DISTRICT LEADERSHIP FOR

SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT

District leaders must limit initiatives to

allow for the sustained focus essential to

school improvement.

THE SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR (DUFOUR, 2003)

CASE STUDY: THE HIGH COST OF

FAILING TO SPEAK WITH ONE VOICE

THE HIGH COST OF FAILING TO SPEAK WITH ONE VOICE Identify two things Superintendent Ditka

did well and two things he should have done differently.

What will you do to build shared knowledge around the school designations to ensure your county has one message?

What are some things you might do so that school improvement is viewed as a positive effort?

COMMUNICATION STRUCTURE

Ken Blanchard (2007) advises leaders to “spend ten times more energy reinforcing the change they just made than looking for the next great change to try”.

MORE IS NOT BETTER! Michael Fullan (2001) asserted the problem

confronting educators is not the absence of innovation but the “presence of too many disconnected, episodic, piecemeal, and superficially adorned projects”.

Reeves (2006) agreed and discovered the size of a district’s strategic plan was actually inversely related to student achievement – the thicker the plan, the lower the results.

Richard Elmore (2003) asserted that most districts are engaged in a frenetic amount of unconnected activities and initiatives characterized by volatility (jumping from one initiative to another) and superficiality (choosing initiatives that have little impact on student achievement and implementing them in shallow ways).

WV STANDARDS FOR

HIGH QUALITY SCHOOLS

When Harvard Graduate School of Education and Harvard Business

School collaborated in a joint project to develop a district-wide improvement

strategy for central office leaders, they concluded that the biggest impediment

to improving schools was the unmanageable number of initiatives and total lack of coherence (Olson,

2007).

BARRIERS TO IMPROVEMENT

unmanageable number of initiatives total lack of coherence too many disconnected, episodic, piecemeal,

and superficially adorned projects the thicker the strategic plan, the lower the

results initiatives characterized by volatility (jumping

from one initiative to another in a relatively short period of time)

Initiatives characterized by superficiality (choosing initiatives that have little impact on student achievement and implementing them in shallow ways)

It is important to know what you are doing, but

it is even more important to know why you are doing what you

are doing!

WHY ARE WE DOING THIS ?

Initiative: techSteps DIBELS Sustained Silent

Reading Lexile measures WV Writes SPL WESTEST 2

District Administrators would say:

Principals would say:

Teachers would say:

KEEP – DROP - CREATE

Find the list of initiatives-assessments-instructional tools (Lavender sheet)

Divide the list up among the people at your table. Each person writes his/her list on post-it notes – one initiative per post-it.

Go to one of the large charts – write the name of the school(s) on the chart.

KEEP – DROP - CREATE As a team…

Determine whether the initiative is (1a)Required or (1b)Not Required

Required by: (2a) state (2b) county (2c) school

Take all of the Not Required items and list them on the Priority Grid

Compare each item to every other item in pairs to determine priority items

What will we keep and why?What will we drop and why?Do we need to create? What? Why?