Schooling by Design
Chapter 7: What Is the Job of an
Academic Leader?
“Our goal is to be the #1 comprehensive
high school in the state of California.”
If you are going to “lead”
people anywhere, you must
have a specific and worthy
destination in mind…
Mission
Vision
We need far more “leadership”
and less “management” ….if
schools are to honor their
obligations and close the huge gap
between vision and reality.
You said what?
Job 1: Responsibilities Related to
Mission and Learning Principles
• Academic leaders have a primary
responsibility to
– Reinvigorate the Mission Statement
– Make it central to decision making
– Ensure staff continually explore it &
– It’s meaning and implications
• What is our mission? To
prepare students to
become first class citizens
with a world class
education
• What is our mission?
College Prep for all
st
students with 21 century
career skills
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What will this vision look like?
Proficiency scores on CST
A-g completion rates
College admissions rates soar
Powerful instruction in all classrooms
Research based instruction (Marzano)
Engagement of students
Rigor/Relevance/Relationships Framework
Effective use of instructional time
Student-centered school culture
How will we get there?
•“Good to Great”
•“The enemy of great is good”
•“To continue to do what we always have
done and expect different results is the
definition of insanity”
•The Plan? Right Curriculum, Right
Instructional Framework, Right Relationships =
Right Results
•We create a high performance school –
culture of excellence with full buy in of staff
What are the desired
classroom behaviors?
• Teachers prepared with dynamic lessons
daily
• Each lesson is aligned to an unpacked high
priority standard
• Use of research based instructional strategies
to engage all students
• Rigorous lessons made relevant to students
The long-term
obligation of academic
leaders is to ensure
that staff members
operate as
professionals…
…basing decisions on defensible
criteria and best practice in their
respective curricular areas.
Job 2: Responsibilities Related to
Curriculum
• Directing the Analysis and “Unpacking” of
Standards
– Are your academic standards
“checked off”
OR
– Are your academic standards
“unpacked”
Unpacking Standards?
•Identifying the Big Ideas
worth understanding
•Identifying the
Essential Questions needed
for student inquiry into
those ideas
Facilitating Curriculum Reviews and
Troubleshooting
• Non instructional roles for teachers…
– “critical friend” peer reviews of curriculum units
– Course maps
– Cornerstone assessments
– Companion rubrics
Orchestration of such
reviews falls to leaders.
Reform “by design”
means that the actions
taken are deliberate and
focused on a clear and
defensible end result.
REQUIRED for Reform
1. Unwavering
2. Constant
commitment to
willingness to
core principles
change
direction,
approach, and
personnel
based on
feedback.
New structures must be in place that
demand and encourage constant review
of educational decisions by getting and
using feedback.
…is a function of constant and
deliberate self correction,
mindful of clear and agreedupon goals while unflinchingly
seeking out feedback and thus
dealing with reality
learn why
…wanting to
students
are bored or made to feel stupid, and it
takes action to correct conduct at odds
with the mission.
know how
…wanting to
schools
can be learning organizations if faculty
resist learning.
Make mandatory for staff to collect data and feedback
by asking questions
1.What is working in mathematics,
writing, foreign language, and other
subjects?
2.What isn’t working?
3.What do you propose to do about
it?
4.What resulted from your action
research?
Job 4: Responsibilities Related to
Personnel
• Clarifying Job Expectations
• Providing training, supervision and evaluation
guided by results-focused criteria
Hiring and Placement
Getting the right people on the bus and in the right seats.
Hiring and Placement
• Interview protocol
– “think-aloud” about big ideas in your content area
– “So tell me, if you were going to teach such a unit,
what would you be looking for in your assessment?”
– “What would you do to move kids beyond a naïve
response?”
– “What would you do instructionally to move the less
sophisticated answers along?”
– “What would you do to make this more fair, more
differentiated, more successful for more kids?”
Professional Development
• Schooling by design implies
that the topics and structures
for staff development are determined
by what is needed to close
the gaps
Professional Development
• Educational leaders need to
support
new teachers during their formative
early years through carefully
sequenced induction
programs and mentorships.
Professional Development
• Educational leaders
use available time
proactively to help teachers
keep abreast of current
information about
teaching and learning
Feedback and Appraisal
• Ensuring that the job is done well
– Instead of fixation on the actions and behaviors of
the teacher learning-focused
supervision concentrates
on the desired results of
teaching—
• Purposeful engagement of learners
• Learners evidence of understanding and transfer
Is everyone in your school on
the bus?
Are the people on the bus in the right seats?
Job 5: Responsibilities Related to
Structure, Policies and Resources
• Policies
• Decision-making
and governance mechanisms
• Organizational routines
• Schedules
• Incentives
• Resources
Time & Mission
• What is the best use of our time together?
• Do current uses of time get the job done most
effectively and efficiently?
• How much “new” time do we need to
accomplish identified tasks?
Teaming and Mission
Job 6: Responsibilities Related to
Culture
• The academic leaders job is to ensure that the
culture of the school is mission focused
Job 6: Responsibilities Related to
Culture
• Criteria of a positive school culture
– Mission focused on student and teacher learning
– Sense of history and purpose
– Core values
– Positive beliefs & assumptions about student & staff potential for
growth
– Strong professional community
– Positive communication flow
– Shared leadership
– Rituals and ceremonies
– Celebrations of success
– Physical environment that symbolizes
– Shared sense
of respect and caring
job and pride
Becoming a Learning Organization
• Only if academic leaders model, invite, and
demand learning about learning regularly and
formally
• Translation: The
leader’s job is not to
pose solutions but to raise questions and
demand thoughtful analysis of
problems, leading to solutions “owned”
by all parties affected.
Why?
• Sustainability….
Questions?