The most effective and inclusive styles of educational leadership

While traditional school principals remain key convenors and facilitators of school improvement work, they must also invite a new body of school and community leaders to the forefront in building a collective vision for that work. Leadership no longer attracts people: it is about orchestrating ideas, people, visions, potential, and organizations into a coherent program of educational improvement. Today’s most effective and inclusive educational leadership styles combine top-down and bottom-up approaches. School and district leaders must share power and delegate key decision-making authority to representative teams of teachers, parents, business leaders, seniors, and others. The multiple interests and expectations that these stakeholder teams bring are crucial to building a common vision for your community’s education system. A sustained and inclusive dialogue identifies priorities, points to strengths, and ensures that even the softest voice is heard. And when that dialogue is put into action, communities begin to institutionalize a participatory process that can be leveraged for a wide range of future projects. The key to sustaining such efforts often lies in the leadership skills of these key stakeholder coalitions. Today, in communities across the country, several prominent groups are working to build alliances among key stakeholder groups, to advocate for a shared and collaborative reform process, and to develop the leadership capacity of their own members / constituents.

Five groups that are building leadership for reform

Parents, businesses, and community groups, as well as school system personnel, are leading a variety of efforts across the country to initiate and support school improvement. To illustrate emerging sources of leadership, we highlight some of the efforts that we have encountered in the course of our work.

1. Administrators. By creating school councils and site improvement teams, administrators in many communities are developing new relationships with teachers, staff, parents, and community members. These relationships are based on listening, sharing information, creating partnerships, and finding common ground. Trust is an important ingredient in the success of these new collaborations, as schools are opened and “outsiders” are invited into principals’ offices, classrooms, and auditoriums to participate in meaningful action. for school improvement. In fact, administrators are drawing on the energy, spirit, and expertise of parents and community members to promote and uphold local standards, review and set budgets, and build support for public schools in their communities. New projects in recent years have allowed some schools to foster a close relationship with parents and community members by collectively examining the future implications of the district’s structural, financial, and human resources.

2. Parents. There is conclusive evidence that when parents become active and involved in their children’s education, those students achieve higher standards. To that end, key coalitions of educators, business and civic leaders, and parents in many states are actively seeking to identify motivated parents in order to equip them with the skills and information they need to become leaders in school reform efforts in their own communities. In addition to receiving information about the state’s education reform law and its high-risk testing system, parents learn how to communicate with other parents and develop skills to increase their voice in decisions about their children’s education. These parent leaders design a sustainable project in their home communities to engage other parents and families in an effort that will impact student achievement. Parents have recently conducted surveys on how schools communicate with families, created handbooks to provide students and families with key information about the transition to high school, and led workshops where parents and teachers talk to each other. .

3. Community efforts. Gone are the days when volunteers were only asked to bake cookies or raise funds for their schools. Today, community volunteers serve on school boards and make critical budget and program decisions, review curricular issues and promote standards, and build support for bond referenda and other key projects. In fact, more and more communities nurture key advocates for public education by providing citizens with the training, information and skills necessary to make a difference in the work of their schools. By reaching out to schools, businesses, and the media in member districts, the coalition has been working hard to generate realistic and appropriate expectations and understanding for the new standards and tests among educators, parents, and business and civic leaders. More citizen volunteers were recruited, trained, and assigned to each of the city’s middle schools to chronicle the behavior, activities, and interaction of students, teachers, and principals through classroom observation. As this process continues, the coalition will organize an ambitious engagement strategy to disseminate its findings and mobilize the entire community around high school reform.

4. Business investment. Traditional models of business investment in schools have included school adoption programs, mentoring and internship programs, speaker offices, and computer donations. While these programs are valuable, they often fail to foster a sustained multidimensional relationship between businesses and schools. A key component of this unique collaborative model is “executives on loan,” the business leaders it takes their companies to work with participating schools and districts to implement change, streamline processes, and incorporate technology into their day-to-day operations. With the addition of new reading curricula, students have shown prominent increases in their reading scores.

5. Policy makers. As new state and federal laws are enacted, new regulations are implemented, and research becomes available on a wide variety of educational practices, it is important that this collective information reaches the hands of educational policymakers, officials, and lawmakers. media. Efforts across the country are beginning to ensure that school board members, legislators, policy analysts, and designated officials receive a quick and comprehensive review of information on key developments in school reform, including laws. and regulations, standards and accountability measures, and an understanding of who the main local, state, and national stakeholders are.