How high poverty districts improve: a national study uncovers the policies and practices of high-poverty districts that have improved achievement across multiple schools

Leadership, Sept-Oct, 2003 by Wendy Togneri, Stephen E. Anderson

A teacher in Kent County explained how data guided work: "We looked at our CTBS scores and our MSPAP scores, and our reading scores were flat. We needed a way to raise them. So the majority of everything that we are going to focus on this year is reading. We looked into research. Just last week, we visited a school in Delaware. They had a reading incentive program that was very successful for them. We went over and took a look at their practices and decided we should spend money on this approach."

Redefining roles and redistributing the leaders

Redefining leadership roles and redistributing leadership was a vital strategy that served multiple purposes across the districts. In fact, in Providence and Chula Vista it was their primary theory of change--improve the skills of school leaders and increase the level of teacher leadership.

This extension of leadership required a rethinking of the functions of various stakeholders. School boards in most of the districts, for instance, worked to become policy focused. More specifically, the boards held their superintendents and staff accountable for progress but did not engage in the daily administration of schools.

An Aldine board member explained: "I am not an administrator; that is not my job. I am not a professional educator ... [The superintendent and her staff] are the professionals, and we say to them, 'These are the results we want to see; you are in charge of how to do it."

By the same token, the central offices in these districts took on new roles. In fact, it could be argued that they took tip responsibilities that are often unperformed within districts, in many cases, leaders determined that there were certain roles that central offices were uniquely positioned to play. Leaders reasoned, if the central office did not take the lead, the role would not be performed. Such roles included creating a districtwide curriculum, building a high quality principal corps, and devising systemwide supports for new teachers.

As central offices undertook these new responsibilities, they paid considerable attention to collaboration with other stakeholders. In particular, they sought to augment instructional leadership capacity by reconceptualizing the leadership roles of principals and teachers.

Most of the districts actively embraced research that promoted the importance of shifting the role of principals from building manager--overseer of transportation, cafeteria and other operations--to one of instructional leader. Yet most of the superintendents found early in their tenures that their principals operated primarily under the building manager model. To shift principal roles and work, the districts stepped up their efforts to provide principals with clear expectations and training to become instructional leaders.

In Providence, for example, central office leaders established written expectations of principal work, adopting the Principles of Learning, created by the University of Pittsburgh's Institute for Learning. Chula Vista engaged in a multi-year collaborative effort to establish performance expectations.