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IT
TAKES A WHOLE VILLAGE…
Reflections from my
career about school leadership…
It takes a whole village to raise a high performing school, but where are
the villagers? “Educational
accountability has changed nearly everything.
Superintendents and local school boards no longer can be satisfied with
principals who simply place teachers in the classrooms, provide textbooks and
get students to attend school. Increasingly,
schools and school leaders are being judged on their progress in teaching most
students to the standards that only the “best students” were expected to
meet in the past. This means that
future school leaders must have in-depth knowledge of curriculum, instruction
and student achievement.” (Bottoms, 2001)
This statement is absolutely true, yet something is missing.
How is the principal going to achieve this?
How are leaders moving from intention to skill to application?
Literature reviews delineate the research on skills and dispositions of
principals in high performing schools. There
are clearly hero/heroine principals who can attain this laudable status.
We have stories of schools where the principals have achieved this high
quality of instructional focus. But
for the entire student population of America, these remarkable success stories
are too isolated to be enough to serve all of America’s schools.
My experience over a thirty-five year career in education is that
principals cannot do this alone. We
need everyone who touches education deeply committed to serving the personnel
who are in the schools serving the students. This includes central office,
regional education centers, professional organizations, universities,
foundations and policy makers. It takes a whole village to raise a high
performing school, but where are all the villagers?
For example, the premise that leadership resides in one person is no
longer apropos because there are no simple best decisions. Leadership is no
longer characterized by applying rules that worked in the past. The age of the
single, great lone leader has passed into a new age where dialogue,
collaboration and cross-perspectives are more important than ever (Drath, 2000).
Leaders are facing extremely complex challenges.
A complex challenge requires immediate action where there are few
precedents nor prescriptive answers. Current leadership issues have novelty that
no one has faced before. Remember
Columbine and September 11th.
The context changed dramatically and became the dominant factor with
multiple issues: physical, mental, emotional and psychological.
The image of the leader as a single, dominant figure broadens to
encompass many people sharing leadership across perspectives to reach common
goals. Leaders have to weave
disparate variables together and react within seconds.
In such cases, the whole village must rally, work together and address
these complex issues that used to be very uncommon, but now occurs all too
frequently in schools.
But
on a daily basis there is the compelling question: How is the whole village
affiliated with education championing teaching and learning?
In my classes preparing future principals and superintendents, there are
devoted, competent and passionate school administrators.
They are eager to continue growing and learning, but when pressed with
the myriad tasks of school management, they feel overwhelmed.
The unfortunate saying among those that are currently assistant
principals is “buses, butts (meaning discipline, not literally corporal
punishment) and books”. Their
absolute intent is to consistently put top priority on teaching and learning,
but feel stymied about how to do all that is currently expected.
Where are the villagers? At
a Policy Think Tank on the principalship (NASSP, 2000), the concluding thought
after three days of intense reflection was that so much had been put on the
principals’ plate that the position had simply become too much as it is
currently designed.
In my work with practicing administrators in Texas and at the Center for
Creative Leadership and the school administrators they serve nationwide, the
theme is repeated….school administration has never been more demanding.
Administrators’ days are filled with scheduling, reporting, handling relations
with parents and the community, and dealing with multiple crises and unique
situations that are constant in schools. The principal must take care of
critical issues like school safety, yet still be the champion of learning.
The recent excellent literature review by Southern Regional Education
Board (SREB, 2001) calls for the principal to be thought of as the chief
executive officer of teaching and learning, but doesn’t tell us how to
accomplish this in today’s context.
My belief is that the path forward is to look at the wisdom in the
systems thinking approach (Senge, 2000). This
approach models living systems and the connectedness of the individual parts and
the whole. It’s like a mobile, where you cannot move a single part
without impacting the whole. The
consistent interdependence of all the players in living systems is amplified.
Leaders are trying to create learning organizations.
They are trying to respond quickly to the external changes and think
more creatively about the future. They
are trying to build authentic relationships.
The principal is one very significant player in the system. But there are
many other key interdependent players from policy makers to central
administration, university preparation programs, professional associations,
state agencies and businesses. It
takes all of these key players working in concert to support a high performing
school. This is the possible cast
of villagers. It is not enough to
produce more research telling what the isolated hero/heroine singular principals
should be doing. We need to bridge
the gap between systems theory with the cohesive practice of the whole village.
Where are there examples of whole villages that are deeply supporting the
principal and teachers in teaching and learning?
The most compelling example is the work in District 2, New York City
School. There Elaine Fink,
superintendent has been working for 11 years using a nested learning communities
concept. At the heart of the
concept is the practice of how teachers are expected to learn from principals
and professional developers and from one another within their school; at the
same time, principals are expected to learn from the superintendent, the deputy,
and one another how to be more effective instructional leaders.
Fink believes that building an effective community of principals is about
two things: the craft of teaching
and learning and the building of strong interpersonal relationships. District 2 builds a system wide pattern of improvement in
teaching and learning through a series of monthly principals’ conferences,
along with specialized training institutes to ensure that its leaders share a
common view of the kind of learning environments and opportunities that its
schools should be providing. The
superintendent and deputies run support groups for small groups of principals.
Each group focuses on some specific need identified either by the
superintendent and deputies or by the principals.
The system has a distinctive feature of individualized coaching that is
lodged at the highest level of district administration: with the superintendent
and deputy. The message of this organizational decision is clear.
Instruction and learning are the district’s fundamental business: all other
functions are secondary. (Fink and Resnick, 2001).
This village includes the superintendent and central office, who are the
villagers in closest proximity to the principals, and thus have constant
opportunities to provide significant levels of support.
Another compelling example of such village effort is the Department of
Defense (DOD) schools. Their
students outscore their public school peers on standardized tests, regardless of
race, family income and parents’ educational levels (Videro, 2001).
A yearlong study by the Peabody Center for Education Policy at Vanderbilt
looked at the 1998 test results of the National Assessment of Educational
Progress, a congressionally mandated exam popularly called the Nation’s Report
Card, and the SAT college entrance exam. The
success of the elementary and secondary schools on military bases---70 in the
USA and 157 overseas---comes despite many of the same issues that public schools
cite when struggling with low test scores: high student mobility rates and homes
with higher-than-average rates of alcoholism, domestic abuse and violence. These schools serve about 112,000 students.
About 40% of the students are minority.
But unlike most regular public schools, military bases form natural
communities with common areas for shopping and recreation, enabling teachers and
parents “to see each other at school, but also out in the community.”
Military commanders can offer schools a wide range of help—not the least of
which is a standing order to personnel that their place of duty during
parent-teacher conference time is at their children’s schools. When I worked
at one of these schools and needed parent involvement and was not getting it, I
could ask for help from the military parent’s supervisor.
Military parents understood that chain of command and were really
cooperative. Other examples of this support include assigning each school a
military partner. The division
assigned to the school can help with technology, field days, playground
construction, and demonstrations. The culture has coherence, connectivity and accountability.
“There’s a unique culture in our schools that sets us apart,” says Joe
Tofoya, the director of the DOD Education Activity.
DOD schools are “a model”, says John Jennings, director of the Center
of Education Policy, a public school advocate (Henry, 2001).
How
are colleges of education becoming part of this village effort?
An example of rethinking support for campus leaders is the Southern
Regional Education Board’s Educational Leadership Preparation University
Network. “The goal of this new program is to design, deliver and evaluate a
school leader program that emphasizes the critical success factors for
comprehensive school improvement and for higher student learning that can be
adopted by other educational programs,” said Mark Musick, SREB president.
The multiyear program recently was awarded a $3 million grant from
Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund’s Leaders Count initiative, which is designed
to address the national challenge of improving educational leadership in order
to increase student achievement. Each
participating university will be expected to design a preparation program for
school leaders that is linked tightly to a comprehensive school-improvement
framework and to state accountability standards. (SREB, 2001)
Thus, this initiative brings higher education into the village with an
organized, systemic effort.
These are relevant examples of substantive efforts to support the work of
developing high performing schools. These examples embody the interdependence
and cohesiveness of systems thinking. These are positive stories of the whole
village commitment that give us role models.
Several
award winning principals that I have the pleasure to support came back from a
conference very excited. They had
heard the following story and it had spoken to them profoundly.
Principals go to school each day juiced up like a ripe plum.
All day long one problem after another demands their attention.
Each problem is analogous to taking a sip from the juicy plum.
By the end of the day they feel like dry desiccated prunes.
The compelling question is: will
the village juice the plum? Can the
village support and collaborate with principals and their campuses to achieve
teaching and learning distinctions. Can
we all be juice givers?
What
does giving juice look like? Penny
Simone, who was to be my new leader at a regional education center serving fifty
school districts, put it eloquently. During
our meetings to introduce the work to me, she said, “Listen deeply to the
principals and teacher leaders. Hear
what it is they want to accomplish, but don’t have the time and resources to
make these ideas come true. Help
them get these ideas implemented. That is the nature of our servant work.
We support schools.”
A
publication released by National Association of Elementary School Principals
(NAESP, 2001) recognizes the ever-expanding responsibilities that school
principals have. The book Leading
Learning Communities: What Principals should know and Be Able To Do issues a
Call to Action, describing 10 ways for school districts, states, and the federal
government to offer improved support for schools principals.
NAESP calls on policymakers to improve working conditions in the schools;
provide the support, funds, and flexibility for alternative leadership
arrangements; demand greater accountability within established frameworks; and
recognize and reward principals through a national certification process. NAESP
calls on superintendents and state education officials to give principals the
kind of support and latitude they need by forcing dramatic changes in
principal-preparation programs, which are often conducted by college instructors
clueless about how to be academic leaders; giving principals options for passing
some administrative duties to lead teachers and guidance counselors; and
establishing mentoring programs for principals.
The
lesson: Principals need authority
and training if schools are expected to make progress toward world-class
standards envisioned back in 1989 when the nation’s governors gathered in
Charlottesville, Virginia to launch what became the national school-reform
movement (“Principal educators”, 2001).
Principals need all of us involved in education to be part of the village
that raises high performing schools.
References
Bottoms,
G. (April, 2001). What school principals need to know about curriculum and
instruction. Southern Regional Education Board (SREB). Retrieved May 12, 2001,
from http//www.sreb.org.
Drath, W.
(2001). The deep blue sea: rethinking the source of leadership.
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Fink, E. &
Resnick, L. B. (2001). Developing principals as instructional leaders. Phi
Delta Kappan, April, 598-606.
Henry, T.
(2001, October 9). Military kids are outscoring civilian schools. USA Today, p. 1D.
National
Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP). (2001, October 29). NAESP
redefines role of school principal: landmark report identifies elementary school
principals as school managers and instructional leaders, bearing greater
responsibility for community. Retrieved November 3, 2001, from
http://www.naesp.org/comm/prss/10-29-01.htm.
National
Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP). (2000, March). Policy
“think tank” on the principalship in America.
Symposium conducted at the meeting of National Association of Secondary
School Principals, Washington, D.C.
Principal
educators. (2001, October 30). USA Today, p. 14A.
Senge, P.
(2000). Schools that learn. New York: Doubleday.
Southern
Regional Education Board (SREB). (March, 2001). Leading school improvement: what
research says. A review of the literature. Retrieved September 24, 2001, from http//www.sreb.org.
Videro, D.
(2001, October 17). DOD-run schools cited for closing achieving gaps. Education
Week, p. 23-24.
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