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

• From your own experience as a school leader, name two or three key dimensions of leadership for sustained reform--the habits of mind and heart that enable leaders to guide successful school change over the long term. . . . Describe these in the context of your concrete experiences as a school leader.

• Take the next few minutes to think of a story from your career as a school leader, one that is very important to you, and relate it to a dimension of leadership that best expresses the essence of the story.

• Take the dimensions of leadership that you have identified and featured in your stories and discuss possible strategies for using them for self-assessment, peer coaching, or other professional development activities.

This report summarizes participants' answers, retells some of their leadership stories, and explains some of the strategies for self-assessment that these innovators use themselves or think might be worth using.

Dimensions of Sustaining Leadership

Partnership and voice: Effective reform leaders cultivate a broad definition of community and consider the contribution that every member can make to helping children meet challenging standards. They hear the voices of many stakeholders--families, businesses, and other groups and institutions. Their ability to develop plans that reflect the legitimate influence of others draws in many authentic partners, whose personal convictions as well as community spirit energize participation. They look for evidence of widespread participation in important aspects of change. Establishing partnerships and listening to a chorus of voices are leadership skills that permeate all aspects of reform. A mid-Atlantic high school principal told a story about how one reluctant tenured faculty member was drawn into a schoolwide reform effort:

When I arrived at City High School, the chair of the English department was the resident scoffer. Arms folded, eyes glazed, poised with car keys in hand, he endured staff meetings. On good days, he graded papers. I began to ask his opinion and demonstrated that I valued it. I asked him to serve in a major leadership role in school strategic planning, insisted that he make the final decision among two candidates for a job in his department, and begged him to chair a long-term study group. That was over a period of three years.

By the middle of the second year, he was asking for help to use the computers and other high-tech equipment he had scorned the year before. He began to shame others into learning about it. A confirmed college-prep teacher, he took an interest in at-risk students and insisted that others attend student support team meetings on their behalf. This year, he responded to a need identified in the long-term study and organized an ethnic literature course with at-risk students in mind; he now claims this as his favorite class. With others in his department, he has proposed new graduation requirements, which they see as a need identified by citizens in our community. He is agonizing over catching two top students who were cheating, when that may have brought him vindictive pleasure four years ago.

None of these changes were mandated for him in a professional development plan. He found a place of worth among his peers, and discovered that the administration wanted to hear--and act on--his opinion. He blossomed when he was valued, trusted, urged, pushed too quickly or shamed for his poor attitude.

Vision and values: Participants agreed that effective reform leaders are dependable and committed "keepers of the dream" and that keeping the dream means adopting key values. They said the school's vision has to be a collective vision, "crafted collaboratively, with generosity of spirit." Good leaders know that the dream must be student centered and focused on ambitious academic goals and that it is continuously evolving. They know that realizing the dream hinges partly on operating consistently according to values and beliefs tied to that vision. In different ways they ask themselves daily: does this decision help realize the dream? Keith Nomura, a principal in an urban California school district, told this story of his faculty's "amen experience" in constructing a vision:

I truly believe that an effective principal needs to be like an effective minister or pastor, with the capacity to inspire in others the sense of commitment and passion that will carry the change for the long haul. When the staff, like a congregation, comes to that collective and spontaneous "amen," that is a magical moment. Here is my story.

After three years of team building, sharing power and decisionmaking, after struggling to find the right process to prepare the staff to move to each new level, along came Senate Bill 1274, the school restructuring grant program. For me this seemed like the right vehicle to use [to achieve our goals]. The staff was unsure at first, but I kept pushing, and finally a cadre of staff went to the training workshop [to learn how to write a 1274 proposal].

They came back both inspired and frustrated: inspired by the possibilities and frustrated by the short timeline to put a proposal together. The staff as a whole decided to go for it, to come to consensus on a proposal that would turn our school upside-down if implemented. In trying to craft the vision, the staff and I struggled with terms, philosophies, language, and more. A subcommittee gathered our thoughts and went away to try to put them into some appropriate prose. They came back with one version, received response, then went away. I participated on the subcommittee and as a member of the staff.

Finally, the subcommittee came to the staff with a proposal that became the vision for the whole school. As they read the vision, there was this collective "yes!" like an "amen" at church. I had chills and tears, as did others. That vision, that passion burned in my soul and, I believe, in the souls of many (if not all) of those in that room that day. Now, three and one-half years later, that passion still burns at our school.

Knowledge and daring: Effective reform leaders develop relevant information bases and cultivate human resources to minimize failure while encouraging risk-taking, said the forum participants. They study, count, seek advice, send staff to workshops, bring in experts and mentors, consult their own insight and experience, and in a hundred other ways increase capacity to make good decisions. Then they step into the unknown and encourage staff to do likewise. Their risks are very carefully calculated to push the boundaries of what is known and commonly done without threatening long-term success. Lois Jones, principal of Oceana High School in Pacifica, California, told how following up on a well-conceived collective decision with a personal risk opened the gates of disclosure among staff members and set them back on the path toward professionalism:

The staff had agreed to implement a peer coaching program, as part of our self-assessment process. We agreed that coaching teams would cross learning areas and that teams would have experienced and new teachers working together to improve classroom practice, thus improving student learning. The work began: teams shared student work and conferenced on practices. However, we bogged down on classroom observations. We did put a process in place--preobservation conference, classroom visitation, and postobservation conference--and grant money was designated for support, but observations did not occur.

As I thought about what was happening and--more importantly--not happening, I decided to find a nonthreatening way to confront the issue. At Oceana, all certificated staff teach in the classroom; all are a part of the process, so I was directly involved.

At a staff meeting on peer coaching, I approached the topic by relating to the staff how I had "forgotten" to meet for a preobservation conference. My question was, "Could I have missed this meeting because the entire issue of coaching one another made me anxious and fearful? " I asked whether anyone else had similar concerns.

A wonderful conversation followed; for the first time we openly addressed the fears inherent in such a process. As a result of this exchange, we built in safety nets to ease the fears of such risk-taking. Now classroom visitations have tremendously increased and the process is becoming institutionalized.

Savvy and persistence: Ever practical, forum participants said effective reform leaders know how the system works and they can take a lot of flak (if they must). They know how to interact with the central office, the local community, and others outside the school. They know how the school structure nurtures or discourages attitudes and behavior. They can put up with resistance inside or outside the building, but they eventually find ways to win cooperation. They are good managers. They monitor their understanding of the nature and operations of systems, and they maintain a network of supporters to lean on in times of particular stress.

Martha Jones, principal of Miller Middle School in Macon, Georgia, paved the way for program success by matching the aggressiveness of her public relations campaign to the aggressiveness of her campaign against school violence:

Perhaps my most radical reform has been the effort to eliminate violence in a middle school with 1,350 students and 84 teachers. In our socially and culturally divided community, the middle school I inherited three years ago was the established leader, academically and in every other measure. However, the 22 percent of Macon students who enroll in private schools are said to do so because they fear the violence in public schools.

So I began the preliminaries to put in place a policy of zero tolerance for violence and prepared for the flood of criticism that would certainly be heard from the parents of children who got caught. I became the chief cheerleader, enlisted the opinions and support of my superiors, teachers, parents, and students; we were off. Every 20 feet, I posted signs with the diagonal slash mark across the word "violence" written in letters dripping blood-red paint. Campus police were enlisted for random searches of lockers and bookbags. Alternatives to violence were promoted through peer mediation and closed circuit t. v. announcements. Students at Miller are suspended automatically if they 1) exchange blows; 2) promote acts of violence with their words or actions--even to the point of spreading word of impending violence; or 3) threaten violence of any kind. Those with weapons are either suspended or sent to an alternative school.

Now non-violence has become the norm. Although there have been repercussions in the form of numerous appeals, incidents of violence have decreased almost to the point of nonexistence.

Personal qualities: Effective reform leaders put to good use an array of personal qualities that many participants felt were innate rather than acquired. Without resolving the nature/nurture aspect of this dimension of leadership, participants mentioned an array of personal qualities that make leadership more effective or leaders easier to follow. Passion, humor, and empathy came up the most often. A well-developed sense of humor was often mentioned as a priceless asset. Strength of character and general maturity were also described as essential. Patience is key. Good leaders have both wisdom and common sense, and they are viewed as trustworthy and reliable. Many credit their success to creativity, although others credit the creativity of their faculties. Furthermore, "If you're not sensitive, you're going to be lost in dealing with children. "The obvious variation in the personalities and temperaments of the forum participants suggests that one can become a notably successful school leader given any of a considerable array of gifts and tendencies.

Role of Self-Assessment

Individual strategies: Journal-keeping, portfolio development, performance indicators, surveys, and mentors were the most frequently mentioned individual approaches to self-assessment.

• Journal-keeping is perhaps the most personal method of reflective assessment. Although journal-keeping often serves solely as a reflective device, some participants use it as an anecdotal record focused on a particular dimension of leadership.

• Several participants suggested developing portfolios of selected documents produced in the course of their work. 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. More elaborate portfolios that include, for example, 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 about leadership competence.

• Performance indicators may be developed as part of the annual professional plan that many leaders already use to list goals and activities related to their assignment and ambitions. For each aspect of such a plan that is related to sustaining reform, some identify a performance indicator and collect data on the indicators to demonstrate accomplishments.

• Many participants found surveys to be a good strategy for assessing some dimensions of leadership. However, sustaining reform is not a reliable way to build general popularity, inasmuch as change makes people uncomfortable--especially at first--and therefore asking the right questions and using the right analytic strategies is essential.

• Mentors who serve as "critical friends" are highly valued by the leaders who participated in the forums. Some found advisors in a supervisor or experienced colleague in the education system. Others looked 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.

Group exercises in self-assessment: Several focus groups recommended group activities for self-assessment, combining personal data collection and analysis with collective discussions and feedback to create a textured portrayal of performance that could then be measured against some agreed-upon standard. Most of the ideas were explicitly developmental, aiming to use group sessions to identify targets for personal reflection and generate analytic frameworks.

Tailor-made rubrics: One way to focus data collection and calibrate measurements of progress is to create a rubric. Participants from Kentucky generated a rubric targeting the specific leadership dimensions demanded to implement provisions of Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA). The rubric, which runs to about 19 pages in table form, details particular behaviors that define levels of competence, from the novice rating of 1 to the distinguished rating of 4, in 12 areas of leadership: assessment, curriculum, instruction, school transformation plans, parent involvement, community engagement, high school restructuring, technology, site-based decisionmaking, primary grade programs, personnel evaluation, and budget.

Developing a self-assessment system: For every participant who used self-assessment for professional purposes, there were two or three who viewed it as an appealing but as-yet-untried solution to the problem of collecting evidence of effectiveness. As pathfinders, they may not score high on traditional rating systems, but as accountable members of an education system, they appreciate the importance of documenting progress. From what participants said about their work and their approaches to accountability and from our own experience as educators, we have learned a few simple principles to guide development of a self-assessment system.

Like any other assessment, self-assessment has three components. First, criteria for assessment must be identified. In self-assessment, the basic question is, "Am I doing a good job? "Answering that question begins with describing what a "good job" looks like in the relevant context. Second, data collection methods suitable for use in self-assessment with respect to their relevance, practicality, and accuracy should be used. Third, techniques for analyzing data should make technical sense and answer the self-assessor's burning questions. Many easy-to-use strategies would serve equally well to document many commonly-adopted criteria for success in sustaining reform. Choosing a strategy that matches one's learning style or circumstances makes a lot of sense. For forum participants, the appeal of self-assessment was that it permitted them to create an accountability system tailored to their avowed principles and situation. However, they also recognized the importance of being responsive to legitimate demands of other authorities in the district. This suggests that some aspects of self-assessment could be aimed specifically at components of professional performance that are deemed crucial by outsiders.

Self-Assessment Skill: A Professional Development Goal

[Chapter 1 Recording the Wisdom of Practice: An Overview]