Leadership: Connecting
Vision With Action
Presented by: Jan Stanley
Spring 2010 Title I Directors’ Meeting
Overview
• Relationship between district leadership and student
achievement
• District leadership responsibilities related to student
achievement
• District commitments that impact student
achievement
WV Goals for Education
• Consistent and equitable gains in student achievement
• Increasing high school graduation rates
• Ensuring college and career readiness
• Preparing all students with the global 21 skills
necessary for success in the 21st century
What is the relationship
between district
leadership and student
achievement?
Leadership Framework
• Positive Culture
Create a
Purposeful
Community
• Communication
• Build Relationships
• Visibility
• Curriculum, instruction
and assessment
Create the
Focus
• Ensure a disciplined
and safe environment
• Connect the resources
to the goals
• Exhibit flexibility
Recognize the
• Act as a change agent
magnitude of
• Optimize opportunities
change
• Monitor and evaluate
initiatives
Change is Required
How is it viewed?
Current Status
• Extension of the past
• Within the existing
paradigms
• Consistent with current
values and beliefs
• Implementing with
existing knowledge and
skills
Necessary for Improvement
• A break with the past
• Outside of the existing
paradigms
• Conflicts with current
values and beliefs
• Requires new knowledge
and skills to implement
Leading the Change Process
Identify the
need for
change
Monitor and
Create
evaluate
demand
Manage personal
transitions
Implement
What district leadership
responsibilities are
related to student
achievement?
District Leadership
Responsibilities
• Collaborative goal setting process
• Non-negotiable goals for achievement and instruction
• Alignment of board of education goals with district
goals and board of education support for district
goals
• Monitoring the goals for achievement and
instruction
• Use of resources to support goals
Collaborative goal setting
process
• sInclude all relevant stakeholders
• Conduct an extensive needs
assessment
• Require involvement of all building
level administrators
• Share the draft goals with school
leadership teams
• Reach consensus on the district
goals and communicate
expectations to all stakeholders
Non-negotiable goals for
achievement and instruction
• Identify the non-negotiable goals for achievement and instruction
• Set specific achievement targets for the district as a whole,
individual schools and for subgroups within the district
• Inform all staff members of the goals
• Create an action plan to achieve the goals (district strategic plan)
• Adopt a broad, but common framework for
instructional design
• Establish a common instructional vocabulary
• Expect consistent use of research based
instructional practices in each school
Alignment of board of education goals
with district goals and board of
education support for district goals
• Ensures the goals remain a top priority
• Makes certain no other initiatives detract attention
from the achievement goals
• Guarantees adequate resources are allocated to
accomplish goals
• Assumes all board members are committed to the
adopted goals and not their own interests and district
expectations
• Provide professional development for board
members
Monitoring the goals for
achievement and instruction
• Ensure highly qualified and highly effective teachers are in every
classroom and highly effective administrators are in every building
• Provide differentiated professional development for teachers in
both pedagogy and content based on need
• Determine what instructional and management strategies are
being used by teachers and evaluate the effectiveness on student
achievement
• Develop a district set of instructional design questions
and a rubric to use for a teacher profile
• Involve teachers in action research through the
professional learning communities to determine
the effectiveness of instructional strategies
• Permit teachers to observe “master teachers”
Use of resources to support
goals
• Consider the four basic resources:
•
•
•
•
Time
Personnel
Money
Materials
• Dedicate money to professional development for both
teachers and administrators
• Ensure that school based professional
development is occurring and aligned to
the district goals
What are the three
critical commitments a
district should consider
related to student
achievement?
Commitments for Improving
Achievement
• Develop a system of individual student feedback
• Ensure effective teaching in every classroom
• Build background knowledge for all students,
particularly those most at risk
Develop a system of individual
student feedback
• Evaluative vs. descriptive feedback
• Common formative assessments of each learning target
• Professional learning communities meet periodically to discuss
teaching strategies and the student achievement results –track
student progress on learning goals
• Training for teachers in standards based grading
• Standards based report cards
Ensure effective teaching in
every classroom
• Examine effective pedagogy-develop instructional
design questions
– What strategies do I use to help students
effectively interact with new material?
– What strategies do I use to engage students in
learning?
– What strategies do I use to help students practice
and deepen their understanding of new
knowledge?
• Conduct action research
– Strategy should be selected by the PLC
– Action research can be formal
or informal
Ensure effective teaching in
every classroom
• Establish a structure and format for the professional
learning communities
– Describe the strategy tried
– Describe the effect on student learning and
present evidence
– Describe how the strategy was used in a lesson
– Describe areas of improvement for the teacher
Ensure effective teaching in
every classroom
• Have teachers observe master teachers applying
instructional strategies
– Identify “master teachers”
– Overall effectiveness in teaching is defined in
terms of student learning
– Teachers observe “master teachers” based on a
specific instructional design question-student
engagement
Ensure effective teaching in
every classroom
• Monitor the effectiveness of individual teaching styles
– Conduct at the district and school levels
– Provide descriptive feedback-capitalizing on
strengths and for improving weaknesses-to
teachers
– Focus on student learning as apposed to using
specific strategies as criterion for effective
teaching
– Collect data on teachers as well as students
– Develop goals for improvement –focus
on student engagement and learning
Build background
knowledge for all students
• Differentiate between “academic” background
knowledge and social knowledge
• Recognize differences in vocabulary knowledge
based on socioeconomic levels
• Develop district conceptual academic terms
• Provide direct, explicit instruction in academic terms
that is consistent across the district
Concluding thoughts
No one questions the pace, the scope and the
implications of change in today’s world. Change is
the one constant of which we can all be certain.
Questions for district leaders
Are you as a leader willing to examine the district
practices and consider alternatives likely to produce
improved results?
Will the changes result in improvement?
Are you as a district leader willing to commit
yourself to continuous improvement?
Acknowledgements
This presentation was developed based on the
research of the following individuals:
• Greg Cameron, M.A.
• Robert Marzano, Ph.D.
• J. Timothy Waters, Ed. D.