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

Chapter 5
Conclusions

In this project, we tried to learn about the dimensions of leadership necessary for sustaining school improvement and reform by simply asking successful practitioners how they did it. While this approach does not generate the kind of reliable findings we get from adequately controlled formal research, it could and did produce a rich and diverse set of ideas to explore and test. Many of the ideas are clearly recognizable from the literature on leadership writ large. Although leaders exercise initiative and take their responsibilities, they engage other community stakeholders in partnerships aimed at helping students achieve high standards. At a profound level, good leaders appeal to others' best interests and motivations and support their pursuit of the common good. However, some kinds of knowledge and skill are particularly useful for keeping the forces of effective change vital and resisting the drag of institutional inertia and the drag of the status quo; these are different from the qualities used more generally to launch reform and school improvement strategies. Several participants registered their recognition of this fact in relatively oblique comments such as these:

Actually, I prefer just to start up new programs and then move on, but this time I decided to stay.

The district hired me because I clearly knew how to turn the school around. Once I'd done that, I had to learn new skills to keep it going.

After the third year, the system was in place. Figuring out what to do next became my full-time quest.

The lists of leadership dimensions produced in every discussion suggest that, despite overlap with other areas of leadership, some special qualities help leaders who are challenged with continuing reforms that are already up and running.
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