learning centered leadership practices in effective … leadership practices for effective high...

Learning-‐Centered Leadership Practices

Learning-Centered Leadership Practices for Effective High Schools Serving At-Risk Students

Jason Huff Vanderbilt University 5208 16th Avenue NE Seattle, WA 98105 (615) 554-5600 [email protected] Ellen Goldring Vanderbilt University PMB #414 230 Appleton Place Nashville, TN 37203-5721 [email protected]

Courtney Preston Florida State University P.O. Box 3064450 Tallahassee, FL 32306-4450 [email protected]

J. Edward Guthrie Vanderbilt University PMB #414 230 Appleton Place Nashville, TN 37203-5721 [email protected]


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Abstract: In this paper we analyze how leaders in more effective high schools implement and

support different practices and routines to improve instruction and learning. We identify such

schools by examining value-added scores for their students, and we analyze data collected in

these schools to compare and contrast leaders’ work to support their staffs’ key practices and

organizational routines. In higher value-added schools we find evidence that leaders are more

attentive to and involved in both the intended and enacted routines they implement to support

teachers’ instruction. We present the findings and discuss implications for examining successful

leadership practices.

Keywords: educational leadership, effective schools, instructional leadership, value-added,

qualitative research, high schools, high school leadership, personalized learning connections

Learning-centered leadership entails the extent to which leaders hold a vision in the

school for learning and enact practices that promote high standards for all students. This vision

of leadership includes not just leaders’ work with individual teachers to improve instruction but

their impacts at the broader school level to implement conditions that sustain improved student

learning (Murphy, Goldring, Cravens, & Elliott, 2011). Prior research across all school levels

suggests that schools whose leaders articulate an explicit school vision, generate high

expectations and goals for all students, monitor their schools’ performance through regular use of

data and frequent classroom observations, and focus on the organizational management of their

schools are linked to increases in student learning (Klar & Brewer, 2013; Horng, Klasik, & Loeb,

2010; Leithwood & Riehl, 2005). Research also suggests that principals play important roles in

implementing reforms: in schools where principals actively work to secure curricular materials


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and act as instructional resources for instructional reforms, their teachers more frequently engage

in new instructional strategies (Nettles & Harrington, 2007; Quinn, 2002). However there is

limited research as to how high school leaders organize and implement practices around learning.

Existing research reveals a complex relationship between the leadership of school

administrators and student achievement—their influences on student learning outcomes are often

indirect, mediated through multiple factors within the school. Researchers have provided

evidence that principals’ practices can influence student learning when they focus on a)

organizing school structures, processes, and resources that support student learning and b)

strategies that more closely support teachers’ high quality instruction (Hallinger & Heck, 1996a;

Heck & Hallinger, 2009; Supovitz, Sirinides, & May, 2010; Louis, Leithwood, Wahlstrom, &

Anderson, 2010; Horng, Klasik, & Loeb, 2010). These processes and strategies are the focus of

this paper.

Research that has addressed the nature of the interrelationships between principals’

leadership and student achievement has typically included schools of all levels—elementary,

middle, and high schools—and few, if any, have focused exclusively on how high school

principals organize and implement leadership practices around student learning (Crum &

Sherman, 2010). While earlier analyses point to the influences that principals can have through

such factors as their selection of high quality teachers and setting of high academic goals

(Brewer, 1993), more work is needed to examine high school leaders’ influences in today’s high

schools. One example of such work is the article by Grissom, Kalogrides, and Loeb (2013),

which documents that high school principals spend less time on instructional activities, including

classroom walkthroughs, than their peers in elementary schools. They continue to find that time

spent on walkthroughs is negatively associated with achievement growth in math, while time


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spent on coaching and evaluating teachers does impact achievement growth in mathematics.

This gap in the literature around high school leadership is crucial to address because of

the unique character of high schools and their limited success in raising student achievement for

all students. High schools differ significantly from elementary schools because of their larger

size, multiple departments grouped by subject area, heterogeneous student bodies, and their role

in providing students with an exodus into the larger society and workforce (Fuhrman and

Elmore, 2004; Jacobs and Kritsonis, 2006). The National Assessment of Educational Progress

has found only moderate gains in high school students’ learning over the past two decades and

international assessments indicate that gaps between American high school students and their

counterparts in other nations are widest in comparison to elementary and middle school gaps

(Grigg, Donahue, and Dion, 2007; Provasnik, Gonzales, & Miller, 2009). This work points both

to the value and urgency of understanding how high school leaders successfully structure their

schools to promote student learning.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how leaders implement and support different

practices and organizational routines that target improved instruction and learning. We ask the

question, What distinguishes the leaders’ practices in more effective high schools from those in

less effective high schools that serve large proportions of at-risk youth? We identify more

effective high schools by distinguishing between those with higher and lower value-added scores

for their students, and we analyze data collected in these schools to compare and contrast

leaders’ work to support key practices and organizational routines by their staff. Our analyses

include work by traditional leaders (principals and assistant principals) as well as other leaders’

(e.g. department chairs, teacher leaders) practices within the schools.


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In the remainder of this paper we first summarize the literature on effective schools and

learning-centered leadership to illustrate the need to understand leaders’ roles in implementing or

supporting those pervasive practices that characterize effective high schools. We also explain

the conceptualizations of “practice” and “organizational routine” that informed our analyses to

identify how school leaders influence their staffs’ work to improve instruction and learning. We

then detail our methodology to choose four case study schools and describe each school before

explaining our analyses. Finally, we present our findings and discuss their significance for

researchers and practitioners.

The Challenge to Understanding Effective High School Leadership

Many current high school improvement efforts focus on the implementation of specific

programs such as Career Academies or Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID)

(see, for example, Kemple, Herlihy & Smith, 2005; Quint, Bloom, Black, and Stephens, 2005).

However, reviews of research on high schools suggest that three decades of urban high school

reform aimed at improving the academic performance of disadvantaged students have not

resulted in substantially narrowing achievement gaps (Becker and Luthar, 2002; Cook & Evans,

2000; Davidson, Young, Davenport, & Butterbaugh, 2004). There is little evidence that any

single program or practice will close more than a fraction of the achievement gap and reduce

high school dropout (Berends, 2000; Miller, 1995). Instead, substantially improving learning

opportunities for students from traditionally low performing subgroups may require

comprehensive, integrated, and coherent designs that simultaneously influence multiple

components in schools (Chatterji, 2005; Shannon & Bylsma, 2002; Thompson & O’Quinn,

2001).


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Principals can often play central roles in implementing such comprehensive designs. As

previously mentioned, school leaders who are linked to increases in student learning are those

who focus on school organization, use data and classroom observations to monitor school

performance, articulate an explicit vision, create a strong learning climate, and set high

expectations for all students (Horng, Klasik, & Loeb, 2010; Leithwood & Riehl, 2005; Murphy,

Goldring, Cravens, & Elliott, 2007; Sebastian & Allensworth, 2012). Principals’ effects on

student learning are also likely mediated by their efforts to improve teacher motivation and

working conditions (Louis, Leithwood, Wahlstrom, & Anderson, 2010), as well as to hire high

quality personnel (Grissom & Loeb, 2011; Horng, Klasik, & Loeb, 2010). This evidence thus

points to the potential and need for principals to engage in the broader conditions within schools

that target improved learning.

However, the body of empirical research on leadership practices in schools is limited

conceptually and in terms of its applicability to high schools. Conceptually, much of the research

on leadership in schools constructs a predetermined dimension of leadership—such as

instructional leadership—with a list of behaviors and activities, and offers assessments or

comparisons of leaders’ (most often principals’) adherence to specific, discrete practices that fit

within the dimension (see for example Goldring, Huff, May, and Camburn, 2008; Horng, Klasik,

& Loeb, 2010; Supovitz, Sirinides, & May, 2010; Grissom Loeb, & Master, 2013). While

research has developed multiple lists of effective characteristics of school leadership, work

remains to identify how such leaders cultivate conditions such that their faculty pursue improved

teaching and learning over a long period of time. In this regard, work in Chicago high schools

finds that principals influence classroom-level academic demand through setting high

expectations for college-going, creating program coherence, and the quality of professional


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development they secure (Sebastian & Allensworth, 2012). Similarly, Wiley (2001), in her study

of high schools and mathematics achievement, found “that learning in mathematics is increased

when school administrators facilitate development of shared values and beliefs about the

school’s mission, support actions focused on instructional development, communicate respect

and value of teachers, and when there is a minimal degree of professional community among

department teachers. That is, the effect of transformational leadership is enhanced by on-going

teacher learning, teacher collaboration, and cooperative focus by teachers on improving teaching

and learning – professional community” (p 25).

To anchor our work and inquiry around leadership practices and routines we focused our

study of high school leadership on a small set of domains that research suggests are at the heart

of learning-centered leadership and school effectiveness with a focus on high schools (Goldring

et al., 2009; Preston et al., 2012), namely creating personalizing learning connections, providing

rigorous and aligned curriculum, developing high quality instruction, and implementing systemic

data use. Existing research indicates that such broader conditions and practices in schools are

key to improving student learning.

Personalized learning connections refers to developing strong connections between

students and adults that allow teachers to provide more individual attention to their students and

to develop students’ sense of belonging to school (McLaughlin, 1994; Lee & Smith, 1999;

Walker & Greene, 2009). Personalized learning connections can exist in high schools on a

continuum from strong and robust, leading to belonging and connectedness, to weak and non-

existent, leading to alienation and ultimately, dropout (Nasir, Jones, & McLaughlin, 2011;

Hallinan, 2008; Crosnoe, Johnson, & Elder, 2004; Rumberger, 2001). Our analyses focused on

how leaders work to develop positive personalized learning connections; that is, schools with


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personalization for both academic and social learning, where students feel strong connections to

the school, both through classroom engagement and opportunities for involvement, and where

these connections exist on a school-wide level with specific social and academic structures in

place to support the development of these connections, are likely to be successful for students

from at-risk backgrounds.

Systemic Use of Data refers to “data use” or “data-based decision making” as a practice

critical to school improvement efforts. Access to data alone cannot guarantee more effective

practice (Ingram, Seashore Louis, & Schroeder, 2004; Schildkamp & Visscher, 2010; Spillane,

2012). Rather, research on systematic data use requires a critical consideration of both which

data and which forms of its use are most effective in improving academic performance. Despite

limited examinations of data use in high schools, existing evidence suggests a number of

essential elements for it to be effective. First is the diffusion of both the availability of data and a

faculty’s ability to analyze and act on data (Copland, 2003; Schildkamp & Visscher, 2010;

Spillane, 2012). When data access is centralized in the hands of a principal, data use can be

limited by the principal’s personal beliefs and skills related to data use (Luo, 2008). Second,

research suggests that collaborative data-based inquiry affects intermediate outcomes, increasing

teachers’ investment in school-wide issues, strengthening instructional efficacy (Huffman &

Kalnin, 2003), and characterizing both mature and successful school improvement efforts

(Copland, 2003; Tedford, 2008; Wilcox & Angelis, 2011). Finally, once data are available and

discussed collaboratively, it must permeate organizational routines in order to be effective

(Ingram, Seashore Louis, & Schroeder, 2004; Schildkamp & Visscher, 2010; Spillane, 2012).

That is, even when data are widely available within the school and teachers are organized to

support collaboration, data analysis and use must become standard operating procedures. We


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suggest that data use is one mechanism to develop educators’ shared commitment to school goals

and students and a mechanism for helping adults and students collaborate and receive feedback

to continue engaging in the 'work' of schooling. We explore leadership routines and practices of

effective data use in terms of access to data, what capacity teachers have to use this data and act

on what they learn from it (e.g re-teach), and whether there is a culture of data use in the school.

Rigorous and Aligned Curriculum focuses on the roles leaders play to ensure that schools

provide rigorous content in core academic subjects (Gamoran, Porter, Smithson, & White, 1997).

On the whole, high school curricula are driven by state standards, as required under No Child

Left Behind (2002). Research on curriculum at the high school level centers around differences

between vocational/technical curriculum or remedial courses and college preparatory curriculum,

the effects of increasing curricular requirements for graduation, and access to curriculum,

specifically advanced courses, for different groups of students.

Effective schools work to compress pre-existing variability by promoting equal and

equitable access to school resources and promoting the inclusion of all students in all aspects of

the schooling experience; in other words, there is a focus on opportunities to learn. Lee and

Burkham (2003) find that students in schools with more constrained curriculum have lower odds

of dropping out and literature suggests that effective schools should work to compress variability

in course selection by race and class and ensure all students have access to advanced courses

(Muller, Riegle-Crumb, Schiller, Wilkinson, and Frank, 2010). Further, effective schools also

create variable and differentiated experiences to meet the needs of diverse learners by offering

transition classes (Gamoran, et al., 1997), schools-within-schools (Ready & Lee), career

academies (Maxwell & Rubin, 2002), college outreach programs (Domina, 2009), and other

differentiated programs to meet student needs. While these programs are targeted at subgroups


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within a school to meet a specific need, such as informing at-risk students about the college

application process, research findings on the effectiveness of these programs are mixed,

suggesting that the structures, programs or practices intended to create variable experiences for

certain subgroups are dependent on other domains of effective high schools, such as Personalized

Learning Connections or Quality Instruction.

Our final domain of focus, Quality Instruction, encompasses the teaching strategies that

teachers employ to achieve high standards for all students. Trends in this research literature

cluster around common practices and specific classroom foci. Common practices include

collaborative group work (Staples, 2007), formative assessment (Brown, 2008), inquiry-based

learning (Cohen & Ball, 2001), scaffolding, and introducing new concepts concretely (Alper,

Fendel, Fraser & Resek, 1997). Foci include creating structures and classroom climate where

students are allowed to try and fail without negative consequences (Alper, et al., 1997), making

content not only relevant for real life, but important, and setting high expectations for all students

(Boaler, 2008). The vast majority of more recent work on quality of instruction has focused on

developing frameworks and corresponding classroom observation rubrics to define and monitor

and evaluate the quality of instruction in schools, such as the CLASS-S (Pianta, Hamre, &

Mintz, 2011) and Framework for Teaching (Danielson, 2013). These frameworks, as well as

others, suggests that highly quality instruction is rooted in a notion of engaged learning

(instructional dialogue, feedback, responsiveness), whereas low quality instruction consistently

allows students to be passive, and disengaged as learners (seatwork, receivers of information,

and limited accountability for learning). As we discuss in the methods section, these areas of

learning-centered leadership guided our data collection and initial coding of the data for these

domains.


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Targeting Evidence of Leaders’ Impact on Practice

In an effort to examine leadership in higher and lower value-added schools, we examined

faculty members’ direct discussions of their leaders’ actions to support various practices and

routines that focused on improving teaching and learning. Our analyses did not rely on a set list

of behaviors to examine how leadership influences the enactment of our four essential domains

of effective schooling. Rather, we used Spillane et al’s. (2011 and 2012) concept of “practice,”

which he describes as "more or less coordinated, patterned, and meaningful interactions of

people at work…" (p. 114). A key aspect of this notion of practice is the notion of Feldman and

Pentland’s (2003) organizational routine, or “a repetitive, recognizable pattern of interdependent

actions, carried out by multiple actors” (p.105). According to Spillane such routines “structure

day-to-day practice in schools by more or less framing and focusing interactions among school

staff “ (p. 116). Analyzing for organizational routines helps us to identify regular, patterned

activity within schools rather than unique or random occurrences that have little broader impact

on a faculty or its students. Such a focus also helps to identify what ongoing, sustained practices

by staff may distinguish more versus less effective schools. Spillane, et al. (2011) emphasize

that such routines focus on interactions between individuals, not just their actions, and our

analyses therefore targeted evidence of ongoing work by groups of individuals. With this

framing of routines to include practice by multiple actors we examined evidence of actions by

traditional leaders such as administrators as well as others such as department chairs or other

teacher leaders. Our findings highlight leadership work by multiple actors to improve instruction

and learning.

One final distinction is central to this part of our analyses: the “ostentive” versus

“performative” aspects of organizational routines. Feldman and Pentland (2003) explain, “the


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ostentive aspect is the ideal or schematic form of a routine. It is the abstract, generalized idea of

the routine, or the routine in principle. The performative aspect of the routine consists of specific

actions, by specific people, in specific places and times. It is the routine in practice” (p. 101).

Spillane, et al. (2011) contrast them in this way: “The ostentive aspect of organizational routines

is part of the formal structure (i.e., the designed organization), whereas the performative aspect

refers to administrative practice (i.e., the lived organization) (p. 591).” These authors all argue

that studies of organizational routines must include examinations of the “ostentive” or intended,

ideal forms of practices, such as recommendations or formal expectations for what a group

should do to examine school data, along with the “performative” aspects of practice that focus on

what different individuals actually do within the context of these expectations and their group.

Only when researchers pay attention to both can they capture organizational routines in both

their intent and their actual implementation.

We thus used the notions of practice and the ostentive and performative aspects of

routines to analyze and discuss how leadership in higher and lower value-added schools creates

or supports pervasive, shared, and structured routines that successfully guide faculty members’

practices to successfully implement the essential components. With this work we identified not

only evidence of specific routines but how well their intended purposes matched their actual

implementations. We found differences between these higher and lower value-added schools

both in terms of leaders’ conceptions of the ostentive forms of routines (the intended, ideal

policies that faculty are to carry out) and their attention to the performative dimensions, through

closer examination of faculty members’ actions or their directed support for faculty members’

practices.


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With the four domains in mind--personalized learning connections, systemic use of data,

rigorous and aligned curriculum, and quality instruction--we ask, how does leaders’ work vary in

implementing and supporting key practices and organizational routines for effective schools? In

this paper we investigate how the leadership in two lower and two higher value-added high

schools create similar and different practices (both ostentive and performative) around these four

areas.

Selection of Case Study Schools

We identified Broward County, Florida as an urban district with a large population of

students from traditionally low-performing groups, and then identified four case study high

schools that varied in terms of their effectiveness at improving student achievement among low-

income and minority students and English Language Learners (ELLs). Using 4 years of student

scores from Florida’s Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT), we estimated school-level

value-added models that produce separate growth estimates for students in different low-

performing subgroups (low income, black, Hispanic, and ELL) to distinguish effective and less

effective high schools for these groups1. Such school-level value-added estimates are correlated

with other measures of school performance and are better indicators of school performance than

school-level average test scores (Grissom, Kalogrides, & Loeb, 2014; Meyer, 1997). While

NCLB only requires states to test once in the high school grades, for over a decade, Florida has

tested English/Language Arts and mathematics in more than one high school grade, improving

our ability to identify more and less effective schools.

1 Sass, 2012 provides additional detail on value-‐added modeling and the selection criteria.


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Because we used four years of test score data in both math and reading to estimate

school-level value-added for all high schools in the district, our estimated school effects

represent the average contribution of a high school to student learning gains in either math or

reading from 2005-06 to 2008-09, controlling for observed student characteristics. We then

identified four case study high schools that were a) relatively high performing for all student

groups or b) relatively ineffective for each student group, considering average value-added

rankings for reading and math. Charter and magnet schools were not considered for selection as

case study schools because their choice component may have influenced school-level value-

added. Finally, we checked that the schools we identified had graduation rates consistent with

our value-added results. Thus, our case study schools (2 higher value-added, 2 lower value-

added) served large proportions of students in traditionally low performing subgroups and were

higher performing or lower performing relative to their district and the state as a whole. Below,

we profile these four schools before discussing our analyses of each.

Case Study Data Collection

We collected data from the four case study schools during three weeklong visits in the

fall, winter, and spring of the 2010-2011 school year. Data collection included observations of

full faculty meetings and professional learning community teams, and semi-structured interviews

with principals, assistant principals, guidance counselors, department heads of English/Language

arts, mathematics and science and eighteen 10th grade teachers who taught those three subjects

in regular and upper-level classes at each school. Principals were interviewed twice, during our

fall and spring visits. We conducted classroom observations during our fall and winter visits in

one class of each of the eighteen teachers who were interviewed. Each teacher was observed four

times (two observations per week) teaching the same class. Researchers used the Classroom


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Assessment Scoring System-Secondary (CLASS-S) to live code instruction and the classroom

environment during these observations (Pianta, Hamre, Hayes, Mintz, and LaParo, 2007). In

addition, we conducted focus groups with students and with teachers who had been identified as

coaches or leaders of student activity groups. Students were selected for focus groups by their

schools in order to include students from all level classes, all grades, and with different levels of

involvement. Finally, on our spring visit, we shadowed six 10th grade students in each school

(three students from "higher" or accelerated/AP and "lower" or regular assignment tracks who

together represented the demographics of the student body) for a day and interviewed these

students at the end of the school day.

We designed our data collection process to allow both the form and function of our

schools’ key programs, practices, and routines to emerge from inductive analysis of fieldwork.

By collecting data from actors in multiple positions within each case study school, we were able

to incorporate multiple perspectives, triangulating findings for increased credibility (Lincoln and

Guba, 1985). This study draws on our interview data with both leaders and teachers in the

different schools. Our interviews also probed beyond the mere existence of formal programs and

routines, which often communicate only the intended practices in which faculty should engage,

to understand the depth and specificity of leadership’s expectations and actions to ensure that

faculty actually carried out such activities (Spillane, 2012). We asked principals and teachers

questions about topics ranging from the principals’ goals and visions for their schools to how

principals and other leaders provided feedback to their teachers to specific actions that individual

faculty took to get to know their students. Our questions focused on not only the formal

structures and policies in place but on principals’ and teachers’ actual practices. Example

questions included the following:


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Example Principal Questions: 1. What is your vision of student learning and instruction for this school? 2. How often do you observe teachers’ instruction, either formally or informally?

a. What type of feedback do you give after the observations? b. What do you see as the purposes of these observations?

3. How often do you discuss professional needs and goals with your lead teachers? 4. What opportunities are there for teachers to grow and learn as a teacher? 5. What do you do to facilitate teachers getting to know their students as individuals? 6. Can you tell me how you interact and connect with your students? How do you get to

know your students as individuals?

Example Teacher Questions: 1. How would you describe what the principal’s goals for this school are? 2. To what extent do you think teachers in this school have common ideas about what

students should be learning? 3. How often are you observed, either formally or informally?

a. What type of feedback do you get from the observations? b. To what extent do you find these observations helpful to you?

4. How often do you talk with school administrators about your professional needs or goals?

5. What types of opportunities does the school provide for you to grow as a teacher? 6. What are you doing to get to know your students as individuals?

By asking participants about what actually happened in different programs or meetings we were

able to identify how closely faculty members’ ostentive and performative practices matched.

Our interviews with principals and teachers enabled us to corroborate evidence across

participants to determine just how broadly certain practices or policies were followed and how

engaged faculty members were in different programs in the school.

Data Analyses

Interview transcripts were coded using pattern coding to identify instances of leadership

across our four domains—personalized learning connections, data use, rigorous curriculum and

quality instruction, with a focus on practices and routines (Fetterman, 1989; Yin, 1989; Miles &

Huberman, 1994). Our analyses used a three-phase approach with multiple coders working


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together. Coding in phase one was used to construct and refine our conceptualization of learning-

centered leadership, identify qualitative dimensions of learning-centered leadership, and develop

rubrics that helped coders determine the intensity, depth, or quality of the different components

or subcomponents in each school. In phase two, we used the refined definitions and newly

identified dimensions of learning-centered leadership to recode the transcripts originally coded

during phase one in order to build reliability between coders. The team of researchers met

weekly to arbitrate their coding and come to consensus. In round three, after achieving

satisfactory inter-rater reliability, the triad of coders analyzed additional transcripts and

observation notes, meeting weekly to share findings and discuss emerging themes. The

researchers wrote memos throughout the coding process to elaborate their findings regarding the

components and other themes that emerged (Corbin & Strauss, 2008) and to triangulate findings

across different sources. These memos form the basis of this study and addressed the following

questions:

1. How and to what degree are learning-centered leadership practices and routines around the four domains manifest (or absent) at each case study school?

2. What makes these schools unique as compared to the other schools? 3. What are the similarities and differences in learning-centered leadership practices and

routines amongst the schools?

Our analyses of learning-centered leadership highlighted data relating to traditional leaders’

(principals and assistant principals) as well as other leaders’ (e.g. department chairs, teacher

leaders) practices within their schools. Here, we focus on data that provided insights into

differences in how these individuals enacted and supported their faculties’ practices in the four

domains that help differentiate between higher and lower value-added schools: rigorous and

aligned curriculum, high quality instruction, systemic data use, and personalized learning

connections. By considering leadership in terms of ostentive or intended actions and policies as


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well as others’ discussions of actual or performative actions and policies, we were able to look

beyond leaders’ own descriptions of their roles and practices to examine others’ accounts of what

strategies and/or practices actually helped distinguish leadership in more and less effective

schools.

District Context and Case Study High Schools

In this section we briefly profile the four case study schools. Table 1 provides

demographic information and performance indicators for these four schools. We first discuss the

district context and its influence on all the schools’ programs and policies before describing

conditions in each of the schools.

Table 1: Demographic Characteristics and Performance Indicators of Case Study High Schools

Low Value-added Schools High Value-added Schools Boulder Star Coral Reef Key Lime Loggerhead School characteristics

Enrollment 1600-2000 1900-2300 2600-3000 2000-2400 Percent minority 55-65% <20% 50-60% 65-75% Percent economically

disadvantaged 60-70% 45-55% 30-40% 45-55%

Percent Limited English

Proficient

10-15% 5-10% 5-10% 5-10%

2010 Graduation Rate <80% <80% >85% >85% 2011School Grade C A B A

District Context

Broward County has been engaged in high school reform for the past nine years and has

received national recognition for its efforts to improve its chronically low-performing schools.


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Its high school reform goals include integrating an academic system with high standards,

common curriculum and assessments across schools, and instructional supports for teachers.

Specific strategies toward those goals include credit recovery programs, intensive skills classes,

dual enrollment options for students, and weekend classes. In interviews in all four schools

faculty referenced a number of district policies or initiatives that influenced their work: the

district’s common curriculum calendar that drove both content and timing of the curriculum, the

centralized program to assign students to classes based on previous performance and test scores,

an emphasis on the use of professional learning communities, an emphasis on more frequent

classroom observations (brief “walk-throughs” or longer ones), and a focus during observations

on classroom conditions such as common blackboard configurations (listing class goals and

objectives ), word walls, the use of “do-now” activities to start lessons. While faculty in all four

schools referenced these district policies, we found that school leaders implemented and

supported these in different ways, and we focus on these differences. We next describe each of

the schools (all referenced by pseudonyms) by offering brief summaries of their leadership

structures, strategies for monitoring instruction, use of observation and student data, and

students’ focus on learning.

Boulder Star High School: Lower Value-added

Over the past several years, Boulder Star’s grades in the Florida grading system have

largely been A’s and B’s, but during the 2010-2011 school year its grade had dipped below a B.

This placed Boulder Star under “Correct II” status, which meant that it had been labeled a school

in need of improvement for four or more years, had met less than 80% of AYP criteria, and faced

state-directed intervention. With this status, it faced increased district and state oversight through


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closer monitoring of progress and support: if it did not make future progress and improve its

school grade, it could also face state- and district-mandated school-wide interventions.

The Boulder Star High School administrative team consists of the principal and four

assistant principals and meets once a week to plan for upcoming events, coordinate specific

responsibilities, and schedule classroom observations and review prior data. Assistant principals

are assigned to supervise 2-3 academic departments and individual grade levels (e.g. one AP

focused on history, English/Language Arts, and 9th grade students each year). A second

leadership team consisting of the principal, assistant principals, department chairs, media

specialist, Exceptional Student Education (ESE) specialist, and reading coach, meets every two

weeks.

The principal commented that assistant principals conduct most of the observations,

which is corroborated by faculty reports, although the principal sometimes participates as well.

The principal described these walk-throughs as the “backbone” of the school’s accountability

efforts. For teachers, Boulder Star accountability encompasses discussing both observation data

and student performance data in regular “3D Data Chats,” where administrators work with

teachers to understand, interpret, and act on student data.

Faculty described a mixed culture of learning among students: a high level of academic

focus among higher-performing students (such as in honors classes) but less academic focus

among lower-performing students in regular classes, marked by lack of engagement or

unwillingness to do homework.

Coral Reef High School: Lower Value-added


21

Over the last several years Coral Reef High School has bounced between C and D school

grades, and during the 2010-2011 school year it too was in a Correct II status under the state

accountability system.

Coral Reef’s administrative team includes the principal and four assistant principals, who

met once a week, and its leadership team consists of the principal and APs, department chairs,

and four academic coaches from reading and math, who met every two weeks and among other

activities, monitors walk-throughs. Assistant principals were assigned 2-3 subjects, and they

supervised students based on last names, except for the 9th graders, who were all supervised by

one AP.

As at Boulder Star, Coral Reef faculty reported that administrators conduct brief, though

sometimes irregular, classroom walk-throughs. Both of these schools’ teachers reported that

walk-through data were not presented individually but were used to discuss trends across

multiple teachers that administrators observed. Coral Reef’s faculty reported that observation

data and student performance data are used for a variety of purposes, but that there is a heavy

emphasis on using this data for evaluation of teacher performance and accountability. Multiple

teachers criticized administrators for offering little feedback after observations, and little support.

Administrators also reported examining teachers’ grade books and test scores to hold them

accountable, and the principal reported publicly posting student test scores for each teacher in an

effort to motivate them to improve.

Faculty reported a weak sense of academic focus among students, where many students

in Honors and AP classes are unprepared for the level of rigor and higher-performing students in

Honors and AP classes are marginalized. They described students as having problematic

behavior and poor attendance, and they tended to attribute poor student performance to students’


22

backgrounds, poor prior performance, or lack of effort rather than their own instructional

activities and strategies. Teachers were also highly critical of the principal’s offer of financial

and field trip incentives to students to improve their performance on the FCAT because these

offers were not followed through on for students who improved.

Key Lime High School: Higher Value-added

This school has received an “A” over the past several years, and it is currently in Correct

I status, which means that it had been labeled a school in need of improvement for four or more

years, but met 80% of AYP criteria and faced district-directed (rather than state) intervention.

Its administrative team is similar to those at Boulder Star and Coral Reef, consisting of

the principal and four assistant principals who met once a week. Its leadership team includes the

principal, assistant principals, department chairs, ESE coordinator, and team leaders from its

small learning communities in science, social studies, and English/Language Arts. The team

meets once every two weeks and we saw evidence of input from informal leadership beyond

departmental heads, including teacher leaders and curriculum leaders. APs and counselors are

both assigned to “loop” with students, working with the same cohort of students as they progress

through high school, instead of working with the same grade level every year as at Boulder Star

and Coral Reef.

At Key Lime, teachers report receiving both formal and informal feedback on their

performance from administrators and department chairs through annual reviews, classroom

walkthroughs, and data chats with administrators and other faculty. While faculty have mixed

feelings about the value of classroom walkthroughs, most teachers reported receiving useful

feedback from performance reviews. In general, faculty report a high frequency of data use that

is central to their practice.


23

Teachers reported that students in the AP/Honors track were extremely motivated both in

and outside the classroom, while students in regular tracks had more problems with attendance,

motivation, and behavior. Multiple teachers at Key Lime followed their comments about low

behavioral engagement with descriptions of how certain school structures such as looping, small

learning communities, or academic advising promote personalization and allow students to

receive more individual attention from faculty over an extended period of time. We return to a

discussion of leaders’ work with these structures below.

Loggerhead High School: Higher Value-added

Loggerhead’s school grade has bounced between an “A” and “B” over the past several

years, and it was in Correct II status during the 2010-2011 school year.

The school’s leadership team consists of the principal and three assistant principals,

department chairs, team leaders, and instructional coaches, and this team meets once a week, but

we did not see evidence of an administrative team as in the other schools. Similar to the other

schools, APs are assigned to supervise both departments and individual grades, but like the lower

value-added schools, do not loop with their students.

Faculty reported that administrators conduct regular classroom observations and hold

quarterly discussions with teachers about their observations. Unlike the other three schools,

faculty at Loggerhead characterized accountability as including test scores but emphasizing

factors such as professional conduct, punctuality, specific instructional practices, and

demonstrable concern for students—teachers and the principal both referenced these additional

criteria. In addition to classroom observations, the principal reported observing teacher meetings

as well as part of the accountability system.


24

Participants reported high expectations for faculty and adult actors in the school, but

mixed expectations for students, specifically lower expectations for low-performing and/or low-

SES students. Some faculty also reported their concerns about their own ability to meet the social

and academic needs of the lowest performing students. In describing these concerns, however,

many Loggerhead faculty identified student performance as a reflection of their own

performance as instructors, while also expressing a need for parents and students to accept a

greater share of the responsibility.

From these descriptions of leadership structures and processes, we turn to describing the

differences between the ostentive and performative routines of leadership in higher and lower

value-added high schools.

Results

Our findings focus on two primary themes that characterize differences in the practices

between lower and higher value-added high schools: 1) Leaders in higher value-added high

schools for at risk students are more involved in, intentional about, and attentive to how their

ostentive routines are implemented, thus ensuring that teachers’ actual practices are changed.

They focus on how these routines provide ongoing monitoring and feedback for their faculty to

build and improve quality instruction, aligned curriculum and systems of support for students. 2)

Higher value-added school leaders provided more targeted, systemic efforts to support

personalized learning for students. We provide a series of contrasting cases, starting with lower

and then moving to higher value-added schools, to illustrate and discuss how differences in

principals’ practices cut across multiple programs to influence the extent and quality of their

implementation.


25

Greater Attention to the Intended and Practical Routines That Support Rigorous

Curriculum and High Quality Instruction

In higher value-added schools we find evidence that leaders were more attentive to and

involved in both the ostentive (ideal) and performative (practiced, actual) routines they used to

support teachers’ instruction. This greater attention and involvement are evident through faculty

discussions of school leaders’ more detailed conceptions of instruction and curriculum and

intentions of supporting higher quality curriculum and instruction and the higher priority leaders

give to teacher observations by providing specific observational data and conferences to review

those data.

Varying Conceptions of Leaders’ Ostentive Routines

In lower value-added schools (Boulder Star and Coral Reef), we found evidence for leaders’

more superficial understandings of what activities they needed to engage in to support

curriculum and instruction. When describing the content of observations by administrators,

Boulder Star’s principal report that they focus on district-recommended strategies such as word

walls and common blackboard configurations (such as listing class objectives), but the principal

provided little beyond these descriptions of what was important to identify or analyze during

observations. Teacher comments suggested they are unsure about leadership’s goals for

instructional improvement and that leaders were looking for rote requirements in observations,

rather than strong instructional practice.

One teacher expressed confusion regarding the specifics of the principal’s vision of learning and

communication of priorities to staff,

“I am not exactly sure what his particular goals are, like when it comes to figures and statistics. I know he wants us to start to really get the kids to pass the FCAT, more of the kids to pass the FCAT, because I think we were a little bit below last year. We weren't


26

making the standard. I don't know what the standard is, how many kids are supposed to pass it within a school, but I think I was told that we weren't making the standard. We need to raise the bar with our instruction on the FCAT.” As with Boulder Star, Coral Reef’s principal offered limited evidence of a deeper

conception of the ostentive role that leaders play in observing curriculum and instruction. The

principal described administrators looking for Marzano’s high yield strategies in their

observations, but provided little if any elaboration or discussion as to how recent district

recommendations for instruction, such as bell-bell instruction and “do-now” or “bell-ringer”

activities to start classes, are emphasized. Thus while the principal offered key current

catchphrases regarding the content of his observations (e.g. Marzano’s strategies), further

discussion provided little evidence of a deeper understanding of strong instructional practice and

suggested instead a heavy emphasis on district-mandated observation priorities, like displaying

objectives that are not closely related to instruction. Multiple teachers questioned the value of

the observations and feedback; the strongest evidence of a disconnect between leaders’ ostentive

(intended) actions and their performative or actual practices to support curriculum and

instruction came from one teacher who commented that “lip service is paid to higher order

thinking and high levels of thinking…(but) I’m not sure it’s supported… I think the attempt of

what we want to do is there. I don't think we are in sync with everyone doing what we should be

doing.”

In contrast to Boulder Star and Coral Reef, multiple sources discuss administrators’ and

department chairs’ roles in one of the higher value-added schools, Loggerhead High School,

evidencing more complex conceptions of their intended practices to support curriculum and

instruction. That sources discuss more elaborate department chairs’ roles at Loggerhead is a key

distinction from the lower-value added schools and is one avenue where administrator’s


27

performative actions are evident: department heads share in the responsibility for supporting

instructional improvement. These comments illustrate leadership’s deeper understanding of their

roles as chairs to support teachers, rather than merely completing administrative work, such as

course scheduling or distributing curricular materials to their departments. One Loggerhead

department chair reported that she focuses on teachers who needed help, such as new teachers

who “don’t know how to teach,” and that she often helps teachers with “techniques to engage

students.” She often determines which teachers need help by reviewing their lesson plans once a

semester or by talking to APs to determine who needed additional help. A second department

chair described herself as “the first line of defense” to provide help if she saw a struggling

teacher. Loggerhead’s principal offered additional evidence of a more complex conception of

teacher observations by elaborating how he looked for a “high level of rigor” comprised of

“ambitious content, high cognitive demand that students are carrying” in their classes. Evidence

from the Loggerhead High School principal and department chair interviews thus illustrates

leaders’ more complex understanding of their formal ostentive roles and routines to support

instruction and curriculum.

Variations in Leaders’ Performative Routines: Providing Feedback

In regard to administrators’ observations and conferences with teachers, leaders in all

four schools self-reported higher frequencies of observations than did their teachers, but teachers

in higher value-added schools describe key differences in leaders’ performative routines of

following up on the observations, such as conferences/discussions and specific steps to provide

support to teachers. First, leaders in higher value-added schools followed up more consistently

with teachers to discuss the content of observations through conferences or brief meetings.

Second, while participants in all four schools discussed having access to multiple forms of data


28

such as student achievement, attendance, and observation results, leaders in higher value-added

schools provided more specific, actionable feedback for teachers to use to inform their own

practice and improve student performance. In these, leaders use a wider range of information to

give teachers more detailed evaluations and appraisals of their work, and did so while

encouraging faculty to engage in ongoing discussions of data around how to improve students’

performance and school conditions.

At Boulder Star High School, multiple teachers testified to having numerous classroom

walk-throughs and were broadly positive about these visits. When asked about provision of

feedback or the use of data, leaders and teachers alike more frequently referred to the “3D Data”

chats that assistant principals led with groups of teachers every three weeks, rather than to

feedback from observations. They reported that feedback was primarily offered by leadership as

various unspecified issues arose or as part of the annual evaluation; this feedback is “minimal at

best” according to one teacher. When pressed for more details on the content of the feedback

and support that leaders provided, one Boulder Star teacher remains vague, “They support you.

They give you a format. They give you the tools, and they are there for you. You have the

knowledge, and they give you the—they give you, how do you say, the supplies that you need.”

This view contrasts with administrators who report conducting frequent walk-throughs and

giving “constant” feedback to their teachers about instruction, indicating that ostentive routines

may not have become performative at Boulder Star. Taken together, these comments provide

evidence of a number of conditions in low value-added schools: infrequent discussions with

teachers, feedback that is non-specific, references to few sources of data from observations, and

a disparity between leadership and teachers as to the utility of walk-throughs and feedback.


29

At Coral Reef High School, administrators described a process of classroom observations

and feedback; however, teachers criticized them for providing little or no feedback after

observations and little instructional support and instead being “concerned only with [test]

scores.” One teacher focus group described receiving limited feedback or follow-through by

administrators, such as providing professional development they recommended, again suggesting

that instructional leadership routines remain ostentive in lower value-added schools. After one

teacher commented that there was little follow-through to provide training to use more

technology in the classroom that the principal had recommended, a second teacher replied, “at

least you got feedback. I have never gotten feedback.” Only a few teachers discussed reviewing

any data other than test scores with their administrators. Further, observations may only be

occurring because walk-throughs are “forced by the district” and teachers reported that

classroom walk-throughs were conducted on an intermittent basis. Administrators described

providing informal feedback to teachers if they felt it was necessary, with no elaboration of goals

for more consistent reviews or discussions.

In contrast, the leadership in higher value-added schools provided more consistent

feedback and focused on data beyond test scores. At Key Lime High School, teachers reported

receiving both formal and informal feedback back on their performance from administration and

department heads through annual reviews, classroom walkthroughs, data chats and memos.

While some teachers at Key Lime offered mixed accounts of the value and frequency of the

shorter classroom walkthroughs, teachers primarily reported receiving useful feedback for their

instruction from their performance reviews. Multiple teachers credited such feedback as

informative for specific changes in their instruction, and many described being engaged in

meaningful, ongoing discussions of their student data throughout the year, in one-on-one


30

meetings as well as in professional learning communities. At Loggerhead High School,

administrators each year scheduled quarterly “one on one” data chats with teachers where they

reviewed teachers’ student performance data, what they had seen in walk-throughs and longer

observations, and their lesson plans, more focused in factors such as professional conduct,

punctuality, specific instructional practices and demonstrable concern for students than on test

scores. For leadership, multiple data sources were more useful in advising teachers’ practices and

were key to making “a school click when it comes to performance outside.” Multiple department

chairs also corroborated the timing and content of these quarterly one-on-one meetings, offering

stronger evidence of a higher frequency of follow-up meetings at Loggerhead. One administrator

detailed using both the data and follow-up conversations with teachers as guides for directing

their department chairs and/or coaches to provide specific content or instructional support.

On the whole, we see evidence that leadership in higher value-added schools have more

detailed conceptualizations of the observation and feedback cycle for their teachers and the

importance of multiple forms of data therein. Further, these ostentive routines related to

observation have been implemented more widely. In lower value-added schools, leadership’s

conceptualization of data use for instructional improvement is less developed and the disconnect

between leadership’s and teachers’ descriptions of the frequency of observation and feedback

indicate that leadership may struggle to implement these routines in actuality. From here, we turn

to the fourth essential component of focus, the role of leadership in promoting personalized

learning connections.

Targeted Efforts to Support Personalized Learning for Students

As previously summarized, personalized learning connections focuses on opportunities

for teachers to provide more individual attention to students and discuss their unique experiences


31

both in and out of school. Ranging from sports to extracurricular clubs and programs to in-class

programs and lunchtime conversations, such activities allow adults to know their students more

closely (Lee, Bryk, & Smith, 1993; McLaughlin, 1994; Lee & Smith, 1999) and to foster

students’ sense of connection to the school (Walker & Greene, 2009).

Our analyses focused on evidence of leaders’ involvement in programs and practices

aimed at developing these personalized learning connections, in an effort to identify how leaders’

guidance of or support for personalized connections differed between higher and lower value-

added schools. The differences we found centered on leaders’ attention to the broader routines

that promote a larger number of adult-student connections: while leadership in lower value-

added high schools more often emphasized their own or others’ individualized efforts to connect

with students such as in lunchroom discussions, leaders in higher value-added schools more

often discussed these connections by describing broader policies or programs they had

implemented and maintained that helped to more systematically connect adults with students.

In the lower value-added schools, Boulder Star’s leadership offered the most extensive

evidence of leaders’ more individualized strategies to promote connections. Boulder Star’s

principal and one assistant principal spent more time elaborating on how they made individual

efforts to get “out and about” and talk with students in the halls and to participate in events such

as dress-up days to help students see them in a different light. The assistant principal commented

on the importance of “being out there so students see me, knowing that we are just not people

that sit in our office.” Other faculty members corroborated these accounts. One teacher described

how the assistant principals had staged a “paint the AP (assistant principal)” event during

lunchtime to connect more with students. One of the assistant principals described how the most

important thing for her to do to ensure students’ success was


32

being their mother or father here on campus…It’s being an extension of what they may be getting here on campus, but a lot of times aren’t…students have to see you are human. They must understand you are a human being…You have to build that connection with your kids. I don’t know if it’s school-wide, I just think that would be more on an individual basis.

Coral Reef’s principal discussed efforts that also emphasized individual efforts to build

relationships: he described his own work to be “visible” to students through conversations, along

with his directions to assistant principals to be in the hallways frequently. The principal

described having started a mentoring program to target 9th and 10th graders in the lowest

percentiles of performance and “personalize the experience” that different students have in

school, but he offered few specifics for the program or any evidence that he or other leaders

devoted much time to it, indicating that ostentive routines have not been translated into

performative routines that shape practice. An assistant principal later reported that the program

was gone due to budget cuts. When asked what administrators were doing to support better

student connections, one department chair’s response suggested that some faculty saw little

evidence that administrators were engaged due to their focus on accountability pressures:

Nothing. Nothing. Administration is so overwhelmed with this FCAT, and the school grade, and we got to up our scores with the AP kids, they don't have time to make sure there is a connection. They are not doing it intentionally. They just don't have the time. They don't. I would say nothing. Then they wonder why attendance is going down. I tell them, why should a kid come to school every day if there is nothing else but preparing them for FCAT. That's all we are talking about. We are not talking about pep rallies. We are not talking about having any activities, besides what's in the textbook. We don't have any guest speakers come out. We don't have student assemblies. We don't celebrate Women's History month, Black History month, Jewish history…

Thus with these accounts from lower value-added schools, we see not only that school leaders

focused on individualized strategies to build personalized connections with students, but we find

evidence that these leaders may espouse ostentive routines for building personal learning

connections, but they did not enact performative aspects of different broader routines such as


33

mentoring programs or school celebrations that could connect students more closely to their

schools.

Evidence that administrators in lower value-added schools more often targeted individual

practices to connect with students differed from evidence in the two higher value-added schools,

where leaders and faculty indicated that school leaders focused on more systemic routines and

programs to build student-adult connections. This focus on individuals developing relationships

with students in lower value-added schools, rather than the systemic efforts we see in higher

value-added schools is similar to differences we see in the implementation of observational

routines. In the lower value-added schools, principals and assistant principals bear the primary

responsibilities for observation, while in the higher value-added schools, responsibilities for

observation are more distributed to include department heads as well.

Discussions with Key Lime’s principal (higher value-added) offer the strongest example

of this. He first noted the centrality of these connections to the school’s success:

And, the reason we have made the A's is because of the sense of personalization…They loop. 9th and 10th loop…An administrator, guidance counselor, and two academic teachers, an English and social studies teacher, are looping with these kids…So this whole idea-- I keep coming back to personalization, knowing the kids, knowing their background, and creating a sense of family I think goes a long way.

He then detailed specific changes he had made for 9th and 10th grades so that students and

teachers are together for more than one year, including modifications to the master class

schedule, and co-locating administrative and counselor offices and classrooms for each of grade

level in the same area of the school: under his direction, ostentive routines have become

performative. Other leaders are aware of the importance of these looping structures as well: one

assistant principal spoke of refining looping so that staff connect with both parents and their

students: “all of us rotate and stay with a cohort of kids until they graduate, this is to increase the


34

level of personalization not only with the students, but the parents as well.” Faculty also value

these looping structures and describe the impacts of them, together with the resource

modifications necessary for their implementation. One teacher echoed how these small learning

communities were central to the school’s success:

I find them critical to our success here…Speaking about the strength (of the school) question, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the way that we personalize education here I think is amazing. There is the sense of community here that is palpable. You can feel it.

Comments by other faculty highlighted the importance of different programs to connecting with

students, “On campus, we have a lot of clubs and that’s important to students because they have

that teacher—they have asked that teacher, that they have a relationship with, to be their club

sponsor, so they get exposed to being with a teacher other than teaching. So they see the

interaction, normal interaction.”

Loggerhead High School also used looping and a reading program established with their

feeder middle school provides stronger evidence of the faculty’s systematic efforts to connect

with their students. The principal detailed how faculty visited their feeder middle schools to meet

incoming freshmen as 8th graders, to introduce the school, and to invite them to participate in a

reading program in which they meet in smaller groups during their freshman year discuss a book.

Efforts such as these helped faculty to make early connections with incoming students. The

principal and one assistant principal also described a program in which administrators and

teachers worked together throughout the year to identify particular student groups (e.g., those in

the lowest 30% of achievement or those with excessive absences) and meet with these groups to

discuss both their academic work as well as their personal experiences at the school and life

issues they may be confronting. When explaining the motivation behind the program the


35

assistant principal explained it was due to “Personalization. Day in and day out personalization.”

Finally, administrators at Loggerhead elaborated on how a lead content teacher had engaged

students in this more systemic approach to personalization and school connections by working

closely with the student government to brainstorm and provide opportunities such as guest

speakers and pep rallies during lunch and after school for other students and faculty to come

together to build school spirit. These efforts served to both engage students in developing the

programs and provide other students with activities to feel more a part of the school.

Discussion

This paper has examined the notion that leadership in effective high schools is defined by

engaging in and supporting articulated routines and practices that are pervasive and permeate all

aspects of the school, rather than the implementation of any particular set of programs (such as

ninth grade academies). As we have discussed, leaders in higher value-added high schools

differed from their counterparts in lower value-added high schools in three key ways. First, they

described more complex conceptions for their own intended, ostentive roles of observation and

feedback to support teachers’ instruction. These leaders provided more detailed summaries of

what they looked for in their observations and what information they provided in their feedback.

Teachers’ comments in both sets of schools corroborated these accounts: some in higher value-

added schools reported how leaders’ input had let to changes or improvements in their

instruction, while some in lower value-added schools questioned the value of leaders’ feedback.

Second, leaders in higher value-added schools used multiple forms of data to provide more

frequent, specific feedback and to engage teachers in ongoing reviews and discussions of their

students’ progress. In this domain we found evidence of how leaders in higher value-added

schools combined the data analyses with data from observations to create more coherent,


36

ongoing discussions about instruction that included both group or team reviews of data along

with their individual feedback to teachers. Finally, leaders in higher value-added high schools

focused on establishing more systemic routines in the forms of broader programs that provided

greater, more widespread opportunities for faculty to connect with and get to know their

students. Their focus on these routines included attention to various resources (such as location

of classrooms or administrator offices) that helped to ensure that the programs had an impact on

teachers’ interactions with one another and with students, all around the shared goal of

connecting with their students. In effect, higher value-added school leaders’ careful attention to

implementation of the ostentive routines and details of the personalized learning connections

initiatives helped to change teachers’ performative routines such that they actually did connect

more frequently and deeply with their students.

Across the four domains of schooling that were the focus of this paper, quality

instruction, rigorous and aligned curriculum, systemic use of data, and personalized learning

connections, we find evidence that leaders’ careful attention to the ostentive routines in higher

value-added schools often helps to ensure that they are carried out and enacted by faculty at a

deeper level. Our findings illustrate that a deeper understanding of leaders’ work to support key

routines in their schools, when analyzed through ostentive and performative perspectives rather

than as discrete practices (Feldman & Pentland, 2003; Spillane et al., 2011 and 2012;), can help

to identify how certain leaders’ deeper conceptions of their responsibilities and roles both inform

their own actions as well as the routines and programs that they implement. This paper also

demonstrates the importance of further examining both the intentions and actual implementations

of organizational routines to determine their success when studying school improvement.

Analyses such as these not only help to determine just how new programs or policies affect


37

leadership practice, such as day-to-day instruction or time spent connecting with students more

personally, but they reveal that school leaders’ deliberate attention to routines, such as use of

data, can influence multiple areas of school effectiveness.

Our findings also inform the larger field of high school improvement in a number of

ways. Just as the results emphasize the need to pay attention to the performative dimensions of

routines, they also point to the need to examine the practical implementation of different

programs such as Career Academies, ninth grade academies, or AVID. In this study’s higher

value-added high schools, leaders’ practices helped to ensure both greater alignment of staff

resources (time and materials) around specific goals such as building personalized learning

connections, and they more closely supported improvements in teachers’ practices (through such

actions as giving more detailed feedback on instruction). Such practices by effective leaders

could certainly apply not only to specific routines but also to implementation of broader

programs and/or comprehensive school reform models. These findings point to the key roles that

principals can play in not only aligning and connecting different resources in their schools but

also in providing guided support of teachers’ changes to or improvements of their practices.

These results also point to the need for refining our understanding of just what specific

leadership practices matter most in improving student achievement in high schools. Grissom,

Loeb, and Master (2013) have found that specific practices such as teacher coaching, evaluation,

and developing a school’s educational program positively predict achievement gains, while

principals’ time spent on brief, informal classroom walkthroughs may actually be with

negatively associated with achievement gains. They call for more study and definition of what

specifically comprises effective instructional leadership in different contexts. Similarly, teachers

in our higher value-added schools described their principals’ more detailed provision of useful


38

feedback to inform and guide their improved practices; these results offer support for Grissom, et

al.’s findings that principals must connect their observations and walkthroughs to longer

discussions and a coherent vision for improved instruction.

Finally, Horng, Klasik, and Loeb (2010) also offer evidence that other organizational

management work (hiring personnel, managing budgets and resources) is key to raising student

achievement in high schools. These activities fall outside of more recent conceptualizations of

instructional leadership and point to the broader organizational roles that principals play in their

schools. Similarly, we found that principals’ careful allocation and alignment of resources were

key to the success of programs (for such priorities as improving personalized learning

connections), and such work falls outside of recent calls for principals to focus heavily on the

teaching and learning dimensions of their schools. As the field deepens its understanding of

effective school leadership, there is a need to develop both more specific conceptions of

instructional leadership practices as well as broader views of the systemic impacts that principals

can have on their schools.


39

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