Contacts:
Mairead Reinhard
Communications Manager
College of Education
206-543-1035
mrein@uw.edu
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 13, 2010
Study Identifies How Urban District Central Offices Transformed Their Work to Improve
Teaching and Learning
NEW YORK (May 12, 2010) – Central offices of urban school districts have been able to shift
their focus from administration and compliance to improvement of teaching and learning districtwide by making five key changes, according to a new report by University of Washington
researchers.
The report fills an important gap in knowledge about strengthening teaching and learning
throughout school systems. Decades of experience and research have shown that districts
generally fail to realize district-wide improvement in teaching and learning without powerful
leadership from the central office, but until now the field has had few positive examples of such
leadership to draw on.
The study, Central Office Transformation for District-Wide Teaching and Learning
Improvement, uncovers the daily practices of administrators in three districts with transformation
efforts under way: Atlanta Public Schools; the Empowerment Schools Organization in New York
City; and the Oakland (Calif.) Unified School District.
“All three districts were making significant investments in strengthening leadership throughout
their central offices to support powerful teaching and learning not in some schools but in all
schools,” says Dr. Meredith Honig, Associate Professor in Educational Leadership and Policy
Studies at the University of Washington College of Education and the lead author of the
report.“The engagement of all central office administrators in focusing their work on those
results represents nothing short of a transformation of longstanding ways of doing business in
many school district central offices.”
The report was commissioned by The Wallace Foundation and published by the Center for the
Study of Teaching and Policy (CTP) at the University of Washington College of Education. The
report was co-authored by Michael A. Copland and a team from the University of Washington.
Another University of Washington College of Education entity – The Center for Educational
Leadership (CEL) – has already been implementing the findings in school districts around the
country, and will be a collaborator on future on-the-ground work stemming from this research.
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Rather than remain in the background focused on “buses, budgets and buildings,” central offices
must work closely with school principals and turn the attention of all staffers to teaching and
learning improvement, the report finds.
The five changes key to this transformation are:
Creating learning-focused partnerships between central office staff and school principals to help
deepen principals’ instructional leadership;
Providing supports for the district-principal partnerships;
Reorganizing and “reculturing” all central office departments so that they focus their work on
strengthening teaching and learning improvement, i.e. by concentrating less on delivering
services and more on solving problems that can help improve schools;
Cultivating – or, providing “stewardship” – to the efforts, which begins with the development of
a “theory of action” describing how to proceed and a well-thought-out rationale;
Using evidence throughout the central office to continually improve practices and relationships
with schools.
“We found that central office transformation is not a rehashing of old efforts at restructuring the
district’s organizational chart,” said Dr. Copland, Chair and Associate Professor in Educational
Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Washington College of Education. “This kind
of transformation goes right to the heart of practice, what people in the offices do day in and day
out to help improve teaching and learning for students.”
A striking feature of all three central office transformation efforts was the focus on building the
capacity of school principals to lead instructional improvement within their schools. For
example, each of these districts designated central office administrators whom the study authors
call “instructional leadership directors” (ILDs) to be directly responsible for ongoing support of
principals’ instructional leadership.
The findings suggest that specific “high quality” ILD practices were likely to help principals
improve by personalizing supports to principals around instructional leadership; modeling
strategies and developing tools to improve instructional leadership; and helping to bring outside
resources and ideas to principals.
From the examination of the three districts, the researchers developed four recommendations for
central office leaders who want to engage in this type of transformation:
Engage in central office transformation as a focal point of a district-wide reform effort and as a
necessary complement to other improvement initiatives;
Start the work by developing a “theory of action” for how local central office practice
contributes to improving teaching and learning and plan to revise this theory over time;
Invest substantially in people throughout the central office to lead the work, especially those who
work most directly with schools; and
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Immediately engage key stakeholders, political supporters and potential funders in understanding
that central office transformation is important and requires sustained commitment.
“Urban district administrators now have research-based ideas and strategies that they can use to
transform their own central offices to support principals and improve learning,” said Richard
Laine, Director of Education at The Wallace Foundation. “Existing Wallace research has
repeatedly confirmed that leadership is crucial to turning around high-need, urban schools like
those profiled in the report. We now know they can’t do it without help from their districts.”
The report is the third in a series from CTP under the leadership of Michael Knapp, Professor of
Educational Leadership and. Policy Studies, and commissioned by The Wallace Foundation, that
investigates leadership in urban schools and districts. The other two are:
Leadership for Learning Improvement in Urban Schools reports on how urban school leaders
help improve student learning by setting high expectations for their schools, provide meaningful
staff training, and organize teachers to share leadership for carrying out improvement agendas.
How Leaders Invest Staffing Resources for Learning Improvement identifies three strategies
districts take to improve how they invest in staffing. They are: investing in instructional
leadership within and across schools; investing in data-based practice; and increasing capacity,
flexibility and support for school-level improvement.
All the reports in this series are free and can be downloaded from The Wallace Foundation’s
Knowledge Center www.wallacefoundation.org or the CTP site at www.ctpweb.org.
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The Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy is a national research consortium home-based at
the University of Washington. It studies the way policies, leadership and conditions in schools,
districts, states, the federal government and the education profession shape the quality of
teaching and learning in the nation’s schools. The Center pays particular attention to the ways
these forces and conditions interact with each other to influence what teachers, learners and
education leaders do in daily practice. A major goal of the Center’s program of research is to
discover and document the means for improving practice so that the nation’s young people
experience a challenging and equitable education. To that end, the Center’s research products are
designed to inform policymakers, practicing leaders and the educational reform community,
along with scholars. www.ctpweb.org
The Center for Educational Leadership (CEL) is a nationally recognized non-profit service
provider housed within the College of Education at the University of Washington. CEL’s
mission is to eliminate the achievement gap for all students. In their work with schools and
districts, CEL engages the instructional and leadership expertise of their faculty, staff and
consultants to help teachers, coaches, school and central office leaders improve their
instructional and leadership practice. www.k-12leadership.edu
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The Wallace Foundation is an independent, national foundation dedicated to supporting and
sharing effective ideas and practices that expand learning and enrichment opportunities for all
people. The Foundation maintains an online library of lessons about what it has learned,
including knowledge from its current efforts aimed at: strengthening educational leadership to
improve student achievement; enhancing out-of-school-time learning opportunities; and building
appreciation and demand for the arts. www.wallacefoundation.org
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