Focus principal development on student learning

By Joan Richardson

Results, September 2000

Being a principal is one of education’s most challenging and important jobs. Virtually everyone agrees an effective principal is essential for a successful school. But the expectations for principals have changed dramatically during the careers of most of those in service today. And, as the demands have changed, the number of educators interested in taking those jobs has declined.

Faced with that conundrum, the need for quality professional development for principals has become more crucial than ever. But, what, exactly, does good professional development for principals look like?

"Unfortunately, principal development, which has traditionally been given an even lower priority by school systems than teacher development, too often turns participants into passive recipients of information rather than active participants in solving important educational problems,’’ NSDC Executive Director Dennis Sparks wrote in the April 2000 Results.

Sparks suggested there are four crucial components of quality learning programs for principals: standards-focused, intellectually rigorous, job-embedded, and sustained.

Roland Barth, creator of the respected Harvard Principals Center and a frequent writer and presenter about principal professional development, agrees. "My strong bias is that the best professional development for principals occurs at the school. It comes in the interactions with teachers, where teachers and principals work together to develop curriculum, to design an evaluation system, to tackle a problem, and learn together,’’ he said.

Leading by example

Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, Kentucky, has provided that sort of exemplary learning program for its middle school principals.

"Until several years ago, professional development for principals was really done by the shotgun approach. It wasn’t necessarily connected to specific student outcomes. Now, it’s very much job-embedded, it’s ongoing, and it’s sustained,’’ said Sandy Ledford, assistant superintendent for districtwide instructional services in JCPS.

Louisville’s principal professional development program has four components:

A more-or-less traditional institute learning arrangement that includes principals and teachers;
Regular staff development days for principals that focus on a single area of instruction;
A cohort strand in which principals learn with other principals who share a common interest; and
Individual professional development plans and a peer evaluation program.

Standards-based improvement

Each summer, JCPS middle school principals and the teacher leadership teams from their schools meet for a three-day institute focused on learning about the standards for a particular academic area and examining data for their school’s performance. During the institute, the principal and teachers jointly develop a school improvement plan and a year-long professional development plan for their building.

"Five or six years ago, the norm was that principals might be at these meetings long enough to introduce someone from central office or maybe an outside consultant. Then, they would leave. Now, principals are not only participants, they are leaders. They are actively learning. When they leave, they are knowledgeable about what needs to be done in their buildings and how various resources are needed to support that,’’ said Cheryl DeMarsh, director of middle school instructional support.

Ledford believes this influences principals’ feeling about their own effectiveness. "It’s clear that they feel they can make a difference in the student achievement in their schools. They are much more confident about their own knowledge and their own skills,’’ she said.

Focused learning

The monthly meetings for JCPS middle school principals have also been transformed. "It used to be that we spent our time talking about the discipline code, talking about policies, going over this detail and that detail. We were not building capacity,’’ said DeMarsh.

Principals meet for a full day once a month with the day divided into two learning pieces. Time spent on "administrivia’’ has been dramatically reduced.

During the morning, principals share a common learning period. For two years, the mornings have focused on writing in the middle grades. The district’s writing specialist has spent 18 hours with principals, teaching them about writing standards and what classrooms should look like if students are writing to high standards. The principals have brought in student writing samples and spent time studying those samples and comparing them to state writing standards.

"The whole point of this is to help them develop their skills as instructional leaders in writing,’’ said Ledford.

After two years of this work, Ledford was anxious to examine the results in the state’s writing assessment. In 13 of the district’s 24 middle schools, students improved their writing scores; in the other 11, scores either remained the same or declined.

"Even though we know what the inputs have been, we don’t know how much has been implemented. So, our next step is to do some action research around writing. We will be looking at the writing scores to see if, in fact, any of the principals’ learning has paid off,’’ Ledford said.

Cohort groups

The afternoon portion of the principals’ monthly meeting is the component that Ledford and DeMarsh believe is most unique. The 24 middle school principals are divided into five groups according to their interests. One group focuses on integrating technology into instruction, another on developing leadership skills, and three groups on learning more about "knowledge work’’ in order to guide teachers’ work in that area.

The cohorts were formed after principals responded to a self-assessment which they designed themselves. They based the self-assessment on what they believed were the 20 most important indicators for high-performing schools and used it to identify areas in which they needed to learn the most.

A coach guides the work of each cohort and stays with them over time. The coaches are former middle school principals or educators with some knowledge about the topic. The coaches also have their own professional development for this role.

DeMarsh’s cohort on knowledge work initially read and discussed articles, spent time with a district specialist exploring the critical components of knowledge work, and doing assessment tasks. They later spent several months developing a survey for teachers to determine their focus for the current school year.

"The beauty of this is that they’ve grown to be real collegial. They’re very open to hearing from each other. They’re very open to talking to each other,’’ Ledford said.

Principal evaluation

A smaller component of the principals’ professional development program is their tri-annual evaluation. By board policy, three principals and a central office administrator are included on every principal evaluation team. At the start of each school year, in consultation with the evaluation team, each principal creates an individual growth plan.

Each year, one of the three principals in the group has a summative evaluation. During mid-year, the three principals meet at that principal’s school for at least 90 minutes to talk in detail about that principal’s growth. Principals can provide artifacts, create a portfolio, lead a walk-through of their buildings — whatever they believe will demonstrate how they’ve met their goals.

Although the central office administrator signs off on the evaluation, each of the other principals must sign the evaluation.

NOTE: To read more on this topic, look for the Winter 2001 issue of the Journal of Staff Development, which will be devoted to the principal as a staff developer and the professional development that principals need to do their jobs effectively.