Author: Alan Jones

     If the literature on school reform can agree on one contributor to successful school reform measures it would be the critical role instructional leadership plays in successfully implementing change initiatives and changing school cultures. The following functions of instructional leadership are most frequently mentioned in the literature: establishing a vision of schooling; authoring a powerful narrative elaborating on the who, what, when, where, and how of implementing the school vision; gathering of resources to support the implementation of the school vision; designing organizational configurations that will be support the school vision; directly supervising strategies for implementing the vision; protecting faculty from unwanted governmental or central office diversions from pursuing the school vision; and continually adjusting strategies to accommodate program feedback and changes in governmental or district mandates.

      Surveys of school administrators on the importance of instructional leadership yield contradictory results: YES, administrators believe instructional leaderships is the most important function they should be performing; but, NO, they spend little of their time on the functions and tasks of instructional leadership. The most frequently cited reason for not performing the functions of instructional leadership is TIME: administrators say, are so consumed with responding to managerial functions and tasks—putting fires out— that they have little time to perform the functions of instructional leadership.

      TIME, on the face it, appears to be legitimate answer to why main office calendars have few instructional leadership functions listed in their daily “to do” lists. In reality, however, there systemic reasons, in the preparation, incentivization, and mindsets of school administrators serve as powerful hurdles to becoming a strong instructional leader. What follows are the hurdles that are rarely mentioned in the literature, but, undermine the key role instructional leadership plays in realizing the educational goals and practices written into all school mission statements.

      Academic Background

      While most school administrators have been certified in teaching an academic subject, rarely if ever, is part of their training include HOW to teach the subject. YES, they learn the theories, the ideas, the concepts, and the practices of a given discipline. But NO, they do not learn how the substance of their academic subject translates into motivating, and then, developing deep understandings of the discipline in children and adolescents. Teacher preparation programs do include a methods class that is supposed to teach them the how of their discipline. The semester long methods class, however, reduces the complexities of developing cognitive understandings of a discipline to tricks of trades lectures by a retired administrator.

      Administrative Certification Programs

      The certification process to become a school administrator includes a list of courses that are thick on managerial courses—-school law, finance, personnel, systems management—and thin on courses in curriculum and instruction. Although course description handbooks outlining the requirements for an administrative certification write in their forward the critical role of instructional leadership plays in managing a school, the course offerings in administrative certification programs tell a different story. That story being, the efficient running of a school and future career advancement is solely dependent on mastering the managerial functions of their offices.

      Two Career Trajectories

      There are two career trajectories in school administration. Career trajectory number one is managerial: teacher–>supervisor–>assistant principal-principal –>district office staff position–>superintendent. How quickly a beginning administrator advances in that trajectory is dependent on the number and complexity of managerial tasks listed on their resume: preparation of budgets; completion of building project; writing of a technology plan; implementation of a technology plan; developing community outreach programs; securing grant monies; supervising transportation and food services.

      Career trajectory number two is instructional: teacher–>supervisor–>assistant principal. Unlike the managerial trajectory, the instructional trajectory stops at assistant principal. Although lip service is given to the critical importance of the roles assigned to the instructional trajectory—curriculum development, teacher evaluation, program implementation—residents of main and central offices consider these roles too soft for preparing future administrators for the hard roles of efficiently and effectively running a school or school district.

     Instructional Leadership is Messy

      Of all the hurdles to becoming a strong instructional leader, the tasks and functions of instructional leadership are very complex and very messy. Conferencing a teacher on classroom performance, writing an engaging science curriculum, adopting instructional standards, implementing a research based bilingual program, all involve a multitude of human, social, emotional, and intellectual variables whose outcomes are unpredictable, and often fall below expectations.

      The same cannot be said about managerial outcomes, which, if executed properly, produce results that fall within established timelines, are brought in within budget, and leave behind various artifacts that a community can be proud of.

      Managerial Mindsets

      From the first day a new administrator enters their new office, they are trained, then assigned, and finally expected to perform the functions and tasks of a manager. Over time, the tasks and functions of school managers develop into what I term a managerial mindset.  A mindset is a pattern of ideas, beliefs, practices, and vocabularies that come together each day in main offices to facilitate certain kinds of actions and not others. School administrators guided by managerial mindset believe the purpose of schooling is to classify, standardize, and document teaching and learning. Managerial mindsets rely on rules, regulations, procedures, and systems to create school environments that are efficient, predictable and accountable. This is little room in this mindset for the goals and practices of instructional leadership.

      The research on classroom interactions in our nation’s public schools does not evidence a great deal of classroom discussion, nor time and space to play; but, does find large amounts of teacher talk, busywork, and school/classroom disciplinary guidelines that heavily control what in this piece is termed, “human connection.” What many parents observed during the Covid lockdown was the “relentless monotony” of a teaching model and curricular materials that John Goodlad documented in his study of high schools over thirty years ago. I am not suggesting that virtual learning should replace “in-person” learning, but, done well, which it wasn’t by most school districts, it is the wave of the future, along with numerous other learning platforms. The educational goal–expressed in most school mission statements—of “lifelong learning”— will not be achieved with a classroom mindset in which all learning is confined to rooms lodged in buildings and taught by an all knowledgeable teacher standing in front of the classroom. No, the reality of the future occupational world lies in technologies that offer on-demand instruction in multiple modalities.

      I join a long line of educators who have written extensively on the qualities of instructional leadership. The quality that is emphasized in these descriptions is the commitment of school leaders to allocate the majority of their time to leading and participating in functions and tasks directly related to teaching and learning—curriculum development, teacher evaluation, staff development, mentoring, facilitating, and coaching.

      The last paragraphs or chapters in these descriptions of instructional leadership lament the fact that in survey after survey school administrators admit to spending very little or no time on the tasks and functions of instructional leadership. The sources of this lack of time allocated for teaching and learning is a subject of a forthcoming blog.

      What I do want to address are the tasks and functions that receive little or no attention in the literature on instructional leadership. The reason the tasks and functions listed below receive so little attention in the literature on instructional leadership are educator’s concentration on the substance of instructional leadership. What these educators leave out of their articles and books are the processes of instructional leadership. Yes, leading and participating in tasks and functions of teaching and learning are necessary, but not sufficient for actualizing those tasks and functions in the real world of classrooms.

      What follows is a brief listing of tasks and functions that must become integral to performing role of instructional leader or what I term “Eclectic Leadership.” Although I will more fully address the reason school administrators opt out of the instructional leadership role in future blogs, the orchestration of the tasks and functions listed below demand a deep knowledge of the theories, concepts, and practices of new instructional models, and at the same time, the managerial acumen to assimilate new theories, concepts, and practices into already established organizational structures and instructional routines. It is the rare school administrator, who in their training and career experiences, have the knowledge and skills to perform both the substance and processes of instructional leadership.

Eclectic Leaders are POETS: (what we can imagine)

POETS express a strong discontent with the goals and practices of institutional schooling. They author a new story about teaching and learning that frees educators from metaphors and vocabularies that serve as obstacles to a quality educational experience: accountability, data driven, no child left behind, race to the top.

Eclectic Leaders are TEACHERS: (what we know)

TEACHERS translate abstract educational goals and values written into school mission statements into daily classroom practices.

Eclectic Leaders are POLITICIANS: (what we can get done)

POLITICIANS mobilize the community support for unfamiliar learning platforms. The assemble the organizational resources necessary for implementation of new learning models.

Eclectic Leaders are MANAGERS: (what we do)

MANGERS gather and allocates the right resources to the right places. They design systems—curriculum, employment, assessment—to support the theories and practices of new learning models.

      The inconvenient truth of the school reform movement is the necessary innovative engine never leaves the train station. For decades governing bodies have passed numerous mandates that they believe will stimulate school administrators to “think out of the box.” These think out of the box mandates have pursued two legislative tracks to coax schools into thinking differently about how we configure school organizations and how we deliver instruction. The first track, which I will term, the do your own thing track, releases schools from governmental constraints to author a new school reality. The second track, which I will term, do what we say or we will hurt you track. Track #1 created the charter school movement; track #2 created the no child left behind movement.

      The subject of this blog is not a detailed analysis of what was wrong with the premises and actions of both movements. Succinctly put, the schools on Track #1 did leave the station—but, only stopped as a similar station down the tracks. The schools on Track #2 remained at the station waiting for governmental inspectors to certify they had left no child behind.

      The failure of both schools of innovation can be attributed to proponents spending too much time standing and talking on station platforms and not enough time inside the train cars they are striving to transform. If these proponents would move off the station platforms and enter the cars on the track they would discover the following schooling realities that will derail any effort at school innovation:

      Reality #1: They need more tracks

      The two-track reform model makes it appear as if there are two distinctly different approaches to school innovation. In reality, although both school platforms are on separate tracks, they both are pursing the same institutional goals—certification—they both leave classroom instruction untouched—telling, listening, testing—and they both leave the school organization in tact—buildings, classrooms, offices, departments.

      Reality #2: They are not practical

      For innovative educational programs to be fully adopted they must stay within the “zone of practicality.” A practical innovative program meets the following criteria:

• The innovation is IMPORTANT–>It pursues a valued end of schooling that teachers believe are vital for student success.
• The innovation is CONCRETE–>It is composed of theories and practices that employs familiar concepts, vocabularies, and practices.
• The innovation is COHERENT—>It aligns with the district’s instructional philosophy and other innovative initiatives.
• The innovation is TEACHABLE–>It is composed of theories and practices that align with faculties educational background.
• The innovation is FEASIBLE—>It can be supported with resources the district possesses.

      Reality #3: They are too complex

      Innovate approaches to teaching and learning originate from university research programs and professional organizations. The level of cognitive complexity of these pedagogical models do not fit well into classroom instructional routines or into the professional training of teachers.

      Reality #4: They are in opposition to the grammar of schooling

      All members of a school community have been to school. They have all experienced the same goals, the same organization, the same teaching, the same curriculum, the same incentive systems that their children are now experiencing—the grammar of schooling. Most innovative programs ask administrators and teachers to discard parts or all of the elements of the grammar of schooling. School communities will be quick to show up to board meetings where they believe are tampering with or discarding what their belief in how schools should look and operate.

      Reality #5: They have no engineer

      For any innovation to work in schools requires a school leader—the train engineer—must be part poet (what we can imagine; part teacher (what we know); part politician (what we can get done); and part manager (what we do). Presently, most schools do not have a train engineer. What we do have are train conductors. They are good at keeping the school train running on time and making sure passengers comply with rules, but, they neither have the knowledge, skills, or inclination to redesign the how, what, or why of the trains they work on.

            For the last ten years we have been teaching Johnny how to read and leaving no child behind. Now we are embarking on a race to the top.  All of these initiatives carry with them strong doses of testing, privatization, and public embarrassment of students, teachers, administrators, and parents. Along the way, we do have more tests, we do have more charter schools, and we do have more non-performing schools, fired principals, and alienated communities of all sorts. And, the bottom line: American’s achievement scores on international testing are declining—quite a record for decade of “leaving” and “racing”.

            A confirmation of our race to the bottom appeared in a recent release of international test scores which showed that for students in American schools, the bottom is coming up quickly. The predictable response of national and state educational leaders is to blame teachers, administrators, unions, and educational bureaucracies for our dismal performance on international tests. The conventional solution offered by these same leaders is a one-two punch of accountability-driven reform initiatives: punish non-performers and reward performers. Embedded in this carrot and stick approach to school reform is an array of policies designed to loosen certification requirements, eliminate tenure, establish merit pay schemes, and incentivize privatized approaches to public schooling.

            The continuing failure of sanctions and incentives to make any headway in increasing our international test scores have only emboldened policy makers to do more of the same—only harder. The fundamental error that policy makers continue to make is to look at education from the outside-in, rather than inside out. Without institutional changes to the fundamentals of our American educational system (inside-out), we only end up throwing money and penalties at visible parts of our educational system (outside-in) that appear to be dysfunctional.

            When you study the educational systems of countries that have recently completed “the race to the top” you discover that educational leaders and legislators worked together to craft a comprehensive approach to school reform from the inside-out—the instructional fundamentals that generate the kinds of thinking and doing that fares well on international exams. If our country is going to get back in the “race,” national and state lawmakers must start investing in those fundamentals of high achieving schools systems documented in the research and emulated by nations now at the top of the international race to the top. What are these fundamentals?

            Admit the Best:   Schools of Education in high achieving countries only admit prospective teachers who have academic backgrounds conducive to teaching disciplinary understandings of real world problems. American schools of education accept prospective teachers with academic backgrounds suited for teaching textbook facts and procedures that are recalled on weekly multiple choice tests. The fundamental: Teaching matters; quality teachers possess deep conceptual understandings of their subject matter and the pedagogical know-how to assist all students with understanding how to apply these conceptual understandings to solving novel problems.

            World Class Curriculum:   High achieving countries have brought together content and curricula experts to develop national content standards that require students to understand the relationship between subject matter concepts, sophisticated methods of inquiry, and real world performances. A curriculum built on conceptual understandings of real world problems requires attention to depth over breadth and performance over task completion. Content standards in America continue to be a confused combination of some professional standards, some state standards, and some political ideology. Without a purposeful approach for determining what knowledge is of most worth and how to organize that knowledge, American classrooms are left with the default option: encyclopedic list of facts and procedures (the textbook) and multiple choice tests to check the recall of what is listed in textbooks. The fundamental: Curriculum matters; quality curriculum embeds subjects into frameworks designed for inquiry into complex human and physical problems.

            Performance Assessment:   High achieving countries develop state and local assessments which evaluate authentic performances—what students will be expected to know and do in the real world. The billion dollar testing industry in America is designed to place students on a bell shaped curve. When teachers in high achieving countries sit down to examine assessment results they discuss task performance. When teachers in America sit down to examine achievement scores they discuss test performance. In high achieving countries teachers are expected to redesign curriculum and instruction based on what authentic functions and tasks students must be able to perform. In America teachers are expected to adopt test preparation strategies for moving low performing students over state test cut scores. The fundamental: Assessment matters; quality assessment evaluates the gaps between knowledge of subject matter and real world performances.

            Continuous Training:    In high achieving countries teachers are required to participate in continuous professional development venues focused on developing deep conceptual understandings of subject matter. In America teachers are ushered off to staff development shopping malls where they are free to choose from techniques, recipes, and programs designed to reward or punish students into memorizing encyclopedic collections of information. The fundamental: Staff development matters; quality staff development requires that teachers continually be immersed in a learning process designed to expand their ability to create classroom lessons that apply the power of intellectual systems to complex real world problems.

            Strong Instructional Leadership:   In high achieving countries principals become principals through demonstrated excellence in teaching, curriculum development, and instructional leadership. School leaders in high achieving nations spend most of their day doing what instructional leaders should be doing: observing lessons; teaching lessons, coaching teachers; writing curriculum. In America principals become principals by demonstrating excellence in balancing budgets, maintaining boilers, pleasing boosters, and controlling students. When pressed by mandates to become instructional leaders, principals in America view that role as instructional manager: distributor of materials; employer of consultants, planner of one-day workshops, and caterer of continental breakfasts. The fundamental: Leadership matters; quality instructional leadership requires superintendents and principals with the knowledge base and managerial skills to effectively implement quality teaching, quality curriculum, quality assessment, and quality staff development.

            While each of these fundamentals for high achieving educational systems appears to make sense, they would not travel well in a country governed by 14, 000 different school systems, a culture that is suspicious of intellectual attainment and a social system which underfunds the family support systems conducive to success in school. Schools in high achieving nations are embedded in educational systems where all the fundamentals of the instructional system mesh well, are housed in cultures that prize intellectual attainment, and provide families with the kinds of social supports that ready children for the rigors of academic learning.

            Those of us who work in schools have no control over the cultural and political conditions supporting world class school systems. Nor is there any research to maintain the belief that more tests, more standards, more choice, or more bonus checks for supermen will develop the kinds of thinking rewarded on international achievement tests. What national, state, and local educational leaders do have control over are policies and practices that guide and coordinate talent, subject matter, training, and performance outcomes — these are the fundamentals that will get our country back into the race to the top.