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[Note: A new 2021 synthesis – How Principals Bear on Students and Schools: A Systematic Synthesis of Two Decades of Research​ – offers updated recommendations on constructive principal practices.​]

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Contents

The School Principal every bit Leader: Guiding Schools to Better Educational activity and Learning

• The Primary every bit Leader: An Overview
• Five Key Responsibilities
• Shaping a vision of academic success for all students
• Creating a climate hospitable to educational activity
• Cultivating leadership in others
• A Contour in Leadership: Dewey Hensley
• Managing people, information and processes
• Improving School Leadership
• Additional Readings

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The School Principal equally Leader: Guiding Schools to Better Instruction and Learning

Shaping a vision of bookish success for all students

Although they say it in unlike ways, researchers who take examined teaching leadership concur that constructive principals are responsible for establishing a schoolwide vision of commitment to high standards and the success of all students.

Newcomers to the education give-and-take might detect this puzzling: Hasn't concern with the bookish achievement of every student ever topped principals' agendas? The short answer is, no. Historically, public school principals were seen as school managers,v and equally recently as ii decades ago, high standards were thought to be the province of the college leap. "Success" could be defined as entry-level manufacturing work for students who had followed a "full general track," and low-skilled employment for dropouts. Simply in the last few decades has the emphasis shifted to bookish expectations for all.

"Having loftier expectations for all is one key to endmost the accomplishment gap between advantaged and less advantaged students."

This modify comes in part as a response to twin realizations: Career success in a global economy depends on a strong teaching; for all segments of U.Due south. guild to be able to compete fairly, the yawning gap in bookish achievement betwixt disadvantaged and advantaged students needs to narrow. In a schoolhouse, that begins with a principal's spelling out "high standards and rigorous learning goals," Vanderbilt Academy researchers affirm with underlined emphasis. Specifically, they say, "The enquiry literature over the final quarter century has consistently supported the notion that having high expectations for all, including clear and public standards, is i key to closing the achievement gap betwixt advantaged and less advantaged students and for raising the overall achievement of all students."^{half dozen}

An effective master besides makes certain that notion of academic success for all gets picked up by the faculty and underpins what researchers at the Academy of Washington describe as a schoolwide learning comeback agenda that focuses on goals for student progress.⁷ One heart schoolhouse teacher described what adopting the vision meant for her. "My expectations have increased every year," she told the researchers. "I've learned that as long as you support them, there is really aught [the students] tin't do."⁸

"Seek Out the Best Preparation You Can Find"

Advice to Teachers Interested in Becoming a Chief

"There'southward a tradition of teachers who are really splendid exemplars in the classroom of proverb, 'I don't want to be a principal considering information technology has nothing to practise with teaching,'" says Linda Darling-Hammond, a leading authority on instruction policy and the pedagogy profession. [See Q&A with her.] "Simply one of the things nosotros plant in our study was that as some of those people were reached out to and got the message that being a principal could be virtually... building the quality of instruction, they said, 'Oh, well I might actually want to do that.' They've get spectacular school principals, and we've seen them in action.So number one, exercise it if that's what y'all're passionate about.

"Number two, seek out the best preparation you can observe for instructional direction, for organizational development, for change management - for these things that we know matter because [being a principal] is a unlike utilize of your skills and talents. There is a broader cognition base to capture, and non every place you may await to build your skills will have those pieces in place. Be ambitious about finding the right support and preparation for yourself.

"Third, collaborate, interact, interact. Go into this with the idea that, 'I'chiliad going to build a team. Information technology's not going to just have to be me. My job is to actually find the expertise and the skills and the abilities of the people that I piece of work with, cultivate those, gum them together.' You will be both a more successful principal and you will exist a saner master who has at least a lilliputian bit of a life beyond all of the endeavor that you put into the work in the schools."

And so, developing a shared vision around standards and success for all students is an essential chemical element of schoolhouse leadership. Equally the Cheshire true cat pointed out to Alice, if you lot don't know where you're going, any road will pb yous at that place.

Creating a climate hospitable to teaching

Constructive principals ensure that their schools permit both adults and children to put learning at the centre of their daily activities. Such "a good for you school environment," as Vanderbilt researchers telephone call it, is characterized by basics like safety and orderliness, as well as less tangible qualities such as a "supportive, responsive" attitude toward the children and a sense by teachers that they are part of a community of professionals focused on good pedagogy.^ix

Is it a surprise, then, that principals at schools with high teacher ratings for "instructional climate" outrank other principals in developing an atmosphere of caring and trust? Or that their teachers are more than likely than faculty members elsewhere to observe the principals' motives and intentions are good?^x

Ane former chief, in reflecting on his experiences, recalled a typical staff meeting years ago at an urban school where "morale never seemed to become out of the basement." Discussion centered on "field trips, war stories virtually troubled students, and other direction issues" rather than matters like "using student piece of work and information to fine-tune educational activity." Well-nigh inevitably, teacher cynicism was a meaning barrier, with teachers regarding themselves as "hardworking martyrs in a hopeless crusade."¹¹

To alter this kind of climate - and begin to gainsay teacher isolation, closed doors, negativism, defeatism and instructor resistance - the about constructive principals focus on edifice a sense of schoolhouse community, with the bellboy characteristics. These include respect for every member of the school community; "an upbeat, welcoming, solution-oriented, no-blame, professional environment;" and efforts to involve staff and students in a diverseness of activities, many of them schoolwide.¹²

Engaging parents and the community: continued interest, uncertain prove
Many principals work to engage parents and others outside the immediate school community, such as local business people. But what does it take to make certain these efforts are worth the time and toil required? While there is considerable interest in this question, the evidence on how to answer information technology is relatively weak. For example, the Minnesota-Toronto study found that in schools with higher accomplishment on math tests, teachers tended to share in leadership and believed that parents were involved with the schoolhouse. The researchers noted, all the same, that "the relationships here are correlational, not causal," and the finding could be at odds with another finding from the study.¹³ Separately, the VAL-ED main performance assessment (adult with support from The Wallace Foundation) measures principals on community and parent appointment.¹⁴ Vanderbilt researchers who developed the assessment are undertaking further study on how important this practice is in affecting students, achievement. In short, the main's role in engaging the external community is picayune understood.

Principals play a major part in developing a "professional community" of teachers who guide one another in improving pedagogy.

Cultivating leadership in others

A broad and longstanding consensus in leadership theory holds that leaders in all walks of life and all kinds of organizations, public and private, need to depend on others to accomplish the group's purpose and need to encourage the development of leadership across the organization.^fifteen Schools are no different. Principals who get high marks from teachers for creating a stiff climate for instruction in their schools as well receive higher marks than other principals for spurring leadership in the faculty, according to the research from the universities of Minnesota and Toronto.¹⁶

In fact if test scores are any indication, the more willing principals are to spread leadership around, the ameliorate for the students. One of the most striking findings of the universities of Minnesota and Toronto written report is that effective leadership from all sources - principals, influential teachers, staff teams and others - is associated with amend educatee performance on math and reading tests.

The relationship is potent albeit indirect: Skilful leadership, the study suggests, improves both instructor motivation and work settings. This, in turn, tin fortify classroom instruction. "Compared with lower-achieving schools, higher-achieving schools provided all stakeholders with greater influence on decisions," the researchers write.¹⁷ Why the better effect? Perchance this is a case of two heads - or more - existence better than one: "The higher operation of these schools might be explained as a result of the greater access they have to collective cognition and wisdom embedded within their communities," the study concludes.¹⁸

Principals may be relieved to discover out, moreover, that their authority does not wane equally others' waxes. Clearly, school leadership is not a zero-sum game. "Principals and district leaders have the nearly influence on decisions in all schools; yet, they do not lose influence as others gain influence," the authors write.¹⁹ Indeed, although "college-performing schools awarded greater influence to about stakeholders...little changed in these schools' overall hierarchical structure."^twenty

University of Washington research on leadership in urban schoolhouse systems emphasizes the need for a leadership team (led by the chief and including assistant principals and teacher leaders) and shared responsibility for student progress, a responsibility "reflected in a gear up of agreements as well every bit unspoken norms amid school staff."²¹

Effective principals studied past the University of Washington urged teachers to work with one another and with the administration on a variety of activities, including "developing and aligning curriculum, instructional practices, and assessments; problem solving; and participating in peer observations."²² These leaders also looked for ways to encourage collaboration, paying special attending to how school time was allocated. They might supervene upon some authoritative meeting fourth dimension with teacher planning fourth dimension, for instance.²³ The importance of collaboration gets backing from the Minnesota-Toronto researchers, too. They constitute that principals rated highly for the strength of their deportment to improve pedagogy were also more apt to encourage the staff to work collaboratively.²⁴

More specifically, the written report suggests that principals play a major role in developing a "professional customs" of teachers who guide one another in improving instruction. This is of import because the research found a link betwixt professional person customs and higher student scores on standardized math tests.²⁵ In short, the researchers say, "When principals and teachers share leadership, teachers' working relationships with one some other are stronger and pupil achievement is higher."²⁶

What does "professional person community" wait like? Its components include things like consequent and well-defined learning expectations for children, frequent conversations amidst teachers about pedagogy, and an temper in which it's common for teachers to visit one some other'south classrooms to observe and critique instruction.²⁷

A central function of being a great leader is cultivating leadership in others.

Most principals would welcome hearing what one urban school ambassador had to say about how team-based school transformation works at its all-time: "like a well-oiled machine," with results that could be seen in "student behavior, pupil conduct, and student achievement."²⁸

Improving didactics

Effective principals work relentlessly to amend achievement past focusing on the quality of educational activity. They aid define and promote high expectations; they attack teacher isolation and fragmented effort; and they connect direct with teachers and the classroom, University of Washington researchers establish. ²⁹

Constructive principals also encourage continual professional learning. They emphasize research-based strategies to ameliorate teaching and learning and initiate discussions almost instructional approaches, both in teams and with private teachers. They pursue these strategies despite the preference of many teachers to be left alone.³⁰

In do this all means that leaders must become intimately familiar with the "technical core" of schooling - what is required to improve the quality of teaching and learning.³¹

A PROFILE IN LEADERSHIP: DEWEY HENSLEY

Almost all 390 students at Louisville's J. B. Atkinson University for Excellence in Teaching and Learning live in poverty. But from 2006 to 2011, principal Dewey Hensley showed this needn't stand in the way of their succeeding in schoolhouse. Nether Hensley'southward picket, students at Atkinson, once one of the everyman performing elementary schools in Kentucky, doubled their proficiency rates in reading, math and writing. Most recently, the school was one of simply 17 percent in the school commune that met all of its "adequate yearly progress" goals under the federal No Child Left Behind Human action.

Hensley'south is not a tale of lonely-at-the-top heroics, yet. Rather, it is a story almost leadership that combines a house belief in each kid's potential with an unrelenting focus on improving educational activity - and a conviction that principals tin't go information technology solitary. "Edifice a schoolhouse is not most bricks," Hensley says. "Information technology'southward about teachers. From inside out, you have to build the strengths. I'thou not the leader. I'm a leader. I've tried to build strong leaders across the board."

Today Hensley is main bookish officeholder of Jefferson County, Ky., Public Schools. Principals there and elsewhere could acquire a lot from how he led Atkinson with a manner that mirrors in many ways the characteristics of effective school leadership identified in research.

Shaping a vision of bookish success for all students
His first calendar week on the job, Hensley drew a movie of a school on poster board and asked the faculty to annotate information technology. "Let's create a vision of a schoolhouse that's perfect," he recalls telling them, adding: "When nosotros get there, and then we'll rest." Hensley, the first person in his extended family to graduate from high school and then higher, sought to instill in his staff the idea that all children could acquire, with advisable support. "I understand the power of a school to make a deviation in a child'due south life," he says. "They [all] have to have someone who will give them dreams they may not have."

Creating a climate hospitable to educational activity
Schoolhouse suspensions at Atkinson were amongst the highest in the state when Hensley took over. Determined to create a more suitable climate for learning, Hensley visited the homes of the 25 nearly frequent student offenders, telling the families that their children would be protected, just other children would be protected from them, as well, if necessary. Hensley brought in teams to diagnose each kid's academic and emotional needs and develop individual "prescriptions" that might include annihilation from home visits to intensive tutoring to eyeglasses. Chess guild, a special program for truant students and ballroom dancing lessons culminating in a formal candlelit dinner that included students' parents were other tone-changers, along with school corridors with names like Teamwork Trail and street signs directing students 982 miles to Harvard or 2,352 miles to Stanford.

Cultivating leadership in others
Hensley set up a leadership structure with two notable characteristics. Showtime, information technology was simple, comprising only three committees: culture, climate, and community; instructional leadership; and educatee support. Second, information technology made leadership a shared enterprise. The committees were populated and headed by teachers, with every faculty member assigned to 1. "I relinquished leadership in social club to go control," Hensley says. "I asked people to be about leadership."

He likewise encouraged his teachers to learn from ane another. Science teacher Heather Lynd recalls the twenty-four hours Hensley visited her classroom then asked her to lead a faculty coming together on ballast charts, annotated diagrams that can be used to explicate everything from the water wheel to punctuation tips. "He'south congenital on teachers' strengths to share them with others," says reading specialist Lori Atherton. "That creates leadership."

Improving instruction
Hensley did a lot of get-go-paw observation in classrooms, leaving behind detailed notes for teachers, sharing "aureate nuggets" of exemplary practices, things to recollect well-nigh and next steps for comeback. He too introduced cutting-edge professional person development, obtaining a grant to prepare up the platonic classroom in the edifice, full of engineering science and instructional resources. And he formed a collaboration with the University of Louisville. In one project, professors observed how Atkinson's teachers kept students engaged and shared the collected information with the kinesthesia in addition to using information technology for a research study.

Hensley as well encouraged teachers to practice skill building on their own. Equally a result, Atkinson teachers began attaining certification at a feverish pace from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, a private grouping that offers teachers an advanced credential based on rigorous standards. Finally, Hensley focused on getting students the instruction that tests and observations showed they needed. For example, Hensley paired struggling 1st, 2d and 3rd graders with National Board-certified teachers who gave them intensive help in reading and writing until they reached form level.

Managing people, information and processes
Data use figured prominently in Hensley's turnaround efforts. "We test them one time, we see where they are," science teacher Lynd says of the students. "If they're not proficient, nosotros re-teach and test again." To track progress across the school, Atkinson used a information board that lined one wall in the school's curriculum heart. Nether photos of each instructor, staff members could view the color-coded trajectory of students' achievement measured on three levels: course level, below grade level and significantly beneath. The brandish was part of what Hensley calls the faculty'southward "tolerance for truth," honestly examining results and "taking ownership of each student's operation."

Such methods did not win plaudits from anybody; half the kinesthesia transferred after his outset twelvemonth. Just as fourth dimension went by, the number of teachers seeking to exit the school declined to a trickle and the list of those seeking to transfer in ballooned. Moreover, if winning over skeptics is any indication of success, Hensley points with pride to a comment years later from a veteran teacher who had initially opposed his changes at Atkinson: "She said, 'They sent a lot of people here to gear up this schoolhouse. You're the only one who taught us how.'"

Principals themselves agree almost unanimously on the importance of several specific practices, according to one survey, including keeping rail of teachers' professional evolution needs and monitoring teachers' work in the classroom (83 percent).³² Whether they telephone call it formal evaluation, classroom visits or learning walks, principals intent on promoting growth in both students and adults spend time in classrooms (or ensure that someone who's qualified does), observing and commenting on what's working well and what is not. Moreover, they shift the blueprint of the annual evaluation wheel to one of ongoing and informal interactions with teachers.

The Minnesota-Toronto study paints a film of strong and weak instructional leadership. "Both high- and low-scoring principals said that they often visit classrooms and are 'very visible,'" the researchers write. "However, differences between principals in the ii groups come into sharp focus as they describe their reasons for making classroom visits. High-scoring principals often observed classroom instruction for short periods of time, making 20 to 60 observations a calendar week, and virtually of the observations were spontaneous. Their visits enabled them to make determinative observations that were clearly about learning and professional growth, coupled with straight and immediate feedback. High-scoring principals believed that every teacher, whether a offset-yr teacher or a veteran, tin can larn and abound.

Effective leaders view data as a ways not but to pinpoint problems simply to understand their nature and causes.

"... In contrast, depression-scoring principals described a very unlike arroyo to observations. Their informal visits or observations in classrooms were usually not for instructional purposes. Even informal observations were often planned in advance and then that teachers knew when the chief would be stopping by. The most dissentious finding became articulate in reports from teachers in buildings with low-scoring principals who said they received little or no feedback later on informal observations."³³

Information technology is important to annotation that instructional leadership tends to exist much weaker in eye and high schools than in simple schools.³⁴ Unlike their elementary schoolhouse counterparts, secondary school principals cannot exist expected to have expertise in all the subject field areas their schools comprehend, so their ability to offer guidance on didactics is more than limited. The problem is that those who are in a position to offer instructional leadership - department chairs - frequently are not called on to do so. One proposition is that the department head'south job "should be radically redefined" so whoever holds the postal service is "regarded, institutionally, equally a central resources for improving educational activity in middle and loftier schools."³⁵

As noted above, a central part of beingness a great leader is cultivating leadership in others. The learning-focused principal is intent on helping teachers improve their practice either directly or with the assistance of school leaders like section chairs and other instruction experts.

Managing people, data and processes

"In the great scheme of things," noted ane enquiry report, "...schools may be relatively pocket-sized organizations. Simply their leadership challenges are far from small, or elementary."³⁶ To get the chore done, effective leaders demand to make good use of the resources at hand. In other words, they have to exist good managers.

Effective leaders studied by Academy of Washington researchers nurtured and supported their staffs, while facing the reality that sometimes teachers don't work out. They hired advisedly, but - adhering to union and district personnel policies - they too engaged in "aggressively weeding out individuals who did not show the capacity to grow."³⁷

When it comes to data, effective principals try to draw the most from statistics and evidence, having "learned to ask useful questions" of the data, to display it in means that tell "compelling stories" and to utilise information technology to promote "collaborative inquiry among teachers."³⁸ They view information as a means not just to pinpoint problems but to understand their nature and causes.³⁹

Principals too demand to approach their piece of work in a way that will get the job done. Research behind VAL-ED (the Vanderbilt Assessment of Leadership in Education tool to assess master performance, adult by researchers at Vanderbilt University) suggests that there are six key steps - or "processes" - that the effective principal takes when carrying out his or her nearly important leadership responsibilities: planning, implementing, supporting, advocating, communicating and monitoring.⁴⁰ The school leader pressing for high academic standards would, for example, map out rigorous targets for improvements in learning (planning), get the faculty on lath to do what'south necessary to meet those targets (implementing), encourage students and teachers in meeting the goals (supporting), challenge depression expectations and low district funding for students with special needs (advocating), make certain families are aware of the learning goals (communicating), and continue on top of test results (monitoring).⁴¹

Principals - and the people who rent and supervene upon them - need to be aware that school improvement does non happen overnight. A dominion of thumb is that a principal should be in place virtually five to vii years in order to have a beneficial affect on a school. In fact, the boilerplate length of a principal's stay in 80 schools studied by the Minnesota-Toronto researchers was 3.half-dozen years. They further found that college turnover was associated with lower student functioning on reading and math accomplishment tests, apparently because turnover takes a toll on the overall climate of the school.⁴² "It is far from a trivial problem," the researchers say. "Schools experiencing exceptionally rapid primary turnover, for example, are often reported to suffer from lack of shared purpose, pessimism among staff well-nigh main delivery, and an disability to maintain a school-improvement focus long enough to really accomplish whatsoever meaningful modify."⁴³ The lesson? Effective principals stay put.

IMPROVING School LEADERSHIP

The elementary fact is that without constructive leaders nearly of the goals of educational improvement will be very difficult to achieve. Absent attention to that reality, we are in danger of undermining the very standards and goals we have set for ourselves. Fortunately, we have a decade of feel and new research demonstrating the critical importance of leadership for school principals and documenting an empirical link betwixt schoolhouse leadership and student growth. And we have the benefit of the professional standards developed by ISLLC and principal evaluation tools like VAL-ED.

Still, the lives of too many principals, particularly new principals, are characterized past "churn and fire," as the turnover findings bear out. Then what can exist done to lessen turnover and provide all teachers and students with the highly skilled school leadership they need and deserve? In other words, how exercise we create a pipeline of leaders who can make a real difference for the better, specially in troubled schools?

A pipeline for effective leadership
Wallace's piece of work over the last decade suggests such a pipeline would accept 4 necessary and interlocking parts:

• Defining the job of the main and assistant principal. Districts create clear, rigorous job requirements that particular what principals and assistant principals must know and do, and that sally from what research tells us are the cognition, skills and behaviors principals need to improve pedagogy and learning.
• Providing high-quality preparation for aspiring school leaders. Principal grooming programs, whether run by universities, nonprofits or districts, recruit and select only the people with the potential and want to become constructive principals in the districts the programs feed into. The programs provide the time to come leaders with loftier-quality training and internships that reflect the realities teaching leaders face up in the field.
• Hiring selectively. Districts rent only well-trained candidates for principal and assistant primary jobs.
• Evaluating principals and giving them the on-the-job support they demand. Districts regularly evaluate principals, assessing the behaviors that enquiry tells us are most closely tied to improving teaching and pupil accomplishment. Districts then provide professional develop- ment, including mentoring, that responds to what the evaluations find for each individual.

Coordination of state and district efforts
Constructive school leadership depends on back up from commune and state officials. Except for the nearly entrepreneurial, principals are unlikely to go on with a leadership style focused on learning if the commune and state are unsupportive, disinterested or pursuing other agendas.

Every bit one of the major Wallace-funded studies reports, central offices need to exist transformed and then that the work of teaching and learning improvement can continue.⁴⁴ That is to say fundamental offices need to "re-culture" themselves so they focus less on administration and more on supporting principals to improve instruction. As for states: Through policy, accreditation and funding for principal training programs, and other levers, they take a major role to play in getting schools the leadership they need. If the states and districts can do the difficult work of coordinating their various efforts, then much the better.⁴⁵

Leadership and the transformation of failing schools
Armed with what we've learned virtually the potential for leadership over the last decade, nosotros have cause for optimism that the education community's long neglect of leadership is at concluding coming to an end. Nosotros still have a lot to learn, but we accept already learned a great bargain. In the face of this growing torso of knowledge and experience, it is articulate that now is the time to stride up efforts to strengthen schoolhouse leadership. Without effective principals, the national goal nosotros've set of transforming failing schools will be next to impossible to accomplish.

But with an effective principal in every schoolhouse comes promise.

THE Chief-Teacher CONNECTION: A SCHOLAR'Due south VIEW

Linda Darling-Hammond is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford Academy. One of the nation's leading authorities on education policy equally well as teachers and the education profession, Darling-Hammond has served on The Wallace Foundation's board of directors since 2009. She was interviewed in April 2012 past Lucas Held, Wallace's communications director. These are edited excerpts of the interview.

Lucas Held: What do nosotros know about the link between constructive teaching and good principals? You note in your 2010 book, The Flat World and Didactics: How America'southward Commitment to Equity Volition Decide Our Future, that practiced principals are the number one reason why teachers stay in school.

Linda Darling-Hammond: That comes up in survey after survey. If you ask teachers, "What kept you lot in a school that you're in?" or "What acquired you to get out?" administrative leadership and support is one of the most disquisitional elements because everything the instructor does is framed by the style the leadership operates. It is possible to exist an constructive instructor in a poorly led school just it's non like shooting fish in a barrel. That takes a toll. And it is possible to become an ever more effective and successful teacher in a well-led school. Teachers get into the profession to exist successful with kids. If they are working with a leadership team led past a main who understands what it takes to be successful with kids, how the organization should be organized, what kind of supports need to exist in that location, how learning for teachers can be encouraged besides equally learning for students, how to get the customs and the parental supports in place, that lets the instructor practise her or his task finer and reach the well-nigh important intrinsic motivation: success with kids.

LH: Is that connection mostly known?

LDH: Y'all would recollect it would exist obvious. Merely in schools where at that place has non been much cultivation of leaders, there is often a hunkering downwardly and just saying, "Well, there'southward leadership over [t]here and there's teaching over here." That misses the boat in terms of creating effective learning organizations.

LH: How practice principals and teachers piece of work together to create a collaborative focus on learning?

LDH: In thriving schools you take a professional learning customs. If there isn't i, it'due south something that teachers and leaders have to build together, getting past the airtight-door culture which is ofttimes inherited in schools: "We're all doing our ain thing in our own classroom."

Leaders who are effective often accept a distributed leadership approach. The chief functions as a principal teacher who is really focusing on instruction along with [and] by the side of teachers - not tiptop down mandates and edicts. When principals are trying to help create such a culture, [they] begin to open the doors and say, "Permit's talk about our practice. Let'southward evidence our student work. Permit's go look at each other'south classrooms and run into what we're doing." Obviously the teachers who will benefit from that tin facilitate [matters] past opening their doors and working with each other and bringing ideas to the tabular array. One of the best practices that I've seen when new cultures are being planted is property the faculty meeting in a different room every time and assuasive teachers to talk nigh strategies they're using that are proving successful. Being willing to open your door and say, "Here's what's going on in my little kingdom here" is the beginning of planting seeds to create a collaborative culture where learning is always building on what teachers and leaders are doing together.

LH: Is it your sense that most schools are operating this mode or does this remain the exception?

LDH: More and more teachers are willing and eager to collaborate with one another. More and more than leaders are condign aware of how important that is. But information technology is certainly not everywhere. In that location [was] an interesting survey not long ago, The Schools and Staffing Survey, which the federal government does. It asked teachers, "How many of you have the opportunity to interact with each other?" Something like 80 or more than percent said, "Yes, I have that opportunity." But [when the survey] asked how many would strongly hold or would hold that in that location is a collaborative culture in their schools where people collaborate ofttimes, only xv percent said that. What it says to me is that we have a fiddling scrap of collaboration going around everywhere, but nosotros have a lot of collaboration going on in very few places.

One reason for that is that we design our schools in most cases still in the U.s.a. based on the factory model of 100 years ago, where the idea was that teachers are only working when they're in classrooms instructing children. If you look at schools in many countries in Europe and Asia, teachers accept most 15 hours a week or more than where they interact with each other on planning, to exercise action research, to exercise lesson study, to go into each other'south classrooms and look at what they're doing, to run into with parents and students about problems that have come up upward or that they're trying to address. That differential use of time allows teachers to continually get meliorate at what they're doing. We need to restructure schools to be able to exercise that.

LH: What you're maxim, in a sense, is that a collaborative learning environs is so important that time needs to be carved out to focus on building that work.

LDH: That'due south right - and existence sure that whenever somebody is doing something right, information technology'south getting shared, and whenever somebody has a problem, they have people to go to to help them solve their problem. [There are] very interesting studies about gains in student achievement that have gone on in recent years, and a couple of them are particularly important. They find that at that place's much greater gain in pupil achievement in a school when people work collaboratively in teams and when teams of teachers stay together over a menstruation of time and build their collective know ledge and collective chapters. The whole can be greater than the sum of the parts. That's 1 of the major jobs of good leadership.

LH: Do teachers need to understand what effective principals do?

LGH: I think and then for many reasons. One is so that [they] know what to expect. [Some other] is that there's increasing utilize of 360-evaluations, where anybody is inputting to perceptions well-nigh the effectiveness of their leaders. [It's of import] also [to empathise] how to work as a team, how to be supportive of one another.

A lot of a principal's work tin can be invisible to teachers when they're in the classroom. I ofttimes utilize the metaphor of the usher of the orchestra. Nosotros sentry the conductor, nosotros're in the audience and we say, "I could do that. Slice of block. Right?" That's truthful of teachers' skill in the classroom; it'south also truthful of principals' skill in orchestrating the collective, harmonious work of teachers. [The principal's piece of work] includes organizational blueprint and development. It includes instructional leadership and the evolution of learning opportunities for kids and teachers. It includes change management, moving an organization from where it is to where it needs to be. It includes outreach with various publics and communities that maintain support for the schoolhouse - the school lath, the parent community, others in the community who are resources to the work of the schoolhouse.... It'south important to understand those things, both to be able to expect and support them, and to also provide good feedback and evaluation.

LH: What advice would you give teachers to become part of the process of making their schools better places?

LDH: Obviously everyone works in their own vineyard, in their own classroom. Across that, it's important for teachers to learn from the starting time of their careers - and throughout their careers - how to be adept collaborators and community members, how to reach out to others (both to offer to share ideas and thoughts, and to ask and larn from others), how to propose ways that collaboration may be able to take root, to sometimes reach out to the principal and say, "Can I assist with this? Is at that place a mode that I can facilitate some of this piece of work getting done or enable you to be able to facilitate it?" At that place is still quite frequently this idea that each teacher is a solitary amanuensis and the principal is a lone amanuensis, merely like the superwoman or superman paradigm, with the cape. And in fact, sometimes school leaders are alone and isolated and may not fifty-fifty realize that they tin get assist from the kinesthesia to move an agenda forward.

LH: Sounds similar a ii-way street.

LDH: Absolutely. There really is a lot to learn nearly how to be a skilful collaborator, how to manage differences of opinion, how to talk to each other in ways that volition be productive and then get to a identify where the conversations can be better and richer. In our efforts to develop the profession, we accept to make sure that kind of learning is bachelor to everyone.

LH: Allow'southward talk near some of the features that distinguish high-performing schools from low-performing schools.

LDH: One of the features that nosotros've talked about is lots of collaboration around expert exercise. That's built on a stiff foundation of trust. Some really important research [has] looked at the relational elements of effective schools. It's not merely focusing on data near the test scores and so on. It's too edifice trust betwixt and amid the professionals, seeing teachers as respected professionals, that is, people not to be mandated to or barked at but equally colleagues who have expertise to be orchestrated and shared - and as professionals who want to proceed to grow. Finding ways for the perspectives of teachers and other members of the school customs to be shared - as a basis for problem solving, equally a basis for school improvement planning - is actually important.

In highly successful environments, efforts accept been made to make it possible for teachers to exist successful. That means making certain that they have the instructional resources they demand - textbooks and other tools of learning (computers, good curriculum). [Information technology means] that they are asked to piece of work in ways that will allow them to be successful. For example, we know that when a teacher can either loop with the aforementioned students or stay in the aforementioned or similar grade level for a menses of time, they get more skilled than if you lot say, "Oh, this year you're teaching kindergarten and side by side yr you're going to teach fifth course, and then I'm going to put you in the 4th so perchance the seventh." That is, in a way, very disrespectful to teachers, simply information technology as well makes them less effective. Nosotros know that from inquiry. Respecting the opportunities for teachers to be efficacious in their teaching by giving them the opportunities, the tools and the relationship time with students to be able to be successful [is very important]. That sometimes means reorganizing the school organization so that it supports the work in a more than productive way.

A Instructor REFLECTS ON LEADERSHIP: "PRINCIPALS HAVE FOUND TALENTS IN ME THAT I DIDN'T KNOW I HAD"

Sara Kay Bonti describes one of her early principals as the "lawn-mowed/books-ordered/supplies-filled" kind of managing director. Looking dorsum over 23 years as a loftier school English language teacher in Florida, she remembers him as particularly demoralizing.

"He kept spreadsheets on who attended - or missed - every meeting," Bonti said. "He couldn't tell you what you lot were teaching or how yous were teaching, but he could tell you what fourth dimension you arrived at school every forenoon. Students told me the first time they ever saw him was when he handed them their diplomas at graduation. The turnover rate for teachers was very loftier."

Luckily for Bonti, this principal was non the only one she has encountered over the years. Indeed, other schoolhouse principals - the kinds who instinctively champion instruction over paperwork - have been a source of inspiration for her. She has felt their efforts straight as a teacher, first in Pasco Canton, Fla., and now in Hillsborough County, which encompasses Tampa. And she has felt their work indirectly through a contempo assignment that has sent her into about one-half the schools in Hillborough County, which, with well-nigh 200,000 students, ranks amid the land'south 10 largest districts.

"What I've seen is that the mutual denominator in schools where students and teachers are successful is strong leadership," Bonti said.

Seeing the five practices at work
The five practices associated with effective leadership are on total brandish at these schools, in Bonti'due south experience. Take, for example, the first practice, knowing how to implant the notion that all students tin can acquire and achieve. "I tin tell by how I'm greeted at the school office how well a vision of student success has been communicated," Bonti said. "I will see a Student of the Month poster, or student art, or perchance in a loftier schoolhouse there will exist pennants effectually the walls of all the colleges where the students accept been accepted. The students get the message."

Bonti has too seen how a main can create a learning-friendly atmosphere that breeds enthusiasm among teachers and students. She cited as an example a principal who takes steps to boost student morale during the important Florida Comprehensive Assessment Exam (FCAT). He makes sure breakfast is available. He can be seen walking the halls, quizzing students - "What does 'inference' mean?" he might inquire - and a correct answer wins an ice cream coupon. He even organizes an FCAT pep rally.

She has as well experienced firsthand how effective principals cultivate leadership in others. Bonti recalls beingness recruited to organize a Parents Night at the schoolhouse where she taught most recently, Freedom High School. She also spent one summer working with eye school English teachers to help ensure that middle-school lessons flowed well into the senior loftier school courses. "Principals have found talents in me that I didn't know I had," Bonti said. "You lot tin feel enriched beyond the classroom, and it'southward smashing to feel you are a part of helping the whole school succeed."

In addition, Bonti has seen how a skillful principal tin utilise data to bring teachers into efforts to meliorate schools. Subsequently ane statewide "Florida Writes!" cess, Bonti's principal showed the school's English language teachers that 10th grade students had unusually low scores for persuasive essays. The teachers determined that students were reluctant to have a stiff stand on an issue - a requirement for making a apparent argument - so the changes they instituted included providing more examples of stiff persuasive essays in the lesson plans.

"The chief was good at pulling together all the pieces, not leaving us to feel nosotros were working in isolation."

Bonti felt the primary had managed to balance leadership with a bow to the faculty'southward expertise. "Nosotros knew the curriculum. He didn't. So, he depended on us for the answer," she said. But he didn't cease in that location. He took the finding to other departments, so they knew to contain the results in their writing assignments. "He was skilful at pulling together all the pieces, not leaving us to feel nosotros were working in isolation," Bonti said.

The power to amend instruction: spur to a career motion?
Finally, there is the effective leader'southward fierce focus on improving education. That was Bonti'southward inspiration for taking on a three-year assignment every bit a full-time "peer evaluator" in the commune's recently introduced teacher evaluation program. Every bit part of the program, every instructor is observed at least three times a year by the school principal and a peer evaluator. And so, inside 1 to 3 days, the teachers receive their assessments, with praise for their strengths and steps for overcoming weaknesses. "You can see why if a main gives a physics teacher a 'requires activeness,' that instructor is going to desire to know why, and and so a master has to explain non only why merely specifically how to improve," Bonti said. "Teachers want that specificity, and they have a right to information technology."

That means principals accept to be current on academic inquiry. It ways they need to be skillful at delegating some of their old management duties to make time for their instructional tasks. And information technology means they spend much of their time in classrooms, not in the seclusion of their offices.

Bonti finds the value in the new ways both self-evident and inspiring. That's why, when her gig as a peer evaluator ends, she is considering pursuing a new goal: becoming a main herself.

Additional Readings

The Knowledge Center at www.wallacefoundation.org contains more than 70 publications about school leadership. Hither'south a sampling:

Central Part Transformation for Commune-wide Teaching and Learning Comeback, Meredith I. Honig, Michael A. Copland, Lydia Rainey, Juli Anna Lorton and Morena Newton, University of Washington, 2010.

Educational Leadership Policy Standards: ISLLC 2008, Quango of Chief Country School Officers, 2008.

How Leaders Invest Staffing Resources for Learning Improvement, Margaret L. Plecki, Michael S. Knapp, Tino Castaneda, Tom Halverson, Robin LaSota and Chad Lochmiller, University of Washington, 2009.

Improving School Leadership: The Promise of Cohesive Leadership Systems, Catherine H. Augustine, Gabriella Gonzalez, Gina Schuyler Ikemoto, Jennifer Russell, Gail L. Zellman, Louay Constant, Jane Armstrong and Jacob W. Dembosky, RAND Corporation, 2009.

Leadership for Learning Comeback in Urban Schools, Bradley Due south. Portin, Michael S. Knapp, Scott Dareff, Sue Feldman, Felice A. Russell, Catherine Samuelson and Theresa Ling Yeh, University of Washington, 2009.

Learning-Focused Leadership and Leadership Back up: Significant and Practise in Urban Systems, Michael S. Knapp, Michael A. Copland, Meredith I. Honig, Margaret 50. Plecki and Bradley S. Portin, University of Washington, 2010.

Learning From Leadership: Investigating the Links to Improved Educatee Learning: Final Report of Inquiry Findings, Karen Seashore Louis, Kenneth Leithwood, Kyla L. Wahlstrom and Stephen E. Anderson, University of Minnesota and University of Toronto, 2010.

Making Sense of Leading Schools: A Study of the School Principalship, Bradley S. Portin, Paul Schneider, Michael DeArmond and Lauren Gundlach, University of Washington, 2003.

Preparing Schoolhouse Leaders for a Irresolute World: Lessons From Exemplary Leadership Development Programs - Final Study, Linda Darling-Hammond, Michelle LaPointe, Debra Meyerson, Margaret Terry Orr and Carol Cohen. Stanford University, 2007.

Review of Inquiry: How Leadership Influences Student Learning, Kenneth Leithwood, Karen Seashore Louis, Stephen East. Anderson and Kyla L. Wahlstrom, Academy of Minnesota and University of Toronto, 2004.

Vanderbilt Assessment of Leadership in Didactics: Technical Manual, Andrew C. Porter, Joseph Murphy, Ellen Goldring, Stephen North. Elliott, Morgan S. Polikoff and Henry May, Vanderbilt University, 2008.

« Previous |

References

5. Seashore Louis, Leithwood et al., 78.

vi. Andrew C. Porter, Joseph Murphy, Ellen Goldring, Stephen Northward. Elliott, Morgan South. Polikoff and Henry May, Vanderbilt Assessment of Leadership in Education: Technical Manual, Version 1.0, Vanderbilt Academy, 2008, xiii.

7. Michael Southward. Knapp, Michael A. Copland, Meredith I. Honig, Margaret L. Plecki, and Bradley South. Portin, Learning-focused Leadership and Leadership Back up: Pregnant and Practice in Urban Systems, Academy of Washington, 2010 , 2.

viii. Bradley S. Portin, Michael S. Knapp, Scott Dareff, Sue Feldman, Felice A. Russell, Catherine Samuelson and Theresa Ling Yeh, Leadership for Learning Improvement in Urban Schools, University of Washington, 2009, 55.

9. Ellen Goldring, Andrew C. Porter, Joseph Muprhy, Stephen N. Elliott, Xiu Cravens, Assessing Learning-Centered Leadership: Connections to Research, Professional Standards and Current Practices, Vanderbilt University, 2007, 7-8.

10. Seashore Louis, Leithwood et al., 81.

eleven. Knapp et al., 1, citing Kim Marshall from  "A Main Looks Back: Standards Matter,"   Phi Delta Kappan, October 2003, 104-113, and noting Marshall is also cited in Charles One thousand. Payne'south So Much Reform, And then Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools, 2008, 33-34.

12. Portin, Knapp et al., p. 59.

13. Seashore Louis, Leithwood et al., 116-118.

14. Andrew C. Porter, Joseph Murphy, et al., Vanderbilt Cess of Leadership in Instruction, 15.

fifteen. See for instance, J.West. Gardner, On Leadership, The Free Printing, 1993; J. Kouzes, J. and B. Posner, The Leadership Claiming: How to Keep Getting Extraordinary Things Done in Organizations, Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2008; and One thousand. Yukl, Leadership in Organizations, Prentice-Hall, 2009.

16. Seashore Louis, Leithwood et al., 81-82

17. Seashore Louis, Leithwood, 35.

eighteen. Seashore Louis, Leithwood, 35.

19. Seashore Louis, Leithwood, 19.

xx. Seashore Louis, Leithwood, 35.

21. Knapp, Copland et al., 3

22. Portin, Knapp et al., 56.

23. Portin, Knapp et al., 59.

24. Seashore Louis, Leithwood et al., 82.

25. Seashore Louis, Leithwood et al., 48.

26. Seashore Louis, Leithwood et al., 282.

27. Seashore Louis, Leithwood et al., 45.

28. Portin, Knapp et al., 56.

29. Portin, Knapp et al., v.

30. Seashore Louis, Leithwood et al., 77, 91.

31. Kenneth Leithwood, Karen Seashore Louis, Stephen Anderson, Kyla Wahlstrom, Review of Enquiry: How Leadership Influences Student Learning, Academy of Minnesota and University of Toronto, 2004, 24.

32. Seashore Louis, Leithwood et al., 71.

33. Seashore Louis, Leithwood et al., 86.

34. Seashore Louis, Leithwood et al., 87-xc.

35. Seashore Louis, Leithwood et al., 92.

36. Portin, Schneider et al., 14.

37. Portin, Knapp et al., 52.

38. Portin, Knapp et al., v.

39. Seashore Louis, Leithwood et al., 195.

forty. Andrew C. Porter, Joseph Murphy, et al. Vanderbilt Assessment of Leadership in Educational activity, sixteen-19

41. Porter, Potato, et al., 141-142.

42. Seashore Louis, Leithwood et al., 168-171.

43. Seashore Louis, Leithwood et al., 165-166.

44. Meredith I. Honig, Michael A. Copland, Lydia Rainey, Juli Anna Lorton and Morena Newton, Cardinal Office Transformation for District-Broad Teaching and Learning Improvement, University of Washington, 2010.

45. Catherine H. Augustine, Gabriella Gonzalez, Gina Schuyler Ikemotoa, Jennifer Russell, Gail L.Zellman, Louay Abiding, Jane Armstrong, and Jacob W. Dembosky, Improving School Leadership: The Hope of Cohesive Leadership Systems, RAND Corporation, 2009; and Linda Darling-Hammond, Michelle LaPointe, Debra Meyerson, Margaret Terry Orr, Carol Cohen, Preparing School Leaders for a Changing Earth: Lessons from Exemplary Leadership Development Programs - Final Written report, Stanford Academy, 2007, 127-129, 139-140.

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Source: https://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/pages/key-responsibilities-the-school-principal-as-leader.aspx

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