The
Principals Critical Role in Leading Instruction
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Bus time, lunch time, passing time-there are many times of the day when principals find themselves conducting crowd control. At other times a principal may be handling the many “crises du jour” or completing reports. Is this truly how we want our school leaders to spend the majority of their time each day? To be sure, getting to know students is important, and some administration is part of the job. But if a district’s focus is where it should be -on assuring that each student is learning and achieving in each classroom- school boards must work with district administration to help every principal become an instructional leader.
Principals play a critical role in creating great schools and helping students succeed. Principals set the vision, guide instruction, build the budget, unite the team and lead the drive for results. Their jobs are an extraordinary mix of small details and big ideas, of crisis management and long-range planning. It is easy to get lost in the myriad of responsibilities and become simply a building manager, rather than an educational leader focused on learning.
“But I thought it was the teachers who mattered most when it comes to learning,” you say. And it is true - teachers make the single most important contribution to a student’s academic success. There are thousands of great teachers out there who inspire learning in their students. But classroom by classroom improvement is incremental, and often is not aligned with other grades. Our goal should be great schools, not just individual classrooms. A growing body of research shows us that to have a high-performing school, you must have a high-performing principal. A high-performing principal is focused on the alignment and quality of instruction across the school and district. In other words, a high-performing principal is an instructional leader.
What is an
‘instructional leader’?
At its core, leadership in K-12 education “is the guidance and direction of instructional improvement.” A principal who is an effective instructional leader creates a vision of instruction and learning that inspires the faculty - in part because they collaborated in developing the vision. An instructional leader knows how to analyze student performance data and determine which areas of the curriculum need attention. Such a principal recognizes good classroom instruction in all core subjects (whether or not he or she is licensed in the content) and can assess the quality of instructional materials. The principal regularly coaches staff with a focus on student learning, rather than only occasionally “observing teaching” for purposes of an annual evaluation of the teacher. Finally, the principal regularly evaluates the entire instructional system curriculum, instruction, standards, assessments, and safety nets to assure that it is aligned with the school’s mission.
An instructional leader visits classrooms regularly, to the point that the students no longer stop and stare at the visitor. An instructional leader motivates faculty to learn from each other, and creates the time to make that happen. Instructional leaders work with faculty to find the extra time and support a struggling student’s needs, whether it is just another five minutes on one topic, after-school sessions or doubling up on math classes.
Principals who are high-performing instructional leaders create schools where it doesn’t matter if your child ends up with the 3rd grade teacher who is beloved by all, or the “other” teacher. Instructional leaders guide the school so there is strong instruction in each classroom, and indeed across grades. Students understand what they are supposed to learn, and what a good work product for each assignment looks like. Parents understand they are welcome and know how to support their children, and teachers regularly communicate with them about the progress of their child.
Indeed, a principal who focuses on instruction will be most successful when the focus on instructional leadership is district-wide. Often our districts pursue improvement through a series of separate projects such as selecting a new curriculum and textbooks, or adopting a new technology or instructional practice. Adopting a district-wide instructional leadership model “reverses the usual relationship between routine functions and instructional improvement activities. The district’s overall instructional improvement strategy drives and shapes” administrative functions and projects, rather than the other way around. But it can start with the principal, whose effective leadership is essential for the school.
The School Board’s Role
My school board, along with many others, is intentional about focusing on policy, and not getting mired in the details of operations. We are mostly successful, although community pressures and sometimes even the legislatively mandated policies we must pass can push us off track on occasion. We try hard to stick to our responsibilities, and send other issues to the appropriate administrator.
And, as we are forced to cut budgets every year, our administration is intentional about focusing on what is truly essential for our core mission. Increasingly that means redistributing responsibilities, as well as dropping some activities (even those some people once thought were essential).
We need to insist on, and help, our
principals do the same. The core responsibility of our principals is to assure
the highest quality of learning occurs in each classroom for each student. We
have to encourage principals to assess how they spend their day, and find ways
to redistribute or simply drop activities that began to seem necessary in an
era of shrinking budgets, but do not enhance learning. Teachers who are
interested in future administrative jobs may be willing to take on
responsibilities that will build their portfolio. In a profession with few
promotional opportunities other than moving into administration, creating ways
for teachers who love the classroom to also try new functions may help retain
and energize staff.
My district has only begun to use the terminology of instructional leadership in board discussions, but we have certainly seen the results. Schools that were most challenged in terms of testing results began focusing on instruction, not only best classroom practices but “what works for Johnny-and Ameenah and Madison and Kierra.” The principals and faculty focused on each student, not just all students, and the test scores jumped up, as well as the morale of students, families and staff.
Such success can’t be, and wasn’t in our district, about one individual’s personal charisma. To repeat and sustain such progress, boards need to work with district administrators to focus all principals on their role as instructional leaders. While principals are key, developing and implementing a successful instructional improvement strategy across a district reaches beyond principals and is more complex than I have room to describe. I encourage you to consult the materials cited in the endnotes for more information and examples of success. Ultimately, school boards and district administrators must base their actions on the belief that principals are “accountable for the quality of instruction in all the classrooms in their schools, and teachers are accountable for learning and using good instructional practice.”
School boards can lead their districts to instructional leadership by encouraging the administration to provide principals the professional development they need, and help them make any necessary operational adjustments, so that all principals become the instructional leaders our students deserve. After all, instruction-and explicitly its connection to student learning-is the reason for our existence, and the principal’s role in leading instruction must be front and center. Indeed, the success of our schools in assuring high levels of achievement for all-no, make that each-student depends on it.
Julie Sweitzer is a member of the St. Louis Park, Minnesota School Board and works at the University of Minnesota’s College Readiness Consortium (www.collegeready.umn.edu). This article is reprinted with permission from the Minnesota School Boards Association Journal.
Sources:
Elmore, Richard F., “Building a New Structure for School Leadership,” Albert Shanker Institute, Winter 2000.
Elmore, Richard F., and Bruney, Deanna, “Continuous Improvement in Community District #2, New York City,” 1998.
Tucker, Marc S., and Codding, Judy B., Eds., The Principal Challenge: Leading and Managing Schools in an Era of Accountability, Joseph-Bass, 2002.