I have just finished reading an article in the latest Educational Leadership Magazine, Leaving Nothing to Chance by Karin Chenoweth. The article explores what lessons can be learned by leaders of what can be classed as 'challenging' schools who have raised student achievement. The starting point has to be the quality of the leadership of the school.
From here the author identified five common traits or lessons...
- It's everyone's job to run the school.
We need to lift ourselves our of the mire of day-to-day crisis and trust others to deal with much of this. We need to set clear expectations that grow a shared ownership and commitment from all to be continually improving and involved in the decision making process. - Inspect what you expect - and expect that all students will meet or exceed standards.
Principals need to provide the critical eye over expectations. We need to be monitoring what we have set as important. - Be relentlessly respectful - and respectfully relentless.
We need to model the attitude and values we expect from others. Tolerance, respect coupled with high expectations.We need to set the professional expectation that all students will meet or exceed school expectations. Decisions are not made based on personal preferences, but rather on student achievement needs. - Use student achievement data to evaluate decisions.
Student achievement data needs to be used to either confirm or reconsider decisions. - Do whatever it takes to make sure students learn.
We need to be dynamic, creative and often adventurous in order to meet students learning needs. This won't always be popular.
School leaders must be guardians of their students' future, not of their staff members' happiness.
It is important that I understand what my role is. I am the students advocate, with the task of creating the conditions under which children will learn.
