Strategy Spotlight: Effective Leadership Practices
If our goal is getting all kids to grade-level proficiency, then school leadership must be focused and aligned on improving teacher practice. Period. End of story.
Strangely, school improvement efforts and action planning are arduous processes that might be getting in the way of our work as instructional leaders. Yes, the system might be the problem. Let’s explore why that is.
Three questions that system leaders must ask themselves?
Is our system changing patterns of behavior?
Are our actions sufficient for reaching the goals we have set forth?
Are we positively impacting teacher practice and effectiveness?
What the research says: The summary findings on school leadership confirm the positive impact that school principals (and administrative teams) have on teacher effectiveness and, in turn, student outcomes. The hard part is parceling out what leadership actions have the most impact. If we stick with the notion that teachers (not principals) have the greatest impact on student achievement, then principals who focus on teacher growth and effectiveness are more likely to be effective (see Hattie).
This is a controversial topic because most of us believe that leadership comes in many styles and forms, which it does. As just one example, transformational leadership is a celebrated style that relies on building broad support across stakeholders for dramatic culture change and innovation, especially in our turnaround schools. Still, without a clear method for improving instructional practice, student outcomes might remain stagnant.
What Hattie attempts to clarify is this: No matter the leadership style, the principal and assistant principals must be able to improve teacher practice, and this goes beyond buying them a new whiteboard. Hattie contends that the most effective leaders do not just rally their teachers, they have the knowledge and skills to coach them up and make them better. “That’s a lot harder than asking, ‘Have got the same vision and have you got the right resources?’” (Hattie).
An evidence-based framework for effective school leadership presents four distinct traits for principals: setting directions, developing people, redesigning the organization, and managing the instructional program (Leithwood and Riehl, 2005). In his original text (2014), Fullan promotes three keys for principals to maximize impact: leading learning, being a district and system player, and becoming a change agent. He provides a more nuanced update in The Principal 2.0 (2023).
A key distinction is recognizing the vast role that principals play in any school or community. In fact, a principal can be considered effective by some if they keep the campus safe, communicate well with parents, and high-five kids in the hallway, without ever improving student achievement. Across complex organizations, school leadership requires a broad skillset that includes likeability and charisma as necessary to bring about reform in school culture, structure, and accountability.
In his seminal text on leadership, Burns describes transformational leaders as those who install a belief that “Leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of morality and motivation” (Burns, J.M., 1978).
If student achievement is a desired outcome, the most reliable leadership model is the principal as instructional expert and teacher mentor. The performance of the top school systems suggests three things that matter most: Getting the right people to become teachers; Developing them into effective instructors; Ensuring that the system is able to deliver the best possible instruction for every child (intervene early to address gaps) (Barber & Mourshed, 2007).
Leading in Our Schools
One thing we know for sure is that our best principals can see a path to success in spite of the unending mandates and emails that clutter the road. They are uniquely confident and skilled at leading in deliberate, actionable ways that are designed to impact instructional improvement and student learning. Without a doubt, our best leaders have something extra special, a unique ability to see things that others do not see, and to lead others in a manner that our current leadership trainings don’t quite capture.
Our inability as an industry to transfer these innovative practices to all school leaders has left us void of consistent, reliable results and always yearning for a deeper bench. This is not a criticism of the many hardworking assistant principals and principals who are just trying to survive the day. They are leading their schools as they were trained to do. In fact, we have a long history of training our leaders to be operational in their thinking, to be transactional, to think inside the box, and to be safe. As a result, it is not unusual for our school leaders to be stifled by the system itself.
This is a strange thing since the research on best practices in school leadership has keyed on a few things that every school should do to increase learning. In fact, most assistant principals and principals can recite these actions as if they were pilots readying for takeoff: increase the focus on standards—check; increase student engagement—check; increase time on-task—check; extend the school day—check; monitor classrooms through instructional rounds—check; make data-driven decisions—check; offer tiered interventions for students—check; flaps down, seats forward and in an upright position, cell phones off—check, check, check.
If only it were that easy. You see, there is something we are missing if all the school leaders in all the land are reading the same research and conducting the same book studies, and no two schools are going about this work in the same way. For those who suggest that their school or district has it all figured out, let us pose even tougher questions. If all the principals in a school district (and all the teachers for that matter) attend the same district trainings, discuss and debate the same strategies, and follow and implement the same district plans, why do we see great variance across schools and classrooms?
Wouldn’t we expect to find similar results if we have all attended the same trainings? Wouldn’t a functioning system produce, at the very least, calibrated results across schools in terms of student outcomes, teacher performance, and leadership capacity? This is a good place to remind us that memorizing the company’s mission statement doesn’t make someone a missionary.
Narrow and Align
At the very least, we can say that the variance we find across our schools is a symptom of systems dissonance. We can also posit that any variance in implementation would be greatly reduced if we successfully focused the expectations of our principals and teachers on a few, key drivers of learning that are evidence-based, reliable, and scalable.
As always, the most reliable research we have is studying the best teachers and leaders in our school districts. Among the lessons they have taught us are the following:
They believe in children (high expectations).
They are instructional experts (highly credible).
They are focused, aligned, and intentional (highly systematic).
They see things coming. They see things that others do not yet see. As such, they are able to narrow the scope of the work and make success manageable, personalized, and meaningful. They consider the consequences of their actions before they take any, and they plan accordingly.
Leaders like this are able to resist the allure of new ideas that the system is not yet ready for. They know when to say, “Why not? Let’s go for it,” and “Why now? Let’s wait on that one.” In turn, they are not distracted by the mirage that new things are needed when the solutions already in place might work if only given more time and attention. They know how to get from here to there with great efficiency.
System, we have a problem
If we dig deep into our schools and districts, we will find that no matter our management styles, objectives, experiences, and intentions, the system itself is to blame for the failures it faces. The system itself is too naïve or too proud to recognize the forces that are undermining its effectiveness, or it is too stubborn to fix them.
In her delightful primer on systems development titled Thinking in Systems, Donella Meadows (2008) compares the frailties and failures of any system to the flu.
In the simplest terms, she points out that the flu bug isn’t the only thing we can blame when we get sick. The flu itself isn’t solely responsible for attacking the individual, for the individual is also to blame. We too are to blame for getting the flu, insomuch as we have not taken care of ourselves, gotten enough rest, or taken enough vitamins.
We are the ones who set up the conditions by which we are attacked by the flu bug. Meadows adroitly reminds us that any system that is not well-designed nor well-orchestrated from the start is destined to catch the flu and fail. “The system, to a large extent, causes its own behavior” (Meadows, 2008).
So what does all this systems talk mean for our school and district leaders? As a start, it means that we must proceed with great caution when we consider fixing our schools and districts one subject, one crisis, or one department at a time. It means that we should be wary to note that the fixes we are putting into place may be affecting other fixes or, quite possibly, creating new crises that will require yet more solutions, plans, people, and processes later. Alas, we have made these mistakes before.
Along the way, we must endeavor to narrow and simplify. Our stakeholders are begging us to do so, and they are not wrong. In the end, we are in the business of teaching children, and we already know how to do that. It is not too much to remind ourselves to stick to the plan and not be easily swayed by shiny new things.
We must resist, at all costs, rewriting our plans over and over again or attacking the progress measures we have in place as being inadequate. Why? Because we cannot just change the needle out every time we fail to move it. Because learning outcomes are the only things that matter. Because the success of children is the only thing we seek.
In the end, the goal is not to write a great plan. The goal is to no longer need a plan. As such, the plan we put into place is not the solution, and the system is not the solution. Only the solution is the solution.
Dan