Executive Summary
the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, through its Penn Center for Educational Leadership, proposes to create model distributed leadership teams in 16 Philadelphia schools and expand the capacity and quality of school leadership in Philadelphia. This project adds a significant new dimension to the current momentum and efforts to redefine the leadership needs of the city’s schools. With our focus on training teacher leaders and supporting new principals through the building of distributed leadership teams and school communities, we believe that we will significantly impact the efforts to improve instruction in each school. We have requested $4.9 million over a 5 year period. The project will target four, four, and eight schools over four years for a total of sixteen by the end of the project. The requested budget extends from August 1, 2005 to August 1, 2010 and addresses the following goals:
- To develop model distributed leadership teams and school communities in 16 Philadelphia Schools.
- To develop a targeted professional development strategy and a regional teacher leadership development center.
- To develop over 80 effective teacher leaders who can support 16 new principals and central office leaders in achieving and sustaining building-level instructional leadership.
- To utilize other leadership-building strategies including professional learning communities and coaching to support distributive leadership teams and achieve improved instructional focus and student outcomes in participating schools.
- To create model distributed leadership agreements with the Philadelphia School District and its unions, and training and develop partnerships with Temple University and Lehigh University in support of sustained leadership development and instructional improvement.
The University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education (GSE) has a vision for preparing leaders of K-12 schools so that they will know how to sustain high performing, standards-based schools. GSE’s Mid-Career Doctoral Program and Aspiring Principals Program are successful efforts to realize that vision and form the curricular base for this project. This project adds a substantive leadership dimension – the development of teacher leaders to build a distributed school setting focused on achieving building-level instructional improvement. It also employs a professional development strategy, including important leadership elements (coaching, professional learning communities, etc.) which build capacity and community. The development of a regional leadership development center increases the likelihood of sustainability and dissemination.
Finally this project, through the partnerships forged with Temple and Lehigh Universities, as well as the School District of Philadelphia, would help to redefine leadership in the Philadelphia public schools. By joining Lehigh’s Urban School Leadership Development Program which is funded by the United States Department of Education and Temple and Philadelphia’s $4 million Broad Foundation grant to create an Academy for Leadership in Philadelphia Schools (ALPS), we will leverage training and development efforts in the Philadelphia schools. These efforts merge resources, capacity, and focus in a collaborative approach which can make a difference for the staff and students of the Philadelphia public schools.
Project Narrative
A. Background, Context, and Need
Philadelphia is among the largest school districts in the country with 190,000 students (K-12) enrolled in 263 schools. It has also been identified as one of the most socio-economically, financially, and academically troubled school districts in the country. When the Annenberg Foundation offered a small number of America’s troubled cities the opportunity to vie for significant resources to restructure their public systems, the Philadelphia School District and a consortium of other partners responded with extraordinary support and a comprehensive school reform agenda designed to create a system in which virtually all schools and all students would be high performing. Unfortunately, extraordinary challenges remain and in the 2003 round of state administered standardized testing – the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) exams in reading and mathematics – only 21.6% of the students scored proficient or above for their grade level (state target is 35%) in mathematics and only 27.5% in reading (state target is 45%). Currently, 194 schools in the Philadelphia public school system are in “School Improvement” or “Corrective Action” status due to failure to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) under No Child Left Behind Legislation.
Philadelphia has attracted the attention of educators and policymakers across the country as it once again undergoes dramatic changes in management structure and redesigns the approach to leadership at all levels of the educational system. The current efforts to transform educational leadership under the direction of Chief Executive Officer Paul G. Vallas are intended to sharpen the focus in Philadelphia public schools on their core instructional mission and to infuse new measures of accountability for school leaders in improving academic achievement of students. A pressing need faced by the District is to reduce the extremely high rate of turnover among school leaders and to develop a cadre of qualified candidates to fill a large number of vacancies anticipated in the very near future. Nearly one out of five schools (forty-five) across the Philadelphia public school system began the 2003-2004 school year under the direction of a new principal. An even higher proportion of assistant principal positions – seventy-five out of two hundred and twenty-six, or 33% - were filled by new candidates. The District maintains that as many as ninety principal vacancies are anticipated in the fall of 2004. The need to recruit and train new principals is what led the District to collaborate with universities and other institutions that can bring expertise not only from the field of education, but from the broader arenas of organizational development and management in collaborative efforts to build appropriate leadership capacity for Philadelphia schools. These identified needs led the District to secure with Lehigh University a three-year grant (beginning in the fall of 2003) from the U.S. Department of Education to launch a new urban school leadership program in Philadelphia, as well as to develop a multi-year Broad Foundation proposal with Temple University intended to build on the momentum gained from that partnership and other ongoing efforts in leadership development in the District. This project is designed to significantly enhance and connect with those efforts and we have pledged to work collaboratively with the proposed ALPS as they undertake their training work with administrators.
Research over the last two decades has well established that focusing on instructional leadership is a key strategy for school improvement and that supporting school-based leaders plays a crucial role in improving lower achieving schools. As Philadelphia has moved toward core curricula as a focal point for instructional improvement, the lack of consistent school leadership has been a substantial constraint to school success. Newman, King, and Youngs (2000) delineated the tasks of instructional leadership that support improved student achievement, notably, comprehensive professional development that builds school capacity. Elmore (2000) has stated as one of his five principles that lay the foundation for large scale improvement that “the purpose of leadership is the improvement of instructional practice and performance, regardless of role.” Instructional leadership must be a shared, community undertaking. Leadership is the professional work of everyone (Lambert, 2003). The complexity of the principal’s role affirms, and the literature strongly suggests, the need to engage a significant number of classroom teachers, as one administrator cannot adequately serve as an impactful instructional leader for an entire school without that support (Elmore, 2000; Lambert, 2003; Lambert, et al., 1995; Lambert, et al., 1997; Olsen, 2000; Spillane, Halverson, and Diamond, 2001).
There is no question that the challenges faced by principals in today’s schools are greater than at any other time in history. The implementation of instructional reforms requires leadership and skills that most principals are not prepared to deliver (Elmore 2000). A recent study entitled Beyond Islands of Excellence: What Districts Can Do to Improve Instruction and Achievement in All Schools – A Leadership Brief, undertaken by the Learning First Alliance and funded by the U.S. Department of Education (2003), focused on five high-poverty school districts across the United States making strides in improving student achievement. Recognizing that effective instruction was crucial to improving achievement, they were interested in learning more about how such districts promoted good instruction across their systems. One of the primary findings is that successful districts significantly redefined the role of school leadership beyond the principal.
Another of the primary findings was that principal and teacher leaders were crucial in defining the districts systems of instructional leadership. Nowhere was the districts’ commitment to building instructional expertise more evident than in the development of principal and teacher leaders. Successful districts provided significant professional development in instructional leadership techniques and, to expand instructional development and efforts, relied significantly on teacher leaders. These teachers provided additional instructional support to colleagues by modeling lessons, providing one-on-one coaching, and assisting struggling teachers. Teacher leaders often relieved principals of administrative instructional duties, such as professional development planning, overseeing testing administration, and deepening the coherence of instructional practices. The expansion of leadership required significant collaboration among the building stakeholders.
Equally important to understanding what these school districts did for instructional improvement is knowing more about how these changes were undertaken or enacted by school leaders in their daily work. To explore the “how”, Spillane, Halverson, and Diamond (2001) conducted a leadership study in Chicago which used a distributed leadership framework to examine the practices of leadership in urban elementary schools working to change mathematics, science, and literacy instruction. They maintained that “knowing what leaders do is one thing but without a rich understanding of how and why they do it, our understanding of leadership is incomplete.” This understanding and its application is a critical underpinning for work that we propose to undertake in this project. In fact, our work extends the work of Elmore, Spillane, and others by developing a model and targeted professional development strategy for implementing distributed leadership.
We are guided in our understanding of the research of Spillane et al. in Chicago as well as insights from such recent reports as the Wallace Foundation’s report entitled, “Making Sense of Leading Schools: A Study of The School Principalship” conducted by Portin, Schneider, DeArmond, and Gundlach (2003). Portin et al. noted that principals are responsible for insuring that leadership happens in at least seven critical areas (instructional, cultural, managerial, strategic, external development, micropolitical, and human resources) but they do not have to provide it all on their own. In their study, the authors distinguish between positional and de facto leaders and between leaders and leadership. They state:
Principals, assistant principals, department heads, and others highly placed on a school’s organizational chart, are leaders by position. However, de facto leaders exist in every school: individuals who, regardless of their position, help schools identify issues that interfere with student learning, create a more participatory environment, and help bring resources to bear toward meaningful change and reform. (Conversely, de facto leaders can also sabotage change by throwing the weight of their influence against it.) Whether appointed or de facto, leaders are thought of as the people who exercise discretion and influence over the direction of schools. Leadership is more of a broad characteristic of schools, a distributed capability in an environment that helps sustain changes that enhance student learning, improve instruction, maximize participation in decision making, and align resources to the school’s vision and purpose (Portin et al., 2003).
It is important to note that all of the principals, regardless of school types, said that they shared at least some responsibility for instructional leadership with other adults in their building, given the current emphasis on the principal as instructional leader. This is important, as our focus in the distributed leadership school will largely be leadership in this critical function which is typically not an area of controversy in collective bargaining agreements. The differences in the way key leadership functions are performed, according to Portin et al., go back to governance. Traditional public school leaders are profoundly affected by the actions of superintendents, district-wide school boards, and central offices. These groups are, in turn, influenced by federal, state, county, or city government policies and by collective bargaining agreements. As this project navigates the distributed leadership school environment, we have anticipated these issues and will determine the extent to which they can be addressed through the distributed leadership agreements and understandings that the project proposes to develop.
Over the next five years, the Penn Center for Educational Leadership will contribute in preparing a new generation of leaders in Philadelphia who will be well-grounded in the skills and strategies needed to sustain high performing, standards-based schools. The Center will work with our partners to strengthen capacities of current school leaders and to develop new school leaders for the future. The following goals will help the reader to understand how this will be accomplished.
B. Project Goals
Our vision for this project involves redefining and reshaping the role of school leadership in overburdened and complex urban schools. These goals represent a significant new dimension to the current momentum and efforts to redefine leadership in the Philadelphia School District. Our focus on developing teacher leaders and building distributed leadership teams complements and ensures the sustainability of the programs that our partner institutions, Lehigh and Temple, and Philadelphia School District are undertaking. Their work focuses on the recruitment, selection, preparation, and support for new school leadership and the continuing education and coaching of experienced school leaders. Our work prepares new principals and teacher leaders to function in a distributed leadership team to improve instruction and achievement. That process is supported by capacity (leadership) and content coaching and schoolwide development of professional learning communities which focus on building and learning issues. In developing a model for distributed leadership training and the support structures to sustain it, we believe that we will greatly increase the likelihood of the principals’ and staffs’ success in each school. By working with teams in schools, we will significantly impact system-wide efforts to improve instruction in each school.
The goals of this project are:
- To develop model distributed leadership teams and communities in 16 Philadelphia Schools.
- To develop a targeted professional development strategy and regional teacher leadership development center.
- To develop over 80 effective teacher leaders who can support 16 new principals and central office leaders in achieving and sustaining building-level instructional leadership.
- To utilize other leadership building strategies including professional learning communities and coaching to support distributive leadership teams and achieve improved instructional focus and student outcomes in participating schools.
- To create model distributed leadership agreements with the Philadelphia School District and its unions and training and development partnerships with Temple University and Lehigh University in support of sustained leadership development and instructional improvement.
The connection between these 5 goals, action plan elements, and expected outcomes are summarized succinctly in the following chart. Initial success indicators have also been included so that the reader might gauge how we will measure our success. This chart is presented here so that the reader can see and understand how critical the action plan elements are to achieving the project goals. Each action plan element helps to build and operationalize the goals that have been stated and each element is essential in understanding the framework used to build this project. For that reason, the action plan elements are central to the project design and have been elaborated in the next section of this project proposal.
Project Design and Action Plan Elements
This project is designed to develop new teacher leaders and to support new principals through the building of distributed leadership teams as they undertake responsibilities in their buildings over the next five years. The project will target four, four, and eight schools over four years for a total of sixteen by the end of the project. It is our intent to work with new principals and their identified teacher leaders and assist them in creating a distributed leadership school setting. This will be accomplished by key Action Plan elements of our project which follow.
1. Develop principals and teacher leaders (teams) in distributed leadership including key organizational elements such as decision making, change, conflict, collaboration, etc.)
2. Develop distributed leadership agreements and understandings.
3. Develop a shared vision of informed practice and supplemental training in best practices in instruction and curricular areas (if needed).
- Develop professional learning communities in each building.
- Increase capacity for analysis and understanding of student work and data.
- Provide coaching and mentoring in creating a distributed leadership school setting.
- Develop a regional teacher leadership development center and a cadre of trainers for sustainability and dissemination.
We request approximately $500,000 for year one and are seeking an overall amount of approximately $4.9 million for the total 5 year project. Those resources will allow us to assist the Philadelphia School District to achieve the outlined project goals and to help principals and teachers to create cultures of reflection, inquiry, and learning that will enhance student achievement and complement the principals’ leadership development that is occurring through the Principals Leadership Academy supported by the Broad Foundation.
The Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania and its Center for Educational Leadership, in partnership with the School District of Philadelphia, other local universities and agencies, propose to create the infrastructure for a project which can be sustained after the commitment from the funders ends. Project planning will also include linkage and connection to the latest research and most effective practices occurring across the country primarily through the regional labs and centers, and through the research findings produced by the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE). CPRE is one of the premier educational research organizations in the United States, uniting five of the nation’s top research institutions: the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, Stanford University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Through these linkages, we will monitor and integrate the most effective practices as part of our project activities. We also expect to maintain a close working relationship with the Annenberg Foundation and the Annenberg Center for School Reform and draw upon the substantial work produced by the Annenberg Challenge. It is our intent to ensure the success of our intervention design by incorporating best practices utilized in urban settings.
The following represents a discussion of each of the action plan elements of the project as planned.
1. Develop Principals and Teacher Leaders (Teams) in Distributed Leadership
Instructional leadership must be a shared, community undertaking. Leadership is the professional work of everyone in the school (Lambert, 2003). The complexity of the principal’s role affirms the need to engage a significant number of classroom teachers as instructional leaders. The traditional model of formal, one-person leadership leaves the substantial talents of teachers largely untapped. Improvements achieved under this model are not easily sustainable; when the principal leaves, promising programs often lose momentum and fade away. As a result of these and other weaknesses, the traditional model has not met the fundamental challenge of providing quality learning for all students.
A powerful force in the quest for alternative and authentic perspectives on leadership practice is the notion of “distributed leadership” which is currently receiving much attention and growing empirical support (Gronn, 2000; Spillane et al., 2001). Instructional improvement requires that people with multiple sources of expertise work in concert around a common problem; this distributed expertise leads to distributed leadership (Spillane, et al., 2001).
In their recent review of successful school improvement efforts, Glickman et al.(2001) constructed a composite list of the characteristics of what they term the “improving school”, a “school that continues to improve student learning outcomes for all students over time”. At the top of this list appears “varied sources of leadership, including distributed leadership” (ibid). Similarly, research by Silns and Mulford (2002) has shown that student outcomes are most likely to improve where leadership sources are distributed throughout the school community, and where teachers are empowered in areas of importance to them.
In contrast to traditional notions of leadership premised upon an individual managing hierarchical systems and structures, distributed leadership is characterized as a form of collective leadership, in which teachers develop expertise by working collaboratively. This distributed view of leadership requires schools to “decentre” the leader (Gronn, 2002) and to subscribe to the view that leadership resides “not solely in the individual at the top, but in every person at entry level who in one way or another, acts as a leader” (Coleman, 2002).
The formal position, therefore, is not the only necessary requisite for leadership. Leadership as stated by Bernard (1938) “is contingent on expertise”. Freedkin and Slater (1995) have written that school principals may effectively coordinate and control instructional activities only when they have been acknowledged as credible sources of advice on instructional matters. “Teachers . . . are an important source of leadership for teachers, and when teachers identify other teachers as leaders, they frequently invoke the human capital of these individuals; that is, the knowledge, expertise, and skill of the individual” (Spillane, Hallet and Diamond, 1999; Spillane, Diamond and Jita, 1999).
Distributed leadership, therefore, means multiple sources of guidance and direction, “following the contours of expertise in an organization, made coherent through a common culture. It is the glue of a common task or goal – improvement of instruction – and a common frame of values for how to approach that task” (Elmore, 2000).
It is not only reasonable but necessary to think about teams as one thinks about distributed leadership in a building. As Elmore (2003) says, “Powerful leadership is distributed because the work of instructional improvement is distributed.” Schools that are improving seldom, if ever, engage exclusively in role-based professional development – that is, professional learning in which people in different roles are segregated from one another. Instead, learning takes place across roles. Improving schools pay attention to who knows what and how that knowledge can strengthen the organization (Elmore, 2003). It is our belief that distributed leadership teams can accomplish that end in a more effective and coordinated way for the improvement of learning.
Since distributed leadership is relatively new in its implementation in schools, a specific research-based training and development plan does not exist that addresses our needs in this project. However, we can and will draw on the best knowledge to date and the extensive experience of our staff and consultants. The Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) has developed an organized set of performance and curriculum standards for professional practices of school leaders. These standards are foundational for any school leaders program and will be for this project. They are incorporated into the substantive and field-based aspects of Penn’s Mid-Career Doctoral Program and its Aspiring Principal’s Program which will be utilized in the content core of this project.
These ISLLC standards will also be delivered through appropriate pedagogical practices and structures that build on and reflect the two other leadership training projects underway. Peterson (2002) suggests that instructional strategies should include experiential learning, use of information technology, small group work, simulation, videotapes, role-playing, case studies, and action research. We will integrate these strategies into a cohort model which offers a structural element that builds strong interpersonal relationships and contacts. The cohesiveness that develops in this type of group setting supports higher completion and success rates and builds future professional networks (Jackson and Kelley, 2002). This strategy has been successful in Penn’s Mid-Career Doctoral Program and its Aspiring Principals Program.
The teacher leadership development program content is a critical variable in this project. Our project will draw on existing programs at GSE, building on content and processes in those programs and supplementing them, based on needs identified in buildings, with the best, appropriate content and processes from other nationally known programs and sources. It is our plan to customize our work to the project schools as much as possible, while developing a teacher leader development program that is transportable to sites who wish to engage in building distributed leadership teams and settings. It is our intent to develop teacher leaders who can coach colleges, support learning communities, and lead instruction-based issues (data analysis and planning, staff development, retraining staff, curriculum and instruction planning, etc.) in their buildings.
Our primary sources for program content are the 46 modules that have been developed for the Mid-Career Doctorate in Educational Leadership at Penn. Modeled on executive business administration programs at leading business schools, the program addresses the ongoing transformation of public and private educational organizations from a leadership perspective. The curriculum fosters a deep understanding of organizations, institutions, and learning, and their implications for schooling. A focus on inquiry-based leadership cuts across the program’s core content areas:
Instructional Leadership
Educational leaders need to be able to grasp and negotiate the learning needs of students and teachers, both in terms of the curriculum that suits their needs and the methods best used in teaching the curriculum.
Organizational Leadership
Successful leaders have many positive qualities, but one of the most important is the ability to use their power to inspire others to change and improve.
Public Leadership
Leaders need to be engaged in productive relationships with the various communities that form the civic context for leadership activities.
Evidence-Based Leadership
Leaders need to be able to identify and employ a variety of data sources and analysis methods to inform decision-making and become more able consumers and producers of data.
The core curricular areas and the 46 modules (see Appendix B) represent rich sources of leadership learning that will be drawn upon to meet the skills required to develop a distributed school leadership team. Those modules will be selected based on advice from our national experts and the needs identified in each building chosen.
The program components will also be consistent with training occurring in the Urban School Leadership Development Program developed by Lehigh University and the Academy for Leadership in Philadelphia Schools developed by the Philadelphia School District. While these programs are centered on developing successful principals, elements from both will be utilized in the preparation of teacher leaders where continuity and quality can be enhanced by doing so. We will include the National Institute for School Leadership (NISL) executive development curriculum for developing teacher leadership in this project. We will use selected units for teachers which are appropriate for the instructional and staff development leadership roles that they will assume. NISL has indicated an interest in permitting the project to use selected units and in studying their impact in the context of a distributed leadership school setting. (See Appendix C)
The NISL program is designed to assist school leaders to accomplish a wide range of leadership purposes. The purposes most closely aligned to this project are the following:
- Think strategically about higher student achievement in their schools
- Create aligned professional development programs, enabling staff to implement the designs in detail and to enrich the capacity of faculties as members of learning communities
- Lead the creation and implementation of fully aligned, standards-based instructional systems that are sustainable over decades
- Build effective math, reading, and writing program
- Coach faculties and staffs to levels that allow good schools to become great
- Manage for results to produce steady improvements in student achievement
- Build faculty teams to get the job done . . .
(NISL, 2004)
This professional development base will be complemented with training specific to needs and problems which arise as staff and targeted schools move toward developing their own distributed leadership framework. A team needs-assessment approach will be included to target specific training or coaching. Modules for this project will be selected from the sources cited as part of a comprehensive design and teacher leader development plan.
Teacher leaders will be selected for leadership teams by building principals and the project directors based on their past experience and history of leadership behavior in their schools. Teachers will be surveyed upon their selection and involvement will be voluntary. We anticipate that the number of teacher leaders will vary from two to five per school based on school size, building needs, and the past history of leadership behavior evidenced by the candidates. The project will provide released time for training and payment for outside work to facilitate the teams’ activities.
It is anticipated that four to six weeks of training will occur in years one and two. In addition to GSE’s own training, project staff will participate in the NISL training with the Philadelphia Leadership Development Teams comprised of exemplary Philadelphia school and regional office leaders with demonstrated ability to provide effective guidance and coaching for others. Exemplary school and regional office leaders will be utilized by this project in professional development, delivery, and coaching to extend the impact and to build and in-district cadre of trainers. A series of NISL train-the-trainer sessions will begin in fall 2004 (and continue for the next two years). Turnaround education of teacher leaders will occur in summer 2005 during 12 to 14 mandatory training days each year occurring over the summer and during the school year. The Philadelphia School District and the Project will maintain a cadre of trained facilitators and contracted consultants to provide follow-up or new education as new teacher leaders are identified and empowered.
2. Develop Distributed Leadership Agreements and Understandings
Spillane, Coldren, and Diamond (2001) argue that a distributed leadership framework requires that leadership activity “is distributed in the interactive web of actors, artifacts, and situations, which form the appropriate unit of analysis for studying leadership practice.” Consequently, leadership practice is not only the purview of positional leaders, but is rather stretched over the work of both formal and informal leaders. Since job descriptions and responsibilities are often defined by contracts, it is logical to attempt to look at decision issues that are faced in a school setting and reach some level of agreement and understanding about which ones will be critical in a distributed leadership setting.
In Making Sense of Leading Schools: A Study of the School Principalship, Portin et al. (2003) have indicated that a schools governance structure effects the ways key leadership functions are performed. The differences in governance structures across different types of institutions were found to influence the degree to which adults in the school share leadership responsibilities. It also suggested that governance affects how much authority the school had to act in each of the seven leadership areas. The table presented earlier in this proposal suggests that in a traditional public setting, the combination of union contracts, constraints on resources, and a historical vesting of power in the principal thwart opportunities to distribute leadership across school management functions. These are certainly questions to be asked as we look at the many different schools where distributed leadership will be focused in this project.
Since we propose to develop understandings and agreements by buildings, we would provide support for these understandings through education in shared decision making, conflict resolution, collaboration, and leading and managing change. The context of these programs would provide an important backdrop for developing a distributed leadership strategy across the buildings.
Since this work would entail interaction with the roles and responsibilities of both teachers and administrators, we propose to work with the Philadelphia School District to discuss these issues with their respective unions in order to be sure that this work does not create conflicts that would violate their professional agreements. Obviously, some flexibility is necessary as we investigate and empower a wider range of leaders in the building. Our goal would be to ensure that more learning happens through a distributed school leadership framework and the wider range of influences on the important tasks of student learning and achievement.
While discussions have occurred with District staff about these agreements, a thorough examination of all contract implications for distributed teacher and administrator leadership roles has not. In our discussions, the general consensus has been that no insurmountable problems exist. Upon tentative or full approval of this project, the Project Director will explore all facets of the planned work with the teachers’ and administrators’ unions.
The nature of distributed school leadership will likely lead to differences in school to school settings in implementation. We do not expect the differences in team and leader development to impact any contract-related issues in developing a Distributed Leadership Agreement and understanding across the District.
3. Develop A Shared Vision of Informed Practice and Supplemental Training in Best Practices (if Needed).
Subject matter and instructional knowledge represent important contexts for teachers’ work (Ball and Lacey, 1984; Little, 1993; McLaughlin and Talbert, 1993; Siskin, 1991; 1994). While subject matter specializations are less defined in the elementary level and more directly defined as one moves towards high school, subject matter is an important context for all teachers, regardless of their level of teaching (Stodoldsky, 1988). As one considers reform practices across the land, there is no question that literacy and numeracy have seen many efforts to define what best practice is and how best practices effect student achievement in each building. We expect, and will be assessing, the extent to which strong literacy and numeracy programs across each building are in place at expected levels. The existence of strong programs are essential for maximum impact on student achievement and ongoing developments in professional learning communities.
Knowledge for and about instruction is more complex and multi-dimensional. Spillane, Coldren, and Diamond (2001) cite Shulman’s work as especially relevant here. His definitions and distinctions about content knowledge and general pedagogical knowledge are especially useful. Content knowledge refers to the facts of the discipline – the knowledge, understanding, skill, and dispositions that are to be learned by students, where general pedagogical knowledge includes principles and strategies of classroom management and organization that appear to transcend subject matter (Shulman, 1987).
Curricular knowledge involves the programs designed for the teaching of particular subjects and topics at a given level, the instructional materials available, and the characteristics that serve both the indications and contraindications for the use of particular curriculum or program materials in particular circumstances. Knowledge of learners and their characteristics, concerns of students, and their cultural backgrounds and interests are important in order to make representations interesting to students (Shulman, 1987; Kennedy, 1991). Finally, the wisdom of practice is the maxim that guides the practices of able teachers (Shulman, 1987) – it is knowledge that comes from the teacher’s experiences in the classroom. All of these issues become very important as one considers a distributed leadership context because the work of teachers in the classroom represents the most fertile ground for determining areas of responsibility in a distributed leadership setting. Portin et al. (2003) conclude that the area of major consensus for shared leadership across the variety of schools focused on the instructional function. This was identified as the area where principals had not only the highest involvement but where there was the strongest consensus for that involvement across schools.
Almost everyone writing in the last fifteen years about how to improve teaching recommends changing the traditional organization and content of professional development so that it better addresses teachers’ learning needs and incorporates findings from cognitive psychology about students’ learning needs. Reformers had argued that professional development needed to help teachers teach for understanding requires both new ideas about what counts as professional development and new policies that provide the framework within which professional development can occur.
Given this context and our fourth goal to develop professional learning communities, it is important that we assist in the development of a shared vision in each building, and support the discussion about and implementation of effective instructional practices. In an effort to create not only leadership continuity but a collective capacity to impact student achievement, we intend to complement training that the District has already done with support activities that will assist in ensuring that that continuity is widely spread across building faculty. As a result, any supplemental training that might be needed in order to address either curriculum or instruction would be an intended as part of this project and provided in support of the District’s standards and program objectives.
To support this important element of the project, a distinguished program in Penn’s Graduate School of Education, The Penn Literacy Network (PLN) will be involved. Led by Dr. Bonnie Botel-Sheppard, PLN has a 22-year history in providing long-term comprehensive, and self-sustaining professional development and coaching in literacy and mathematics best practices to districts across several states. PLN will complete an on-site assessment of literacy and numeracy practices to ascertain if they are rich in active reading, writing, speaking, and listening activities that promote critical thinking, problem-solving, and logical reasoning as focused on the Pennsylvania Academic Standards and the District’s curricula. They will determine whether a shared vision and best practices are in place in each building and to what extent.
The results of this assessment will determine whether and what additional training or coaching will be necessary in literacy and numeracy in each building. A customized plan will be developed and presented to the leadership team and the faculty based on this work and the project will involve PLN or specific consultants in targeted follow-ups. This is an important prerequisite to the development of professional learning communities.
4. Develop Professional Learning Communities in Each Building
Halverson (in press) maintains that a professional community provides a model for creating the conditions for teachers to hear, share, and experiment with new ideas about practice. He cites the considerable research on the character and effects of professional communities in schools (e.g., Louis, Kruse, and Bryk, 1995; Bryk, Camburn, and Lewis, 1997; Newman and Wehlage, 1995; Youngs and King, 2000; Supovitz and Poglinco, 2000). These researchers indicate that characteristics of schools with strong professional communities include:
- a clear sense of shared purpose and collective responsibility for student learning;
- professional inquiry among staff to achieve that purpose, including opportunities for sustained collaboration and reflection on practice;
- deprivatization of teaching practice and norms of collegiality among teachers and leaders and, finally;
- opportunities for staff to influence school activities and policies.
Strong communities in schools that promote collective responsibility for student learning and norms of collegiality among teachers have been associated with higher levels of student achievement (Lee and Smith, 1996; Little, 1982; Louis, Marks, and Kruse, 1996; Newman and Wehlage, 1995). Research is providing strong evidence that low performing schools can overcome challenges that accompany reform efforts and increase student achievement when the staff and school are organized as Communities of Continuous Inquiry and Improvement (Hord, 2004) or Professional Learning Communities. These communities are school organizations in which staff and administrators actively engage in shared leadership practices focused on the improvement of student learning (Hord, 2004; Louis and Kruse, 1995; Newman and Wehlage, 1995; DuFour and Eaker, 1998). Characteristics of professional learning communities that strongly relate to improving student outcomes include:
- Supportive and shared leadership requiring facilitative and collegial participation of the principal who shares leadership by inviting staff input, decision-making, and action in addressing school issues and challenges.
- Shares values and vision, especially with an unwavering focus and commitment to improved learning for all students.
- Collective staff learning and application of learning to seek new knowledge and application of this learning to solutions that address student needs.
- Supportive conditions that encourage and sustain a collegial culture and collective learning and action.
- Shared practice and peer support for individual and collective instructional improvement.
Professional learning communities do not generate spontaneously in schools (Grossman, Weinberg, and Woolworth, 2000). We do know that a distributed leadership perspective helps to identify and understand the practices that establish the conditions of professional community in schools (Spillane, Halverson, and Diamond, 2001). In the efforts to focus on how leadership is distributed through a school building, one must focus on the leadership tasks necessary for that to occur. A distributed perspective defines instructional leadership as the establishment and maintenance of the conditions for improving teaching and learning and, thus, is supportive of and supported by the development of a professional learning community practices in a school. The professional learning community structure, therefore, is an essential component for both improved student learning and shared leadership. In is also essential to creating the model distributed leadership communities that are intended as part of Goal 1 in this project.
It should be noted that Supovitz and Christman (1993) in their policy brief entitled Developing Communities and Instructional Practice: Lessons from Cincinnati and Philadelphia have well-documented the long history of developing professional learning communities in the School District of Philadelphia. These efforts stem back to several prior administrations. In their analysis of the extent to which they are in place and working, Supovitz and Christman found that, in Philadelphia, the reform
positively influenced the communal culture of schools and the relationship among teachers. However, only in the subset of the schools and teacher communities did the reforms penetrate the instructional culture between teachers around teaching and learning. In these cases, the communal reforms were coupled with an instructional intervention thus . . . only where communities focused on changing the instructional practices of their members was there measurable improvement in student learning. (1993)
It is our belief that this project will build on the work already done in the District to address the challenges of building professional learning communities, reinforcing their purpose in a distributed leadership context. We believe that if that context is focused on instruction and student learning and lead by our distributed leadership teams, it will provide a foundation for a more effective building-level learning community. That community would both facilitate engagement and instructional practice and build a coherent focus on improved learning and teacher development at the school level. In doing so, it would reinforce the leadership capacity of the principal. Or, as Supovitz and Christman (2003) state, “if it takes a village to raise our children, then a community of teachers can more effectively instruct them.” That is precisely the target of this project.
This project intends to support this focus on professional learning communities in several ways. Working with Shirley Hord, whose research and training in building professional learning communities is well known, we would begin with a baseline, school-wide survey and focus groups intended to help each school distributed leadership team assess the state of professional learning communities in their school. The results would be shared with the staff and, after analysis, we would work with the team to create an intervention/action plan for enhancing the development of the school as a professional learning community. Part of that assessment would include the state of teachers’ motivation, professional development, and skills. This would overlap with Goal 3 since the focus would be on instruction and student learning. Developing/refining the vision for each school would also be an important assessment question.
This process would provide baseline information on the content and process of the professional learning community and development activities and a plan for moving forward. This project would support that plan through needed education, professional development, coaching, or consultation on an ongoing basis.
A trainer of trainers model would be used to build capacity on the distributed leadership team. The team would then bring leadership skills back to the faculty to build their knowledge and skills. Support would be provided for the team throughout the process including consultants for education, professional development or coaching as necessary. A framework would guide the process and evaluations would be conducted to determine the teachers’ progress in developing a school-wide professional learning community.
5. Increase Capacity for Analysis and Understanding of Student Work and Data
While the School District of Philadelphia has undertaken rigorous efforts to use data to guide district/school decision-making, we cannot conclude that all schools will be skilled in using data. This project is committed to improving capacity where skills are not strong. As one builds professional learning communities focused on the achievement of all children, it is critical to be able to use student and school data to identify student needs, improve assignments and instruction, assess student progress, and inform professional development. Data can also be used by the school distributed leadership team for program direction (by measuring program effectiveness, instructional effectiveness, guide curriculum development and implementation, etc.), resource allocation, and accountability purpose.
We propose that student work and data should serve as the primary mechanism for schools in focusing and directing the efforts of professional learning communities. Teachers must have the capacity to analyze student work and data, as they map out the critical targets for improving instruction in the building. Those targets are often idiosyncratic to the student population and the school and community contexts. Capacity (or leadership) coaches will work with distributed leadership teams. Questions including but not limited to the following would be asked:
- What different types of data should school leadership teams use when assessing student performance?
- How can data analyses effectively target achievement gaps?
- Which methods work best for efficient – and accurate – data collection?
- What analytical methods can school leadership teams employ so they are confident that they are interpreting data correctly?
- How can school leadership teams develop an effective accountability program that is supported by staff, parents, and the community?
Translating successful data-driven decision-making into educational strategy and practice requires a team approach. Our leadership (capacity) coaches would work with teams to assist in that effort.
6. Provide Coaching and Mentoring in Creating a Distributed Leadership School Setting
In their comprehensive study of coaching in America’s choice schools, Poglinco, Bach, Hovde, Rosenblum, Saunders and Supovitz (2003) have described coaching as “a form of inquiry-based learning characterized by collaboration between individual, or groups of, teachers and more accomplished peers. Coaching involves professional, ongoing classroom modeling, supportive critiques of practice, and specific observations.
Neufeld and Roper (2003) in their monograph entitled Coaching: A Strategy For Developing Instructional Capacity, argue for “change coaching” which addresses “whole school, organizational improvement and help schools examine their resources – time, money, and personnel – and allocate them more effectively. They develop the leadership skills of both teachers and principals.” Since this proposal is being developed in concert with two other projects (funded by other organizations) which focus on principals, it is important to remember that this work will focus primarily on the education and support of administrators in each building. Neufeld and Roper identify the following ways in which change coaches can be helpful to those administrators:
- Help principals understand the importance of recruiting teachers to assume instructional leadership roles to drive whole-school change
- Act as strategists and assistants in building capacity for shared decision making
- Model leadership skills for principals as well as for teachers
- Assist in scheduling
- Help principals organize their time so that they are able to visit classrooms regularly to observe instruction and offer feedback to teachers.
There is no question that change coaches (or capacity coaches as they came to be called in the Boston Annenberg site) could be extremely valuable in the development of a distributed school setting and leadership agenda that would evolve in such a setting.
Neufeld and Roper (2003) have explained that the goal of coaching is “to engage educators in collaborative work designed to contribute to the development of intellectual capital in schools.” It is clear that training itself does not necessarily result in enhanced performance. Hesketh (1997) has indicated that one issue in the lack of transfer of training is that in general training programs do not explicitly impart metacognitive skills to trainees. Yet metacognitive skills – the ability to think about one’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors – are essential features in mastering new skills (Carver and Scheier, 1998). Since the fostering of metacognitive skills is central to the coaching process, it has been suggested by Grant (2001) that coaching may prove to be a useful adjunct or replacement for some training programs. Olivero, Bane, and Kopelman (1997) found that training followed by one-to-one coaching, significantly increased productivity compared to training alone. We hope to affect similar results through the use of multiple strategies, including content and capacity coaching.
Capacity (leadership) coaching is the primary coaching to be used in the project. We will utilize the knowledge, skills, and experience of retired principals who are chosen for the specific skills that they bring to the project. These principals will undergo a rigorous executive education program to add to their already substantial backgrounds which cover aspects of this project that are essential to its implementation. The Penn Center for Educational Leadership networks with many distinguished retired administrators. In addition, we have partnered with other organizations including the Philadelphia Education Fund, the Education Information Resource Center (New Jersey), and the Mid-Atlantic Coalition of Essential Schools. These organizations, along with the Center, have employed or have available over one hundred candidates for capacity coaching positions.
This project would use content coaching as needed to reinforce literacy and numeracy practice in those schools where we find assessment deficits. We are committed to assessing and conducting follow-up training and coaching, if necessary. That work would be done through the Penn Literacy Network, which has an excellent history and capacity for assessment, training, and coaching with low-achieving school districts.
We will also draw upon an additional resource that our Lehigh University partner has begun as part of their U.S. Office of Education (USOE) grant. Their center, which was created in collaboration with the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP), assists newly placed elementary and middle school principals through standards-based mentoring, coaching, collegial support, peer assistance, and networking. NAESP is also partnering with National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) to create the National Mentor Center. That Center has already been engaged to assist Philadelphia as an outcome of the USOE grant through Lehigh University. This project will also access the National Mentor Center in addressing our coaching and mentoring needs.
We will expect and encourage principals and teacher leaders to participate in capacity (or leadership) coaching. The same expectation will exist for building staff if content training and coaching is necessary. Resources will be made available to pay for time outside of school or to utilize substitutes. Cycles of coaching will also be used to maximize the coherence of the work.
7. Develop a Regional Teacher Leadership Development Center and a Cadre of Trainers for Sustainability and Dissemination
In their policy brief entitled Building Capacity for Educational Reform, O’Day, Goertz, and Floden (1995) indicate that teacher capacity interacts with organizational capacity. They go on to say that
an individual’s ability to accomplish the goals set by the new standards depends not only on personal capacity but also on the capabilities of his or her colleagues. Among the factors influencing an individual teacher’s ability to teach are the formal and informal networks to which they belong and the teaching context – or culture – of the school. These dimensions of teacher capacity, in turn, are interdependent with those of the department, school and district. (Goertz and Floden, 1995)
This project would add capacity to the District through the levels of support that come from the partnership created by the three institutions of higher education and others who can facilitate and assist in providing professional development and other services needed to support change in Philadelphia. Diane Massell (1998) looked at state strategies for building local capacity and found an external infrastructure which provided professional development and technical assistance. She describes external infrastructure as consisting of “regional institutions, educational networks, professional associations, and institutions of higher education” (Massell, 1998).
It is our intent, as a major institution of higher education in the Philadelphia region partnering with Temple and Lehigh Universities and community organizations, to establish a regional teacher leadership development center which would assist in supporting the sustainability and dissemination of these training goals and models. Since the funding available to do this work is less than that necessary to reach all of the schools in Philadelphia, it is our goal that successes in the fifty-four buildings targeted by this project may constitute a strong incentive for the District to move forward with this work in the remaining buildings. By developing a regional teacher leadership development center with a cadre of available trainers who have done this work in fifty-four schools, we would increase the likelihood that that work could continue with a stable training force in place. We will utilize all of the resources at the University of Pennsylvania (and our University partners) in determining the very best trainers, as well as involve the talented and skilled staff in the Philadelphia schools, so that together we will form a training corps that could make an ongoing difference.
As we develop and implement our model for distributed leadership in Philadelphia schools, we will develop a “trainer of trainers” model to ensure that we also build internal capacity. As we identify exemplary sites who are working effectively in a distributed leadership capacity, we will use those sites as models as we involve those teachers and administrators in future training. Since we intend to replicate effective distributed leadership practices in Philadelphia, we will consciously build on external capacity for that purpose.
We will identify a site, as well as maintain staff résumés, for a regional teacher leadership development center. That regional teacher leadership development center will assist with sustainability and function to disseminate training and effective practices from successful distributed leadership schools. We will conduct, at the close of the project, a national conference on distributed leadership to explore with our colleagues what we have learned and how we can use the Regional Training Center to extend that learning across the country. If budget and time permit, we will produce a leadership manual and materials, as well as publications which feature the essential components of our model and program.
D. Evaluation Plan
The design of our initiative includes a strong evaluation. We are planning on implementing a matched-pair random assignment design for our program so that we will have a clearer way of distinguishing the effects of our efforts. Initially, we will identify all schools that are eligible for our intervention. We will then match pairs of schools based upon student demographics (lunch assistance, ethnic composition), school characteristics (prior achievement, size), and leadership characteristics (principal experience, leadership team existence, and strength). We will then randomly select one of the two schools and work with them to improve their teaching and learning through strong leadership team efforts described in this proposal. Our evaluators will track the leadership and performance of both of the matched schools, allowing us to have a strong comparison group to distinguish our effects over time.
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