set up voluntary coaching sessions for
teachers wishing to get more information on student progress
by using a tool called a running record. The staff loved
these coaching sessions -- perhaps this is the impetus for the
next level of coaching.
But I don't think these events are [the whole story]. For
five years, different teachers have taken leadership in
providing training in their particular areas of expertise. We
all learn together. I go to workshops with teachers so I know
what they are learning and can provide materials and emotional
support. I'm sure modeling being a learner is part of this,
but I'm not sure this is all. Empowerment is part of it too...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
VICKI FOREMAN, NOW PRINCIPAL of Kimball Elementary in Seattle,
Washington, explained how she got started:
When I was a new principal, our district made a top-down
decision to implement a reading program that required
significant paper/pencil testing of even the very youngest
learners. The teachers did not support the program and the
parents did not understand it, but we had to do it.
During the first round of testing in the fall, I was in a
kindergarten class watching the teacher, who was patiently
encouraging the children to do their best and explaining that
she could not help them. Most of the children filled in the
bubbles and crossed out pictures by thought or guesswork,
trying to comply with the teacher's request. One little girl
just sat there, arms folded, pencil down. Several times the
teacher encouraged her to give it a try, but she continued to
just sit. When she was asked again to pick up her pencil, she
responded with total exasperation, "Don't you know, I can't
read, that's why I'm here."
Now I could comment on my story with many thoughts on the
purpose of assessment and the appropriate connections between
expected outcomes, teaching strategies, student understanding
of the expectations, and authentic ways to demonstrate
learning, but that's for another time.
Since then, I have often thought about the principal's
leadership role in dealing with other people's agendas and
district imperatives. I think we need to deal with them from
our perspective as "keepers of the collective dream." I
didn't know then how to help the staff figure out where the
district-imposed reading program matched our school goals and
how to "turn a sow's ear into a silk purse." We just moved
along, crabby and negative, and it's unlikely that our efforts
contributed to student learning.
I think principals need to give staff the chance to vent,
rant, and rave, and then to model for them how to use someone
else's agenda to further our goals. Often it is possible. We
need to help teachers ask questions like, "Why are we doing
this? Where does the purpose match ours? How can we view
this as a resource to further our agenda? What's in it for
the school community?" We need to be careful not to join in
the naysayers, the "burned out," the negative thinkers. But
we also need to stand up and be counted when a program or
initiative is just not okay. While we try to bend a program
to our own purposes, we need to pull out the research and best
practice evidence and try to be a positive force for change
within the community, district, and school. If teachers have
been allowed and encouraged to develop their own leadership
and knowledge base, they can be a powerful force for change,
in partnership with principals.
All of our schools operate within the context of a district,
local, state, and federal government, and many community
advocacy groups. They all have an agenda for our schools.
Some match, some don't. Some help greatly, some don't.
Principals need to exercise their leadership to help their
school community thread its way through this sea of
expectations toward the vision, the dreams of the school. And
most important, to focus on the students and their dreams.
Like the kindergartner, they all came to learn. Don't you
know?
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Ideas for Assessing Success in "Creating a School Culture
That Could Sustain Change After the Leader Leaves" & in
"Building Meaningful School Partnerships"
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PARTICIPANTS IN THE SAN FRANCISCO FORUM -- like those in several
other groups -- hotly debated the question of whether the
leadership qualities for sustaining reform were innate or acquired
and, in either case, how their effectiveness could be assessed.
Challenging the hypothesis that most important qualities were
ineffable and unmeasurable, one participant said, "Well, suppose
the superintendent said that unless you could prove that you were
skillful in reform-related areas, she would simply evaluate you
according to the old rules that are unrelated to reform. If you
absolutely had to show evidence, how would you do it?" Thus
inspired, the group generated the following ideas for assessing
success in two often-mentioned areas of reform that can be
difficult to measure: creating a school culture that could sustain
change after the leader leaves and building meaningful school
partnerships.
Evidence of a school culture that can sustain change:
Show what school committees are doing and who is on each,
that is, demonstrate distribution of authority and
responsibility among a wide range of stakeholders
Document voting patterns on key issues, to demonstrate
the breadth and depth of support
Chart organizational functions and the decision making
matrix to demonstrate the extent of participation
Show how meetings are run--and that the reform leader
does not always run them
Show the diversity of key players
Document the persistence of reform after the leader
leaves
Evidence of meaningful school partnerships:
Provide a roster of the school site council
List community institutions that have formally "adopted"
the school and document their productive efforts
Report the number and nature of student apprenticeships
or mentorships involving community institutions
Create a photographic record of special events involving
community partners
Keep a sign-in log for volunteers
List members of the advisory board & their contributions
Document teachers' participation in community-sponsored
summer learning opportunities (e. g., serving as interns
in content-related industries or cultural institutions).
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Kirk Winters
Office of the Under Secretary
U.S. Department of Education
kirk_winters@ed.gov