conviction that educators have one of
two roles—either they teach or they
support teaching and learning.
Gwinnett and a growing number
of other large districts are focusing on
two objectives to strengthen school
leadership: ( 1) building a pipeline of
new principals who are ready to tackle
the most underperforming schools and
( 2) fully supporting those leaders, especially during their novice years.
Objective 1: Build a Strong
Pipeline of School Leaders
Start with Standards
Standards spell out the key behaviors
and competencies of a successful school
leader. Many districts follow their state’s
leadership standards—usually some
form of the standards created by the
Interstate School Leaders Licensure
Consortium (see p. 27), with
a focus on skills needed to
improve instruction. Others,
such as New York City;
Boston; Jefferson County,
Kentucky; and Fort Wayne,
Indiana, have enacted standards tailored to their own
needs (Orr, King, & LaPointe,
2010).
For example, to reinforce
a districtwide drive to get
principals and teachers to
use data more effectively
and consistently, New York
City’s “school leadership
competencies” provide highly
detailed criteria for assessing
how effectively principals
are applying and promoting
those skills in their schools. A
top-rated “exemplary leader”
must demonstrate, among
other things, that he or she
“creates a school culture in
which staff reflect on data to
determine their professional
development needs and create
learning opportunities to
address their own needs” and
“creates excitement around
Leadership standards
only come to life
when districts actually
use them to shape
how they select, hire,
train, and evaluate
school leaders.
tracking progress and develops a school
culture that uses data to drive con-
tinuous improvement.”
The point is that leadership standards
only come to life when districts actually
use them to shape how they select, hire,
train, and evaluate school leaders. In
Chicago, Illinois, for example, high prin-
cipal turnover that affected 25 percent
of schools pointed to the need to
develop highly detailed “principal com-
petencies”—now being drafted—on
which to base everything from principal
mentoring to performance assessments,
according to Steve Gering, the district’s
chief network officer. “We needed a tool
that clearly laid out a pathway for us to
improve,” he said.
Improve Principal Training
Principal training at the
majority of university-based
programs has long been
upbraided for being out of
touch with district needs and
leaving graduates ill-prepared
to lead. As a result, more districts are exercising their “
consumer clout” to prod training
providers to introduce more
selective admissions, update
their curriculum, provide
better internships, and pay
closer attention to district
realities (Orr et al., 2010).
MCT VIA GET TY IMAGES
More districts, such as St.
Louis and Springfield, Illinois,
are collaborating with area
training providers to create
programs tailored to district
needs and conditions—what
it takes to turn around a
