For Best Results, Leadership Teams Need Support, Too

In addition to improving and refining specific skills and strategies for classroom efficacy, high quality professional learning in schools builds the leadership capacity of everyone in the organization.   Leadership should not be entirely role specific.  However, when establishing annual professional learning priorities, many districts mistakenly invest almost exclusively in teachers and neglect supporting the growth of those in formal leadership positions who are held accountable for ensuring outcomes are met.

According to Marzano, Waters, and McNulty (2005), leadership does matter, but the type of leadership matters most.  Instructional leadership has an effect size of .42 as compared with .11 for transformational leadership.

High quality classroom teaching has always been critical to student learning, but as teaching becomes increasingly complex, even the best teachers do not thrive to the maximum extent possible in mediocre schools.  High quality leadership helps build and sustain a system that supports learning for all students and minimizes the randomness of high quality teaching.

It goes without saying that students in the best schools with the best teachers achieve at the highest level.  After two years, students in these situations achieve at the 96th percentile.  But, consider this.  Students who attend a least effective school with a most effective teacher achieve at the 63rd percentile, while students in a most effective school with an average teacher achieve at the 78th percentile (Marzano, Waters, and McNulty, 2005)!  The days of teaching being an individual endeavor are long gone. 

The beauty of the Professional Learning Communities Model is that teachers regularly collaborate, leadership is distributed throughout the organization, and all people are mutually accountable to each other for ensuring student growth.  However, in order to be effective, PLCs must be supervised properly, and high quality principal leadership is essential to maintain focus on school goals and provide feedback to PLC teams.  Formal teacher evaluation, when done well, can certainly have a positive impact on teaching and learning, but without high functioning PLCs, its effect will be minimal.  Principals should spend the majority of their time supervising PLCs, and should be supported in their efforts to do so.

Tips for How to Support Principal Leadership

1)  Create a "First Team" of District and Building Level Administrators.  District leadership has an effect size of .24, statistically significant at the .05 level (Marzano and Waters, 2009).  However, as stated above, the effect size of quality building level leadership is greater.  Take teams of district level AND building level administrators to workshops and conferences aligned to district priorities.  It is not enough to send district administrators to conferences, by themselves, and expect them to come back to the district and lead improvement.  Build an army!  To lead the work, principals must deeply understand the work.

2)  Model PLCs.  By bringing district office and building administrators together as a team, district meetings can be their own PLC that focuses on student learning data and concrete district and school level improvement goals.  Principals can replicate experiences from these meetings and model expectations for their building level PLCs.  Saying that PLCs exist in a district is not the same as ensuring that they function at a high level.  Cultures Built to Last:  Systematic PLCs at Work (Fullan and DuFour, 2013) is an excellent resource for principals that combines PLC and change leadership concepts together in a practical, easily digestible manner.  

3)  Develop an Annual Professional Learning Plan for Administrators.  It is common practice in most districts to develop a professional learning plan in the spring for the following school year that is shared with principals and teachers and used for budget development.  Do the same for your First Team.

The focus of the Arlington Central School District for the 2021-22 school year will be personalized learning.  It will work with Eric Sheninger, Associate Partner with the International Center for Leadership in Education and author of Disruptive Thinking in Our Classrooms:  Preparing Learners for Their Futures.  He will be visiting classrooms and working with teachers regularly throughout the year, providing feedback and coaching on utilizing technology to accelerate learning.

However, the District is not randomly bringing in an outside "expert" and leaving the rest to chance.  Arlington has been accepted into the American Association for School Administrators Learning 2025 Network and will work closely with Ray McNulty, President of the Successful Practices Network, to support the leadership team in developing a system that leverages growth for all students.  Sheninger will also meet regularly with administrators throughout the year.  Arlington will use Cultures Built to Last as a resource to strengthen PLCs and build leadership capacity, and it will use principles from the Reeves and Eaker book 100-Day Leaders:  Turning Short-Term Wins into Long-Term Success, to develop short cycle improvement goals that will drive the PLC work.

Each of these activities has been mapped out, beginning with the opening Leadership Team Retreat, and continuing each month at its leadership team and grade level principal team meetings to ensure focus and coherence.

That high quality teaching is essential to student learning goes without saying.  However, when it comes to professional learning, allocation of resources is not an either-or proposition.  High achieving schools and districts recognize the role effective leadership plays in creating and sustaining the systems necessary to support the learning and challenging work of teachers.   

Fullan and DuFour (2013). Cultures Built to Last:  Systematic PLCs at Work. Solution Tree Press:               Bloomington, IN.

Marzano and Waters (2009). District Leadership That Works:  Striking the Right Balance. Solution Tree     Press:  Bloomington, IN.  

Marzano, Waters, and McNulty (2005). School Leadership That Works:  From Research to Results.           Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development:  Alexandria, VA.

Reeves and Eaker (2019). 100-Day Leaders:  Turning Short-Term Wins into Long-Term Success.           Solution Tree Press:  Bloomington, IN.

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