The REACT Technical High School Project

Diplomado de Liderazgo y Gestión Educativa

Daniel Morales, Ph.DResearch Associate

How we joined the REACT Project?

• ¿What is CILGE (Research Center in Educational Managament)?

• What were we doing?– Empirical educational research – Trying to identify leadership and management

skills that are relevant in the context of Dominican public schools

• Supporting literature: Grissom and Loeb (2011)

Grissom and Loeb (2011)

• Grissom and Leob (2011) try to identify specific skills that school principals need to promote schools’ success

• They argue that the literature has mainly focused on two views that determine principals’ training policies – Instructional Leadership

• The principal´s role is to facilitate teaching and learning– Tranformational Leadership (Bass, 1998)

• The principal´s work is to inspire, motivate, and develop commitment

Instructional Leadership• A principal’s role in school:– Edmonds (1979): create an atmosphere conducive to

learning – McLaughlin & Marsh (1978): become involved in staff

development– Brookovedr et al (1979): monitor classrooms– Leithwood & Montgomery (1982): guard teachers´

instructional time– Hallinger & Murphy (1985): anything and everything within

their means to support classroom learning– Marks & Printy (2003): everything that supports the

achievement of students and the ability of teachers to teach

A complementary approach• Grissom and Loeb (2011) study the principal’s

effectiveness by examining a broader spectrum of practice– Including what March (1978) calls the “rudimentary

pragmatics” of making the organization function• Grissom and Loeb (2011) observe that much of the

principal’s day to day activities are not concerned with the core business of teaching and learning– March (1978): schools are bureaucracies; and as managers

in those bureaucracies , much of the principal ´s time is allocated to the “mundane work” of making a bureaucracy work

A complementary approach

• Grissom and Loeb (2011) find five groups of task areas that principals perform in schools:– Instructional Management– Internal Relations– Organizational Managament– Administration– External Relations

Data and methods in Grissom and Loeb (2011)

• Miami Dade County• More than 350 schools• A “rich administrative data”• Applied an inventory of tasks for the five areas

Some findings in Grissom and Loeb´s work

• They find that those principals that see themselves more effective in Organizational Management have systematically better school outcomes– Better performance in Miami Dade County

Accountability Index, Teacher Satisfaction, Parent Climates, and Math and Reading achievement

Our research• We replicate Grissom and Loeb’s study with

the purpose of:– Identifying the areas and tasks that are more

closely related to better outcomes in Dominican Republic

• We hope our findings contribute to the development of effective strategies surrounding the necessary teaching leadership and management skills for high performing school principals in the Dominican context

Our findings

– Along the lines of Grissom and Loeb (2011), school principals that perceived themselves as more effective in Organizational Management tasks are associated with better school outcomes, as measured by national assessments

– However, school principals that are more effective in Internal Relations tasks are associated with worse school outcomes

Some thoughts/ problems • The Dominican Education System currently

functions under the Instructional Leadership Paradigm– The common knowlege is biased towards the role of

school principal that warrants quality teaching and learning processes

• Education provision for school principals is biased and does not help develop leadership and managemnet skills that contribute to school performance as a whole

Some thoughts/ problems • Dominican Republic lacks a clear job description/

profile• Nevertheless, the Ministry of Education recently

applied stricter standards on the competitive examination for the school principal post

• Also, there is a growing concern regarding principals’ credentials and their and leadership and educational skills – They have a special training program for principals

called: ESCUELA DE DIRECTORES (Principal School)

How we joined the REACT Project?

• We are invited to present our findings to Agustin and Gladys Navarra (CORD)

• INICIA Foundation’s concerns regarding the involvement of Principals in the Project

• Also, INICIA considered the monitoring of principal a necessary condition for success through empowerment

What did we do?

• We created a program to develop principals’ leadership and manegement skills as part of REACT Project– We call our Program “Diplomado de Liderazgo y

Gestión Educativa”

Diplomado

• We proposed a Workshop with 96 Academic Training hours split into 6 modules

• Objectives– Develop leadership skills and school exemplary

practices– Provide school management with tracking tools to for

a stronger accountability culture– Concrete lines of action to develop and implement

school projects– Integrating leadership and management practices to

effectively monitor the implementation of REACT Project

ProgramModule Area Grissom and

LoebKnowledge

1 Introduction to Management

n.a. • Leadership skills• Accontability

2 Administrative Management

Administration

• Project Management

3 Organizational Management

Organizational Management

• Strategic Planning

4 People Management Internal Relations

• Human Resources

5 Educational Management

Instructional Management

• Instructional Leadership

6 Community Integration External Relations

• Social Responsibility and Sustainability

Program• Case studies are used throughout the program– Most of the case studies are developed by CILGE

using Dominican examples

• Workshops provide tools and teach practical ways to use case studies

• Self- Assessment tools are administered for attendees to reflect on their work

Expectations

• Fundación INICIA already has a monitoring plan to follow the teachers

• A monitoring plan is in place to follow the school principal and guarantee the success of REACT Project