An effective principal also makes sure that notion of academic success for all gets picked up by the faculty and underpins what researchers at the University of Washington describe as
a schoolwide learning improvement agenda that focuses on goals for student progress.7 One middle school teacher described what adopting the vision meant for her.
Not exact matches
Their yearlong effort to build
schoolwide civic
learning illustrates how civics can be an effective conduit for connecting curriculum and leadership practices: School
improvement becomes both a collective endeavor and a means for teaching active citizenship.
Multiple measures of classroom practice, student
learning, and other evidence related to the teacher's contribution to
schoolwide improvement; and
The
learning agenda contributes to a school culture necessary to sustain continuous
improvement as well as shared responsibility for
schoolwide success.
This year, the New York network has expanded their networked
improvement community to include 12 schools, with an explicit focus on the
schoolwide culture that promotes
learning mindsets and skills, and with a goal to better foster students» sense of belonging and value for
learning.
The community engages in an
improvement process that embeds
schoolwide professional
learning that benefits all faculty and all students.
NASSP believes that data has the power to transform teaching and
learning by helping educators identify and provide supports to all students, assisting teachers and school leaders in improving their instructional practices, and informing
schoolwide improvement activities.
Districts that invest heavily in better training and support for their principals, only to treat them as ciphers once they are hired, are a long way from cultivating the brand of leadership described in this report, which holds that authority and responsibility must be broadly exercised in order to create sustainable
learning improvements schoolwide.
As a result, I always assumed a high level of accountability for what my students
learned and how that would impact my decisions as a teacher for student progress and
schoolwide improvement.
But, as we're reminded by the 2012 Wallace study, The School Principal As Leader: Guiding Schools to Better Teaching and
Learning, these adjectives don't amount to much more than slogans without a clear understanding that any effective leadership model relies on the officially accountable individual — the principal — to shape a clear
schoolwide vision of academic success and to manage the people, data, and processes that foster school
improvement.