Teacher Leadership Work in Delaware
2004 – 2009
Hilary Mead, Kelly Sherretz and Shannon Holston
Delaware Academy for School Leadership
November 2009
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This report describes the state of Delaware’s growing interest and involvement in the issue
of teacher leadership. Delaware has been fortunate to receive ten years of generous funding from
The Wallace Foundation, focused on building a Cohesive Leadership System. This has allowed the
Department of Education (DOE), the Delaware Academy for School Leadership (DASL) and other
partners to design, implement and evaluate a variety of projects intended to strengthen educational
leadership to promote student achievement. It has become very clear that leadership is a skill, not a
position, and that teachers as well as administrators can contribute powerfully to school improvement
and instructional leadership. Delaware did not begin this teacher leadership work with clear
parameters. Rather, over the past ten – and particularly five – years, an understanding of the practice
and impact of teacher leadership has steadily increased, with implications for policy and research.
This was true in Delaware and also nationally.
2004: Distributed Leadership and Succession Planning reveal potential of teacher leaders,
need for more training and support
As part of the Wallace grant, in 2004 Delaware articulated two “breakthrough ideas” to improve
conditions and guarantee effective leadership into the future:
1. Develop exemplary models of distributed leadership
2. Develop a qualified pool of school leaders through succession planning
Both of these projects targeted school districts as drivers of reform; change at the district level was
intended to filter upwards (changing state-level policy, regulation, etc.) and downwards (affecting
individual schools, teachers and students). Both projects focused primarily on school administrators:
Distributed Leadership taught them to share responsibility and build teams, while Succession
Planning focused on identifying the next generation of leaders. However, both projects involved
teachers in crucial ways. As districts piloted these two projects, they demonstrated the potential of
teacher leadership and also the need for increased training and support.
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Distributed Leadership
Distributing leadership means sharing responsibility for school improvement and student
success and involving staff members in meaningful leadership roles. Delaware embraced the
Distributed Leadership concept because by 2004 it had become abundantly clear that leadership
mattered but that no one could do it alone. Researchers like Marzano, Waters and McNulty (2005),
Leithwood (2004) and others were documenting the clear impact of leadership on student learning,
while at the same time federal, state and local demands on the principal proliferated. Given the
importance of instructional leadership but the limits of a 24-hour day, distributing responsibilities
emerged as one important strategy. Distributed Leadership could improve working conditions,
making the principalship more sustainable while also engaging stakeholders, especially teachers, in
working towards school improvement. Distributed Leadership especially had potential to affect
Delaware’s troubled secondary schools, which traditionally operated in departmental “silos” rather
than in a collaborative fashion.
The Distributed Leadership (DL) Project began with the premise of connecting research and
practice. At a kickoff retreat, district teams learned about the research on teacher leadership and DL
generally and about four particular models or strategies (High Schools That Work, Learning Focused
Strategies, Breaking Ranks II and Professional Learning Communities). Four districts (New Castle
County Vo-Tech, Appoquinimink, Christina and Indian River) subsequently received $25,000 minigrants to bring their own models of distributed leadership to life. Over the next three years, the
project grew to 15 middle and high schools in seven districts. The distributed leadership model
looked different in each case but always involved empowering and engaging teachers in
responsibilities that were hitherto the principal’s. Participating schools learned research and theory
about distributed leadership and school improvement with a different focus each year (e.g. in 2008 –
2009, it was developing SMART goals). Convening several times a year, schools receive training to
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apply the research, share best practices, and consult with experts. Schools continuously revise their
plan for distributing leadership in their school, which may include implementing professional
learning communities, using teachers to deliver professional development, changing schedules or
assignment, etc. Teachers in the schools have become a critical part of the school improvement
process.
As the project matured, it demonstrated four key insights about teacher leadership. First:
teacher leaders could and did contribute meaningfully to school improvement. Several Distributed
Leadership schools experienced positive change in their culture and student achievement (Buttram
& Pizzini, 2009; Data accessed from DSTP Online Reports www.doe.k12.de.us ). Second: teachers
who were engaged in the Distributed Leadership work expressed the desire for further development
of their leadership skills. Third: administrators also had to develop new knowledge, skills and
abilities as they collaborated more with teachers; this learning curve merited more study. Finally:
distributing leadership was tightly coupled with other school improvement efforts. This was revealed
in the program structure, as, for instance, Distributed Leadership teams and coaches received
training in statewide information systems so they could delve further into their student data.
By the fifth year, an independent evaluation found significant differences between DL and
non-DL schools in the area of collaboration, although the embedding of DL with other reform
efforts made it difficult to determine causation (Buttram and Pizzini, 2009). The evaluators
concluded:
What came through most clearly was the positive change in culture,
particularly in the relationships among teachers and between teachers
and administrators. Teachers in DL schools felt more aware, more
empowered, and more listened to, both in terms of their traditional turfs
(i.e. classroom curriculum, instruction and assessment) as well as in
other less traditional areas (i.e. ninth grade orientation, student parking lot,
professional support for other teachers) (Buttram and Pizzini, 2009, p. 20).
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These examples demonstrate the breadth of teacher leaders’ contributions. This evaluation provided
significant back up and momentum for DASL’s teacher leader policy efforts in 2009, described later
in this report.
Succession Planning
While DL focused on teams working collaboratively to improve schools, Delaware’s
Succession Planning project raised questions about those teachers’ and administrators’ career paths.
This project followed the same basic structure as Distributed Leadership – a kick-off retreat for
district teams followed by start-up grants to several districts, with the hope that all 19 would
eventually implement succession plans. The overall goal was to motivate districts to take
responsibility for cultivating their own future leaders rather than leaving it up to the state or to
higher education. The project aimed to develop a cohort of 100 talented, prepared leaders statewide
who could step up to fill the many projected administrative openings. Another goal was to diversify
the pool of leaders.
Launched one year after Distributed Leadership, Succession Planning soon intersected with
it in interesting ways. Many teachers who had been engaged in Distributed Leadership now had a
new opportunity for growth through their districts’ aspiring programs. There was now a clear
pathway between teacher leaders and the principal’s office. Furthermore, districts were newly
invested in identifying, developing and providing professional development to high-potential teacher
leaders. This happened in formal and informal ways. Structured opportunities included skills and
knowledge clusters (culminating in a 2 or 4% pay raise for completion) and school-based
administrative internships. More generally, Succession Planning reinforced Distributed Leadership in
highlighting teachers as a key resource for educational leadership and reform. This project succeeded
in many of its aims. Participating districts had no difficulty filling administrative openings, and as of
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2008, the aspiring pool numbered 104 individuals, 49 of whom had entered leadership positions and
twelve of whom were minorities.
2007-2008: Research into career continuum and launch of teacher leadership consortium
Distributed Leadership strengthened the collaboration and professional learning between
administrators and teacher leaders, and Succession Planning created a clear trajectory between
teacher leaders and the principalship. In 2007, Delaware turned to investigate the educational career
continuum. The common sense understanding that educators need different things at different
phases of their career was increasingly becoming expressed through policy, mostly focused on
administrators but with implications for teacher leaders. In 2007, a state task force made
recommendations for supporting and developing school leaders, “from aspiring to retiring.” As part
of this work, DASL held six focus groups with administrators. One “takeaway” from these focus
groups was that not all teacher leaders want to become administrators (or conversely, not all
administrators would have chosen that role had others been available to them). Another was that
principals rely on their teacher leaders and would be loathe to lose their voice and expertise from the
classroom. With so much attention going to principals and their careers, key questions also emerged
about teacher leaders: Did teacher leaders and administrators need the same skills and knowledge or not? What
were the most effective ways to prepare people for these roles? What were the career prospects for a teacher leader who
did NOT want to leave the classroom entirely?
Delaware decided to explore these ideas further by developing a curriculum to prepare
teacher leaders. A partial model for this already existed at Wilmington University and Delaware
wanted to build upon this work and collaborate more broadly. Consultant Joe Murphy knew several
other states investigating the same issues and connected Delaware to Kentucky, Ohio, Alabama and
Kansas (KODAK, for short). This became the Five-State Consortium on Teacher Leadership. Joe
Murphy facilitated this group’s work, and the Council for Chief State School Officers (CCSSO)
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acted as a coordinator and fiscal agent. An initial meeting was held in Louisville, KY March 2008,
and Delaware sent representatives from DOE, the Professional Standards Board, DASL and the
University of Delaware as well as a former Teacher of the Year. The Consortium aimed to jointly
investigate teacher leadership and in particular the best ways to prepare and develop teacher leaders.
In the first meeting, the Consortium heard from two experts on teacher leadership, Mark Smylie
(University of Illinois) and Marilyn Katzenmeyer (author of Awakening the Sleeping Giant) and began
to develop a shared understanding of teacher leadership. In subsequent meetings, they adopted a
common definition of teacher leaders: “Teacher Leaders are educators who use their expertise to improve
student learning by working outside the classroom in formal and informal ways to augment the professional skills of
colleagues, to strengthen the culture of the school, and to improve the quality of instruction.” Another obvious task
was to develop standards, but states were in different places and Kentucky and Kansas already had
standards. Instead, the Consortium agreed to allow standards to emerge from the “ground up” after
the curriculum development.
Despite contextual and policy differences, each of the KODAK states had a need for
resources to prepare teacher leaders. Some were considering a teacher leader certificate, license or
endorsement; others were collaborating with higher education to design new programs; others were
planning to offer increased professional development for teacher leaders. In all these cases, states
recognized that new learning had to take place. Great teachers often become teacher leaders, but the
skills required to influence, mentor and collaborate with adults for school improvement are very
different from those needed in the classroom with students. As Delaware was learning through
Distributed Leadership, teacher leaders also had unique skills as compared to administrators. A
teacher leader curriculum was seen as a way to distinguish, codify and build these new skills.
Working with consultant Joe Murphy, the Consortium then began to design this curriculum.
They drew on examples from various states including Delaware; Wilmington University’s John Gray
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presented WU’s teacher leader coursework, which had recently been developed. The KODAK
curriculum was designed for maximum flexibility. It consists of 14 courses, each with three foci.
These could be used individually, in part or in whole to meet a variety of needs (new certificate,
endorsement on an existing teacher certificate, university program, professional development
session, etc.). The five states divided up the course development, according to local expertise. These
were the course titles and state developers:
A. DEVELOPING AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE WHOLE SCHOOL
1. Understanding How Schools Work [AL]
2. Understanding Professional Responsibilities of Leaders [KY]
3. Developing a Deeper Understanding of Leadership [OH]
B. WORKING PRODUCTIVELY WITH OTHERS
4. Developing More Effective Interpersonal Skills [KY]
5. Learning to Coach/Mentor Others [OH]
6. Facilitating Productive Collaboration [DE]
C. DEEPENING THE INSTRUCTIONAL CAPACITY OF COLLEAGUES
7. Designing and Implementing High-quality Professional Development [KS]
8. Recognizing, Assessing, and Supporting Quality Instructional Practices with Colleagues [KS]
9. Program Evaluation on Teacher Leaders [DE]
D. LEADING SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
Developing and Sustaining Professional Learning Communities [KS]
Leading Change [DE]
Teacher Leader Research I [AL]
Teacher Leadership Research II [AL]
Promoting Equitable Schools for Youngsters and Families [KY]
The states also agreed on several principles to ensure that the curriculum would be useful – and
used. Courses were to be grounded in what teacher leaders actually do and emphasize collaborative,
inquiry-based learning and authentic assessments. They would facilitate partnerships between
schools and universities, and would apply equally to teachers at any level, in any subject area.
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2009: Policy Work in Delaware
Taken together, the Teacher Leader course titles articulate five leading states’ thinking about
what teacher leaders should know and be able to do. After a critical friends’ review in fall of 2008, the
curriculum was finalized by the end of the year and states began using it in different ways. For
instance, Kansas created a Teacher Leader Specialist Certificate and used the courses as professional
development towards certification. Delaware’s policy work included several stages and groups, as
illustrated here:
For Delaware, an immediate task was developing Teacher Leader standards. A committee formed
comprising representatives from DOE, DASL, DSEA, higher education, districts/charters,
principals and of course teacher leaders. Using Kentucky and Kansas’ standards as models, the
committee drafted standards for Delaware. These will be brought to the Secretary of Education for
approval before being moved to the Professional Standards Board for consideration. (See appendix
for Teacher Leader standards).
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Delaware also needed to discuss policy changes to support teacher leadership more broadly.
The value of teacher leaders in driving educational improvement and improving school culture was
clear, and had been proven through the Distributed Leadership evaluation. Now there needed to be
conversations about pre-service preparation, selection, professional development and incentives for
teacher leaders. To tackle these issues, another committee formed, again with representation from
diverse stakeholders. This group worked in subcommittees throughout summer 2009, ultimately
approving the following eight policy recommendations:
STANDARDS
1. Have the Professional Standards Board and the State Board of Education approve
the teacher leader standards.
EDUCATION/DEVELOPMENT
Pre Service
2. Have the Professional Standards Board and the State Board of Education approve
new coursework regulations that include a teacher leadership component for
teachers seeking certification as assistant principals or principals and who already
have a master’s degree.
Professional Development
3. The DOE should put into regulation the NSDC recommendations for professional
development (per the audit).
4. The Professional Standards Board should revise the clock hour requirements for
licensure renewal for administrators so that 30% of the continuing education
requirements are in the area of teacher leadership and aligned to the Teacher Leader
Standards.
Requirements for licensure renewal for teachers should be revised so that
educational experiences in the area of teacher leadership become an approved
category for continuation of one’s license.
Add a requirement that a focus on teacher leadership be added to the teacher mentor
program.
5. The DOE will assure that delivery of the teacher leader professional development is
an important part of the professional development delivery system for the state
(regional centers) and aligned to the Teacher Leader Standards.
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6. Regulations should be developed to create a teacher leadership certificate built upon
the new teacher leadership standards.
CONDITIONS OF WORK
Incentives/Recognition
7. Get legislation/amend legislation and develop regulations/revise existing regulations
so that teachers who earn teacher leader certification from the National Board for
Professional Teaching Standards earn a ten-year advanced teaching license.
8. Revise legislation to increase the number of academic excellence units earned by
districts and require that a percentage of all units be allocated to school principals for
the purpose of hiring a certified teacher leader to coach and mentor teachers at the
building level.
The issue of a teacher leader certificate (recommendation #6) provoked the most
disagreement within the committee while also generating interest with other audiences.
Originally, a subcommittee did propose establishing a new certificate, but the full policy
committee disagreed. The discussion centered on practical questions (would there be extra money
associated with the certificate?) and philosophical ones (would turning an informal responsibility into a
formal role change who was motivated to become a teacher leader?). Concurrent with the committee’s
deliberations in the spring and summer of 2009, teacher leadership also became a topic in
other statewide work groups including the Enhancing Teacher Effectiveness Work Group
and the Innovation Action Team (IAT) on Teacher Quality. (IATs were groups convened by
DOE to guide the department’s strategic planning in several key areas and eventually to
inform its Race to the Top application). In both committee reports, a teacher leader
certificate was recommended as a strategy to attract, retain and develop outstanding teachers.
With political momentum swinging towards creating a certificate, but the committee still
divided, the group engaged in a structured brainstorming process called the Implications
Wheel (or I-Wheel). This process fleshes out the possible implications of any change, in this
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case creating a Teacher Leader Certificate. After reviewing I-Wheel data, the committee
decided to move forward with this recommendation after all.
This decision making process revealed some of the tensions inherent in Delaware’s
work. By supporting and incentivizing teacher leadership, would the state change or “water
down” who was drawn to the work? By creating positions called “Teacher Leader,” would
the state discourage others from stepping up to leadership in informal ways? What would be
the trade offs between gaining a teacher’s leadership contribution and losing part of his/her
time in the classroom? Structuring teacher leadership is still new territory and consequences
of policy actions are hard to predict. It is clear that teacher leadership elicits strong
investment, beliefs and in some cases disagreement. Collaboration among stakeholders is
thus essential. The policy committee’s final eight recommendations were to be brought to
the Secretary of Education and her cabinet on November 23, 2009.
2009: Further research and study on teacher leadership
Delaware’s work on teacher leadership continually reflected national research and policy
change. One example of this synergy was the research of Brad Portin. From 2007-09, Portin and his
colleagues at the University of Washington conducted a national study of instructional leadership in
urban schools (Portin et al, 2009), including both administrators and teacher leaders. The findings
demonstrate the influence of teacher leadership both “upward” (as a resource to administrators) and
“downward” (as a support to teachers). Teacher leaders played many roles in instructional
improvement, including setting priorities, using data, conducting professional development,
fostering a collaborative culture, etc. The study also revealed some important facilitative conditions
for teacher leaders, including role clarity, school culture, and peer and supervisor support.
Parallel to this national study, Portin came to Delaware to build an understanding and to
inform the Teacher Leadership Policy Committee. The state-level study (Portin, 2009) echoed many
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of the national findings. In focus groups around the state (May 2009), teacher leaders were asked
about their day-to-day leadership practice, what skills and knowledge it requires and what supports
or stands in its way. They were also asked what incentives and resources they receive, and finally
about their vision for contributing to their school. Portin synthesized the findings into a number of
considerations for further exploration:

Role complexity: “The teacher leaders describe the difficulty of what it means to inhabit
the “middle place” between administrators/principals and their colleague teachers in
classrooms” (p. 29)

Coordination: Teacher leaders call for greater collaboration with peers to offer support and
minimize redundancy

Preparation: Teacher leaders felt poorly prepared for the “extra stuff” beyond the
classroom

Trust: themes of communication and informal influence were prevalent

Recognition is highly individual and connected to one’s passion/purpose

Career continuum: as previous work with Distributed Leadership suggested, many teacher
leaders do not want to become principals. What other opportunities for advancement exist?
To some extent, the eight policy recommendations described earlier respond to Portin’s conclusions.
For instance, there are multiple recommendations to strengthen pre and in-service training for
teacher leaders. Yet on another level, these considerations are not so easily resolved and “softer”
issues of communication, trust, role clarity/ambiguity and professional satisfaction are likely to
resonate through the teacher leadership work for years to come.
Early on in this work, it became clear that administrators learn just as much as teachers from
distributing leadership. Portin followed up with a second research report: Leading Leaders: Principals
and Teacher Leaders in Delaware’s Schools (2009). This time, focus group questions elicited
administrators’ perspective on teacher leaders: what they do, how they contribute and help the
administrator lead, and how to identify them. Administrators were also asked how they learned to
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work with teacher leaders and what support/resources they received in the process. This
investigation confirmed that principals value both informal and formal teacher leadership. Teacher
leaders work in concrete tasks and roles (e.g. “train the trainer” professional development or in an
instructional leadership team) but they also act as a “sounding board” for the principal and a “go to
person” for fellow teachers. Administrators identified several key dispositions for teacher leaders to
possess (communication, efficacy, perspective). They spoke about the shifting nature of their own
positions, “more akin to an orchestra conductor than a soloist” (p. 20). When it comes to working
with teacher leaders, “the principal needs to be trained, too” (p. 21).
The more Delaware learns about teacher leadership, the more the state wants to learn. The
power and the complexity of this role are increasingly clear. Delaware plans to bring Portin back in
the winter of 2010 to continue studying the dynamics between principals and teacher leaders and
how each group adapts to shifting roles. At the same time, Delaware is poised for exciting changes
as the universities, DOE, State Board of Education and others prepare to act on the ideas described
here. The teacher leadership work brought together stakeholders from every part of Delaware’s
educational system and from other states. There was vigorous collaboration and sometimes debate.
Research, policy and practice informed each other cyclically. Indeed, Delaware’s work with teacher
leadership epitomizes its approach to building a Cohesive Leadership System more generally.
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References:
Buttram, J. & Pizzini, E. (2009). Distributed leadership in Delaware. Newark, DE: Delaware Education
Research & Development Center.
Katzenmeyer, M. & Moller, G. (2001). Awakening the sleeping giant. Helping teachers develop as
leaders. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Leithwood, K., Seashore Louis, K., Anderson, S. and Wahlstrom, K. (2004). How leadership
influences student learning. New York: The Wallace Foundation.
Marzano, R. J. (2003). What works in schools: Translating research into action. Alexandria, VA: Association
for Supervision & Curriculum Development.
Marzano, R. J., Waters, T., & McNulty, B.A. School leadership that works: From research to results.
Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.
Portin, B., Knapp, M., Dareff, S., Feldman, S., Russell, F., Samuelson, C. & Yeh, T.L. (2009).
Leadership for learning improvement in urban schools. Seattle, WA: Center for the Study of Teaching
and Policy.
Portin, B. (2009). Teacher voices: Teacher leaders in Delaware’s schools. Bothell, WA: University of
Washington, Bothell.
Portin, B. (2009). Leading leaders: Principals and teacher leaders in Delaware’s schools. Bothell, WA:
University of Washington, Bothell.
Smylie, M. A. (1995). New perspectives on teacher leadership. The Elementary School Journal,
96 (1), 3-7.
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