A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

The Role of Leadership in Sustaining School Reform: Voices From the Field - July 1996

Individual Exercises in Assessment

Journaling. Perhaps the most personal approach to reflective assessment that forum participants used was journal keeping. Although journal keeping often serves solely as a reflective device, to capture insights and images of events, some participants use it as an anecdotal record focused on a particular dimension of leadership. Participants suggested that some aspects of behavior or manifestations of attitude or predisposition could be logged easily into a journal. For example, a leader could record instances of ensuring that student welfare was at the center of decision making or keep lists of meeting participants to show the extent of shared decision making. Journal keeping, for some, was a way to stop time for a moment and tell a story that wove fragments of an overfull experience into some durable lesson or insight. For others, the journal served simply as a time and task log that held the answer to the end of the week lament: "Where did the time go? !"

Portfolio development. Recognizing that educators often generate paper trails that show where they have been, several participants suggested developing portfolios of selected documents produced in the course of their work, rather than creating still another written record. For instance, artifacts of parent contacts--telephone logs, message slips, notes from home--can illustrate something of the scope and frequency of home/school communications. Collections of periodic newsletters from school to home or from principal to staff can also shed light on communication patterns. Clipping files that show local publicity for school events, copies of grant proposals (winners and losers), memos to the central office--all of these establish a kind of record of activity or documentation of competencies that may bear on sustaining reform.

More elaborate portfolios offer stronger documentation and potentially more complete and complex evidence of effectiveness, they said. Videotapes of supervision conferences or meetings, archives of email correspondence, and photocopies of notes to teachers and students related to reform goals may produce a thorough and authentic body of evidence supporting assertions of leadership competence--or, on the other hand, reveal why more growth is necessary to achieve acceptable levels of skill. Many participants were working with teachers to implement portfolio assessment strategies with students, and some were aware of the teacher portfolios used by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards as part of its voluntary certification program. Developing their own portfolios as part of a self-assessment plan struck them as a natural outgrowth of these related initiatives.

Action plans and performance indicators. Many leaders already write an annual professional plan that lists goals and activities related to their assignment and ambitions. For each aspect of such a plan that is related to sustaining reform, they identify a performance indicator and collect data on the indicators to demonstrate accomplishments. For example, an administrator who was worried that he spent all his time reacting to others' demands set the goal of spending a certain amount of time each week on proactive instructional leadership. Another realized that too much meeting time had been spent on "administrivia" and set a goal of including at least 15 minutes of "news from the field" at each faculty meeting. Identifying indicators related to each goal and recording them on a regular basis can provide a leader with evidence of progress (or lack thereof). Although student accomplishments are the ultimate indicator of school effectiveness, few leaders are in a position to show clear and direct influence over that output in the early stages of reform. However, they have many opportunities to contribute to conditions that lead to student success, and these contributions often can be documented. Developing a system of personal performance indicators is one way leaders chart their own progress in creating the right conditions for student learning.

Participants in the San Francisco forum--like those in several other groups--hotly debated the question of whether the leadership qualities for sustaining reform were innate or acquired and, in either case, how their effectiveness could be assessed. Challenging the hypothesis that most important qualities were ineffable and unmeasurable, one participant said, "Well, suppose the superintendent said that unless you could prove that you were skillful in reform-related areas, she would simply evaluate you according to the old rules that are unrelated to reform. If you absolutely had to show evidence, how would you do it?" Thus inspired, the group generated the following ideas for assessing success in two often-mentioned areas of reform that can be difficult to measure: creating a school culture that could sustain change after the leader leaves and building meaningful school partnerships.

Evidence of a school culture that can sustain change:

Evidence of meaningful school partnerships:

Participants held that the evidence collected by any combination of these means would provide some indication of a leader's proficiency in two dimensions of skill that they thought necessary for sustaining reform. The evidence could be used to inform self-assessment or shared with others--for instance, supervisors--who are concerned with accountability.

Staff/Parent/Community Surveys. Although sustaining reform is not a reliable way to build general popularity, inasmuch as change makes people uncomfortable--especially at first--many participants found surveys to be a good strategy for assessing some dimensions of leadership. They discovered that asking the right questions is essential; it may be more illuminating to learn how block scheduling has affected lesson structures than to learn whether everyone is yet delighted with its effects. Gathering baseline data is sometimes discouraging--if the news was good, change would not be in the works--but it enables one to make judgements about the nature and extent of change.

Some participants advocated using a short and simple set of questions and ratings. They chose items that ask about dimensions of leadership directly relevant to the school's reform programs. For example, this item might be on a survey sent to parents:

Circle the number that indicates your satisfaction with the home/school newsletter: 

  Very satisfied                                    Not at all satisfied         5            4           3           2             1
Others prefer even more streamlined, open-ended forms, with questions such as this for a survey of faculty views on the leader's performance:

  1. I like it when you. . . .
  2. I don't like it when you. . .
  3. I wish that more often you would. . .
  4. The one thing I would like to change in school is. . .
Leaders use responses to items such as these to identify general trends or to choose improvement goals for the coming period.

A Little Help From My Friends...

One of the things I do, as principal of a state-funded restructuring school, is focus on student learning and some of the things we are attempting to change... For me, a weakness is in managing the process, so I have professional mentors. One is an executive in a major company that is downsizing. He shadows me for one day each month, observing my efficiency. He also gets feedback from students. Then I meet with him over lunch and share my self-assessment. In our conversations, he focuses on one question: "has change taken place in efficiency in day-to-day management?" A second mentor is good at organizational development. I keep him on retainer for consulting; when I have a problem, I give him a call and he offers suggestions or come in. People who are away from school life don't get bogged down in the details. My third mentor is an African American who is skillful in resolving community conflicts. My school has a lot of racial diversity and sometimes things get tense. An angry teacher in contact with 140 students a day can do a lot of damage. This mentor helps me sort out the fundamental issues and gives insight and sometimes direct assistance in solving problems.

In addition, now every year I survey the staff for feedback on my work. They see me as a problem solver, but in reality, I always give them back the problems to solve. I have institutionalized the process of collaborating. They take care of things. We have an "academy of directors." I have give them leadership training. We have developed rubrics for the areas that are my responsibilities. I do all the evaluating and supervising, but they share the rest. I have been a principal for 25 years, mostly in elementary school. I used to be autocratic, but now I am not.

Some leaders use surveys only for private reflection and others share results with colleagues or supervisors. Participants made the point that surveys may be most suited for use by the bold and thick-skinned. One principal whose initial sally into the world of survey data produced some scathing anonymous feedback about his leadership said gamely that he would do it again if he thought it would lead to better experiences for kids. Then he added, "I'd sure like the same chance to rate those respondents anonymously on their professionalism!" Another in that group said that his one adventure with surveys was enough. "I was devastated by the feedback," he confessed. "From then on I used other, less painful ways to determine whether I was measuring up to my goals, in the eyes of the faculty." The main point made by those who use surveys as part of their self-assessment was that the results do not provide the direct rating of performance. They are simply one of the indicators leaders may use to learn more about the perceptions of other stakeholders with reference to the leader's public manifestations of certain skills, attitudes, or knowledge or to the attainment of commonly espoused goals.

Using Staff Surveys for a Reality Check

In my current position as a middle school principal, one of the interesting dilemmas I faced was that I and the staff that I was joining had seemingly different ideas of leadership. The superintendent and the board had charged me to work collaboratively with the staff to transform a very traditional, high-achieving junior high school into a very student-centered, high-achieving middle school. My strength in previous schools had been the shared leadership and collaborative environment. I had no doubt that this would be true at my new assignment as well. During my first year at the school I formed a school leadership team (all teachers who volunteered), decentralized budget decisions, and formed a number of task forces around issues about curriculum and other aspects of the school program. Training was provided in team work, shared decision making processes, and group processes.

Teachers participated in these processes, but in general little was accomplished. They became frustrated--some angry--and only a few embraced the new processes. Their evaluations of my first year indicated a general sense that they thought they were all doing my job and that my leadership skills were weak. Their criticisms alleged that "I wouldn't or couldn't make a decision" and that I called "too many meetings." What I realized was that my understanding and commitment to collaboration had not been referenced against the pas history and tradition of the school.

Their image of and knowledge about leadership was grounded in a top-down, authoritarian model. Mine was grounded in years of learning and realizing the value of working with others--an experience that began when I started teaching in 1970. At the end of my first year as principal, I had to discuss my dilemma with staff publicly and begin to rework with them a common meaning of shared leadership--one that has guided our work together for the past two years.

Mentors from inside or outside the system. Mentors who serve as "critical friends" are highly valued by the leaders who participated in the forums. Some found these advisors in a supervisor or a more experienced colleague in the education system. While they often served as teachers, the mentors also served as "mirrors," observing and reflecting back to their proteges information about performance that could stimulate self-assessment. Others found advisors outside the system; corporate or university partners were a commonly mentioned resource. Corporate partners helped with applications of analytic frames, highlighting such leadership dimensions as efficiency, communication, problem solving, and continuous improvement. Several participants took lessons from their corporate mentors in Total Quality Management. Then they used corporate help in adapting some of the key principles to school life. University partners helped with curriculum, staff, or the organizational development dimensions of leadership.

These partnerships were seen as mutually beneficial. The school-based leaders learned new approaches to achieving their goals and assessing their own performance. The community-based partners gained new insights into the challenges of school leadership, and, according to participants, these insights made them stronger advocates for education.
-###-

[Chapter 4 Strategies for Self-Assessment] [Table of Contents] [Group Exercises in Self-Assessment]