Instructional Leadership

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Instructional Leadership for Standards-Based Refor
m
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Current standards-based reform...
calls upon educators for the first time ...
to provide strong basic education ...
for ALL children !
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CHALLENGE
Public Education
Increasingly dependent
Large scale improvement of instruction
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HISTORICALLY
Individual teachers responsible for
? What was taught
? How instruction was delivered
? How learning was assessed
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Educational Administrators responsible for
? Management of school structure and processes
? Not for the technical core of instruction
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LOOSELY COUPLED structure
Prevented
Widespread dissemination of successful
instructional practices across educational system
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Statewide Content and Performance Standards
Challenge
Traditional pattern of school organization
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Schools Must
? Manage conditions of learning in a systemic way
? Meet identified levels of performance
? Cultivate organizational cultures of continuous
improvement
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Elmore defines School Improvement as
Change with direction sustained over time
Moves entire systems
Raising the average level of quality and
performance
Decreasing the variation among units
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In Standards-Based Reform, the most important
role of LEADERS ...
Provide guidance and direction for Instructional
Improvement
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Most of the knowledge required for improvement ...
Must inevitably reside in those who deliver
instruction
Not in the people who manage them
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Teaching and Learning
(knowledge-intensive enterprise)
Calls for
? Distributive leadership (multiple sources of
guidance and direction)
? Common culture (set of values, symbols, rituals)
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Job of Administrative Leaders is about
? Enhancing the skills and knowledge of people
? Creating of common culture of expectations (all)
? Involving the pieces of the system together in
a productive relationship with each other
? Holding individuals accountable for
contribution to the collective result
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Leadership Roles
Leadership Functions
SYSTEM

• Design system improvement strategies
• Design, implement incentive structures for
  schools, principals, teachers
• Recruit, evaluate principals
• Provide professional development consistent with
  improvement strategy
• Allocate system resources toward instruction
• Buffer non-instructional issues from principals,
  teachers

Superintendents, Support Personnel
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Leadership Roles
Leadership Functions

• Design school improvement strategies
• Implement incentive structures for teachers,
  support personnel
• Recruit, evaluate teachers
• Broker professional development consistent with
  improvement strategy
• Allocate school resources toward instruction
• Buffer non-instructional issues from teachers

SCHOOL
Principals, Support Personnel
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Leadership Roles
Leadership Functions
PRACTICE

• Design, conduct, participate in professional
  development
• Participate in recruitment, hiring of new
  teachers
• Evaluate professional development
• Consult, evaluate professional practice of
  colleagues
• Evaluate student work
• Participate in development of new professional
  development practices

Teachers, Professional Developers
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Design Principles for Instructional
School Improvement
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Maintain a Tight Instructional Focus Sustained
Over Time
? Organize everyones actions (all levels of
system)
? Start with a single instructional area then add
? Improve both practice and performance
? Become progressively more ambitious over time
? Teach people how to think and act around
learning for continuous performance
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Routinize Accountability for Practice and
Performance in Face to Face Relationships
? Create strong normative environment where
ADULTS take responsibility for academic
performance of children
? Rely more heavily on face-to-face relationships
than on bureaucratic routines
? Evaluate performance on basis of ALL STUDENTS
not select groups OR school or grade level
averages
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? Design Everyones Work to Improve Capacity and
Performance of Someone Else
? Judge system-level administrators on how well
they build capacity of principals to work with
teachers
? Principals judged by how well they build
capacity of teachers
? Teachers judged by how well they build capacity
of students
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Reduce Isolation and Open Practice Up to Direct
Observation, Analysis and Criticism
? Make direct observation of practice, analysis
and feedback a routine feature of work
? Create multiple avenues of interactions among
classrooms and schools, between schools and
broader environments
? Adjust and adapt routines (teaching schedules,
preparation periods, substitute teacher
allocations)
? Focus group discussions on instructional work
of the organization
? Model desired classroom practice in
administrative actions
? Model desired classroom practice in collegial
interactions
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Exercise Differential Treatment Based on
Performance and Capacity, Not on Volunteerism
? Acknowledge differences among communities,
schools and classrooms within a common framework
of improvement
? Allocate supervisory time and professional
development based on explicit judgements about
where schools are in developmental process of
practice and performance
NOTE There can be no demands without attention
to the capacity that exists to deliver them.
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Devolve Increased Discretion Based on Practice
and Performance
? Loosen and tighten administrative control based
on hard evidence of quality of practice and
performance (diverse groups of students)
? Greater discretion follows higher quality of
practice and higher levels of performance
? Volunteerism is NOT a strategy of differential
treatment
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Three Powerful Lessons About Leadership
(Michael Fullan)
? There is a vital and paradoxical need for slow
knowing
? So much time is spent processing information,
solving problems and meeting deadlines that there
is none left in which to think.
(G. Claxton)
? Leaders must cultivate the ability to wait.
(John Keats)
? Effective leaders listen attentively. (Beware
of leaders who are always sure of themselves.)
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? The importance of learning in context
? Improvement is more of a function of learning
to do the right thing in the setting where you
work than it is of what you know when you start
to work.
(Richard Elmore)
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? Need for leaders at all levels of the
organization (from above and below)
? Leaders create the conditions for daily learning
? Leaders are not born, they are nurtured
? Leaders have an obligation to remove barriers
to sharing, create mechanisms for sharing and
reward those who do.
? Leaders of leaders know that they do not run
the place but instead cultivate leadership in
others.
? If leaders lead right, the organization will
outgrow them
(R. Lewin and B. Regine)
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"Doing your best isn't good enough if you don't
know what you are doing."
W. Edwards Deming
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Ultimately, your leadership will be judged as
effective or ineffective
? NOT by who you are as a leader
? BUT by what leadership you produce in others
Michael Fullan
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We transform dysfunctional relationships into
functional ones, not by continuing to do what we
already know how to do more intensively and with
greater enthusiasm...
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but by learning how to do new things and,
perhaps more importantly, learning how to attach
positive value to the learning and the doing of
new things.
Richard Elmore