Educational Leadership

aimed to increase public confidence in the province’s 5,000 publicly funded schools.

The defining feature of the initiative was its focus on building capacity in schools to raise achievement. Elementary school teachers received extensive professional development on key instructional practices in literacy and numeracy, with intensive assistance given to schools in greatest difficulty. At the high school level, “student success officers” identified potential dropouts and developed individualized education and support mechanisms to keep them in school.

As part of this reform, the province developed a coherent leadership development strategy—the Ontario Leadership Framework and Principals’ Qualification Plan—which changed the function of the principal from administrator to instructional leader. Supporting the instructional core became the focus of principal preparation programs.

Now, in addition to successful experience as a teacher and completion of a principals’ training program at a university, every principal and vice principal receives two years of mentoring in each of these roles from an experienced principal. This mentoring is funded by the Ontario Ministry of Education but organized through local school boards. The program includes training for mentors and a clear learning plan for mentees.

In consultation with their school boards, principals set a number of challenging goals and strategies to achieve those goals. This becomes the basis of their evaluation, which takes place every five years. There’s also considerable job-embedded professional development and information sharing across schools. The ministry also gave each of the 72 local school boards funding to develop a leadership succession plan so reform momentum isn’t lost when principals move on.

As a result of these measures, by

2010, 68 percent of students
achieved the 6th grade pro-
ficiency standard—up from
54 percent in 2004—and
the high school graduation
rate moved to 79 percent,
up from 68 percent in 2004.
The reforms also reduced the
number of low-performing
schools from 20 percent
to under 5 percent and
decreased the attrition rate of
new teachers by two-thirds
(Levin, 2008).

Lessons Learned What lessons can the United States take from international efforts to develop the next generation of school leaders?

Redefine the Role
of School Leaders

As countries seek to raise the performance of their education systems and adapt them for the 21st century, they recognize that the role of the principal as conceived in the past (and codified in regulations) is no longer appropriate. These countries have developed new standards to redefine the responsibilities of school leaders to focus on leadership for learning. Overall, the definition of the principal’s role has changed from “bells, buildings, and buses” to a focus on instructional leadership.

Although these new leadership standards include many items, they tend to focus on the following responsibilities, which seem most closely linked to improved student outcomes (Pont, Nusche, & Moorman, 2010):

n Supporting, evaluating, and devel-
oping teacher quality.
n Setting school goals for student
performance, measuring progress, and
making improvements.

n Strategically using resources to focus all activities on improving teaching and learning.

n Partnering with communities, social agencies, and universities to support the development of the whole child.

Although it’s not entirely clear what experiences actually serve to develop such leaders, especially on a scale large enough to staff a whole system, many places, including Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway, and Hong Kong, are exploring new leadership models like those described here.

Take a Comprehensive Approach

Although the United States tends to focus on developing new kinds of training programs for aspiring and current principals, training programs on their own will not ensure a sustainable supply of effective school leaders. The highest-performing countries take a comprehensive approach to attracting, recruiting, and supporting high-performing school leaders.