Education Week
A Supplement to the January 21, 2015, Issue
Vol. 34 • No. 18
A Special Report on Principals > www.edweek.org/go/principals
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EDUCATION WEEK
n
January 21, 2015
Shaping Strong School Leaders > www.edweek.org/go/principals
|
S1
INSIDE
S4
BUILDING A PRINCIPAL FROM START TO FINISH
S6
DEEPENING THE BENCH OF SCHOOL LEADERS
S10 CONTINUOUS LEARNING KEY FOR PRINCIPALS
Greg Kahn for Education Week
S12 REDEFINING THE ROLE OF PRINCIPAL SUPERVISORS
Coach Judy Edgar, left, leads a role-playing exercise with assistant principals on how to work
with the media in emergency situations. The three school leaders are participants in the
Governor’s Promising Principals Academy in Maryland, a yearlong training program that
prepares assistant principals to run their own schools. PAGE S6
CLICK ON THE DIGITAL EDITION
www.edweek.org/go/principals
S14 ‘REAL WORLD’ PREP FOR KIPP PRINCIPALS
S15 DISTRICTS TURN TO TEACHERS TO LEAD
ON THE COVER
Elizabeth Valerio, a KIPP assistant
principal, visits a 6th grade math
class at KIPP Rise Academy in
Newark, N.J. She is training to become
the principal of one of the network’s
schools in St. Louis next fall.
PHOTO: Mark Abramson for Education Week
Coverage of leadership, expanded learning time, and arts learning is supported in part by a grant from The Wallace Foundation, at www.wallacefoundation.org.
Education Week retains sole editorial control over the content of this coverage.
ONLINE EXCLUSIVES
| PHOTO PROJECT |
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A PRINCIPAL
On Jan. 7, Education Week asked principals
to share photos that capture their daily lives
as school leaders. Hundreds of principals
submitted their photos via Twitter and
Instagram with the hashtag #APrincipalsDay.
See their submissions.
www.edweek.org/go/principals-day
| AUDIO SLIDESHOW |
PRINCIPALS AND THEIR SUPERVISORS
The relationship between principals and their
supervisors is key to ensuring that good
instructional practices are reflected in the
classroom. Hear Dan Bartels, the principal of
Alfonza W. Davis Middle School, in Omaha,
Neb., and his supervisor, Pamela J. Cohn,
discuss how they work together to make sure
that happens.
www.edweek.org/go/principals-audio
| WEBINAR |
READY TO LEAD: COVERING THE NEXT
GENERATION OF SCHOOL PRINCIPALS
Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2015, 1 p.m. ET
This webinar, moderated by Education Week’s
Denisa R. Superville, is hosted by the
Education Writers Association. It will explore
challenges in building the principal pipeline.
www.edweek.org/go/principals-webinar
S2
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EDUCATION WEEK
n
January 21, 2015
Shaping Strong School Leaders > www.edweek.org/go/principals
A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR
AN IMPOSSIBLE JOB?
The principal’s job is often called the loneliest in K-12 education, but it’s just as fitting to
call it the toughest.
Hours are long. Demands come from every
direction: the central office, teachers, students,
parents, and the community. And no one else
in a school has the same responsibilities.
Managing buses, budgets, and buildings is
still central to the job, but the current generation of principals—and the generation that
will succeed them—also must oversee colliding
rollouts of some of the most dramatic shifts in
public schooling in more than a decade: more
rigorous academic standards, new assessments,
and retooled teacher-evaluation systems.
That principals’ time is so often strained by
day-to-day requirements of the job while they
are held responsible for the success of myriad
new initiatives makes their main mission—to
be their schools’ instructional leaders and chief
architects of a positive school climate—all the
more challenging.
So who would want the job? And who is cut
out to do it successfully, year in and year out?
In this special report, we examine how some
educators and policymakers are tackling these
critical issues. In a small but growing number
of school districts and states, deliberate efforts
are under way to create and sustain a strong
corps of principals who can be the kind of political, managerial, and instructional leaders the
profession now demands.
We start in Denver, where district leaders
over time have been building and refining a
“principal pipeline,” starting with specific preparation requirements for aspiring school leaders
and ending with proactive succession planning
for when vacancies occur. In Maryland, state
education officials have undertaken an obvious
though rarely used strategy: tapping districts’
most promising assistant principals and preparing them through coaching and peer support
to take the helm of schools.
Professional development for school leaders—especially for those who are midcareer
principals or veterans—remains perennially
overshadowed by the need for ongoing teacher
training. That situation persists despite a
growing body of research showing that principals who receive high-quality on-the-job career
development are more likely to stay on the job.
The role of principal supervisors—the people who manage principals and have typically
been charged with enforcing rules and regulations—is undergoing a major makeover,
meanwhile, in a handful of districts where
leaders see that job as an important piece of
their overall strategy to support principals
and improve student achievement.
The kipp charter school network puts its aspiring principals through a yearlong training
fellowship alongside their peers—a model it
has created to help address high burnout rates
and turnover in its school leadership.
Finally, we look at how teacher-leaders
remain a powerful yet vastly underutilized
tool for spreading the complex and competing
demands on principals across a team of educators in school buildings. n
—Lesli A. Maxwell
Executive Project Editor
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EDUCATION WEEK
n
January 21, 2015
Shaping Strong School Leaders > www.edweek.org/go/principals
BUILDING A PRINCIPAL
FROM START TO FINISH
HOW DENVER DOES IT
The Denver public school system has made developing its own
school leaders a priority for more than a decade. About three years
ago, backed with grant funding from the Wallace Foundation, the
district intensified efforts to expand—and strengthen—the principal
pipeline by focusing on how it trains, selects, and supports school
leaders. The pipeline begins with teacher leadership. About 1 in 5
Denver teachers serve in leadership roles.
REPORTING BY DENISA R. SUPERVILLE
SCHOOL LEADER PREPARATION >>
Aspiring principals can earn their certification from three different university pathways. The
district also runs an alternate-route program that caters to individuals who may already be
assistant principals, or teacher-leaders, or have served in the private sector but have the skill
sets to take on the principal’s job. Regardless of whether candidates complete a traditional
university preparation program or the district’s program, they go through the following process:
FIRST-YEAR ASSISTANT PRINCIPALS >>
First-year assistant principals must participate in the New Leaders
Academy, where there is a continued focus on developing leadership skills.
Candidates
have access to:
coaching
mentoring
monthly meetings with other assistant principals in the program
ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL LEADERSHIP COHORT >>
Assistant principals must apply to be part of this group. They are placed in a school
and are assigned a yearlong management project that addresses the school’s most
immediate needs. They meet monthly with their peers and have access to principal
coaches, most of whom are retired principals.
Assistant principals are investigating a problem
responsible for:
developing a response plan
implementing the response plan
PRINCIPAL RESIDENCY PROGRAM (LEARN-TO-LEAD) >>
Assistant principals are placed as residents in schools and serve in a co-principal role.
During “lead” weeks, aspiring principals or “principal residents” work as the schools’ main
administrators. The assistant principals are evaluated at the end of the year on their
competency and skills. Top performers are eligible to apply for principal positions.
Assessments include
feedback from:
mentors
instructional superintendents (principal supervisors)
supervising principals
PRINCIPAL SELECTION PROCESS >>
The selection process consists of:
phone screen
one-on-one interview with the hiring manager
group interview
performance-based assessments
problem-solving, coaching, and conflictresolution role-playing scenarios
Aspiring principals who successfully complete this round are eligible to apply to individual
schools with vacant principal positions. Once a vacancy arises, a second round of interviews is
triggered. The school’s leadership, staff, parents, and community members provide feedback to
the instructional superintendent, and a list of finalists is forwarded to the superintendent, who
conducts the final interview.
PRINCIPALS >>
First-year principals participate in the
New Leaders Academy and have access to:
a mentor, who works with about six principals
monthly meetings with other group members
an executive coach to help with challenges
Second-year principals have access to:
a coach
leadership and management training
professional-development opportunities
SUCCESSION PLANNING >>
iStockphoto
S4
The district plans for vacancies by tracking principals likely to move on because of retirements,
performance, internal movement, or other professional opportunities. District officials review the
backgrounds, skills, interests, and training of candidates enrolled in the preparation programs, assistant
principals, and principals already on the job to determine the best fits for projected vacancies.
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S6
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EDUCATION WEEK
n
January 21, 2015
Shaping Strong School Leaders > www.edweek.org/go/principals
Greg Kahn for Education Week
DEEPENING THE BENCH OF
SCHOOL LEADERS
BY COREY MITCHELL
Annapolis, Md.
The Maryland education department is
immersed in a yearlong endeavor aimed at
developing a model program to provide support, networking, and practical training for
assistant principals who want to become
principals.
Through the Governor’s Promising Principals Academy, officials will train nearly 48 assistant principals this academic year, selecting two of the best and brightest from each of
the state’s 24 districts.
Education leaders say Maryland’s initiative
represents one of the most ambitious statewide efforts undertaken to upgrade school
leadership ranks and is distinctive for its
deliberate tapping of the state’s assistantprincipal workforce as the main source of
promising talent.
The yearlong academy was designed to
help construct a key piece of the principal
pipeline at a critical time, when the success
of school improvement initiatives—from the
implementation of the Common Core State
Standards to conducting meaningful teacher
evaluations—depends largely on the political, managerial, and instructional-leadership
skills of principals.
It is also a response to a widespread concern expressed by district executives: Too
many new principals—even those who have
served as assistant principals—face a steep
learning curve, said Tom DeHart, a leadership-development specialist with the Maryland education department.
‘A Learning Process’
The participants—primarily assistant principals chosen by their district superintendents—gathered for multiday retreats in July,
September, and December. A final in-person
session is scheduled for March. Each cohort
of aspiring principals is paired with a coach,
a former principal who serves as a mentor. In
between the sessions, the groups gather online
with their state-provided iPads to complete
exercises and network under the guidance of
their mentors.
“They’re very eager to bounce ideas off
each other,” said coach John R. Nori, a re-
Maryland grooms
assistant
principals to
move into top job
tired principal and assistant principal in the
154,000-student Montgomery County district
and a former director of program development
for the Reston, Va.-based National Association
of Secondary School Principals.
Maryland is using $440,000 in federal Race
to the Top funds to underwrite the effort. The
participants are in line to take top jobs at
schools during the 2015-16 school year.
At least one participant has already
climbed the career ladder. Rochelle Archelus
opted to remain in the academy even after
leaders in the Baltimore County system appointed her as acting principal at Woodlawn
Middle School in September, shortly after the
start of classes.
“Every moment is still a learning process,”
she said.
Faced with a four-month conception-toPAGE S8 >
Jennifer Schrecongost, an assistant principal
in Stevensville, Md., views a peer’s mock
news conference as part of a state effort to
prepare more principals.
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EDUCATION WEEK
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January 21, 2015
Shaping Strong School Leaders > www.edweek.org/go/principals
CONTINUED FROM PAGE S6
inception timeline, Maryland education officials scrambled to assemble the syllabus for
the Promising Principals Academy.
To promote diversity of thought and experience, the program organizers gave all the participants behavioral assessments and ensured
that each group had members from urban, suburban, and rural districts.
In December, the two-day retreat centered
on communication, including sessions focused
on managing and leveraging social and digital
media and responding to queries from reporters—common issues that principals must be
prepared to deal with to be successful.
During one breakout session, the aspiring
principals used their iPads to record mock oncamera interviews in response to a campus
crisis, such as students exchanging sexually
explicit text messages and images and school
shootings. The participants had one minute to
read and digest the scenarios before their colleagues peppered them with questions.
By recording the interviews to review later,
the exercise provided the opportunity for peer
reflection and critique that have become the
program’s hallmarks, the education department’s Mr. DeHart said.
“Much of this work is about adaptive leadership, and emotional intelligence is necessary,”
said academy coach Nakia Nicholson, an educational consultant and former principal in the
127,500-student Prince George’s County, Md.,
school system.
The range of topics the participants tackle,
including managing staff, instructional leadership, and using teacher evaluations to improve students’ performance, allows them
to determine if the daily demands of being
a principal is a good fit, said Ms. Nicholson,
who also worked as a principal manager in
the Baltimore district.
“It’s like spinning a bunch of plates at one
time,” she said.
Waiting in the Wings
Demand for principal preparation has spiked
over the past decade to the point where most
districts have some sort of training for aspiring
school leaders, said Mary Martin, an associate
professor of education at Winthrop University
in Rock Hill, S.C.
Most of the preparation now focuses on expanding the responsibilities of assistant principals, who traditionally were given a limited
range of responsibilities for school discipline
and operations, such as buses and food services.
To attract the best prospects, districts must
offer a broader view of the job, including training that prepares aspiring principals to become
instructional leaders, Ms. Martin said.
Doug Anthony, the executive director
of the office of talent development for the
Prince George’s County school system, has
seen the shift.
“The vice principal’s role was to handle grunt
work—busing, behavioral challenges, cafeteria,”
Mr. Anthony said. “The assistant principal has
to be well-rounded and understand instruction
well enough” to prod teachers to foster better
results in the classroom.
The modern demands of the job require that
districts build a bench to ensure that schools
will have effective leaders waiting in the wings
when vacancies occur, Ms. Martin said.
She points to the Wallace Foundation’s “Prin-
cipal Pipeline” initiative as a bellwether for districts and states looking for models on how to
construct that bench.
“Principals need their own professional learning communities,” said Ms. Martin, a retired elementary principal. “In turn, the aspiring leaders
have to be willing to grow and learn.”
In 2011, Prince George’s County was among
the districts that landed a five-year, $12.5
million grant from the New York City-based
foundation to measure the impact of recruiting the most highly qualified and trained
principals into every school. (The Wallace
Foundation also supports coverage of school
leadership, arts education, and extended- and
expanded-learning time in Education Week.)
Similar efforts are underway in the districts
in New York City; Denver; Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C.; Hillsborough County, Fla.; and
Gwinnett County, Ga.
Wallace embarked on the five-year, $75 million investment across the six school systems
to support strategies to identify, train, evaluate,
and support principals.
Continuous Improvement
The key components of the initiative are role
definition of the principal and assistant principal; high-quality training for aspiring leaders;
employment of only well-trained candidates;
and constant evaluation and on-the-job support.
In the past, when vacancies arose, it was
common practice for districts to bump assistant principals into the top job by default with
little thought of training or preparation, said
Jody Spiro, the director of educational leadership for the Wallace Foundation.
The participating districts have set up
systems to track the career paths of aspiring principals. Prior to the grants, most districts did not differentiate between assistant principals who had aspirations to lead
a school from those were satisfied in their
current roles.
“Being an assistant principal is not the career end,” said Ms. Martin. “It’s now a training opportunity.”
To avoid bottlenecks in the promotion process, the districts also project principal vacancies by grade level, lining up aspiring leaders
who may take on the top jobs five years down
the road. Wallace Foundation leaders see the
climb from assistant principal to principal
as a three- to five-year process, though some
high-fliers are exceptions.
The initiative also involves a new principal-evaluation system, bonus pay for principals who meet district performance goals,
and the use of outside coaches to help fullfledged principals get even better.
In many districts, the training doesn’t end
when assistant principals make the move
up: The Wallace Foundation grant also provides aid to new principals navigating new
territory.“The majority of folks need time,”
Mr. Anthony said. “When I became an assistant principal, I found out how much I
don’t know.”
That’s why Ms. Archelus, the acting principal in Maryland’s Promising Principals
Academy, decided to stick with the program
even after being bumped into the top job.
“If we want students and schools to succeed, it’s necessary to keep building capacity
in teachers and leaders,” Ms. Archelus said.
“It would be a disservice to myself and the
community I serve if I just stopped.” n
EDUCATION WEEK
n
January 21, 2015
Shaping Strong School Leaders > www.edweek.org/go/principals
|
S9
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June 28 – July 1, 2015
Atlanta, Georgia
FAR LEFT: John R. Nori, left,
an educational consultant,
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center, and Colin Carr, both
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Maryland, in watching their
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S10
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EDUCATION WEEK
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January 21, 2015
Shaping Strong School Leaders > www.edweek.org/go/principals
CONTINUOUS LEARNING
KEY FOR PRINCIPALS
BY ARIANNA PROTHERO
The principal’s job has been called both the
most important in a school building and the
loneliest, and the stress it places on individuals is illustrated by its rapid turnover rates,
especially in high-poverty schools.
School leadership experts say that robust
and ongoing training can alleviate those issues and help keep principals on the job, but
professional development for school leaders is
often bypassed for other pressing needs such as
teacher training. And the professional development that many principals do get is of questionable quality.
“Most [professional development] for principals is not consistent with our best understanding of how learning occurs,” said Joseph F. Murphy, the associate dean at the Peabody College
of Education at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. “But if you can get the content and
the structure and delivery right, it can be huge.”
Beverly J. Hutton, a deputy executive director
of the National Association of Secondary School
Principals, sums it up this way: “I would say
that there is a shortage of good pd.”
Research has consistently shown that after
teachers, principals have the most impact
on student achievement when it comes to inschool factors. And though principals’ effects on
student outcomes may be more indirect than
teachers’, their load-bearing role as a school’s
instructional leader and the individual most responsible for fostering a positive climate is getting more attention from researchers, district
leaders, and policymakers.
But even with a sharper focus on the needs of
the profession, half of new principals quit by the
end of their third year on the job, according to a
2014 report from the School Leaders Network.
The same report argues that administrators
put too much emphasis on recruiting and preparing principals—and tend to neglect their
development once they are on the job, especially past the first two years. The study also
cites a 2013 report from the National Center
for Education Statistics that shows that principals who didn’t get professional development
the previous year were 1.4 times more likely
to leave their school than leaders who did receive training.
That turnover in leadership has negative
ripple effects on schools, and that churn ultimately means wasted money for districts.
“Good PD should
promote higherquality instruction
and promote more
powerful culture and
climate in a school.”
JOSEPH F. MURPHY
Vanderbilt University
Quantity and Quality
But the importance of principal professional
development is often trumped by other issues
or ignored altogether, say many in the field.
“If you go to a conference on education, of
the 100 sessions on professional development,
98 might be on teacher pd and maybe one will
be on principal pd,” said Heather Anichini, the
president and ceo of the Chicago Public Education Fund, which recently started a principal-training program. “There’s just not a lot of
attention on it.”
That tendency to overlook school leaders’
needs also plays out in academia—where
there is relatively scant research on the
needs of principals and what is needed to
boost their retention—as well as in the federal funding arena.
“There certainly hasn’t been a lot of federal
dollars designated for principal professional
development,” said Ms. Hutton of the nassp.
“The professional-development money that
comes into principals’ budgets, they use it on
teachers because they know the teachers are
right there in front of students.”
Of the $1 billion the federal government
sends to districts annually for training programs, 91 percent goes to teachers, leaving
9 percent for principals, according to that
same 2014 report from the School Leaders
Network.
The nassp and the National Association for
Elementary School Principals are working
to change those numbers. The organizations
are pushing for the federal government to set
aside some Title II funds from the Elementary
and Secondary Education Act that are aimed
at improving teacher and principal quality,
and allocate it specifically for principal development. Congress tipped its hat to the need for
more funding for school leader training in the
spending measure it approved in December,
directing the U.S. Department of Education to
tell states to do just that.
And the Education Department under the
Obama administration has diverted from previous administrations with some new grantsupported professional-development programs
for principals.
‘Not One-Off Experiences’
But even when programs for principal professional development are better financed and
more accessible, the quality and relevance of
training remains a huge challenge.
Although the specific professional-development needs vary from rookies to veterans,
the tenets of good career training remain
the same, according to leaders in the field. It
should be individualized and rooted in realworld, or real-school, problems.
“Job-embedded,” said Ms. Hutton. “Every
piece of research we include in our programs
has been translated into what does this look
like on your job.”
Trainings should also be spread out over a
longer period of time—say a semester versus
a two-day workshop, according to Mr. Murphy.
“Great pd is not one-off experiences,” he said.
“Good pd should promote higher-quality instruction and promote more powerful culture
and climate in a school.”
It should also promote distributive leadership—or training teams of people in a school
to help handle leadership responsibilities to
better balance the load of demands. The perks
behind that way of operating are manifold, including preparing staff members for handling
school business during the principal’s absence
so he or she can take part in professional-development opportunities, said Mr. Murphy and
Ms. Hutton.
Finally, access to peer networks or cohorts is
important, allowing principals at every level of
experience to have a chance to bounce ideas or
problems off colleagues, said Ms. Hutton. Such
networks, as well as more structured training
programs, can also help battle feelings of isolation—a major reason principals leave their
jobs, according to the nassp.
First-year principals are especially in need
of guidance as they try to apply the theory
they’ve learned in certificate or university
Push for quality
professional
development
gaining traction
programs to the realities of the job, leadership
experts agree.
“I think one of the big challenges first-year
principals have is setting their priorities and
managing their time,” said Mark J. White, the
principal at Hintgen Elementary School in LaCrosse, Wis., and the president of the National
Association of Elementary School Principals.
“There’s all these things coming at you.”
Mentorship programs, Mr. White said, are
one of the best ways to start new principals
out on the right foot. “Every school is unique,
so it’s really helpful to have someone that can
help you apply what you’ve learned on the
job,” he said.
The Minneapolis district has four mentorship
programs, including one in which recently retired principals are paired with a newly hired
one. The mentors, who are paid, help their
charges with everything from budgeting to
communications, observing them at work and
offering feedback.
Bernadeia H. Johnson, who recently announced she will step down as superintendent in Minneapolis at the end of this
month, remembers the mentor who helped
her navigate the cultural nuances of her
new city when she first arrived. His practical advice to her was how to handle a popular fall holiday.
“He called me up and said, ‘Before you make
this mistake, we don’t call it Halloween. You
can have a fall festival, but don’t have a Halloween day,’ ” she said. “He called me up before
I got in trouble.”
Minneapolis’ mentoring programs also help
with recruitment. People want to come work
in districts where they will be supported, Ms.
Johnson said.
Needs of Veterans
Mentoring programs can also benefit veteran principals who serve as mentors by forcing them to think about what works and what
doesn’t, and ultimately, what makes them successful in their position.
“That’s a professional-development experience for them to grow,” said Elisa Calabrese,
the chief talent-development officer for the
Broward County district in Florida. “There’s no
better way to learn about leadership than to
mentor someone in leadership.”
Her district has been a finalist three times
for the Broad Prize—an annual award for
urban districts that demonstrate improvements in closing achievement gaps—in part
because of its training for principals at all levels of experience, according to Broad officials.
But as important as training is to new school
leaders, it shouldn’t be squeezed into the first
few years.
“We really do need that ongoing professional
development all the way throughout our careers,” said Mr. White.
Principals who have already proved themselves as strong leaders are the focus of a new
program launched in the fall of 2014 by the
Chicago Public Education Fund, a philanthropic
venture fund, for a select number of the city’s
principals. The fellowship program was developed using feedback gathered through surveys
and interviews with the city’s principal corps.
“They were being engaged as instructional
EDUCATION WEEK
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leaders, the [Common Core State Standards]
stuff, but they weren’t necessarily being engaged around leadership generally,” said Ms.
Anichini, the fund’s ceo.
Principals said they wanted better customized training, and more of it.
To meet those needs, the Chicago Fund
partnered with Northwestern University’s
School for Education and Social Policy as
well as its Kellogg School of Management to
offer classes and mentoring to the fellows.
“Corporate America is actually pretty
good at this: identifying their best and developing them,” said Ms. Anichini. But, she
said, the university is still attentive to the
fact that it’s dealing with a special group of
people. In exchange, fellows agree to remain
in the Chicago district for at least three
years. The program has 20 participants
this session, including Barbara Kargas, the
principal of Goethe Elementary School.
“Learning how to lead when you have
many built-in challenges is something that
you need leadership and guidance to do,”
said Ms. Kargas. “I wish that it was something that was going to be ongoing until I
retired.” n
|
S11
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S12
|
EDUCATION WEEK
n
January 21, 2015
Shaping Strong School Leaders > www.edweek.org/go/principals
REDEFINING THE ROLE OF
PRINCIPAL SUPERVISORS
Photos by Daniel Johnson for Education Week
BY DENISA R. SUPERVILLE
New efforts focus
on administrators
in charge of
school leaders
Pamela J. Cohn, an executive director of
secondary principal support in the Omaha,
Neb., district, meets with Dan Bartels, the
principal of Alfonza W. Davis Middle School.
Until last summer, the superintendent of
schools in Omaha, Neb., was theoretically
responsible for supervising, coaching, and
evaluating the district’s 87 principals and
school leaders.
The reality was different. In any given year,
principal evaluations could be conducted by
the assistant superintendent of curriculum,
one in charge of finance, or another in charge
of human resources.
“You just distributed principals to other
district leaders, but there was no coordinated
focus and aligned effort not only on evaluation but on how you supported them,” said Superintendent Mark A. Evans, who has been
at the helm of the 51,000-student district for
two years.
To address the ad hoc way in which the district was managing its principals, Mr. Evans
last year hired four executive directors to be
their dedicated supervisors—to guide, evaluate, and coach the school leaders. Their most
pressing responsibility was to focus on improving principals’ instructional practices.
The executive directors, all retired principals who had led successful schools, were each
charged with overseeing between 21 and 26
principals. They were also required to spend at
least half their time in the schools. And while
the number of principals each was responsible
for remained higher than recommended—10 is
often cited as a good number—Mr. Evans said
that the steps taken in Omaha put the district
on a forward-moving path.
School districts like those in Omaha;
Tulsa, Okla.; the District of Columbia; and
New York City are working to retool the job
descriptions and responsibilities of so-called
principal supervisors, who have traditionally
been charged with making sure principals—
and the schools they run—comply with rules
and regulations.
As the varied demands on principals increase and as districts ramp up the role they
play in implementing key initiatives—including college- and career-readiness standards,
common-core-aligned assessments, and new
teacher- and principal-evaluation systems,
district leaders say who principals’ bosses are,
and what they do in that job, is critical.
Scant Attention
The position received scant attention before.
But a 2013 report by the Council of the Great
City Schools, the Washington-based organization that represents 67 of the nation’s largest districts, and the Wallace Foundation, the
New York City-based philanthropy focused on
improving learning in disadvantaged communities, put a spotlight on the lack of coherence
and clarity in the principal-supervisor role.
The report highlighted the degree to which
the job varied from district to district and the
disparity in the number of principals that supervisors oversee.
In New York City, for example, supervisors
were responsible for 67 principals.
The report recommended reducing the
number of charges and clarifying responsibilities, increasing professional development
and training, and developing accountability
measures for supervisors.
Building on that work, the Council of Chief
State School officers will release this year the
first-ever national standards outlining what
principal supervisors should know and be
able to do. Those standards will be similar to
ones that already exist for principals.
According to a draft of those standards,
supervisors are expected to dedicate their
time helping principals grow as instructional
leaders, including assisting them in devising
systems that promote teaching and learning,
and engaging in regular on-site observations
in schools. Supervisors should use adultlearning theories and school-site data to help
principals create instructional visions for
their schools. They should set up professional
learning opportunities for principals; tailor
support and feedback based on individual
principals’ needs; and act as brokers between
the principals and the central office.
One standard centers on the need for continuous professional development for principal supervisors and the responsibility they
have to keep abreast of laws and regulations
that affect their job.
“This is first-generation work,” said David
Volrath, who heads the principal- and
teacher-evaluation section at the Maryland
education department and is the co-chairman
of the committee that drafted the supervisor
standards. “But I think it’s really critical to
helping those people who supervise principals at least understand the components of
the principal’s job [and] how to evaluate them
in terms of instructional leadership.”
The bulk of the research and practical work
on principal supervisors has been spearheaded by the Wallace Foundation, which
is also underwriting the development of the
standards and providing grants to select
school districts to refine the principal super-
EDUCATION WEEK
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January 21, 2015
Shaping Strong School Leaders > www.edweek.org/go/principals
visor role. (The Wallace Foundation supports
coverage of leadership, arts education, and
extended- and expanded-learning time in
Education Week.)
Jody Spiro, the foundation’s director of educational leadership, said the new attention
on the position has moved the focus beyond
Wallace-supported districts, and that school
systems nationwide are recognizing how important principal supervisors are in ensuring
that schools improve.
Deeper Trust
Among the districts forging ahead is the
125,000-student Duval County school system in Jacksonville, Fla. In 2013, it started
to overhaul the principal-supervisor role to
one focused on instructional leadership, and
it aligned the supervisors’ work with the district’s achievement goals, said Superintendent Nikolai P. Vitti.
Last year, the district cut the supervisorto-principal ratio to 1-to-20, from 1-to-40.
Mr. Vitti hopes to reduce it even further. Supervisors are expected to spend 80 percent
of their time in the schools. To ensure that’s
the case, no districtwide meetings are scheduled before 1 p.m. Supervisors are also now
assigned primarily by school levels—by elementary, middle, and high schools—and not
by geography. Grouping supervisors by grade
levels fosters deeper collaboration, learning,
and problem-solving among principals in
similar environments who face similar challenges. It also makes it easier to coordinate
meaningful professional development.
Duval County also created the Four Pillars of Instructional Leadership, which defines the hallmarks of good instructional
practices for principals and supervisors. It
then teamed up with tntp , formerly The
New Teacher Project, a national nonprofit
that trains teachers for posts in low-income
schools, and the University of Florida Lastinger Center for Learning, to offer professional development on the new standards
and instructional coaching for both principals and supervisors.
At minimum, communication between the
district and principals about district goals
and initiatives has improved. That has led
to deeper trust and greater ownership at the
school building level, Mr. Vitti said.
“You have to focus on principals, regarding instructional improvement,” Mr. Vitti
said. “There is no question that you have to
work with your teachers and build their capacity, but if that is not echoed, and driven,
and owned at the school level by the principals, then you likely will be seeing very little
return on investment because it’s not being
implemented with fidelity on the school level.”
In Denver, which is part of the Wallace
Principal Pipeline Initiative—a $75 million project to help build effective urban
school leaders—supervisors oversee only
eight or nine principals. In the city’s lowest-performing schools that are undergoing
major improvement efforts, the ratio of supervisor-to-principal is 1-to-4. (See related
graphic, Page S4.)
When the district reduced the number
of principals that managers had to oversee
from 15 to eight three years ago, officials were
responding to the research, feedback from
principals on their needs for professional
development and support, and the ability of
the supervisors to effectively coach and lead
teams, Superintendent Tom Boasberg said.
“It’s to allow for more time for coaching
and feedback in an extraordinarily difficult
and complex job; it really was that simple,”
he said.
Mr. Boasberg said the program is work-
ing. Since focusing on the principal pipeline,
Denver students have shown the highest
year-to-year growth of the 20 largest districts in Colorado, he said.
While the improvement cannot be attributed
solely to changes to the principal-supervisor
role—a host of other initiatives were simultaneously at play—Mr. Boasberg said that
he does not doubt the emphasis on principal
managers has had an impact. Teachers have
been awarding principals higher marks in the
district’s annual perception surveys in recent
years, he said. Principals have been doing the
same for their supervisors, and principal turnover is also down, Mr. Boasberg said.
Last year, 90 percent of teachers who responded to the survey said they had a “moderately effective” to an “extremely effective”
principal, up from 85 percent in 2013.
Districts hoping to transform the principal-supervisor role may face funding challenges. They either have to find the money
to pay for those positions in existing allocations or pursue grant funding. While the new
Omaha positions were included in the school
system’s budget, the district received about
$700,000 from the Sherwood Foundation and
Lozier Foundation to help with professional
development for the supervisors.
Building a trusting relationship between
the principal and the supervisor can also
be tricky, but districts must be clear about
goals and expectations and emphasize that
supervisors are at the schools to work with
principals, not to hand out edicts, superintendents said.
‘Candid Conversations’
Dan Bartels, the principal of Alfonza
W. Davis Middle School in Omaha, had no
such problems with his supervisor, Pamela
J. Cohn, a retired principal who had hired
him as a teacher when he first started in the
district.
But even before Ms. Cohn and her colleagues got to the business of supervising
their charges, they met informally with the
principals to discuss goals and expectations.
For Mr. Bartels, that meeting was followed
at the beginning of the school year with a goalsetting session, during which he and Ms. Cohn
discussed his target for the year (increasing student engagement), how he planned
to achieve it, and the measures he intended
to use. The two also discussed the school’s
strengths and weaknesses, the changes that
needed to occur to correct those weaknesses,
and how they would gauge progress.
Mr. Bartels said he appreciates the daily interactions with his supervisor—by telephone
and email—that go beyond the one-on-one
sit-downs or troubleshooting. Ms. Cohn also
facilitates monthly principals’ meetings and
peer-coaching sessions, he said.
“My executive supervisor and I can have
some candid conversations about where I am
[and] where I need to be,” Mr. Bartels said.
“And it’s refreshing to have that personal relationship with one person.”
Ms. Cohn said she tries to visit three to
five classrooms in her school visits, during
which she observes not just teachers in the
classrooms but how engaged students are in
the lessons. Those observation sessions are
followed by a 20- to 45-minute debriefing
session with the principal and a summary
email to the principal reiterating the points
covered earlier in the day.
Ms. Cohn said she thinks the supervisors are already making a difference, but
she would recommend adding coaches to
the team and further reducing the number
of principals they oversee—something with
which Mr. Evans already agrees. n
|
S13
Pamela J. Cohn, who oversees 26 school
leaders, observes a 7th grade science class
at Alfonza W. Davis Middle School in Omaha.
|
EDUCATION WEEK
n
January 21, 2015
Shaping Strong School Leaders > www.edweek.org/go/principals
Photos by Mark Abramson for Education Week
S14
‘REAL WORLD’ PREP
FOR KIPP PRINCIPALS
BY ARIANNA PROTHERO
Newark, N.J.
Kipp, or the Knowledge Is Power Program,
is known for its size—162 schools and 59,000
students nationally and growing—as well as
its track record of getting solid test scores
out of underprivileged urban and rural
schoolchildren.
But a lesser-known, equally distinctive feature of the network is its principal-training
programs. With the same focus and intensity
that kipp applies to expanding its schools and
improving achievement, it has developed a
comprehensive leadership-training program
that has become sought after by other charter
networks and regular school districts.
On a recent morning, a principal and
teacher at Rise Academy—a kipp charter
school named for a Maya Angelou poem in
this New Jersey city—are discussing the academic performance and personal struggles of
a student. During the conversation, Principal
David Branson pulls up a series of metrics
on a large computer monitor mounted on the
wall by his desk. Hovering his mouse over a
set of numbers, he asks the teacher, “How concerned are we about this?” referring to metrics tracking grades, homework completion,
and discipline.
Watching their exchange is Elizabeth Valerio, a kipp principal in training. As the conversation moves from students to personnel,
Ms. Valerio jots down observations in her
notebook. After the meeting wraps up, Mr.
Branson and Ms. Valerio spend nearly half
an hour dissecting the discussion. Referring
to her notes, Ms. Valerio peppers Mr. Branson with questions, and, in turn, Mr. Branson
prods her on what she would have done differently in that discussion with the teacher
and why.
It’s the first of several similarly styled conversations Ms. Valerio will have with Rise
Academy staff members throughout the morning—all a part of her preparation to lead a
new kipp school next year in St. Louis.
Ms. Valerio is a Fisher Fellow—kipp’s apprenticeship program for principals who will
soon be opening their own schools through
kipp’s franchise-like system.
Not Hypothetical
Launched in 2000, the Fisher Fellowship
was kipp’s first training program. After being
accepted into the selective program, often
from kipp’s assistant principal and teacher
leader ranks, Fisher Fellows spend a year visiting schools of their choice across the country
to see how schools manage everything from
staff to discipline to curriculum.
“One thing that Rise is notoriously good at is
data-driven instruction—so what that means
is making sure that all of their instructional
The charter
network readies
leaders with
intensive training
choices are rooted in data,” said Ms. Valerio.
That is why she chose to spend a week shadowing Mr. Branson. “They’re also a really
high-achieving school, and I knew I would be
able to see really excellent teaching in an established school.”
In the summer, Fisher Fellows also attend
a five-week workshop in Chicago and receive
regular, one-on-one coaching with other experienced kipp leaders—all aimed at preparing
them to open and lead a school the following
year. The program is not cheap. Fellows receive salaries and benefits, costing the kipp
Foundation up to $150,000 per person.
A chunk of that money pays for sending fellows to schools across the national network
and making sure the training is rooted in
real-world practice, said David Levin, a kipp
co-founder. “We are not training folks for a hypothetical leadership job.”
Another important feature of kipp’s training
programs, he said, is that participants are always part of a cohort. “You’re not alone. That
cohort experience is a big deal.”
Established principals can also join a cohort, and the kipp Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports the kipp franchise,
offers several other ongoing professional-development opportunities, including two national retreats a year for its school leaders.
In 2005, the foundation expanded its school
leadership-training offerings to a total of six
EDUCATION WEEK
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January 21, 2015
Shaping Strong School Leaders > www.edweek.org/go/principals
programs, including ones aimed at new assistant principals, regional leaders in the network, and people selected to succeed a principal at an established school.
But even as kipp offered more training to
principals at all stages of their careers, one
vexing issue remained: Retention rates for
network principals who had founded schools
were stuck at around 50 percent. That kicked
off a kind of soul-searching initiative within
the network.
Kipp surveyed its principals—current and
past—to see what they felt they needed in
the job and brought in David Maxfield of VitalSmarts, a corporate training- and leadership-development company, as a consultant.
Through its research, kipp identified four vital
behaviors it believes successful school leaders
possess: They distribute leadership responsibilities to others; they’re savvy goal-setters;
they lean on support systems both inside and
outside the school; and they make time to rest
and recharge.
Minimizing Burnout
Teaching, supporting, and encouraging
those behaviors has become a staple of kipp’s
training programs. That final trait, officially
called “behavior four, renew to get stronger,”
represents somewhat of a sea change for a
mostly nonunionized organization and sector
that has been heavily criticized for driving
teachers and principals toward burnout.
Seeing how Mr. Branson attempts to balance the extended school days kipp is known
for with the personal needs of his staff
members was something Ms. Valerio was
closely watching.
After codifying the four vital behaviors
and imbuing the training system with
them, kipp’s retention rates started to climb.
Seventy-eight percent of school founders
remained in their positions in 2009, and
that number grew to 82 percent by 2011,
according to numbers provided by the kipp
Foundation.
Kipp’s training initiatives are not limited
to leaders within the network. It also offers
professional development for other charter
and regular district school leaders.
With the help of a $50 million Investing in
Innovation, or i3, grant from the federal government, kipp developed an eight-monthlong
leadership training program aimed at training district administrators on kipp’s principal leadership development practices.
“Two of our principals have participated in
the kipp institute,” said Kelvin Adams, the
superintendent in the St. Louis school district. “And when we have trainings that kipp
wants to participate in, they can.”
The training exchange is part of a unique
partnership between kipp and the St. Louis
district that was hammered out last summer.
As part of the deal, the district is providing
some kipp schools, including Ms. Valerio’s,
with unused school buildings in exchange for
incorporating kipp students’ state test scores
in the district’s achievement data.
That means once Ms. Valerio completes
her fellowship and opens her school, there
should be a buffet of ongoing professionaldevelopment opportunities available to
her through both kipp and the district. That
opportunity for ongoing support, she said,
was the reason she first joined kipp as a
teacher.
“I really wanted to grow as a teacher and
I wasn’t receiving coaching at my current
school,” Ms. Valerio said. The principal at
a nearby kipp school promised her that if
she joined his team, she’d get coaching every
week. “Once I heard that I was like, ‘When
can I join?’ ” n
|
S15
FAR LEFT: Elizabeth Valerio, a KIPP
assistant principal, talks to 6th grader
Shihaab Metz at KIPP Rise Academy in
Newark, N.J. She is training to become
the principal of one of the network’s
schools in St. Louis next fall.
Ms. Valerio listens to KIPP Rise
Academy Principal David Branson.
As part of her training, she has been
spending time in KIPP schools around
the country to observe and learn from
other principals.
DISTRICTS TURN TO
TEACHERS TO LEAD
BY DENISA R. SUPERVILLE
Marilyn Boerke, the principal of Liberty Middle School in Camas,
Wash., a district of 6,400 students along the Columbia River, applauds
the district’s philosophy that encourages teachers to serve in school
leadership roles and actively creates opportunities for them to do so.
Teachers are being recruited by the district—and many are stepping
up—to run professional-development sessions, coach their peers, and
help adapt curriculum to the common-core standards.
“We were dying on the vine as building administrators trying to
manage everything that we needed to manage,” said Ms. Boerke, who
has been a principal for nine years.
As principals’ responsibilities continue to grow, Camas and other
like-minded districts are tapping their teacher corps to create
meaningful leadership roles that are meant to address a number of
pressing issues in public schools: reduce stress on building administrators, improve teaching and learning, and help retain new and
veteran educators.
The teacher-leadership concept is not entirely new: In a sense,
teachers have been leading for as long as they have been teaching.
But the movement was infused with new vigor last year with the
announcement of the Teach-to-Lead Initiative, a partnership between the U.S. Department of Education and the National Board for
Professional Teaching Standards. The nation’s two largest teachers’
unions and the associations representing principals and administrators have also signed on to the program, which is aimed at
training and guiding teachers to take on leadership roles in both
policy and practice.
Even before that most recent boost, many districts and states—including Camas in Washington state and the state of Tennessee—have
been tapping the expertise of their most effective teachers to help roll
out major policy initiatives such as the common standards and new
teacher-evaluation systems.
Clearly Defined Roles
The arguments for expanding teacher-leadership opportunities are
many, but boil down to this: Principals simply cannot be expected to do
the job alone. Advocates say that developing a competent back bench
of teacher-leaders may help stem high principal-turnover rates—studies show that 50 percent of principals leave their schools after three
years—and increase retention for both new and veteran teachers.
“Effective principals understand that they need to tap into the
talents of their most effective teachers to make sure that they have
the largest impact on student achievement,” said Lindsay Sobel, the
executive director of Teach Plus Massachusetts, a chapter of the national organization that trains teacher-leaders to work in challenging urban schools, including in Chicago, Indianapolis, Los Angeles,
and Memphis, Tenn. The group’s signature t3 initiative prepares
teacher-leaders to work in turnaround schools. “When that’s done
in a very thoughtful and structured way, that’s when you see the
Rising demands
push principals
to tap teacher
talent
real change. It’s not just a matter of principals delegating, but [a
matter] of a real, thoughtful implementation of teacher leadership.”
Groups that are focused on preparing teacher-leaders say the roles
must be clearly defined and fit the school’s and district’s needs. Leaders should go through a rigorous selection process and should be those
who have displayed stellar leadership skills and are superior teachers.
They should have access to professional development and training
in areas that include leading and working with adult leaders, curriculum, and communication. They should receive a stipend or other
compensation as recognition of the role’s importance to the school.
The intentional development of teacher-leadership roles is still
nascent in the United States when compared with England. There,
teachers know from the first day on the job the leadership roles they
can assume and the training—education, professional development,
and practical experiences—that they need to get there, according
to Jonathan A. Supovitz, the director of the Consortium for Policy
Research in Education at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate
School of Education, in his recent paper, “Building a Lattice for School
Leadership,” which compares leadership development in the United
States and England.
Some districts have been actively working to fix the deficiency that
Mr. Supovitz identified. Boston and the District of Columbia, for example, have built career ladders into their teachers’ union contracts
and provide additional compensation for each step.
‘Transparent and Inclusive’
Through Leadership Initiative For Teachers, or lift, teachers in
the District of Columbia’s system can move to “advanced,” “distinguished,” and “expert” teachers, earning more money along the way
and qualifying to serve in greater leadership capacities. An advanced
teacher can serve as an ambassador who helps with teacher recruitment and selection, for example, while a distinguished teacher can
apply for a number of prestigious fellowships, including one that allows select educators to work on K-12 policy issues and another for
high-performing secondary mathematics teachers.
In 2013, the district also created Teacher-Leadership Innovation,
or tli, a hybrid teacher-leadership position that allows teachers to
spend up to half their time in the classroom and half serving in a
leadership role. Some coach and mentor other teachers, lead new
approaches to teaching writing, or develop positive behavior incentive programs.
The tli fellows receive a $2,500 annual stipend, which is paid for in
part through the federal Teacher Incentive Fund grant, a competitivegrant program to promote teaching initiatives in poor communities.
Scott Thompson, the deputy chief of human capital for teacher effectiveness the District of Columbia system, said the program has
had a positive impact on principals and on improving school culture.
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January 21, 2015
Shaping Strong School Leaders > www.edweek.org/go/principals
CONTINUED FROM PAGE S15
“What we see is that when teachers are
included in decisionmaking processes, when
they are included as leaders, the broader set
of teachers in the school feel like the decisionmaking is more transparent and inclusive,”
Mr. Thompson said. “They feel valued, they are
more likely to feel that the school is a place
where the principals care about teachers [and]
listen to their voices.”
In Marion County, Fla., individual principals
examine their schools’ needs and try to match
those needs with their teachers’ strengths.
Jayne Ellspermann, the principal of West
Port High School in Marion County and the
2015 National Principal of the Year, actively
invites talented teachers to shoulder additional responsibilities outside the classroom,
based on their expertise, interests, and career
goals. Fourteen of Ms. Ellspermann’s former
teachers have gone on to become principals.
One, Benjamin Whitehouse, who Ms. Ellspermann hired as a world history teacher
in his first year out of graduate school, is
now principal of the district’s North Marion
High School.
After learning that Mr. Whitehouse was interested in administration, Ms. Ellspermann helped
him try out different hats—from club adviser, to
testing coordinator, athletic coach, and eventually assistant principal in charge of discipline.
“It was much easier for me stepping into my
first year [as a full-fledged principal] because
I had done pretty much every job there was
to do in high school at that point,” Mr. Whitehouse said.
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While some see the teacher-leadership roles
as a steppingstone for future principals, others
see them as inherently important roles that
should exist at every school and that are critical to building strong, successful schools.
In the Camas district, for example, administrators leaned on teacher-leaders to draft the
district’s template for writing and measuring student-growth goals, which are required
under Washington state’s teacher-evaluation
system. Without the teacher-leaders, the task
would have fallen on principals, who were
already juggling a host of other duties, said
Ms. Boerke, the principal of Camas’ Liberty
Middle School.
There was also another positive outcome
from using teacher-leaders: The resulting
model was accepted by teachers because they
had devised the framework, the time frame
for evaluation, and the tools of evidence that
would be used, she said.
Ms. Boerke said teachers can also lead professional development in ways that administrators cannot. By relying more on the expertise of their teachers, Ms. Boerke said she has
additional time to observe what is happening
in the classrooms.
“Now I can go in and see what the teachers are doing, knowing very well what their
growth goals are,” Ms. Boerke said. “And I
can give them just-in-time feedback on maybe
tweaking an assessment or asking a question
in a different way to get to what I know their
learning goal is.”
“I just love my work again,” Ms. Boerke
said. “If we want to retain principals, this is
what we need to do—it’s share the workload,
share the responsibility for teaching and
learning. ... When those test scores come out,
I feel like I have a team, that we can work
through what went well, what didn’t go well,
as opposed to me seeing it all by myself. More
brains are better than one. Anytime you collaborate with like-minded people, amazing
things can happen.” n
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