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April 2004
| Volume 61 | Number 7
Leading in Tough Times
What Do Leaders Do?
Marge Scherer
The Seven Principles of Sustainable Leadership
Andy Hargreaves and Dean Fink
According to a study of three decades of change in eight U.S. and Canadian schools, one of the key forces leading to meaningful, long-term change is leadership sustainability. The authors assert that most school leadership practices create temporary, localized flurries of change but little lasting or widespread improvement. Leaders develop sustainability, they write by committing to and protecting deep learning in their schools; by trying to ensure that improvements last over time, especially after they have gone, by distributing leadership and responsibility to others; by considering the impact of their leadership on the schools and communities around them; by sustaining themselves so that they can persist with their vision and avoid burning out; by promoting and perpetuating diverse approaches to reform rather than standardized prescriptions for teaching and learning, and by engaging actively with their environments. The authors give examples of sustainable and unsustainable leadership in the eight schools they studied.
The Roles That Principals Play
Bradley Portin
Do principals play core roles regardless of the type of school they lead? And how do these roles differ across public and private schools? To answer these questions—and understand what it takes to lead schools in challenging times—a team of researchers at the University of Washington studied leadership in 21 different schools. They distilled school leadership into seven common functions that no school can afford to neglect: instructional leadership, cultural leadership, managerial leadership, human resource leadership, strategic leadership, external development leadership, and micropolitical leadership. According to the study, principals don't necessarily need to provide direct leadership in all seven areas; they often show leadership by ensuring that others exercise more direct influence. The study found that models of leadership in schools gravitate toward two poles: Traditional public schools often tend to focus all responsibilities on the principal whereas other types of schools have environments that facilitate shared leadership. Principals also indicated that although they were often called upon to diagnose problems, analyze available resources, and come up with solutions, their credential programs had not adequately prepared them to effectively deal with these issues.
A Call for Powerful Leaders: A Conversation with Rod Paige
Marge Scherer
Rod Paige, the first U.S. secretary of education to come from the ranks of educators, discusses his vision for U. S. schools and defends the rationale for No Child Left Behind. He describes the lessons in leadership he learned as a former superintendent in Houston and urges school leaders to overcome obstacles to reform schools.
What School Leaders Want
Jean Johnson
Despite their optimism about what they can accomplish, principals and superintendents would like to see some changes in public education. The author presents the findings of a recent survey of school superintendents and principals that Public Agenda conducted for The Wallace Foundation to learn more about the conditions school leaders believe they need in order to make progress. The report found five key changes that school leaders would like to see: fewer mandates and less red tape; relief on special education; mid-course corrections of No Child Left Behind; easier ways to remove failing teachers; and more good teachers. Although these reforms are controversial and will meet rough sailing politically, they are also specific, and school leaders have the consensus and wherewithal to bring them to the light of day.
The Wounded Leader
Richard H. Ackerman and Pat Maslin-Ostrowski
Effective leadership in schools requires more than just strength, power, and competence. According to the authors, it means developing a genuine sense of self grounded in strengths and vulnerabilities alike. Two essential questions arise: How can school leaders preserve a healthy sense of self in a crisis situation that can seriously wound them? How can leaders learn and grow from such experiences? Three school leaders describe the wounding experience, and their stories illustrate the meaning of leadership: a high school principal uses the wound to learn about himself and become a better leader; a superintendent takes a year off to reflect on his purpose and decides to become a middle school principal; a principal under attack learns to trust in herself and her community. Sometimes forces outside the leader's control seem to fuel the crisis. Although this can often be the case, genuine leadership requires that the leader confront the vulnerability from within and without. Discussing the problem with a trusted group of people, ‘communicating clearly and honestly,’ and showing willingness to question one's beliefs, feelings, and preconceptions pave the way to effective leadership.
When Leadership Spells Danger
Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky
The authors have learned from their work with superintendents, principals, and teachers that educators often fail to appreciate how dangerous and difficult it can be to lead meaningful change. They explain that true leadership is dangerous because it involves challenging people to accept new realities and move beyond their traditional values and beliefs. Leadership is difficult because it requires that we meet adaptive challenges—those that require changing our values, beliefs, habits, ways of working, and ways of life. In order to exercise leadership and survive professionally, leaders need to put relationships first and think politically. The authors describe essential aspects of thinking politically, including forming partnerships, staying in touch with the opposition, making allies of those in the middle by acknowledging the difficulty of change, and acknowledging your own need to change.
Creating a Community of Difference
Carolyn M. Shields
Leading in tough times requires grounding yourself in the bedrock moral principles of social justice and academic excellence for all students, and paying attention to relationships, understanding, and dialogue. Although some believe that social justice and academic excellence cannot coexist, the author argues that they are, in fact, intertwined, and creating a community of difference can lead to both. Such a community emerges when leaders and others develop a shared understanding around four criteria for decision making: justice, caring, democracy, and optimism. It flourishes through dialogue that values diversity of all kinds and that addresses the needs, abilities, and interests of all students. Rather than dismissing the challenges of today's schools as unsolvable, leaders must recognize and thoughtfully use their power to influence others in a moral and deliberate way.
New Lessons for Districtwide Reform
Michael Fullan, Al Bertani and Joanne Quinn
How can districts implement sustainable education reforms, especially during tough times? After examining seven districts that have made successful reforms, the authors uncovered 10 crucial components of effective district leadership and reform: a compelling vision, collective moral purpose, effective structure, capacity building, lateral capacity building, ongoing learning, productive conflict, a demanding culture, external partners, and growing financial investment. Success is possibly when district leaders can integrate and direct all of these interlocking components toward a common goal. Deeper work on pedagogical strategies for increasing student achievement, more attention to districtwide reform for high schools, and greater attention to the state level of education reform are also important. As more and more districts reach out to learn from one another, district-wide reform has never been more vibrant.
Leadership That Sparks Learning
J. Timothy Waters, Robert J. Marzano and Brian McNulty
Does leadership really make a difference in schools? Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) addresses this question in its meta-analytic study, School Leadership That Works. McREL found a significant, positive correlation between effective school leadership and student achievement. In fact, analysis suggests that improving principals' leadership abilities by one standard deviation—from the 50th to the 84th percentile—would lead to an increase in average student achievement from the 50th to the 60th percentile. McREL was able to identify 21 key leadership responsibilities that have the greatest impact on student achievement—culture, order, discipline, resources, focus, communication, affirmation, and visibility, for example. Authors Waters, Marzano, and McNulty signal two factors that determine whether leadership will have a positive or a negative effect on student achievement: the leader's ability to identify the right focus for school and classroom improvement and his or her ability to distinguish between first- and second-order changes. First-order changes build on the past and on existing models. Second-order changes dramatically break with the past and require that stakeholders acquire new sets of knowledge, skills, and values. Second-order changes also require more skillful leaders. McREL's study on school leadership defines the traits of skillful leaders and shows that leadership may be more science than art.
Evaluating Administrators
Douglas B. Reeves
The instruments used to evaluate leaders in most school districts are deeply flawed, writes the author. The National Leadership Evaluation Study collected information from 510 school principals, superintendents, and central-office administrators and examined the leadership evaluation instruments used by more than 700 schools. The results showed that, in almost every case, “these systems tolerate mediocrity, fail to recognize excellence, turn a blind eye to abuses, accept incompetence, and systematically demoralize courageous and committed leaders.” The author identifies ambiguous performance standards, inconsistent rating scales, and unreasonable expectations as the three major problems. He describes an alternative model called the Multidimensional Leadership Assessment, which he believes will provide a more fair, specific, and constructive leadership evaluation system.
Leading from the Eye of the Storm
Scott Thompson
To ride out the storms of controversy and organizational upheaval that inevitably characterize the education landscape, educators must learn to lead from the eye of the storm, from that still point at the center, which can be a place of great clarity. The author defines spiritual leadership as “a state of mind or consciousness that enables one to perceive deeper levels of experience, meaning, and purpose than can be perceived from a strictly materialistic vantage point.” Leaders who cultivate this dimension of leadership learn to connect with their core values, rise above their egos to clearly define the issue at hand, inspire confidence in those they lead, and develop sound conflict resolution skills. Positive self-talk and setting time aside for regular spiritual practice are strategies leaders can use to fortify the inner strength they require to effectively lead.
Meeting Challenges in Urban Schools
Larry Cuban
Teachers, principals, and superintendents working in low-income schools and districts face different challenges than their middle-class and affluent peers. The media have made much of the heroic urban educator—the movie Stand and Deliver, for example, celebrates math teacher Jamie Escalante's success in teaching calculus to underachieving Latino students. But author Larry Cuban contends that urban school leadership has more to do with place, roles, and budgets than with hyped-up imagery. The author shares the challenges and successes of three notable urban educators: Rafe Esquith, who fought to implement a rigorous curriculum for his 5th and 6th graders; Principal Betty Belt, who made it clear that she expected excellence from both her teachers and students; and Superintendent John Stanford, who turned an entire school district around. In these challenging settings, urban educators—teachers, principals, and superintendents alike—perform three crucial roles, which relate to instruction, management, and politics. Educators seek to raise student achievement, provide moral leadership, and reduce the achievement gap, but in an absence of funding. Cuban cautions against confusing the often noble call to leadership with the “less-than-subtle call to educators to do more with less.”
A Is for Audacity: Lessons in Leadership from Lorraine Monroe
Kathy Checkley
Effective leadership is part vision and part action, says Lorraine Monroe, an international consultant who helped to transform an apathetic, low-performing school in Central Harlem into a place of high expectations and greatly improved student achievement. Monroe, who now heads the Lorraine Monroe Leadership Institute (LMLI), adds that many leaders have trouble with the “action” part of the equation. “Of course, you need to collaborate,” she explains. “But there comes a time when a boss has to look at her staff and say, “OK, I've heard you, there's validity in what you're saying, but we have to move on and here's what we're going to do.” Monroe shares her perspectives on the kind of leadership needed in education today, offering advice on how to survive in this era of accountability and tight budgets.
Sharing the Lead
Janice Patterson and Jerry Patterson
The authors' research on school resilience has convinced them that teacher leaders play a major role in shaping school culture and building the school's capacity to respond positively to adversity. Because the teacher culture is relatively more stable over time, teachers may have even more opportunities than short-term principals to shape the school culture. The authors give examples of three qualities through which teacher leaders exert influence: credibility, expertise, and relationships. They describe how teachers leaders can help schools stay focused on what matters most, create a climate of caring and support, and maintain hope—all important qualities in meeting and overcome adversity.
The Power of Student Voice
Stephen McKibben
Drawing on their experience in Vermont, the authors describe how students can develop their leadership capacity and participate with teachers and others in a school's democratic learning community. Students have a legitimate leadership role to play in improving schools because of their unique perspective as consumers of education. Critical leadership skills that students should practice include respectful listening, facilitation of conversations, and consensus building. Leadership grounded in collaboration differs from the traditional notion of leadership, which relies on a leader-follower pattern. The new “leaderful” approach that the authors favor acknowledges the potential of students to make a difference in their schools by giving them meaningful ways to participate (for example, as researchers, mentors, advisors). It also nurtures the genuine idealism that young people typically personify.
A Day in the Life of a School Leader
Linda Nathan
The toughest challenge for the school leader may be simply to stay focused on teaching and learning in the face of the harrowing daily routine of running a school and defusing innumerable minor crises. Each day is filled with obstacles to this central focus, including administrative and personnel tasks and high-stakes testing concerns. Nevertheless, school leaders are responsible for protecting the curriculum, encouraging teacher leadership, and nurturing a school climate in which both teachers and students feel safe expressing themselves. At the end of the day, the school leader might choose to reflect by asking him or herself, Did I make a teacher's job easier today?
Meet ASCD's Outstanding Young Educator for 2003
Deborah Siegel
Mentoring New Leaders
John H. Holloway
Review
Web Wonders / Leading in Tough Times
Amy M. Azzam
ASCD Community in Action
The Best of Times, The Worst of Times
Denis P. Doyle
EL Study Guide
Amy M. Azzam
Copyright © 2004 by Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
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