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Shared Decision Making Works!

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September 1992 | Volume 50 | Number 1
Building a Community for Learning Pages 36-38

Robert Kessler

I've spent many sleepless nights worrying whether the difficulties facing our district's restructuring efforts have been worth the energy needed to move forward. As morning comes, I always reach the same conclusion: yes.

For five years I was head negotiator for the teachers' association in Moraga, California, a small suburban district east of San Francisco. In spite of my public support for our successes through collective bargaining, I always felt personally uncomfortable with its confrontational nature. Often on the same day, I would have to switch from collegial conversations with a teacher, administrator, or parent, to uncompromising confrontations about salary increases with the same people.

As a principal, I often felt a similar conflict. I worked hard to develop trust between myself and the staff. Yet the mutual respect that grew out of overcoming problems and developing new programs together would often be tossed aside as teacher and district positions hardened at the bargaining table. I found myself voicing positions that were not necessarily my own feelings, but seemed necessary to protect the district's bargaining strategy. At times the conflicts over salary issues so dominated the school year that efforts to improve the educational program became secondary at best.

I became convinced that there had to be a better way to resolve conflicts. Though the road is difficult, the Reed Union School District is finding a better way.

Starting at the District Level

Two years ago I became superintendent of the district after three years as principal of the middle school. A major factor in my decision to apply for the position was my confidence in the district's three-year budget restructuring project. I was continually amazed by the positive impact shared decision making had on our district. For two-and-a-half years, beginning while I was still at the middle school, for example, we had no damaging conflict over salary increases.

In Reed, we began our restructuring effort at the district level. Many districts that experiment with involving teachers in leadership start at the school site level. We began with the topic everyone considered the biggest obstacle to educational improvement: conflict over the district budget.

With help from the Stuart Foundations, we launched our Management Team: seven teacher representatives, one classified representative, the district's three principals, the superintendent, and two board members. This group meets regularly-and in public-to develop a recommendation on the district's annual budget. While the Board of Trustees is not legally obligated to accept the team's recommendation, it has done so for the past three years. The proposal has also been the basis for the formal salary settlements between the district and bargaining units.

Forming a Team Agreement

Getting started wasn't easy. Several years ago, as part of a countywide professional development project, the Reed Board of Trustees made an initial commitment to developing teacher involvement in decision making. Once the Management Team was in place, we hired a trainer to help us analyze our personal styles and develop effective group dynamics. Out of the training process came our Team Agreements: to commit to operate by consensus, respect one another's styles, speak honestly, and advocate the team's decisions to our constituencies. Taking the time to work out these agreements was critical for success.

In the meetings, when a member objects to a particular proposal, everyone listens carefully to his or her reasoning because we cannot reach consensus without everyone's approval. Similarly, when team members raise objections, they also offer suggestions because everyone has the same ultimate goal: consensus. As one member stated in our second-year evaluation, "If this were a collective bargaining session, it would have ended in the first few minutes, because everybody would have stormed out. Everyone here feels responsible for coming up with the product, instead of exhibiting the attitude that 'it's not my problem-it's yours!'"

Developing a Recommendation

Beginning with the Team Agreements, we held monthly three- to four-hour meetings to develop a budget recommendation. Though the process was tedious, we went through the budget line by line. The business manager clearly explained state budgeting procedures and regulations, and everyone's questions were answered. As Management Team members gained an understanding of what makes a district budget, we focused on priorities for the upcoming year.

We spent many hours ranking priorities for adjustments to the budget. A typical meeting focused on such questions as: With only a small cost of living increase from the state, what priority do we give to programs, classroom aides, class size, and staff salary increases? The discussion was intense, often heated. Sometimes members broke into smaller groups to try to reach accord. At times, we doubted we could reach consensus, but everyone persevered, and eventually we drafted a plan that preserved core programs, instructional aides, and small class size. Some specialist positions were dropped and instructional supply allocations reduced. Increased costs, including teacher and staff salary increases, were included in the final budget recommendation. Though no one enjoys deciding whether a half-time elementary physical education teacher or a groundskeeper deserves a higher priority, members knew they must make some hard choices-and that they could make them-because we all share the same fundamental value: quality education for our students.

In June 1991, we completed our third round of budget development. As we have become clearer about our priorities, we have also generated new questions. How should the budget reflect the differences among our schools? Do differing student needs require different student to teacher ratios? Or is equity among schools a better criterion? In the future, we feel able to address these difficult questions because of the creativity inherent in our Management Team process.

A Model That Can Work Anywhere

Working in a restructured system has been demanding at times. As emotions become heightened, it's a struggle to maintain a constructive attitude. Adapting to changes in the roles of board members, administrators, and teacher-negotiators has also been a challenge. One of our most persistent problems is finding the time necessary for frequent Management Team meetings. Clarifying the team's role in the district's chain of command remains a thorny issue, as does defining the relationship between legally required collective bargaining and Management Team recommendations.

However, dealing with these challenges is unconditionally preferable to the system I have been used to. After having an adversarial environment for many years, the district now has open communication and an atmosphere of developing trust. Teachers and principals can focus their attention on improvements in curriculum and school programs. Community support has grown, too. Three years ago, district voters turned down a special local tax assessment for schools. In April 1990, they approved a similar measure by a two-thirds margin.

Recently, the budget situation throughout California has created our greatest challenge yet. The lack of cost-of-living increases in state revenue to local districts means that budgeting for even minimal salary increases is increasingly difficult. District staff began to question whether teacher interests are best served through traditional, adversarial bargaining or through a more collaborative process. It is a mark of commitment to shared decision making that the district and the teachers' association have agreed to broaden the scope of our Management Team to include all contract negotiations.

While the small size of Reed may partially account for our success, our diversity in individual points of view is typical of all school districts. I believe that making a mutual commitment to work by consensus and to base decisions on the best interest of kids is a model that can work anywhere.

Shared Decision Making: Suggestions for School Districts

Robert Kessler is Superintendent, Reed Union School District, 277-A Karen Way, Tiburon, CA 94920.

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September 1992 | Volume 50 | Number 1 Building a Community for Learning Pages 36-38 Robert Kessler I've spent many sleepless nights worrying whether the difficulties facing our district's restructuring efforts have been worth the energy needed to move forward. As morning comes, I always reach the same conclusion: yes.

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How to Make Decisions with Different Kinds of Student Assessment Data

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by Susan M. Brookhart

Simple logic does not always help us with data interpretation. Here are two examples, both of which are true stories.

Once during a workshop session, a school administrator explained to me that he saw standardized test scores as a sort of barometer. He aimed to make changes in his school that would lead to a rise in test scores, and that would be his indication that his reforms were successful. The analogy he gave me was the population of oysters in the Chesapeake Bay. Environmental reforms were needed in the bay area, changes were made, and the oyster numbers are increasing (see http://www.chesapeakebay.net/issues/issue/oysters for more information). Similarly, he explained, reforms in his school should lead to higher test scores.

The second example occurred at an airport, where I struck up a conversation with a businessman and his young son who were waiting for the same airport shuttle I was. The man said that he was really glad that his state now administered standardized tests, as per No Child Left Behind, because finally he had what he called a "bottom line" that he could watch to know how his child and his child's school were doing. His analogy was to the bottom line in a profit-and-loss statement in a business.

The administrator and the businessman dad were well-meaning people who valued education; they were not nay-sayers. They were both bright and successful individuals who applied logic and common sense to a problem they cared about. And they were both wrong.

Here's the thing. If you are an environmentalist or an oysterman, the oysters are the issue-or in the case of the Chesapeake Bay, one of the issues. Increasing the oyster population, to improve the habitat and the economy, is the purpose of the scientific reforms and management strategies. More oysters means the program is achieving its goal. Similarly, generating a profit is the purpose of being in business. Higher profits mean more money for shareholders, employees, and product development. Making money means your business is achieving its goal.

In contrast, raising test scores is not the purpose of education. The purpose of education has changed with society's needs and values over the years (Sloan, 2012). At this point in time, if you ask people the purpose of education, you will get answers such as these: to create adults who can compete in a global economy, to create informed citizens who can participate in the democratic process, to create critical thinkers and problem solvers, to create lifelong learners, or to create emotionally healthy adults who can engage in meaningful relationships. Obviously, no test score can tell you whether you have achieved these things.

The less obvious problem with our well-meaning administrator and businessman is that even if you limit your interest to academic learning outcomes, raising test scores is not the purpose of education. The students' learning is. Test scores are a measure of student learning, but they are not the thing itself. In our analogies, the oysters and the money were themselves the objects of interest. You can count oysters, and you can count money, but you can't "count" learning.

The best you can do to measure learning is to use a mental measurement that, if well designed, is a measure of learning in a limited domain. The key is to define clearly what that domain is, use a test or performance assessment that taps this domain in known ways, use a score scale with known properties that maps the student's performance back to the domain, and interpret that score scale correctly when making inferences about student learning. The purpose of this book is to explain just enough about the properties of data on student learning so that you can make those inferences well. Then-and only then-can you make sound decisions. Another name for this purpose is developing assessment literacy. As the examples demonstrate, literacy in educational assessment involves more than counting or ranking. It involves specifying what specific learning you are measuring; understanding how the questions or tasks in the measure form a sample of that domain of learning; understanding properties of the scales, numbers, or categories used in the measurement; and being able to reason from all these things to make sound interpretations and decisions.

To complicate matters a bit, as the title of this book indicates, there are different kinds of data. For most educational decisions, you will want to mix the different kinds of data to broaden and deepen the pool of information about student learning that you use to monitor and improve that learning. You will want to know which kinds of data to watch, and when, in order to evaluate the effectiveness of your decisions. This book will help you do that in two ways. First, it offers a framework for thinking about assessment systems that categorizes different measures of student learning. Understanding how information differs from one category to another will help you interpret data. Second, this book offers some insights into different types of scores. Understanding different types of scores and their meanings will help you interpret data properly, as well. Equipped with an understanding of these two big ideas, your data interpretation and subsequent decisions will be more sound, more valid, and more useful.

The Purposes and Uses of Data

The phrase "data-based decision making" is used often and has many meanings. Teachers use data to answer questions about students. Groups of teachers and building administrators use data to answer questions about students, classes, programs, and their school. Central office administrators use data to make decisions about teachers, as well as students, classes, programs, and schools. An Internet search on "data-based decision making" will bring up dozens of PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, images, and plans. Many books also address this theme.

It may seem like an obvious point, but the data you choose should be related to the intended purpose. If I want to make a tablecloth, I need to measure the length and width of the table; measuring its height won't help me much. The same principle operates in making decisions about student learning, but it's less easy to see. For example, if I want to make a decision about which reading skills to emphasize in my reading class, shouldn't I just look up students' scores on the state reading test? No. What the state reading test measures is general, overall "reading achievement," as defined by a whole set of reading standards. State test results will give you a sense of how your students do at "reading in general," as defined by whatever reading standards your state says its test measures, taken all together.

For example, the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium says that, regarding reading, its assessments can support this claim: "Students can read closely and analytically to comprehend a range of increasingly complex literary and informational texts" (Smarter Balanced, 2014). If I'm a teacher with a student whose assessment results suggest he can't do that very well, how do I design instruction for him? Low test results relative to this claim suggest a general decision-more or different reading instruction-but don't provide any clues about what aspects of reading to emphasize, remediate, or build on. To design reading instruction for that student, I'll need different data, assessment data that give a more fine-grained description of what the student can and cannot do as he reads.

In this simple example, reasoning from data is a two-step process. Data from the standardized accountability assessment help me identify a problem (Arland doesn't read proficiently) and lead me to another question: Why? To answer that second question, I need different data, because the reading accountability test doesn't give me information that is specific enough. Using complementary kinds of data for educational problem solving requires understanding different kinds of data.

This focus on a deeper understanding of data about student learning is what sets this book apart from other data books. I will, of course, also talk about how to use the data to inform instructional improvement. Two other excellent books that talk about using data to inform instructional improvement are Data Wise by Boudett, City, and Murnane (2013) and Using Data to Focus Instructional Improvement by James-Ward, Fisher, Frey, and Lapp (2013).

This book complements those and other books about data by focusing on developing a clearer understanding of exactly what test scores and other data about student learning are and what they mean. As an analogy, think about reading a Shakespeare play in a high school English class. If you read the play with a basic understanding of the English language, you will understand the plot. If you take the time to learn some Shakespearean vocabulary, you will understand the plot and the word-play nuances that unlock some of the humor and characterization in the play. In other words, you will understand the play better. Similarly, if you do data-based decision making with a basic understanding of assessment and of numbers, you will be able to make general decisions. If you learn some concepts about how educational assessments are constructed and some nuances about what their results mean, you will understand better what the data are telling you about your students' achievement.

Data About Student Learning

One way to organize and describe the different kinds of data about student learning is to use a four-quadrant framework (Brookhart, 2013). This framework allows us to group different kinds of data according to general type and purpose and to examine how they complement each other. It gives us some vocabulary to describe "assessment" in more specific terms. Figure 1.1 shows a four-quadrant framework for describing different kinds of assessments of student learning. The framework does not attempt to cover other data of interest to educators (e.g., student attendance, the number of books in the library, the ratio of students to teachers), just assessments of student learning.

Figure 1.1. Four-Quadrant Framework for Describing Types of Assessments

This framework will help you use different types of data to get richer, fuller information for your classroom decisions. The response of teachers and administrators to this framework has been quite positive. I have found that people are looking for a way to describe their "assessment system" that is more than just a long list of assessments.

Two dimensions: Purpose and focus

The framework in Figure 1.1 defines two dimensions on which assessment of student learning can be described: intended purpose for the information (formative or summative) and intended focus of the information (classroom or large scale). Of course, individual students are the ones who are assessed in all cases; even the large-scale state accountability test is administered to individual students. The focus dimension is about the place where the information is centered, and for large-scale assessments that focus is across individuals, classrooms, and schools.

Purpose. If learning is the main emphasis in education, then the distinction in purpose-between assessment that informs learning and assessment that certifies that learning-is important. Many readers will be familiar with balancing formative and summative assessment in their classroom practice. Formative assessment, or assessment for learning, occurs during learning and is intended to result in improved learning (Moss & Brookhart, 2009). Summative assessment, or assessment of learning, occurs after an episode of learning and is intended to summarize the student's achievement level at a particular time (Moss, 2013). Typically, formative assessment items and tasks, and formative feedback, tackle next-step-sized learning targets. By the time summative assessment is appropriate, the outcome may be broader. As a somewhat oversimplified illustration, feedback on a 2nd grader's writing might be about capitalization and punctuation today and ideas tomorrow, and the final graded writing sample may appraise both.

Focus. The location of reference for the learning information is the other dimension-whether assessment is centered in the classroom or in a large-scale context. Some readers may be less familiar with distinguishing classroom-focused from large-scale assessments than they are with distinguishing formative and summative assessment purposes. After all, it's students in classrooms who take all the assessments, right? In Chapters 2 through 5, you will see that it is very useful to distinguish assessments that are primarily focused on the learning that occurs in one classroom, with its particular instructional context, from assessments that are primarily focused on generalizing across classroom contexts. The two differ in important ways, most notably on what specific learning is assessed and in the kinds of numbers that are used to quantify student performance. Some of that assessment information is meant for classroom use, and some is meant to be aggregated across classrooms for larger-scale evaluation-of a course, a program, or a school, for example.

Four quadrants

Crossing the two dimensions results in four quadrants that define the four major types of assessment of student learning that are used in schools, or what I have been calling "different kinds of data." These types are formative classroom assessment; interim/benchmark assessment, including "common formative assessments" that are intended to be given in more than one classroom; summative (graded) classroom assessment; and summative (accountability) large-scale assessment. I'll briefly describe each type here and then devote a chapter to each.

Formative assessment: Formative purpose, classroom focus. Formative assessment is an active and intentional learning process that partners teachers and students to continuously and systematically gather evidence of learning with the express goal of improving student achievement (definition from Moss & Brookhart, 2009, p. 6; also see Wiliam, 2010). Formative assessment involves strategies such as the following (Moss & Brookhart, 2009; Wiliam, 2010):

Sharing learning targets and criteria for success with students

Feedback that feeds forward, from teachers, peers, or other sources

Student self-assessment and goal setting

Using strategic questions and engaging students in asking effective questions

One of the hallmarks of formative classroom assessment is student involvement. Formative assessment strategies aim to develop assessment-capable students who can see where they are headed (they can envision a learning target and know what it represents), take stock of where they are in relation to the target, and understand what they need to do next to continue to approach the learning target. Formative assessment's foundation is the students' clear concept of a learning target, or even a broader learning goal, and a clear understanding of what achievement of that goal looks like. This means students understand the criteria for success, or what Moss and I call "student look-fors" (Moss & Brookhart, 2009). Receiving feedback and using it to improve, setting goals and monitoring progress toward them, and asking effective questions all are based on the foundation of understanding "what I am trying to learn."

In recent years, people have quibbled over whether students have to be involved in making decisions about assessment results in order for the assessment to be formative. One of the reasons for the confusion is ignoring the distinction between classroom-focused and large-scale assessment. Students have to be involved in classroom formative assessment, which works only when students take action on what they should do next in their learning. They can't take effective cognitive action if they aren't involved in making the decisions. However, students don't necessarily have to be involved in decisions made about large-scale assessments that are intended to be formative in purpose. Teachers may use these results to modify instruction, for example, without the students knowing about it.

I have found that the focus dimension-classroom versus large scale-helps enormously with the vocabulary problem educators have been struggling with regarding formative assessment. For example, I was talking with a principal who thought "formative assessment" had to refer to the interim assessments his district purchased from a testing company, and so he didn't know what to make of the formative assessment strategies that occur within daily lessons-which was the topic I was at his school to address. I showed him the four-quadrant framework, and he found it immediately helpful. We might not be able to do much about the fact that the term formative assessment is currently used in too many different ways, but we certainly can make sure that we understand exactly what we are talking about for any specific data and interpret the data accordingly. This framework will help you do that.

Interim assessment: Formative purpose, large-scale focus. Teachers can use interim/benchmark assessments that do not involve students-other than to respond to assessment items or tasks-to inform instructional planning for those students or even for future students. This is a formative purpose, although it's not what I generally have in mind when I use the term formative assessment; to me, that term usually means classroom formative assessment. Interim assessment and classroom formative assessment are different from each other in a couple of ways. One difference is that interim assessment data can be aggregated, whereas classroom formative assessment data cannot. The second difference is that the users of interim assessment data are teachers, whereas the users of formative assessment data are students and teachers. The four-quadrant framework makes these differences explicit, because interim assessment is in the "large-scale" space, above the axis, and formative classroom assessment is in the "classroom-focused" space, below the axis. In Chapters 3 and 5 I'll say more about what this means for interpreting and using assessment results.

There is a place for assessment information that can inform future instructional decisions and even administrative decisions. An example might be using interim assessments three times a year, each to inform planning of the next nine weeks of mathematics instruction, or combining information from several interim assessments to decide that, given limited funds, the school will hire a mathematics specialist next year instead of another classroom teacher. Some schools use assessments they call "common formative assessments," which they administer in more than one class, typically across a grade level and a subject area. If common formative assessments are used for planning (and not grading), they fit in this category.

Some interim/benchmark assessments or common formative assessments are also used for classroom grading or other evaluative purposes (Abrams & McMillan, 2013). This is not a recommended practice, and the four-quadrant framework helps us see why. Using data for several different purposes at once is possible, but it requires making sure that the data are valid for both purposes. Validating data for two different uses is very difficult to do, and the interaction of the different uses usually ends up changing the meaning of assessment results for both purposes (Koch & DeLuca, 2012). I'll have more to say about this in Chapter 5, as well.

Interim/benchmark assessment and common formative assessment involve practices such as the following:

Using an item bank to construct tests at checkpoint times-for example, at the end of a unit or quarterly, for all students taking a certain subject in a certain grade

Using teacher-made tests, and sometimes performance assessments, at checkpoint times-for example, at the end of a unit or quarterly, for all students taking a certain subject in a certain grade

Using commercially published tests at checkpoint times

Using curriculum-based progress-monitoring data

Grading: Summative purpose, classroom focus. Classroom grading comes in two forms: (1) individual grades-summative assessment via tests or performance assessments or any other graded assignments, and (2) report card grades (Brookhart, 2011). A report card grade is dependent on the quality of the information in the individual assignments on which it is based. Great procedures for report card summarizing cannot make up for poor-quality assessment information. On the other hand, high-quality assessment information, summarized poorly, does not produce a meaningful report card grade either. Both high-quality component information and summarizing methods that preserve intended meaning in the composite are necessary.

Classroom grades are a longstanding tradition in education and have been the subject of controversy for years (Brookhart, in press). Classroom grades typically report on unit-sized (or thereabouts) "chunks" of classroom learning. Classroom grades are typically expressed either as percentages or on short scales made up of achievement categories (e.g., ABCDF or Advanced, Proficient, Basic, Below Basic). Chapter 4 will discuss these points in more detail.

Large-scale accountability assessment: Summative purpose, large-scale focus. Finally, there is summative, large-scale accountability assessment. State tests fit here, as well as national and international comparison studies. Large-scale accountability assessment has been the subject of much interest and study recently (Perie, Park, & Klau, 2007), so I don't have to defend its place in the framework. Many educators realize the potential value of large-scale accountability tests but feel they may have more influence than they should (Shepard, 2000). Chapter 2 will describe how accountability tests typically furnish data about learning at a very large grain size (e.g., reading, mathematics) and explain how to interpret data that may be norm-referenced, criterion-referenced, or "standards-referenced," which draws a bit from both (Brookhart & Nitko, 2015).

Balanced Assessment

Looking at the framework, you might think that a balanced assessment system should simply contain equal amounts of assessment from each of the four quadrants. This is not true.

Some materials designed for state and local administrators suggest that a balanced assessment system should be based on a tiered or pyramid-style model (e.g., Crane, 2010; Perie, Marion, & Gong, 2009). Classroom assessment, the bottom portion of the pyramid, is the most common or frequent kind of assessment, followed by interim assessment and then state accountability assessment. This pyramid model lumps all classroom assessment together and misses the opportunity to specify a good balance between classroom formative assessment and classroom summative assessment.

The four-quadrant framework privileges classroom-level data by devoting a dimension-and therefore half of the framework-to it. The classroom is the place where learning happens, and if we ignore the information closest to the learning, we lose a lot of fine-grained and diagnostic information. I argue for an assessment balance that looks more like Figure 1.2.

Figure 1.2. Achieving Balance in an Assessment System

Classroom formative assessment is the assessment that is best positioned to help improve learning. Well-designed classroom formative assessment focuses information on the growing edge of learning, puts the information in the hands of the students, and supports small, incremental, and immediate next steps in learning (Andrade, 2010; Black & Wiliam, 1998; Datnow & Hubbard, 2015; Moss & Brookhart, 2009). That's why Figure 1.2 enlarges the classroom formative assessment quadrant and suggests that this quadrant is the foundation of a balanced assessment system.

All types of assessment have a place, however. It is when data are used without an understanding of what they are for (e.g., a high school decides to use data from its benchmark assessment as part of students' report card grades to "make them take it seriously") that we get into trouble. I wrote this book to support informed use of the different kinds of data and to discourage using data for purposes for which the data are not suited.

How Sound Is Your Information?

The suitability of assessment results for particular purposes has a name: validity. This concept is central to educational assessment. Remember the businessman's bottom line? Because making money is a goal of his business, the amount of money made is one valid measure of the success of the business. Of course, it's not the only measure, because the business may have other goals, but clearly the bottom line is an important measure.

Contrast this with assessments that measure student learning. We can't directly measure that. We can't get "inside a kid's head." So we use "mental measures" that we construct according to sets of rules that we think might give us good estimates of student learning. Occasionally the set of rules is something like this: "Select a correct answer for each of these test items; for each answer you select, you will get one point; your score will be your total number of points divided by the number of possible points."

You can see there are several questions that need to be asked before we can be confident about what the score means. Some of those questions are about the test items. How much confidence you have that the score is a valid measure of what you want to know depends on the answers to questions such as these:

What were those test questions about? Were they about things the students had an opportunity to learn? Were they a representative mix of all the things the students were supposed to learn about the topic-that is, of all the possible questions you could have asked, how representative a sample is the set of questions you actually asked?

Were the questions well written and clear? Were they at an appropriate level of difficulty? Did students understand all the words in the questions?

Did students need any other specialized knowledge to answer the questions, besides what the questions were trying to test (e.g., did students need background knowledge on anything in a scenario, such as in a word problem or a reading passage), that might affect the test question's ability to measure achievement?

Did the questions ask students to use thinking skills in the manner your learning outcomes intended (e.g., were students supposed to just recall information, or were they supposed to be able to use information to solve a problem or analyze a situation)?

Some of those questions are about the scoring procedure. How much confidence you have that the score is a valid measure of what you want to know also depends on the answers to questions such as these:

Does each of those one-point questions really contribute about the same value or weight to the total score? Should some questions be worth more than others-and if so, why?

Are there enough questions to ensure that the results provide you with an accurate sense of what students know and not just an indicator of chance performance? Are there enough questions to reasonably support using the percentage scale you have chosen (e.g., if there are only two questions, the only possible scores are 0, 50, and 100, which is a little silly).

This is not an exhaustive list of questions, but it should be enough to show you how you need to build a bridge of reasoning and evidence between the score on any assessment and its meaning in a way that is not necessary for concrete measures like number of oysters or amount of money. This list of questions should also show you that the validity questions will differ for different kinds of data. Finally, the list should illustrate that behind questions about the meaning of a measure and its suitability for its purpose (validity), there are also some questions about the accuracy and consistency of the measure (reliability). You can't make meaningful decisions if you have inaccurate data.

As I describe the different kinds of data in Chapters 2 through 5, I'll try to highlight particular validity and reliability issues that are especially important for common uses of each kind of data. This book is not meant to be a substitute for a more thorough treatment of educational measurement (Brookhart & Nitko, 2015), but rather to be a guide to those who use data in practical ways in schools. To show that validity is important for everyone who uses educational data, not just for measurement experts, I ask you to consider two current examples that have validity questions at their core.

The issue of using large-scale, standardized tests as measures of school accountability with associated consequences has been with us for a while but became particularly salient when the No Child Left Behind Act was signed in 2002 (NCLB, 2002). Arguments about the suitability of large-scale tests to measure the quality of schooling range on both sides of the issue, and they hinge on validity questions. What do those tests measure? Are they the right indicators for the purpose of judging school quality? Are there other indicators that should be considered? Are the resulting judgments about school quality accurate?

Another current issue with validity questions at its core is the use of student assessment results as part of teacher evaluation systems (ISBE, 2013; NYSED, 2014). Arguments about the suitability of assessments for this purpose also range on both sides of the issue, and they too hinge on validity questions. What assessments are most appropriate for any given teacher, subject, or grade level? Is the student achievement thus measured really a measure of teacher quality? Do various statistical treatments applied to scores (e.g., pre-post gains, value-added models) appropriately remove the effects of irrelevant information and leave relevant information in the results? Are the resulting conclusions about teacher quality accurate?

Although these are hot-button issues, I believe that similar issues at the classroom level are equally important. Does your classroom assessment actually give you the information you think it does and support your next instructional move? Does your classroom assessment give your student an accurate picture of exactly what she needs to focus on next in order to improve in the way that she wants to? It always angers me that people say that daily classroom decisions are "less important" in some way than, say, medical decisions. Although it's true that poor medical decisions can lead to death, I always say that "messing with a kid's mind" has an equally dire consequence. I realize that an unintended wrong turn in instruction might last five minutes and can be corrected in the next five minutes, but I submit that it risks confusing the student or, at a minimum, wasting five minutes of precious learning time. We need to champion the cause of high-quality data for classroom use as well as large-scale uses, even though such data won't make headlines.

The Organization of This Book

Each of the next four chapters treats one quadrant of the framework. The chapter begins with a definition and a description of the kind or kinds of data available in that quadrant. I describe what you can (and can't) learn from these kinds of data, which in turn is based on the kind of learning and the grain size of the constructs that are commonly measured by that kind of data. Each chapter explains how to interpret common kinds of scores usually associated with that kind of data. Of course, I provide examples in each chapter.

In the process, I hope to demystify some quantitative concepts-not only different kinds of scores (e.g., what's the difference between a percentile rank and a percentage?), but also some principles (e.g., how aggregation can mask patterns in data, the difference between norm referencing and criterion referencing) and issues (e.g., the issues involved in measuring student growth, how to decide whether data are comparable-the "apples and oranges" issue). However, this is not a mathematics or statistics book. It is an "explaining" book. Just as you learned to read words, you can learn to "read" numbers. Some words mean different things in different contexts. It may surprise you to learn the same is true for numbers.

The book concludes with three additional chapters. Chapter 6 discusses how to combine the different kinds of data about student learning, plus additional data about instruction, school culture, and resources, to answer questions about student learning and make decisions about what to do. Chapter 7 explains how to use different kinds of data about student learning to evaluate those decisions. Chapter 8 brings us back to the purpose of this book-to make you a better "reader" of data, who can reason with assessment results to arrive at defensible, effective decisions.

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An Introduction to Different Kinds of Data

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by Susan M. Brookhart Simple logic does not always help us with data interpretation. Here are two examples, both of which are true stories. Once during a workshop session, a school administrator explained to me that he saw standardized test scores as a sort of barometer.

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How to Thrive as a Teacher Leader

Chapter 1. Organizational Leadership: Nurturing Leadership in Your School

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by John G. Gabriel

For nearly a century, schools have functioned in the autocratic style of the line-staff model: principals are managers and teachers are their employees, often voiceless and powerless to influence their superiors' quest to improve student achievement. But with the growing emphasis on high-stakes testing and the advent of No Child Left Behind, many school leaders are seeking more effective organizational behavior by drawing on the leadership potential of all stakeholders, especially teachers.

Schools making this change are creating and expanding teachers' roles as leaders. For principals, this trend is a shift from "relying on the power of the system" to "seeking to empower others"-or, more specifically, a shift from "seeking to be in control" to "letting go of control and building a community of relationships that tends to be self-organizing" (Caine & Caine, 2000, p. 8). Lending support to the need for transformation, Buchen (2000) argues that "the only leadership that will make a difference is that of teachers. They alone are positioned where all the fulcrums are for change. They alone know what the day-to-day problems are and what it takes to solve them. They, not the principals, should be the ones to hire new teachers. They know what is needed."

A task force report from the School Leadership for the 21st Century Initiative (2001) echoes these sentiments. It states: "Mischaracterized though they often are as incompetent know-nothings, teachers are, paradoxically, also widely viewed as . . . indispensable but unappreciated leaders in the truest meaning of the word. . . . It would be difficult to find a more authentic but unacknowledged example of leadership in modern life" (p. 1). The report claims that teachers are essential to reform and that they possess a body of knowledge yet to be exploited.

But we already knew that. That's common sense.

We educators also knew that the role ripest for this kind of metamorphosis is that of the department chair in high schools or the team leader in elementary and middle schools.

Department chairs and team leaders walk a fine line: they are neither teacher nor administrator. They nurture colleagues and teach alongside them, but they also must retain allegiance to their administrators. They lack line authority. Considering how essential teacher leaders are to improving achievement, this is perhaps the most curious aspect of their roles. They are constantly reminded, by both administrators and teachers, of all they cannot do-regardless of their potential for positive change, which is often greater than that of all other leaders in a school because of their broad sphere of influence.

Teacher leaders possess a semblance of authority but no formal power-only the illusion of power. For example, a department chair cannot complete teacher evaluations. She cannot place a memo or letter in someone's personnel file, nor can she dismiss a teacher. As a result, she must find other ways to motivate, mobilize, and lead teachers. She must rely on intrinsic leadership abilities, knowledge of group dynamics, influence, respect, and leadership by example to boost the productivity of her department.

In myopic schools, the role of department chair is limited to that of a paper pusher. These schools view the teacher leader as someone who will complete the master schedule, order supplies, maintain inventory, and pass along administrative directives to the department. These schools either don't know how else to capitalize on the strengths of their teacher leaders or are uncomfortable doing so. True, these traditional responsibilities are critical to maintaining the wellness of a school, but in terms of improving the health of an organization, forward-thinking schools have moved beyond this.

In schools where transformational leadership is present, administrators recognize that the leadership of a department chair or team leader can make a significant difference to the climate and culture of the school. They are not threatened by a teacher's influence or exercise of leadership, nor by giving up some control. These administrators strive to encourage and cultivate leadership and "make better use of the unique strengths and contributions [that] department heads can bring to school management and improvement" (Weller, 2001, p. 80). At these schools, teacher leaders act as coaches and mentors, observe classrooms so that instruction can be refined and best practices implemented, and attempt to realize a vision or to "reculture" the environment. With the pressure of high-stakes testing and the need to meet state and federal benchmarks, administrators rely on these leaders to improve achievement and even defer to them in certain instances.

Roles for Teacher Leaders

Although the traditional teacher leader is still important in a school, other leadership positions can have as much influence in ensuring student achievement. These roles offer teachers a greater voice in shaping programs, supporting the mission, and guiding a team toward its goal, which will ultimately help the students and the school achieve.

Not all leadership positions are formal in nature. Every school has teacher leaders who do not serve-and may never have served-as official leaders, which is one of the most unique components of teacher leadership. In any kind of organization, informal leaders command a great deal of respect; they have much say and sway in determining a team's climate or the chances of a proposal's adoption, and they are often sought after for advice.

Similarly, not all leadership roles are fixed-meaning assigned, specific positions. Someone might act as a mentor one week and then assume the role of innovator with a unique proposal the following week. These fluid and spontaneous roles are just as essential as the leader to the success of the team. Ideally, these people are the supporters whom the leader can trust and turn to for help in a variety of matters.

It is also expected that leadership roles will change, shift, and evolve over time. If someone was a team leader for the past five years, it does not guarantee him that role for a sixth year. Leadership roles should not be determined by seniority. Therefore, if standardized results are marginal or a teacher's leadership is questionable, a change is warranted. Don't be afraid to make changes; change, along with its potential for struggle and conflict, is often an essential ingredient of success.

If you are a department chair or team leader, you probably have already realized how difficult it is to accomplish everything that your job entails. Effective teacher leaders are usually given more responsibility, whether they want it or not, so you need to learn how not to overburden your teachers and how to say no (and that there is nothing wrong in doing so) to avoid burnout. Although the following leadership positions can enhance teachers' professional self-worth, these roles are equally significant to you: delegating (not avoiding) responsibility is critical if you hope to succeed as a leader.

Moreover, these roles can be vehicles for grooming future leaders. Aside from becoming a department chair, counselor, or administrator, a teacher has very little opportunity for career advancement within a school building. Not only can the leadership possibilities below benefit a school or a program, they can also spark interest in pursuing a position at the central office or collegiate level, where teachers can have an even greater influence on education.

Grade Level/Subject Area Leader

The grade level leader coordinates specific organizational needs (whether the 5th grade will take its annual class trip to Philadelphia, what supplies to order, and so on), and he runs meetings that address concerns and strategies regarding specific students.

This leadership position is often further broken down by content area or instructional concerns. Through horizontal alignment, the subject area specialist coordinates curriculum across the grade level, providing instructional leadership and support to teachers of a common subject. For instance, the subject leader might call a meeting to discuss why some 6th graders are having more success than others in comprehending photosynthesis, and which strategies have been effective in conveying the concept.

Monitoring the instruction and assessments of the teachers on the grade level is paramount since every student in each subject area is expected to possess the same set of skills and body of knowledge at the end of the year. These leaders initiate curriculum mapping and scrutinize the assessments used. Analyzing data also plays a large role in improving student achievement, so leaders should be aware of the most recent data about the team and its progress toward certain benchmarks. Finally, these leaders create staff development opportunities for their teams, because they best know the challenges that the teams face.

Vertical Leader

This role is similar to the above, except that the leader is in charge of seeing that curriculum is aligned up and down the grade levels. For example, the 6th grade vertical team leader ensures that students have acquired the knowledge and skills in their previous math classes that they need for success at the benchmark level. If not, leaders find ways to tighten the instruction and the curriculum. They also promote collaboration and share pertinent content literature.

Backup Leader

Train future leaders by rotating teachers as the backup to your position. Invest time to sit down with them and explain the nature of your job, or to discuss situations that arise during the course of your day. You might have them proofread one of your e-mail messages so they can learn about the issues you deal with (plus, it is always a good idea to have an extra set of eyes look over something you wrote).

Let them join you in interviews. Afterward, meet with them immediately to explain your line of questioning or to see what characteristics of the applicant they picked up on. Send them in your place to meetings where they will learn how time-consuming, and at times frustrating, a leadership position can be and how to cope with that. Have them assume your responsibilities when you are absent.

Basically, let them experience your experience, similar to an informal internship where they can get an overview of your position and its nuances. While you are equipping them with essential skills and knowledge, you may be creating your successor for when you move on. Even if you don't leave in the near future, your backup will have been trained to take a leadership position elsewhere. As one of my administrators used to preach, begin the cycle anew and help reform education from within.

Mentor

This person takes on the responsibility of coaching and advising novice teachers and teachers who are new to the school system. With more and more novice teachers leaving the field within the first few years of teaching, the mentor is not only concerned with instructional and organizational needs; he also lends emotional and moral support to alleviate the stress that the job creates.

A mentor need not always be the strongest instructional leader, but he should have a solid grounding in best practices and his content area. He should be able to suggest ideas and strategies to assist in classroom instruction. And he must be astute enough to read people (that is, he must be perceptive and have a high emotional intelligence). Because of the importance of retaining teachers, new employees should be carefully placed and matched with mentors, either by a lead mentor, who oversees mentors in the entire building, or by the team or department leader. (See Resource 1.)

Peer Coach

Not a new concept, peer coaching has received much attention in recent years and is embraced and advanced in some school districts. A peer coach is similar to a mentor except that with this pair, both teachers-not necessarily novices-function as mentor and as protégé. In this relationship, the word "peer" is key. Because peer denotes equality, these teachers' classroom visits are nonthreatening. They are not evaluative and prescriptive; they are diagnostic and constructive, allowing teachers to experiment and take risks without fear of judgment.

After each has observed the other in class, peer coaches discuss observed instructional behaviors, actions, and practices, which can include giving feedback on plans, lessons, instruction, classroom presence, and classroom management. There is a safe environment among these volunteers that enables them to converse in a candid manner and learn from each other. This ultimately benefits the teachers' growth, the team's growth, and the students' growth.

Note-Taker/Recorder

It is imperative to keep a record of every meeting because we tend to have selective memories, especially when we are passionate about an issue. An accurate record of what was discussed and what was decided can be helpful in case of future disagreement, as well as in bringing people who missed the meeting up to speed.

Minutes should document who was present, who was absent, and who was late. Working from an agenda, the note-taker keeps a record of issues and questions raised and the resulting dialogue, outcomes, and resolutions. In circumstances where there may be rancor over what the minutes reflect, it might be prudent to have two people record them and compare notes to ensure their accuracy.

Although it might be interpreted that the note-taker is in cahoots with you if she sits next to you, proximity can be helpful. It enables her to look over your shoulder at your own notes in case she misses something and to stay on top of every issue. It is also a good idea to keep the minutes in a central place so all teachers, regardless of what team they are serving on, have access to them.

Parliamentarian/Timekeeper

This person alleviates the team leader's responsibilities by keeping the group on task with the agenda. After a stressful day of work, it is natural for a meeting to degenerate into a complaint session or, in worse cases, a complete digression into the social lives of the group's members. This leader keeps the group plowing ahead and reminds members when they are nearing the cutoff or have exceeded the time limit for a topic. Meetings should be productive, and the main reason they often are not is that someone has been allowed to derail the group and pursue his own topics of discussion while everyone waits for someone else to intervene.

Presenter

Too often schools are obsessed with spending money to send teachers to conferences outside the system when the answers, knowledge, and resources are right there within their own walls. Both weak and strong school systems tend to underuse the extraordinary wealth of talent they possess.

Target one of your teacher's strengths and ask him to give a presentation. Or ask someone, or a team, to read a professional article and report back to the group on it. This role is by no means fixed. For example, the team leader can begin by selecting someone to present. Then the role should rotate through the team, perhaps in a "popcorn" fashion (often used during reading activities), where the last person to present picks the next person to present. This kind of staff development should be the focus for most of your team meetings.

Conference Attendee

After you have exhausted your team's resources, try to send your teachers to seminars, depending on your budget. They should also attend local, state, and national conferences. However, this should not be a free vacation. The attendee should clearly understand that she is responsible for bringing information back to the team at the next meeting. This sharing can lead to further meeting topics and action research.

Speaker/Writer

Have your teachers identify something that they do extremely well and encourage them to polish, organize, and market it by submitting proposals to present at conferences. Or encourage them to share their experiences and successes by writing articles for various educational journals. These are great opportunities for them to grow professionally and to network-and it brings your school good publicity. Moreover, if they impress someone with their presentation or article, then that could turn into a speaking engagement-a chance to make a few extra dollars with little additional preparation. As one colleague explained, a strong presentation is like an annuity because it keeps on paying.

School Plan Chair

Contrary to how it is viewed and used (or not used) in some schools, the school plan is a vital, fluid document that should guide your team toward improving student achievement. The role of school plan chair usually does not rotate because consistency and continuity are extremely important. The school plan chair has an integral position in coordinating and guiding the school toward achieving its vision.

People should not feel penalized for holding this position in spite of the work it might entail. If your school functions in a collegial and cooperative manner, a team leader or department chair will not have to bear the brunt of this responsibility. The school plan chair should be charismatic, compassionate, and organized. She will be working with all the teachers in the building; a group effort is needed to create or enhance this document.

Faculty Representative

Some school systems have faculty councils where teacher leaders bring team, department, and faculty issues to the administration. If teachers are concerned that a tardy policy is not being enforced, for example, then the faculty representative would bring this issue to the council. Other school systems have a council where teachers can bring issues directly to the superintendent. If teachers are concerned about the number of inservice days that the county is mandating, this would be the forum to bring such a concern. And, finally, some schools have instructional councils that teachers sit on, where leaders discuss issues pertaining to classroom and buildingwide instruction.

A faculty representative seeks out the questions, concerns, and issues of his colleagues and brings them, verbatim when possible, to a more powerful body. He could set up a drop-box in the building or, with the aid of the building's technology specialist, establish an e-mail account that would protect the anonymity of teachers posting or sending messages. This leader brings back minutes to the team or school so people know what has been decided and can confirm that their concerns have been accurately represented.

A union representative is a similar position. A strong teacher advocate, the union rep listens to faculty concerns and works closely with the administration and external bodies. This leader, who in many ways is a watchdog, protects and ensures teacher interests, advises teachers who believe their rights have been infringed, and, in some states, plays a role in negotiating contracts.

Host Teacher

A host teacher is someone who is willing to sponsor a practicum student or a student teacher from the local college or university. Finding the right match is crucial; you want the visiting student to have the best and most realistic experience possible. Some host teachers might view this role as a vacation because someone else will be responsible for teaching their classes. It should be stressed that hosting a student teacher involves much time and can even be quite burdensome, especially if the person is not as well prepared as he should be.

This leader models exemplary instructional practices, techniques, and strategies for the student teacher to observe during his stay. After the student teacher has observed the host teacher's classes for a couple of weeks, the bulk of the teaching load is turned over to him. The host teacher assists with unit and lesson planning and helps him create assessments. Although it would seem that the host teacher has fewer responsibilities because she is teaching fewer classes, she has the responsibility of coaching and mentoring the aspiring teacher. She observes classes, provides timely and meaningful feedback and constructive criticism to her student teacher, and conferences with both him and the college supervisor regarding his progress.

If a team leader or department chair isn't the host teacher, he should meet with the student teacher to provide an overview of the program and its policies. Meeting again at the end of the student's stay to answer lingering questions will provide closure to the experience.

Instructional Audit Leader

Every public school must go through some kind of an accreditation cycle. This leader serves on the school's accreditation committee by gathering evidence to demonstrate that the school is meeting certain standards; he meets with the visiting committee, and then reports its recommendations to the school or relevant team and assists in making any necessary changes. A variation of this role is for a teacher to serve on the committee that visits schools on the cycle. In doing so, the leader can learn more about the functioning of the total school and its programs and can bring back information about successful programs and ideas.

Search Committee Panelist

In schools where administrative applicants must interview with a panel-a team usually consisting of the principal or her designee, teachers, and, in some cases, even parents and students-a teacher might enjoy having a hand in finding the best fit for the school and community by sitting on such a panel. Although he might not have a voice in creating the panel questions, he can, with the principal's permission, canvass the school to determine the characteristics and qualities the faculty is looking for in their new administrator. If he has the principal's trust, he might even be the one to organize and coordinate the panel; he could review résumés or tap other teachers to serve with him on the team.

Community Leader

All teachers should be involved in their communities not just because of the obvious reasons but also because of the political ramifications. At a time when budgets are slashed because community members do not have children attending the local school and are loath to pass a tax increase, and when a significant portion of the public believes that teachers work only "9:00 to 3:00 and have summers free," PR work is needed to demonstrate the many services that a school provides and the good things that occur there.

Teachers can reach out to the surrounding community by volunteering to teach courses in their areas of specialty, by attending community functions to show their support, or by attending community meetings to keep abreast of concerns. Attending PTSA meetings or serving as a liaison between the PTSA and the faculty is another way to build connections.

Teachers can also exhibit leadership by actively engaging the community. A leader I know initiated a "community and texts" program, a kind of book club where every student, parent, and community member was invited to read the same book and meet at the school for book talks. This leader had incredible success in uniting property owners and businesses and showcasing the innovative things the school was doing.

Other kinds of community outreach can be targeted solely at parents. I hosted two events, one on the SAT and one on our AP program, so parents could become better informed. Securing guest speakers, sending letters home in multiple languages, and using the PTSA to promote the events drew some of the largest audiences the school had seen and did wonders in involving parents in their children's education.

Student Activities Coordinator

Often an administrator is the one to oversee the placement of sponsors and coaches to the groups needing sponsorship. But a teacher might be able to forge a tighter bond between students and organization sponsors by finding the best match. A good match could have a direct influence on student achievement because, as some literature suggests, extracurriculars and achievement are related. In addition to overseeing student groups, this leader might encourage teachers to become sponsors or encourage groups to plan joint events.

Technology Leader

This person does not initially need to be the technology guru of the team. She should have an interest in technology, but she can be trained in this area. The leader coordinates the team's technological needs and serves as a troubleshooter when glitches arise. If your building has a technology committee, she serves as a liaison to that group and assists in making buildingwide decisions concerning technology.

Web Page Curator

This position is best suited for a technophile. Many teachers love technology and crave the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge of it-and will jump at the chance to use it. Tap these feelings and abilities by making someone responsible for creating or monitoring a department or team Web page. This can be a vital resource for parents and students in addition to being a great PR vehicle. This person might create links to other helpful Web sites, post bios of your teachers, write an online newsletter, or work on anything else that would be beneficial to the learning community.

Supplies Coordinator

A supplies coordinator may not be necessary on all grade levels or in all subject areas. For example, a high school history department may be concerned only with books and traditional supplies, but a 7th grade science team might need someone to coordinate the use, inventory, and ordering of lab equipment and supplies. This leader's responsibility is to determine what the team needs and ensure it has the materials for success.

Leadership Qualities

Although the options for leadership are varied, there are a number of qualities that leaders have in common. Many of these characteristics are seen in effective teachers, which might be why people gravitate toward them and why they seek leadership positions. Look for the following traits in the teachers in your department and in your school, and steer your potential teacher leaders toward growth opportunities.

Principled

One of the problems with U.S. politics today is that few representatives are willing to take a stand and fight for what they truly believe in. It's not surprising that people are apathetic and voter turnout is consistently low. People want someone to believe in, someone who will "fight the good fight" and risk the consequences of doing so, and teachers are no different.

It would seem that tenured teachers have little to lose because they have job security, but repercussions can take the form of having their schedules changed, being forced to "float" between rooms, not receiving administrative support, or being unable to advance in their careers. A teacher who weighs these risks and still wants his voice heard over the din is a leader whom people want to work with and to follow. These teachers are student centered and not motivated by stipends or how being a leader makes them feel.

A principled person is also trustworthy. Earning the trust of colleagues is no small feat, and maintaining confidentiality can be difficult sometimes. Those who confide in you expect you to keep information to yourself, and if you do, you can be rewarded in a variety of ways.

Honest and Ethical

By choice or not, people will generally follow their leaders. If a leader is honest and ethical, however, he will be respected, which is more important. An elementary school team leader was asked not to tell one of his teachers that she would be inheriting a very disruptive student midway through the marking period. If he withheld this information and was later asked if he had previous knowledge of it, he would either have to lie, which he was uncomfortable doing, or admit the truth, which he believed would diminish his leadership.

The day he learned of the news, he decided it was best to tell the teacher after school what was going to happen the next day. Consequently, the teacher respected him for being forthright and treating her as a professional. He was able to prevent her emotional outburst, which would have occurred the following day when the disruptive student walked into her classroom-and which would have affected the teacher, her students, the leader, the guidance department, and the administration. And his leadership was strengthened as a result.

Organized

A disorganized teacher leader would be hard-pressed to handle all her responsibilities inside and outside of the classroom while holding a leadership position. Organized, though, does not mean that every paper is tucked neatly away in a manila folder or that a workstation is spotless. Being organized means having some kind of system in place, however foreign it may appear to others, to stay focused and on track, which facilitates being able to handle the myriad responsibilities necessary for teaching and leading.

Perceptive

Nowadays, too few people listen carefully to what others are saying, and too many ignore facial expressions, gestures, and other clues. Being sensitive to people's needs and concerns is crucial. It is essential to be able to discern when your team is overwhelmed, when a meeting ceases to be productive, and when your teachers need assistance or direction but are reluctant to ask for it.

Sensing what people need and when they need it is a key leadership quality. Successful leaders are able to read people. They mentally note people's reactions and remember certain situations, and they are able to connect the dots along the way. They perceive differences between what people say and what they do. They are observant, as they note the school politics, identify potential threats, and adjust accordingly so that their actions are not damaging. Trusting their instincts is another way that these leaders are effective: they know when to go with their gut.

Empathetic and Supportive

People are more inclined to follow someone who understands what they are going through. It is not good enough for a leader to imagine what it is like to have a class of 35 freshmen; she needs to have had such a large group herself. This is why administrators who had only a brief tenure in the classroom, or who never taught, have a tough time leading: they are unable to convince their constituency that they have "been there, done that." A lack of direct experience makes it difficult for them to provide viable and valuable suggestions to teachers, or for teachers to trust and act on recommendations they receive.

An empathetic and supportive leader assists others emotionally, socially, and instructionally, and forges connections with them. Without being judgmental, she finds ways to help people recognize and learn from their mistakes. She is not intent on punishing people but instead on helping them.

Altruistic

Much as a mother feeds her children first when there is not enough to go around, those who put the needs of others ahead of their own have a solid understanding of what true leadership entails. The sacrifice may involve waiting until everyone else receives supplies or taking on an unappealing task. Leaders sacrifice their planning periods, their free time, and sometimes even their personal lives for the benefit of others. A leader understands that the health of the family depends on letting others eat before she does.

Accessible

The concept of having an "open-door policy" has lost almost all its cachet. Some profess it but don't practice it, whereas some preach it but make others feel awkward for taking advantage of it. We obviously should be accessible during contract hours. But because the nature of the job demands that we often take our work home, we should be accessible after hours as well.

An administrator made himself accessible to me by giving me both his home phone number and his cell phone number, and when I called, he never made me feel that I was intruding on his time. He understood that for us to be successful, these kinds of sacrifices were necessary. In turn, all my teachers have my contact information. When a new hire needed to reach me, he was astonished when a colleague gave him my cell phone number, exclaiming, "You mean he doesn't mind if you call him during the weekend?"

Of course, you need to set limits. I know a department chair who would receive phone calls from one of her teachers several times a week simply to talk about his day. This chair was going beyond being accessible; she was unable to set and communicate boundaries.

Resourceful

Obstacles do not slow down a good leader; they are opportunities for him to flex his problem-solving muscles. People are inspired to work with a leader who can circumvent roadblocks, devise creative solutions, and use the network. For example, a resourceful teacher does not accept a shortage of funds as the bottom line; he knows whose pockets to pick or finds people to subsidize the team's needs.

Fair

Being professional means putting aside personal prejudices for the good of the students. A fair leader hears all voices, does not play favorites (although she may have them), and is not self-serving. Treating everyone fairly is more important than treating everyone equally, and a fair leader is an impartial leader. She does not allow friendships or rivalries to impede the group's progress, especially when moving toward improved achievement. She understands that she walks a fine line, expresses that to her teachers, and practices fairness toward all whenever possible.

Accepting

Accepting people for who and what they are shows leadership. Although placing blame may make a leader feel more secure, it is better for the group if he accepts people's flaws and shortcomings and learns how to work with them (or around them). Also, rather than passing the buck, accepting the blame for a problem demonstrates responsibility. Teachers respect and want to work with leaders who are willing to be accountable, a rare quality indeed in our current age of abdication of responsibility.

Vulnerable

Leaders who own up to mistakes or share their errors with their colleagues, with an explanation of what they learned from the experience, are valued. Leaders who admit mistakes show a willingness to grow. They are perceived as human, not as unapproachable academics in an ivory tower or arrogant know-it-alls. Not afraid to admit when they do not know an answer, they are willing to learn and ask others for the answers. And humility can be refreshingly disarming.

Forward-Thinking

Some people have a knack for anticipating what might happen next. Whether it is predicting the outcome of a meeting or a situation or analyzing political and educational trends, the ability to plan for what may be coming down the pike is a talent that not many possess. Successful athletes demonstrate this on a regular basis by just seeming to know what is needed or where they are needed. Successful teacher leaders are no different. Conducting a parametric analysis (where education is, where it has been, and where it is headed) can put a team on the cutting edge. Leaders can save their group time and growing pains by suggesting change and giving choices rather than mandates, which are always less palatable.

Futurists are often risk-takers. The teacher in a previous scenario who had the dilemma of whether or not to inform a colleague about a decision is a risk-taker of sorts. He was not foolhardy; he did not rush into the situation but weighed the risks and the consequences and took action. As General George S. Patton once remarked, taking calculated risks is quite different from being rash. Examples of risks include piloting a new idea or strategy or supporting someone who is willing to do so. Similarly, these people seize the initiative instead of waiting for others to act. They recognize the far-reaching effects of a good idea and get the ball rolling.

Global

Seeing the bigger picture is a skill that facilitates problem solving. A teacher leader is not always able to understand why decisions are made and how they affect the entire organizational structure, but she does comprehend the ramifications on her team. She is able to see beyond her classroom to at least her hallway. She doesn't deal in scraps; she deals in what is best for all students and teachers.

Decisive and Incisive

Leadership demands an action-oriented, decisive person: those leaders who get things done are the most appreciated. They take the initiative and make things happen. Penetrating to the heart of an issue shows a keen and quick mind-and it can save time. In a profession where time is limited and people spend an inordinate amount of time discussing, debating, and deliberating issues, respect belongs to the person who, without making a rushed decision, can consider all angles and cut to the chase.

Intelligent

Intelligence as a key quality may sound obvious, but a leader I know was not respected because he lacked depth in his content knowledge. Once teachers realized this, they ran academic circles around him to hide what was really going on in their classrooms, and students used this to their advantage to help them get what they wanted.

Similarly, teachers resent leaders who simply give an answer because they are expected to have one. Students can sense when adults fake their way through an explanation, but adults can be more perceptive and unforgiving. Even though it seems that anti-intellectualism is rampant in our society, educators value intelligence and crave an intelligent leader.

The Leadership Choice

You already possess a powerful strategy for improving achievement: nurturing teacher leadership. Most people want to feel that they are part of something significant, that what they do matters, and that they are contributing members to a common goal that affects achievement. Teacher leadership meets this need because it creates a greater sense of ownership, buy-in, and community.

Although administrators hold influential positions in guiding a school toward its goals, it is the teacher leader's interpretation, support, and implementation of decisions-his and the administration's-that move an organization forward. He simultaneously deals with a myriad of obstacles and runs interference so that an avalanche of issues does not deluge the main office.

If a teacher leader is effective, he will rarely need to disturb an administrator, and what administrator would not appreciate more time to devote to her responsibilities? In fact, by taking on more responsibility or solving problems creatively, he can build rapport with her. The teacher leader, in turn, will be better supported by his administrator, which will ultimately increase his effectiveness. Moreover, because of high-stakes testing, administrators are spending more time out of the building at workshops, meetings, and training sessions or promoting the school, so the need for teacher leadership has never been more obvious. Identify those teachers in your department who are integral to its success and train them as teacher leaders.

There will be those who rise to the challenge and those who attempt to knock them down. Leadership breeds envy, and we teachers can be very petty people sometimes. What is baffling is that we're not envious of other teacher leaders because of what their positions bring. Most often, no tangible rewards are associated with teacher leadership. Many department chairs and mentors receive some kind of financial compensation, but dedicated leaders do not take on these roles for remuneration (and it usually is nominal in relation to the hours they spend).

Most teachers accept leadership as a reward in itself: they derive a sense of self-worth from having their voices heard, developing vision, or serving their students and colleagues. Desirable as this satisfaction is, it should hardly evoke envy or (at worst) maliciousness. But it can. I'm not here to explain human nature but to remind you that these kinds of feelings and behaviors exist.

To mollify those who are discontented, you or an administrator might be tempted to grant them leadership positions. This tactic might work in some cases. Perhaps putting such people in the spotlight will unleash their latent leadership abilities or force them to step up to the plate. This is not always the case, however, and such a decision can backfire with horrendous consequences. Remember that the business of educating children is not Little League baseball: everyone does not get a chance to swing the bat. A score is kept, and there are winners and losers. To give everyone a chance to play, regardless of ability, is damaging to students and can be even more damaging to the game.

Our student athletes realize this. Students are not selected to start on the varsity team simply because they are seniors. They know that it takes more than a desire and a commitment to win: their abilities determine their roles. To use another analogy, a high-profile legal case is not given to a lawyer simply because it is his turn in the firm to have one. That would not be serving a defendant's interests. Lawyers receive such cases because they earn them. The same should hold true for your teachers. If adolescents and other professionals can understand this concept, you need to believe that your teachers will understand it also. If a teacher who lacks leadership qualities and abilities feels it is unfair that she does not have a leadership position, find another way to make her feel valued.

Buchen, I. H. (2000, May 31). The myth of school leadership. Education Week, 19(38), 1-3.

Burns, J. M. (1978). Leadership. New York: HarperCollins.

Caine, G., & Caine, R. N. (2000). The learning community as a foundation for developing teacher leaders. NASSP Bulletin, 84(616), 7-14.

School Leadership for the 21st Century Initiative. (2001, April). Leadership for student learning: Redefining the teacher as leader. Washington, DC: Institute for Educational Leadership.

Weller, L. D., Jr. (2001). Department heads: The most underutilized leadership position. NASSP Bulletin, 85(625), 73-81.

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Organizational Leadership: Nurturing Leadership in Your School

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by John G. Gabriel For nearly a century, schools have functioned in the autocratic style of the line-staff model: principals are managers and teachers are their employees, often voiceless and powerless to influence their superiors' quest to improve student achievement.

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Driving Change

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February 2015 | Volume 72 | Number 5
Improving Schools: What Works?

Tony Frontier and Jim Rickabaugh

Why is the change necessary?

How much change needs to occur?

Where should the change occur?

Who will participate in the change process?

Aligning the answers to these four questions in a manner that improves student learning is surprisingly difficult. It's also among the most important work that a school leader must do.

Unpacking the Questions

The first question, Why are we doing this? is powerful. When people share an understanding of why they're engaging in certain actions for change, they can align their efforts toward the crucial goals. The amount of effort people exert-and where they direct that effort-looks different when their goal is to comply with an external mandate than when their goal is to change a key process to improve student learning. Being clear about why is essential; the answer becomes the premise for the other three questions.

How much change is needed? asks how much effort people need to invest to move things forward. We've identified three magnitudes of change: maintaining the status quo (meaning existing beliefs and processes are carried forward); transactional change (meaning incentives and requirements drive changes in processes); and transformational change (meaning individuals develop new beliefs, insights, and skills that result in entirely different conceptions of themselves).

Where should the change occur? asks where we should invest efforts to raise student achievement. In education, we've found that virtually every initiative seeks to address one of five areas of leverage: structure (such as schedules and logistics); sample (such as grade configurations and student grouping practices); standards (expectations for quality); strategies (teachers' instructional strategies and students' learning strategies); and conceptions of self (what students believe about themselves as learners and what educators believe about teaching). By understanding the advantages and disadvantages associated with these areas of leverage, educators can better prioritize their efforts.

Who will participate in the change process? seems to be the easiest question to answer, but it may be the most elusive. If educators engage in a significant change process but students don't notice any difference in their opportunity to learn, have we implemented meaningful change?

The Traffic Safety Analogy

Allow us to use an analogy to clarify the challenges and opportunities associated with aligning why, how much, where, and who. Suppose that rather than serving your community as an educator, you're its director of traffic safety. You and your crew work hard every day to ensure and improve safety. What might happen if you don't thoughtfully consider these questions?

Maintaining the Status Quo: Ensuring That Signs Are Visible

Some change efforts simply maintain the status quo; they leave structures, standards, and strategies in place, but deploy them in a slightly different context. With this approach, Why change? isn't really about improvement, but about reducing any variance in existing practice. Maintaining the status quo can include rolling over dates to establish the next school year's calendar, providing orientation to new teachers, or teaching a lesson to a new group of students using the same strategies as in the past.

To maintain the status quo as director of traffic safety, you'd ensure that existing stop signs were properly installed and visible at every intersection. Your crew would diligently trim tree branches that obscure stop signs, apply new reflective paint, or replace old poles. If this maintenance didn't occur, the results would be catastrophic-confusion at intersections and accidents. But as long as your crew maintains the intersections and assures proper signage, drivers will take this work for granted. They'll use a familiar set of strategies: Stop, look in both directions, and go.

Ensuring that existing structures are preserved and practices are consistent is an essential management task. Without it, chaos would ensue. However, no matter how much effort is put forth to maintain the status quo, these efforts are not about improvement. In schools, they don't improve standards or strategies. To the contrary, they ensure that those who are already served by the system can continue to use the same strategies to obtain the same results.

Transactional Change: Installing New Signs

Other reforms lead to transactional change. Here, Why change? is driven by compliance. Organizations create new incentives, adopt new structures, or modify processes so individuals can efficiently use existing strategies to yield different results. In education, transactional changes could include deploying a new grading scale, modifying the schedule to increase student contact time, or adopting a template to align existing curriculum to new standards.

When examining how transactional change relates to school improvement efforts, it's crucial to understand who needs to change for the initiative to be implemented. Consider this traffic safety scenario.

A government agency creates new safety standards, mandates you to follow them, and deploys safety score measures and incentives to monitor results. Key components include taller, larger stop signs. Some stop signs will require solar panels to power a flashing red light.

Eager to comply, your community adopts these standards. You work with your purchasing manager to acquire dozens of new poles, signs, and panels. Your crew even engages in days of professional development to learn how to install the complex solar panels. The signs require a new type of cement to ensure stability. Your crew is working more hours than ever, and although some crew members are thriving, others express frustration and talk of the good old days when they could get their jobs done by trimming branches or applying fresh paint.

A year later, you receive your new traffic safety scores. You're shocked to see there have been no improvements. To understand how your crew could work so hard, yet your safety scores stay the same, you hold a focus group with 12 citizens. Most of the drivers barely noticed the new, larger signs; only a few noticed the blinking lights. They report using the same strategies they had in the past; stop, look, and go.

You leave the focus group deflated. Despite the efforts of your crew, the community seems mired in the status quo. Driving the well-worn path between city hall and your house, you approach a familiar intersection and glance in both directions. As usual, there's no traffic. You slow down-but don't stop-and roll past one of the new stop signs. Then it hits you; for the drivers, nothing has changed.

The irony of transactional change is that our best efforts to adjust and comply can still maintain the status quo for those we serve. Whether installing new stop signs or responding to education mandates, leaders need to guide change to ensure compliance. However, we can't assume that our efforts-no matter how significant-will change students' beliefs or help them adopt new learning strategies.

For example, to comply with new evaluation requirements, teachers are often asked to identify the standards they're addressing in each lesson by posting them in their classroom. The intent is to ensure that the new standards aren't placed on a shelf and forgotten. The assumption is that if teachers post the standards, students are more likely to meet them.

But how will complying with this transactional requirement yield different results if lessons are taught no differently than in the past? If posting of the standard isn't accompanied by new strategies that help students establish learning goals, self-assess, and monitor their progress, then for students, nothing will change.

Transformational Change

Transformational change occurs when individuals are empowered to engage in work differently because new beliefs about their capacity support the development of new skills. Such change for a teacher may occur when he realizes the value of providing students with meaningful feedback-as opposed to just grades-after teaching students to use standards to monitor their own progress toward learning goals. A student may realize such a change when she pursues new leadership opportunities after developing self-confidence and new skills in a public-speaking class.

When transformation occurs, the why runs deeper than compliance. The drive to do the same work only better is replaced with the understanding that the work itself must change. As a result, the role of the learner must change as well.

Transformation for Some: From Signs to Lights

Suppose you decide to identify the intersections where the most accidents occur so you can take action to improve your safety metrics. After analyzing reams of data, you identify six intersections and decide to install stoplights. The stoplights require significant restructuring; intersections must be widened, electricity rerouted, and trees removed. Politics ensue, but eventually the plan gets approved. You restructure your department, establishing an electronics team and a heavy equipment team. The teams go through extensive training and emerge with new skill sets.

After months of effort, the new lights are installed. For your crew, this experience has been transformational; they've developed new skills and view their capacity and roles differently.

In the first few months, accident rates decline moderately. But the accidents that do occur are more serious because people drive faster through the new, larger intersections. At your request, a new ordinance is passed that doubles fines for speeding. Ironically, increased police presence at these intersections results in the documentation of more infractions than before, lowering your safety score.

After a few months, drivers in your community fall into familiar routines. Rather than stopping and looking-as they'd done in the past-they aren't even attuned to the traffic. If the light's green, drive; if it's red, stop, wait, and then go. At times, drivers have to sit at a red light for 30 seconds although there are no other cars near the intersection.

You've restructured your department. Your streetscape looks entirely different. Professional development has transformed the capacity of your staff. However, for drivers, the new stoplights have merely resulted in transactional change. Drivers deploy existing skills through slightly different processes, under the threat of new consequences.

A transformed organization may only yield transactional change among those it serves. Switching to block schedules, smaller schools, or one-to-one technology requires dramatic restructuring and hours of professional development. But who develops new strategies to participate in such changes? Too often, students-who should benefit most from the change-engage in different processes, but they have the same learning experiences as in the past.

Imagine that you invest significant time, effort, and energy in purchasing and training teachers to use new technology, but teachers deploy the technology in a manner that yields the same curriculum, instruction, and assessment as before. Or you invest time developing supervisors' understanding and skills associated with a new teacher evaluation framework, but the framework is used in a way that teachers merely view as more visits, different forms, and new deadlines.

The end results in these scenarios are counterintuitive. The organization has been restructured. The individuals implementing the change are transformed. But the individuals using the system simply experience a transactional shift. They play the same role and use the same strategies as in the past.

Transformational Change for All: Roundabouts

As traffic safety director, frustrated by the lack of change in driver behavior, you take a step back and consider the scenario from the drivers' perspective. While you've focused on safety, drivers care about getting through each intersection quickly. Instead of asking, How can I get drivers to stop? You ask, How can I help drivers get to their destination quickly and safely?

You read about a strategy that eliminates intersections: roundabouts. In communities using roundabouts, the rate of serious accidents decreases by 90 percent, whereas the number of vehicles passing through each intersection per hour increases. You're concerned that you may engage in another restructuring effort that yields no meaningful change. So you contact a colleague in a nearby community who's an advocate for roundabouts. You share your concern about the ability of drivers in your community to change: Given their ambivalence in the past, will they develop a different set of strategies?

"I was concerned about that, too," replies your colleague. "Then I realized that I'd never really asked drivers to change. I was so busy training my crew and restructuring that I assumed drivers would change as well. But we can't expect the outcomes to be different than in the past unless we empower drivers to see their role differently and develop new behaviors."

A roundabout differs from previous restructuring efforts because it requires-and supports-use of different driving strategies. The new structure is based on a different set of assumptions (there is no intersection). It requires new strategies (the center circle requires drivers to make an active response). It's simpler (rather than looking both ways, drivers need only look to the left) and yields different processes (rather than stopping when no traffic is approaching, drivers are free to proceed through). Finally, it empowers each driver as the active agent in the process.

Real Change

What might a school restructuring effort that empowers students as the most critical component in the learning process look like? Implementation of new standards would begin with the premise that students should be taught to be the primary users of the standards. Teaching students to establish their own learning goals and monitor their own progress through formative assessments would become part of the curriculum. Students would be taught how to design activities that guide their own progress toward each standard. A shared language of quality among teachers and students would be seen as essential. As students learned skills and strategies that empower them to be active agents in the learning process, their engagement, commitment, and learning would grow.

Viewing change through the eyes of those who are intended to benefit from that change clarifies the areas of leverage most likely to improve results. All learning, and all change, is personal. Meaningful change occurs when students shift their conceptions of themselves because they've been empowered to use new strategies that guide them toward new standards. This can occur independently of the structural changes typically associated with reforming schools.

Structural changes are enticing because they're tangible (We had a large high school; now we have four small high schools). Yet too often, these changes are the equivalent of taller stop signs. The people who control the system engage in significant change efforts, but those who use it utilize the same beliefs and skills they applied in the past. Restructuring schools is hard work-but not always the right work.

Aligning the reason for change, the magnitude of change, the area of leverage where the change should occur, and the people who participate in that change is challenging. But it's the only way we know of to ensure that the changes we make will support the outcomes we seek.

Endnotes

Frontier, T., & Rickabaugh, J. (2014). Five levers to improve learning: How to prioritize for powerful results in your school. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Marzano, R. J.,Waters, T., & McNulty, B. A. (2005). School leadership that works: From research to results. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Tony Frontier is an ASCD faculty member and an assistant professor at Cardinal Stritch University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Jim Rickabaugh is director of The Institute@CESA#1 in Pewaukee, Wisconsin. They are coauthors of Five Levers to Improve Learning: How to Prioritize for Powerful Results in Your School (ASCD, 2014).

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February 2015 | Volume 72 | Number 5 Improving Schools: What Works? Tony Frontier and Jim Rickabaugh Why is the change necessary? How much change needs to occur? Where should the change occur? Who will participate in the change process? Aligning the answers to these four questions in a manner that improves student learning is surprisingly difficult.

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The Change Leader

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Effective school leaders are key to large-scale, sustainable education reform. For some time, educators have believed that principals must be instructional leaders if they are to be the effective leaders needed for sustained innovation. Newmann, King, and Youngs (2000), for example, found that school capacity is the crucial variable affecting instructional quality and corresponding student achievement. And at the heart of school capacity are principals focused on the development of teachers' knowledge and skills, professional community, program coherence, and technical resources.

Fink and Resnick (2001) examined school districts' efforts to develop principals into instructional leaders who could achieve a large-scale turnaround in literacy and numeracy. They described some core strategies for developing the role of the principal as instructional leader, including five mutually reinforcing sets of strategic activities: nested learning communities, principal institutes, leadership for instruction, peer learning, and individual coaching.

Characterizing instructional leadership as the principal's central role has been a valuable first step in increasing student learning, but it does not go far enough. Literacy and mathematics improvements are only the beginning. To ensure deeper learning-to encourage problem solving and thinking skills and to develop and nurture highly motivated and engaged learners, for example-requires mobilizing the energy and capacities of teachers. In turn, to mobilize teachers, we must improve teachers' working conditions and morale. Thus, we need leaders who can create a fundamental transformation in the learning cultures of schools and of the teaching profession itself. The role of the principal as instructional leader is too narrow a concept to carry the weight of the kinds of reforms that will create the schools that we need for the future.

Principals Who Lead Cultural Change

Leaders have a deeper and more lasting influence on organizations and provide more comprehensive leadership if their focus extends beyond maintaining high standards. Collins (2001) examined 11 businesses with a minimum of 15 years of sustained economic performance each. The study identified the effective leader, who "catalyzes commitment to a compelling vision and higher performance standards," as well as the executive leader, who goes beyond performance standards and "builds enduring greatness" (p. 20). The best examples of school system success represent accomplishments at the effective level-high performance standards with corresponding results. These accomplishments may be impressive, but they do not represent the kinds of deep, lasting reforms implemented by executive leaders, who establish the conditions for "enduring greatness."

When the goal is sustainable change in a knowledge society, business and education leaders increasingly have more in common. Like the business leader, the principal of the future-the Cultural Change Principal-must be attuned to the big picture, a sophisticated conceptual thinker who transforms the organization through people and teams (Fullan, 2001). Cultural Change Principals display palpable energy, enthusiasm, and hope. In addition, five essential components characterize leaders in the knowledge society: moral purpose, an understanding of the change process, the ability to improve relationships, knowledge creation and sharing, and coherence making.

Moral Purpose

Moral purpose is social responsibility to others and the environment. School leaders with moral purpose seek to make a difference in the lives of students. They are concerned about closing the gap between high-performing and lower-performing schools and raising the achievement of-and closing the gap between-high-performing and lower-performing students. They act with the intention of making a positive difference in their own schools as well as improving the environment in other district schools.

Let me be clear: If the goal is systemic improvement-to improve all schools in the district-then principals should be nearly as concerned about the success of other schools in the district as they are about their own school. Sustained improvement of schools is not possible unless the whole system is moving forward.

Student learning is paramount to the Cultural Change Principal. This principal involves teachers in explicitly monitoring student learning. But the Cultural Change Principal is also concerned with the bigger picture and continually asks, How well are other schools in the district doing? What is the role of public schools in a democracy? Are we reducing the gap between high-performing and lower-performing students in this school? district? state? nation? The Cultural Change Principal treats students, teachers, parents, and others in the school well. Such a principal also works to develop other leaders in the school to prepare the school to sustain and even advance reform after he or she departs. In short, the Cultural Change Principal displays explicit, deep, comprehensive moral purpose.

Understanding Change

The goal is not to innovate the most. Innovating selectively with coherence is better.

Having the best ideas is not enough. Leaders help others assess and find collective meaning and commitment to new ways.

Appreciate the implementation dip. Leaders can't avoid the inevitable early difficulties of trying something new. They should know, for example, that no matter how much they plan for the change, the first six months or so of implementation will be bumpy.

Redefine resistance. Successful leaders don't mind when naysayers rock the boat. In fact, doubters sometimes have important points. Leaders look for ways to address those concerns.

Reculturing is the name of the game. Much change is structural and superficial. Transforming culture-changing what people in the organization value and how they work together to accomplish it-leads to deep, lasting change.

Never a checklist, always complexity. There is no step-by-step shortcut to transformation; it involves the hard, day-to-day work of reculturing.

The Cultural Change Principal knows the difference between being an expert in a given content innovation and being an expert in managing the process of change. This principal does not make the mistake of assuming that the best ideas will carry the day. Instead, the Cultural Change Principal provides opportunities for people to visit sites that are using new ideas, invites questions and even dissent, and expects the change process to proceed in fits and starts during the first few months of implementation. Nevertheless, such a principal forges ahead and expects progress within a year because he or she has nurtured the conditions that yield results sooner rather than later.

Improving Relationships

The single factor common to successful change is that relationships improve. If relationships improve, schools get better. If relationships remain the same or get worse, ground is lost. Thus, leaders build relationships with diverse people and groups-especially with people who think differently. In complex times, emotional intelligence is a must. Emotionally intelligent leaders are able to build relationships because they are aware of their own emotional makeup and are sensitive and inspiring to others (Goleman, Boyatzis, &amp; McKee, 2002).

The Cultural Change Principal knows that building relationships and teams is the most difficult skill for both business and education leaders (Hay Management Consultants, 2000). This leader works hard to develop the full range of emotional intelligence domains, especially self-management of emotions and empathy toward others (Goleman et al., 2002). Focusing on relationships isn't just a matter of boosting achievement scores for next year, but rather a means of laying the foundation for year two and beyond. The Cultural Change Principal's efforts to motivate and energize disaffected teachers and forge relationships among otherwise disconnected teachers can have a profound effect on the overall climate of the organization. Well-established relationships are the resource that keeps on giving.

Knowledge Creation and Sharing

Creating and sharing knowledge is central to effective leadership. Information, of which we have a glut, only becomes knowledge through a social process. For this reason, relationships and professional learning communities are essential. Organizations must foster knowledge giving as well as knowledge seeking. We endorse continual learning when we say that individuals should constantly add to their knowledge base-but there will be little to add if people are not sharing. A norm of sharing one's knowledge with others is the key to continual growth for all.

The Cultural Change Principal appreciates that teaching is both an intellectual and a moral profession. This principal constantly reminds teachers that they are engaged in practicing, studying, and refining the craft of teaching. The Cultural Change Principal is the lead learner in the school and models lifelong learning by sharing what he or she has read lately, engaging in and encouraging action research, and implementing inquiry groups among the staff. Teachers who work with the Cultural Change Principal know that they are engaged in scientific discovery and the refinement of the teaching knowledge base. Knowledge creation and sharing fuels moral purpose in schools led by Cultural Change Principals.

Coherence Making

Because complex societies inherently generate overload and fragmentation, effective leaders must be coherence-makers (Fullan, 1999, 2001). The other characteristics of the change leader-moral purpose, an understanding of the change process, the ability to build relationships, and the creation and sharing of knowledge-help forge coherence through the checks and balances embedded in their interaction. Leaders with deep moral purpose provide guidance, but they can also have blinders if their ideas are not challenged through the dynamics of change, the give-and-take of relationships, and the ideas generated by new knowledge. Coherence is an essential component of complexity and yet can never be completely achieved.

Principals not attuned to leading in a culture of change make the mistake of seeking external innovations and taking on too many projects. Cultural Change Principals, by contrast, concentrate on student learning as the central focus of reform and keep an eye out for external ideas that further the thinking and vision of the school. They realize that overload and fragmentation are natural tendencies of complex systems. They appreciate the creative potential of diverse ideas, but they strive to focus energy and achieve greater alignment. They also look to the future and strive to create a culture that has the capacity not to settle for the solution of the day. Cultural Change Principals value the tensions inherent in addressing hard-to-solve problems because that is where the greatest accomplishments lie.

Leadership and Sustainability

To develop and support Cultural Change Principals, we must turn our attention to sustainability-the likelihood that the overall system can regenerate itself toward improvement. Key components of sustainability are developing the social environment, learning in context, cultivating leaders at many levels (and ensuring leadership succession), and enhancing the teaching profession.

Developing the Social Environment

Those concerned about the depletion of resources in the physical environment were the first to discuss the issue of sustainability. Our concern is the depletion of resources in the social and moral environment (Hargreaves, in press). In the social and moral environment of the school, we need the resources to close the achievement gap between high and low performers, to develop all schools in the system, and to connect schools to the strength of democracy in society. Further, if school leaders do not concern themselves with the development of the social and moral environment of the entire district (in addition to the development of the environment within their own school), then not only will the school system deteriorate, but eventually their own school will also fail.

Learning in Context

Recruiting top-performing principals and rewarding good principal performance are both important. Providing strong principal training is useful, too. But as Elmore (2000) points out,What's missing in this view [of focusing on talented individuals] is any recognition that improvement is more a function of learning to do the right thing in the setting where you work [my emphasis]. (p. 25)

Learning at work-learning in context-occurs, for example, when principals are members of a district's intervisitation study team for which they examine real problems-and the solutions they have devised-in their own systems. Learning out of context takes place when principals go to a workshop or conference. Such learning can be valuable for further development, but it is not the kind of applied learning that really makes a difference.

Learning in context has the greatest potential payoff because it is more specific, situational, and social (it develops shared and collective knowledge and commitments). This kind of learning is designed to improve the organization and its social and moral context. Learning in context also establishes conditions conducive to continual development, including opportunities to learn from others on the job, the daily fostering of current and future leaders, the selective retention of good ideas and best practices, and the explicit monitoring of performance.

Cultivating Leaders at Many Levels

An organization cannot flourish-at least, not for long-on the actions of the top leader alone. Schools and districts need many leaders at many levels. Learning in context helps produce such leaders. Further, for leaders to be able to deal with complex problems, they need many years of experience and professional development on the job. To a certain extent, a school leader's effectiveness in creating a culture of sustained change will be determined by the leaders he or she leaves behind.

Also crucial to sustained improvement is the effective succession of leaders. Leadership succession is more likely if there are many leaders at many levels. Organizations must set their sights on continual improvement at all levels, and for that they must nurture, cultivate, and appoint successive leaders who are moving in a sustained direction.

The good news for most of us is that charismatic leaders are actually a liability for sustained improvement. Collins (2001) compared 11 companies with long-term, positive financial performance profiles (a minimum of 15 consecutive years) with other companies that made short-term shifts from good to great, but failed to sustain their gains. Collins suggests that leaders who build enduring greatness are not high-profile, flashy performers but rather "individuals who blend extreme personal humility with intense professional will" (p. 21). Sustainability depends on many leaders-thus, the qualities of leadership must be attainable by many, not just a few.

Enhancing the Teaching Profession

We will not have a large pool of quality principals until we have a large pool of quality teachers because quality teachers form the ranks of the quality principal pipeline. Individualistic strategies-signing bonuses, pay hikes-will not work to boost the ranks of quality teachers; the conditions of teacher work must be conducive to continual development and proud accomplishment. And this is certainly not the case now.

In 2001, PriceWaterhouseCoopers published the results of a teacher workload study they had conducted in England and Wales. The researchers concluded that if the government is to transform the teaching force,An essential strand will be to reduce teacher workload, foster increased teacher ownership, and create the capacity to manage change in a sustainable way that can lay the foundation for improved school and pupil performance in the future. (p. 2)

Principal-leaders should work to transform teachers' working conditions. From the standpoint of sustainability, the principalship itself benefits from these improved conditions: We will only get quality principals when we have quality teachers.

The role of the principal as instructional leader has taken us only so far in the quest for continual school improvement. We now must raise our sights and focus on principals as leaders in a culture of change. School improvement depends on principals who can foster the conditions necessary for sustained education reform in a complex, rapidly changing society. Never has the time been riper for change leaders than right now.

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Effective school leaders are key to large-scale, sustainable education reform. For some time, educators have believed that principals must be instructional leaders if they are to be the effective leaders needed for sustained innovation. Newmann, King, and Youngs (2000), for example, found that school capacity is the crucial variable affecting instructional quality and corresponding student achievement.

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Padlet #2 Research Says / Communicate in the Ways That Count

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Padlet #2 Research Says / Communicate in the Ways That Count

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April 2015 | Volume 72 | Number 7
Communications Skills for Leaders Pages 82-83

Bryan Goodwin and Heather Hein

Tonight, we are the greatest hockey team in the world. You were born to be hockey players. Every one of you. And you were meant to be here tonight. This is your time!" With these words, Coach Herb Brooks-as portrayed in the film Miracle -inspired an unproven U.S. ice hockey team to pull off one of the greatest upsets in sports history, beating the Soviet team in the 1980 Olympics.

For many of us, stirring speeches like this one seem synonymous with leadership. Films, sports, and history are replete with examples of leaders rallying followers to dig deep and overcome insurmountable odds. Such speeches make for good drama. But research suggests that effective leadership requires a quieter, more subtle form of communication-namely, dozens of small, everyday interactions driven less by rhetorical talent than by keen emotional intelligence.

An Essential Leadership Trait

For decades, researchers have explored ways that noncognitive skills contribute to success. In a seminal study, Salovey and Mayer (1990) observed wide variations in individuals' ability to detect others' emotions, understand their own emotions, and use this information to guide their interactions with others. They labeled this ability emotional intelligence.

A few years later, Daniel Goleman (1995), a science journalist with the New York Times, popularized a four-part model of emotional intelligence that included self-awareness; self-management; social awareness (or empathy); and relationship management. In subsequent work (1998/2004), Goleman highlighted a strong link between emotional intelligence and leadership ability. He noted,

Emotional intelligence is the sine qua non of leadership. Without it, a person can have the best training in the world, an incisive, analytical mind, and an endless supply of smart ideas, but he still won't make a great leader.

According to Goleman, emotional intelligence enables leaders to keep emotions in check, to think before acting, to demonstrate passion for their work, to pursue goals with energy and persistence, and-most relevant to communication-to persuade others by finding common ground and building rapport.

Emotional Intelligence and School Leadership

Following in the footsteps of Goleman and other business researchers, a growing number of studies have documented a strong link between school principals' emotional intelligence and their schools' performance (Labby, Lunenburg, & Slate, 2012). In 2005, Stone, Parker, and Wood examined a sample of 464 principals and vice principals and found that those whom teachers rated as having "above-average" leadership abilities also scored higher overall on an emotional intelligence survey. In particular, the most effective principals demonstrated high levels of self-awareness; self-actualization (the ability to engage in self-improvement); empathy; interpersonal relationship building; flexibility; problem solving; and impulse control. A more recent study of 48 school administrators in three southeastern states (Maudling, Peters, Roberts, Leonard, & Sparkman, 2012) found that emotional intelligence accounted for nearly 38 percent of the perceived variance in leadership abilities.

Hanlin (2014) examined the extent to which the emotional intelligence of 66 high school principals predicted their ability to fulfill 21 responsibilities of effective leaders that had been identified in a McREL meta-analysis (Waters, Marzano, & McNulty, 2003). Her study found a strong positive correlation ( r = 0.74) between emotional intelligence (in particular, the domains of self-monitoring and relationship building) and a number of key leadership responsibilities. Notably, these included many communication-related behaviors, such as keeping goals at the forefront of everyone's attention, conveying strong convictions, regularly discussing best practices with staff, reading undercurrents in the school, advocating for the school with external stakeholders, being accessible to teachers, and keeping the lines of dialogue open.

A Tale of Two Principals

A case study of two neighboring schools in South Africa, one high-performing and the other low-performing, offers a revealing glimpse of how school leaders' emotional intelligence affects their schools (Bipath, 2008). The principal in the low-performing school was anxious and insecure, with little control of his emotions; he was mired in ongoing adversarial relationships with his teachers. He also lacked goal-directedness and didn't take responsibility for his students' learning or well-being, an attitude that was mirrored throughout his school, where teachers and students arrived late and left early and no one seemed to notice or bothered to repair a gaping hole in the perimeter fence that students regularly used to leave the grounds without permission.

In contrast, the leader in the high-performing school maintained a calm demeanor; connected well with teachers and parents (for example, arranging school meetings on Sundays after church services, when parents were most likely to be available); and maintained the school's steadfast focus on its common vision. He also sent a strong message to everyone about his commitment to the school and students, arriving at 6:00 a.m. and leaving at 11:00 p.m. and driving past the school "at all odd hours" to make sure everything was OK. "People here think that I am mad," he told the researcher. "But I do this for the sake of learners in my school" (Bipath, 2008, p. 60).

Implications for Communication

The research on emotional intelligence suggests that effective leadership is not a dramatic, one-time event, but rather an everyday affair that requires the "ability to communicate, listen intently, and maintain an empathetic disposition that builds trust and understanding" (Maudling et al., 2012, p. 25). A moving speech or a well-penned newsletter article is all well and good-but to influence school performance, it must be backed up with effective, ongoing relationship building and communication.

References

Bipath, K. (2008). The emotional intelligence of the principal is essential in the leadership of a functional school. The International Journal of Learning, 15(10), 57-64.

Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam.

Goleman, D. (1998/2004). What makes a leader? Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2004/01/what-makes-a-leader

Hanlin, D. C. (2014). The relationship between emotional intelligence and research-based leadership practices of high school principals. (Unpublished dissertation). College Park: University of Maryland.

Labby, S., Lunenburg, F. C., & Slate, J. R. (2012). Emotional intelligence and academic success: A conceptual analysis for educational leaders. International Journal of Educational Leadership Preparation, 7(1).

Maudling, W. S., Peters, G. B., Roberts, J., Leonard, E., & Sparkman, L. (2012). Emotional intelligence and resilience as predictors of leadership in school administrators. Journal of Leadership Studies, 5(4), 20-29.

Salovey, P., & Mayer, J. D. (1990). Emotional intelligence. Imagination, Cognition, and Personality, 9, 185-211.

Stone, H., Parker, J. D., & Wood, L. M. (2005). Report on the Ontario Principals-Council leadership study. Retrieved from the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations at www.eiconsortium.org/pdf/opc_leadership_study_final_report.pdf

Waters, J. T., Marzano, R. J., & McNulty, B. A. (2003). Balanced leadership: What 30 years of research tells us about the effect of leadership on student achievement. Aurora, CO: McREL.

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Communicate in the Ways That Count - Educational Leadership

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April 2015 | Volume 72 | Number 7 Communications Skills for Leaders Pages 82-83 Bryan Goodwin and Heather Hein Tonight, we are the greatest hockey team in the world. You were born to be hockey players. Every one of you. And you were meant to be here tonight. This is your time!"

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Padlet #1 Theories of Leadership Response-Jill Daniel

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Padlet #1 Theories of Leadership Response-Jill Daniel

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This article really made the definition of situational leadership very clear. It was very interesting to read how when Situational Leadership is stripped down to the basics it really just has to do with task behavior, relationship behavior and maturity. When reading about Situational Leadership in School Leadership that Works (Marzano, Waters, & McNulty, 2005) I did not find this theory of leadership to apply to my philosophy of instructional supervision at all. However, once reading this article I do agree with several aspects of it. When I taught public school I worked really hard to work with each child on their own personal level. In my mind it was the only way to truly be the best teacher possible. I would assess the students and work with them in small groups and individually based on what they did and did not know.  This was the only way to make sure each child was learning something daily and was not bored.  It makes perfect sense to use this same line of thought for instructional supervision.  You can not supervise everyone off of a single model but rather where they need the most supervision.

My only concern from the article is that it was printed in February of 1976. Has the definition of Situational Leadership changed since this was posted? If I use this as an example will I not be up to date in my terminology? I plan on doing more research to find out the answers to these questions and will let you know what I discover. Thank you for providing such an interesting article.

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Padlet #1- Theories of Leadership Response (Jasmyn Smith)

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Padlet #1- Theories of Leadership Response (Jasmyn Smith)

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I enjoyed reading this article because it did not just hit on one leadership aspect or only cover one type of leader scenario. In fact, as I was reading I realized that this article could be geared towards students as well. The article mentioned maturity vs. leadership qualities. Often times in the classroom, group projects can be challenging when no one steps up to be the leader. This could be because students often lack the maturity levels needed to take control of the situation. The article stated, "A leader must develop the maturity of followers slowly on each task that they perform, using less task behavior and more relationship behavior as they mature and become more willing and able to take responsibility" (Gates, Blanchard, Hersey, 1976). This could be applied to a range of scenarios, including students vs. student relationships, teacher vs. student relationships, teacher vs. teacher relationships, or administration vs. teacher relationships.

The article also provides an example of how leadership is important in the classroom when it comes to teaching styles. This year I taught 85 students who were all various types of learners. Each class period I would alter my teaching style to fit the needs of my kids. Second period and fourth period were hands-on learners who thrived when they were able to get up and move around the room, i.e. stations. Third and Fifth periods were students who preferred the hands-off method. I could give them instructions and they would be efficiently working for the rest of the class period. First and seventh period required lessons to be spread out over two days. For these students to retain information, they needed repetition.

Before reading this article I hadn't thought of adjusting teaching styles as a leadership quality. I enjoyed reading the provided example of the student who struggled with English because he was in an upper level class where the teacher assumed he was a hands-off learner. Unfortunately situations like this occur often because we assume one student is similar to the rest. Understanding the way your students retain information and learn are key to creating a successful classroom.