Journal of Effective Schools, Spring 2011 Edition

Journal for Effective Schools research

practice policies

Volume 10, Number 1 In This Issue: Effective Schools: Past, Present, and Future Lawrence W. Lezotte

Effective Schools Correlates and Teacher Leadership Preparation: How one Interdisciplinary, Practice-Oriented Doctorate is Challenging the Status Quo Harriet, Bessette, Traci Redish, Nita Paris, Dawn Latta Kirby

Changing the Face of Professional Development through Professional Learning Communities Lisa Jo Vernon-Dotson, with Robert Rodrigues and Karen Belacastro

Book Review: Using Research to Lead School Improvement: Turning Evidence into Action

by Scott C. Bauer and David S. Brazer

Our Mission The Journal for Effective Schools provides educators and administrators involved or interested in the Effective Schools process with the opportunity to share their research, practice, policies, and expertise with others.

Reviewed by: William A. Owings, Professor of Educational Leadership Old Dominion University Leslie S. Kaplan, School Administrator (Retired)/ Education Writer, Newport News, Virginia

Book Review: The Moral University by Maurice Berube and Clair Berube Reviewed by: Leslie S. Kaplan, School Administrator (Retired)/ Education Writer, Newport News, Virginia William A. Owings, Professor of Educational Leadership Old Dominion University

Published by the Journal for Effective Schools at Old Dominion University College of Education Educational Foundations and Leadership

Journal for Effective Schools

Volume 10, Number 1

The Journal for Effective Schools

Volume 10, No. 1 2011

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AIM and SCOPE

The Journal for Effective Schools publishes original contributions in the following areas:

• Research and Practice – Empirical studies focusing on the results of applied educational research specifically related to the Effective Schools Process.

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Educational Practices – descriptions of the use of the Effective Schools Process in classrooms, schools, and school districts to include instructional effectiveness, evaluation, leadership, and policy and governance

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Preparation of Educational Personnel ‐ Research and practice related to the initial and advanced preparation of teachers, administrators, and their school personnel including staff development practices based on the Effective Schools Process.

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Other – Scholarly reviews of research, book reviews, and other topics of interest to educators seeking information on the Effective Schools Process.

CORRELATES OF EFFECTIVE SCHOOLS

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A clearly stated and focused mission on learning for all – The group (faculty, administration, parents) shares an understanding of and a commitment to the instructional goals, priorities, assessment, procedures, and personal and group accountability. Their focus is always, unequivocally, on the student.

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A safe and orderly environment for learning ‐ The school provides a purposeful, equitable, businesslike atmosphere that encourages, supports, allows mistakes, and is free of fear. School is a place that does no harm to developing psyches and spirits.

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Uncompromising commitment to high expectations for all – Those who are leaders empower others to become leaders who believe and demonstrate that all students can attain mastery of essential skills. This commitment is shared by professionals who hold high expectations of themselves.

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Instructional leadership ‐ Although initially coming from the principal, teacher, or administrator, the goal is to include all participants as instructional leaders as their knowledge expands as a result of staff development. New insights excite and inspire. In the accountable learning community, everyone is a student and all can be leaders.

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Opportunity to learn is paramount ‐ Time is allocated for specific and free‐choice tasks.

Students take part in making decisions about goals and tasks.

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Frequent monitoring of progress – Effective schools evaluate the skills and achievements of all students and teachers. No intimidation is implied. Rather, monitoring often is individualized, with improvements in learning as the goal.

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Enhanced communication ‐ Includes home, school, and community coming together as partners in learning for all.

*Adapted from Phi Delta Kappa International

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From the Editors

This issue of the Journal for Effective Schools benefits from serendipity. Just as the journal was going to press, we were communicating with Larry Lezotte. He mentioned that he had an article that needed a home. As it turns out, his article ties all the other writings together in a timely and tightly‐themed journal. Following is an overview of how well all these articles fit together.

Many public elementary and secondary schools are now using the effective schools correlates in daily practice. Since No Child Left Behind, all public schools are disaggregating data to monitor student subgroup accountability (and hopefully, to inform instruction). Some question remains about the degree to which higher education has adopted these correlates. To what extent do the effective schools correlates appear in foundations, leadership preparation, and teacher leadership programs to educate future educators about research‐validated practices which can increase learning for all students? This journal issue gives examples of how elementary, secondary, and higher education are using the effective schools know‐how to strengthen quality learning for all.

Larry Lezotte’s lead article, “Effective Schools: Past, Present, and Future,” is an insightful analysis of the effective schools movement in a post‐NCLB world. Among other issues, he asks why higher education has yet to adopt the effective schools’ research to enhance their education graduates’ effectiveness. He concludes by considering where evolving policy and practice may be with the ESEA reauthorization modifications currently proposed by Senator Tom Harkin’s committee.

As if replying to Lezotte, the second article, “Effective Schools Correlates and Teacher Leadership Preparation: How One Interdisciplinary, Practice‐Oriented Doctorate is Challenging the Status Quo,” by Harriet Bessette, Traci Redish, Nita Paris, and Dawn Latta Kirby, recounts how a group of professors started a doctoral program in teacher leadership at Kennesaw State University using the correlates of effective schools to guide their program development.

Feedback from the program verifies the correlates’ effectiveness in changing doctoral students’ school leadership behaviors.

With another nod to the effective schools correlates and higher education, the third article, “Changing the Face of Professional Development through Professional Learning Communities,” by Lisa Jo Vernon‐Dotson with Robert Rodrigues and Karen Belcastro, documents the collaborative and dynamic partnership between a university and a local school system for job‐embedded professional development in instructional improvement and the subsequent outcomes for student achievement.

Finally, this issue includes two book reviews that advance effective schools goals. The first, Using Research to Lead School Improvement: Turning Evidence into Action, by Scott Bauer and S. David Brazer, is virtually a “how to” manual for organizing and implementing an effective school improvement planning process in public schools. Their chapter dealing with research design is a delightful overview that would serve any introductory leadership class quite well as a primer.

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The second book review, The Moral University, by Maurice and Clair Berube, deals with ethics and equity in higher education – a common effective schools theme in the K‐12 world. If education is about individual and societal improvement and passing on a worthwhile intellectual heritage, ethical and moral judgments are implicit in identifying, developing, and teaching the curriculum. The Moral University advances relevant lessons to thoughtful educators who want students to develop ethical character and behaviors essential to living in a democratic society.

Finally, we will be starting a special feature in the upcoming issues. We would like readers to nominate an individual or a school that has made noteworthy use of the effective schools correlates to foster a significant increase in student achievement. Please send your nominations including a description of the program, outcomes, and contact information for the nominee to wowings@odu.edu and place “effective schools nomination” in the subject line.

Happy reading!

William A. Owings and Leslie S. Kaplan Editors

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Table of Contents The Journal for Effective Schools

Articles

Effective Schools: Past, Present, and Future ................................................................................................... 1

Lawrence W. Lezotte

Effective Schools Correlates and Teacher Leadership Preparation: How One Interdisciplinary, Practice‐Oriented Doctorate is Challenging the Status Quo ................................................................... 23

Harriet Bessette, Traci Redish, Nita Paris, Dawn Latta Kirby

Changing the Face of Professional Development through Professional Learning Communities ........ 45 Lisa Jo Vernon‐Dotson, with Robert Rodrigues and Karen Belcastro

Book Reviews

Using Research to Lead School Improvement: Turning Evidence into Action by Scott C. Bauer and S. David Brazer .................................................... 61

Reviewed by William Owings and Leslie Kaplan

The Moral University by Maurice Berube and Clair Berube ..................................................................... 65

Reviewed by Leslie Kaplan and William Owings

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Effective Schools: Past, Present, and Future

By

Lawrence W. Lezotte National Education Consultant Effective Schools Products, Ltd., Okemos, Michigan

Introduction

Public education, historically one of the crown jewels of our great democracy, is sailing straight into a “perfect storm.” The current economic crisis is likely to accelerate the pace of how soon this storm will totally engulf the system, as well as the intensity of the storm itself. Three societal trends are coming together to create this “storm.”

First, to remain competitive in world markets, business and industry finds itself in a head‐to‐head race with foreign companies in China, India, and elsewhere. As a result, our business leaders need workers better prepared to confront the best and brightest workers in those countries. These leaders have advocated that educational standards be raised and as a result they are now higher than ever before in our history. Many are still claiming that they are not yet high enough to remain competitive.

Second, the demographic profile of the United States is changing dramatically, fueled by two factors: 1) The number of foreign nationals that have come to the U.S. to attend college and have remained here has increased over the years; and 2) more importantly, the birth rate among the various demographic subgroups has changed dramatically. Middle‐class birth rates are at or below zero population growth, indicating that overtime this group will become a smaller percentage of the total population of the United States. At the same time, the birth rate among low‐income families and those families living in poverty is well above zero population growth, indicating that this subgroup will become a larger percentage of our total population. Said another way, the number of children coming to public school who have been historically the easiest to teach (middle class) is in steep decline and the number of students coming who have been the more challenging to teach (low income) is increasing significantly. The number and percent of minority students continues to increase as well and these students also tend to be disproportionately poor and disadvantaged.

Third, while standards have been raised and the number of disadvantaged students has increased, the resources that support educational success will likely be targeted for cuts. The current economic crisis has meant that state budgets, including school budgets, have been cut, sometimes in mid‐year. Because of budget cuts, teachers are being pinked‐slipped, school calendars are being compressed, school days are being shortened, and support personal are being reduced. In addition, because of accountability, many schools believe they have already exhausted the available school and classroom changes they thought necessary to satisfy the 3

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accountability demands and avoid threatened sanctions. Even so, many of the schools are facing sanctions, with more predicted to do so in the near future.

Said in a sentence, public schools are being asked to do more with less for an increasingly more needy clientele ‐ a perfect storm indeed.

Public school leaders are truly feeling the pressure. What to do? Where to turn?

Before offering these dedicated and caring educational leaders one tested way to navigate the turbulent waters created by the perfect storm, three important “truths” must be considered. First, the current system of public education, while designed to provide access to all students, was never designed or even intended to successfully teach all students a high‐standards curriculum. The importance of this “truth” is that the public school system is currently being asked to successfully fulfill a mission for which it was never intended.

Most have heard or read the expression that “form ought to follow function.” It’s the first principle of the architect who asks for the client to describe the aim or purpose to which the space is to be used (function). The architect then uses the principles of the profession to design a physical form to fulfill the intended function. A corollary to the expression states that, anytime a function of a system is changed, its form must be modified as well. Conversely, if one tries to fulfill the new function in the old form, the old form will reclaim the mission every time.

The individual states and the federal government changed schools’ mission to that of “learning for all” and “no child left behind.” Educators are now called to change the form to fit the new mission. Educators, parents and many of the governing groups are struggling with this new reality.

Second, contrary to the view held by many, public schools are not performing less well today than they performed previously, especially when we examine the data that informed the previous mission. Those who quickly claim the current system is broken and needs fixing should be challenged to show a time in history when they were more successful, especially when the purpose stopped far short of the learning‐for‐all mission. The shift in the public school’s mission embodied in the accountability movement and capped off by No Child Left Behind represents a “game changer.”

While it has always been true that there was room for improvement in public schools, it does not logically follow that changing the mission means that the system is broken. It would be more accurate to say that the current mission demands a different form of school and classroom—it doesn’t help to allow critics to use the “broken” metaphor. It would be much more helpful in building public support for future public schools if the critics said that the schools must be reinvented or transformed to meet the new mission.

Third, throughout the history of public education some schools have always been more effective than most other schools. Even when you equate the schools based on the clientele they serve, some schools have distinguished themselves as “outliers” on the high side. Likewise, even when you equate classrooms based on the students served, some teachers have distinguished themselves as “outliers” on the high side. Now the learning‐for‐all, no‐child‐left‐behind mission has come to define the aim of the system, it begs the question: Are there public schools that 4

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distinguish themselves as “outliers” on the high side with the new the new learning‐for‐all mission? For more than three decades, researchers have identified and described schools that were outliers on the high side when it comes to the learning‐for‐all mission. As a matter of fact, many of the state and federal policymakers that led the charge to change the mission of public schools used these schools to provide proof that fulfilling the new mission is achievable.

This body of work has come to be known as the Effective Schools Research and its application as Continuous School Improvement based on the Effective Schools Research. The remainder of this paper describes my perspective on the Effective Schools Movement. I have been privileged to both conduct some of the early effective schools research and work with hundreds of schools and districts throughout the United States as they have used it as the framework for their school improvement efforts.

The Effective Schools Movement The Early Years

Let’s begin our journey with an overview of the Effective Schools Movement and how it has evolved over thirty‐plus years.

In July 1966, “The Equal Educational Opportunity Survey” by J.S. Coleman and colleagues was published. The Coleman report concluded that family background, not the school, was the major determinant of student achievement. Coleman was foremost among a group of social scientists who, during the 1960s and ‘70s, believed that family factors such as poverty or a parent’s lack of education prevented children from learning regardless of the method of instruction. His report, along with the related literature, was the catalyst to the creation of “compensatory education” programs that dominated school improvement throughout those decades. According to Ron Edmonds, these programs, provided chiefly through Title I of the Elementary Secondary Education Act, “taught low‐income children to learn in ways that conformed to most schools’ preferred ways of teaching.” These programs focused on changing students’ behavior to compensate for their disadvantaged backgrounds and made no effort to change school behavior.

By lending official credence to the notion that “schools didn’t make a difference” in assuring successful student achievement, the report stimulated a vigorous reaction, instigating many of the studies that would later come to define the research base for the Effective Schools Movement. The educational researchers who conducted these studies, myself among them, developed a body of research that supported the premise that all children can learn and that the school controls enough of the factors necessary to assure student mastery of the core curriculum.

Of course, the Effective Schools Movement did not discount the important impact of family on student learning. In 1982, Ron Edmonds published a paper entitled “Programs of School Improvement: An Overview,” in which he stated, “while schools may be primarily responsible for whether or not students function adequately in school, the family is probably critical in determining whether or not students flourish in school.”

The first task of the effective schools researchers was to identify existing effective schools that were successful in educating all students regardless of their socioeconomic status or family 5

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background. Examples of these especially effective schools were found repeatedly, in varying locations and in both large and small communities. After identifying these schools, the task remained to identify the common characteristics among these effective schools. In other words, what philosophies, policies, and practices did these schools have in common?

Upon closer inspection, the researchers found that all of these especially effective schools had strong instructional leadership, a strong sense of mission, demonstrated effective instructional behaviors, held high expectations for all students, practiced frequent monitoring of student achievement, and operated in a safe and orderly manner. These attributes eventually became known as the Correlates of Effective Schools.

Edmonds first formally identified the Characteristics or Correlates of Effective Schools in the 1982 publication noted above. In this paper, Edmonds stated that all effective schools had:

the leadership of the principal notable for substantial attention to the quality of instruction;

a pervasive and broadly understood instructional focus;

an orderly, safe climate conducive to teaching and learning;

teacher behaviors that convey the expectation that all students are expected to obtain at least minimum mastery; and

the use of measures of pupil achievement as the basis for program evaluation.

While Edmonds, Brookover, and Lezotte conducted the original effective schools research in elementary schools, another team of researchers in the United Kingdom was conducting similar research, only in secondary schools. Their independent research was published in America in 1979 in the book, Fifteen Thousand Hours (Rutter, et al, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA). The conclusions they reached about school attributes that positively affect student achievement were nearly identical to those rising out of effective schools research.

The results of the original research in the U.S. and Britain, plus the hundreds of subsequent research studies further confirming the attributes of an effective school, gives credence to this insightful assertion by Ron Edmonds:

We can, whenever and wherever we choose, successfully teach all children whose schooling is of interest to us. We already know more than we need to do that. Whether or not we do it must finally depend on how we feel about the fact that we haven’t so far.

We’ve come a long way since the Correlates were first published, and the research has continued to bear out these basic “truths” of the Effective Schools Movement:

All children can learn and come to school motivated to do so;

Schools control enough of the variables to assure that virtually all students do learn;

Schools should be held accountable for measured student achievement;

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Schools should disaggregate measured student achievement in order to be certain that students, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status are successfully learning the intended school curriculum;

The internal and external stakeholders of the individual school are the most qualified and capable people to plan and implement the changes necessary to fulfill the learning‐for‐all mission.

The Effective Schools Movement, its constituent research, and the Correlates themselves have not only withstood the test of time, but have also evolved and grown as our understanding of effective schools has both deepened and broadened. Over the years, the Correlates have been refined and expanded to the following:

Instructional Leadership

Clear and Focused Mission

Safe and Orderly Environment

Climate of High Expectations

Frequent Monitoring of Student Progress

Positive Home‐School Relations

Opportunity to Learn and Student Time on Task

Other aspects of the Effective Schools Movement have evolved over the years as well. The early definition of effective schools rested on the concept of equity between children from differing socioeconomic classes. As educators became concerned about equity among other subsets of the population, gender, ethnicity, disabilities, and family structure were added to the mix. Furthermore, the early definition was cast in terms of mastery of essential curriculum, i.e., reading and arithmetic. Over time, other curricular outcomes were added: problem‐solving ability, higher‐order thinking skills, creativity, and communicative ability.

In addition, the early Effective Schools Movement emphasized the individual school as the unit of change. Eventually, it became clear that school improvement resulting in increased student achievement could only be sustained with strong district support.

Organizational management theories provided significant additions to effective schools research and policy. The concepts of decentralization and empowerment, the importance of organizational culture, and the principles of total quality management and continuous improvement have added important dimensions to our understanding of effective schools.

The Effective School Defined

The brief history of public education provides the context for the defining the effective school and a conceptual framework for the research that describes such schools. We offer the following definition of the effective school. It has served as the conceptual underpinning for the research for the last three decades or more.

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The effective school is a school that can, in outcome (performance or results) terms, reflective of its learning‐for‐all mission, demonstrate the presence of equity in quality.

A deeper analysis of this deceptively simple definition of the effective school is needed.

First of all, the definition and the supportive effective schools research are only going to be appropriate and useful for schools committed to the mission of learning for all. For example, private, parochial, and charter schools could find this body of work useful if they share the mission of learning for all. On the other hand, public schools will not find this body of work useful unless or until the educators are truly committed to the mission of learning for all.

Schools that lack the passion for the learning‐for‐all mission may give “lip service” to the mission, and may even go through the motions of the effective schools process. Unfortunately, they’ll experience little, if any, success. Why? Because school leaders and educators who only give lip service to the mission and go through the motions either lack the commitment to do the work, or do not truly believe that all students can learn or that they should be accountable for successfully teaching all students.

By definition, the effective school is able to claim being effective based on student results, performance, or outcomes. Using results or outcomes as the primary basis for judging effectiveness is a significant departure from past practice. For most of their history, public schools were judged based on inputs, processes, and programs. For example, regional accreditation programs would ask schools to report on how many books the school had in the library. The accreditation program never asked whether anybody read the books! Likewise, in the early days of the U.S. Office of Education’s school recognition program, schools were celebrated because of their fine arts or technology programs. As important as these and other programs are, the programs themselves do not address the consequences for the students.

The leaders of effective schools that have been studied over the years were among the first educators or policymakers to realize that, at the end of the day, it’s about results.

Educational leaders who are not ready to “bet” their legacy and, maybe even their professional career, on demonstrated student results will be uncomfortable with the effective schools concept.

When educational leaders commit fully to the results paradigm, they have just begun a long and potentially explosive journey. The new questions that must be addressed by the educational leaders, policymakers, and other stakeholder groups are: What results? How should the desired results be gathered? When should the results be measured? In the final analysis, who decides?

Finally, the definition of the effective school specifies that the two policy pillars of public education—quality and equity—must be considered simultaneously. This means that we want each child in the public schools to be guaranteed a quality education and equal educational opportunity. Strategic planning for school reform must connect with both quality and equity.

Diane Ravitch, in her book The Schools We Deserve, stated that there must be an in‐ dissolvable link between the issues of quality and equity, Further, she notes that whichever one of these two vital concepts a democracy chooses to ignore, at the end of the day, the one ignored will bring down the democracy (Ravitch, 1985). That being said, how do we create this strong link in a way that can serve to identify and describe the effective public school? Here we call attention to the “little words,” for they set the vision.

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Examining the definition of the effective school shows that we suggest that the proper connection should be to look at schools to see if there is equity in quality. As a practical matter, if one were asked to evaluate a school to determine whether it meets the definition of the effective school, how should the evaluator proceed? First, the evaluator would inquire as to what the school believes are its indicators of quality (e.g., percent of students participating in advanced placement courses). Once the quality indicators have been identified, the evaluator would analyze those indicators to see who is participating in and, more importantly, benefiting from those centers of quality.

Let us offer one final caveat regarding the definition of the effective school. The concept of the effective school, as it has been employed in research and practice, does not mean that “effectiveness” is an all‐or‐none concept. For example, a school could, based on the outcome data examined, be judged effective in the curricular area of Math but not when it comes to Language Arts. Even so, it if very useful in verifying success and pointing out where more work is needed.

A Primer on the Correlates of Effective Schools

The Correlates are critical to the effective school because they represent the leading organizational and contextual indicators that have been shown to influence student learning. In other words, the extent to which the Correlates are in place in a school has a dramatic, positive effect on student achievement. Furthermore, the individual Correlates are not independent of one another, but are interdependent. For example, discipline problems in the learning environment relate to the safety and orderliness of the learning environment as well as the opportunity to learn and time on task.

The following descriptions are intended to give a basic understanding of each Correlate as it was first conceptualized. As you begin to successfully implement the Correlates, the question may arise, “What next?” At that point, you will be ready to consider and implement the Second‐Generation Correlates ‐ an even more challenging developmental stage for schools committed to the learning‐for‐all mission. A description of the Second‐Generation Correlates is available elsewhere. But you must walk before you run, and the original Correlates must be in place before your school can aspire to the next level of development.

Instructional Leadership. In the effective school, the principal acts as an instructional leader and effectively and persistently communicates the mission of the school to staff, parents, and students. In addition, the principal understands and applies the characteristics of instructional effectiveness in the management of the instructional program. Clearly, the role of the principal as the articulator of the mission of the school is crucial to the overall effectiveness of the school. If you read In Search of Excellence, the management bible written by Tom Peters and Bob Waterman, you’ll quickly discover that complex organizations, like schools, suffer from drift with respect to the core values or mission. They emphasize that it is the obligation of the leader to make sure that everyone has a shared sense of purpose, and a shared understanding of the mission and core values of the organization. Clearly, schools qualify as complex organizations that require strong leadership. The principal must fulfill this role.

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Ron Edmonds often said, “There may be schools out there that have strong instructional leaders, but are not yet effective; however, we have never yet found an effective school that did not have a strong instructional leader as the principal.” Simply put, the principal as a strong instructional leader is a necessary, but not sufficient component of an effective school.

Clear and Focused Mission. In the effective school, there is a clearly articulated mission of the school through which the staff shares an understanding of and a commitment to the school’s goals, priorities, assessment procedures, and accountability. The staff in the effective school accepts responsibility for the students’ learning of the essential curricular goals.

When we first started conducting research on effective schools, we took as a given that schools had a shared understanding of what their mission was and ought to be. The more we worked with schools, the more we became convinced that the issue of mission is one that must receive substantial discussion. When you think about all the things that might be done in the name of good education and realize the limits of your time, people power, and energy, it becomes clear that there has to be some focus to the overall effort. This idea of a shared sense of mission is one way to assure that we’re all moving in the same direction. One way to ascertain whether your school has a clear focus is to ask each stakeholder “What does this school care most about?” Would you get the same answer from each individual asked, or many different answers?

To the extent that there are many answers, the school would be said to lack a shared sense of mission.

Safe and Orderly Environment. In the effective school we say there is an orderly, purposeful, business‐like atmosphere which is free from the threat of physical harm. The school climate is not oppressive and is conducive to teaching and learning.

For many years, parents have said that the safety and disciplinary climate of the school is their first concern when judging schools. School shootings, bomb scares, and other senseless violent acts have only served to deepen parental concerns. We obviously want the learning environment to be a safe and secure place for its own sake.

We also want schools to be safe and secure because the presence or absence of a safe learning environment enhances or impedes learning. Even if the environment does not sink to the level of shootings or bomb scares, the extent to which student learning is interrupted by routine disciplinary problems serves to diminish learning to some degree. Therefore, the goal of the effective school is to minimize, if not totally eliminate, such incidents.

What we have found in working with schools is that safe and orderly environment is one of the easier Correlates, or characteristics, to address in terms of school improvement if you can get certain prior conditions in place.

First, all the adults, but most particularly teachers, must accept that they are on duty, all the time, everywhere, during school hours. If there’s a place in the school or a time in the day when students perceive that there is no adult on duty, that’s my nomination for a trouble spot.

Second, rules must be enforced with absolute consistency across all teachers and administrators in the school. Inconsistency will quickly undercut and destroy the orderly environment of a school. Students will be quick to pick up on inconsistent enforcement and be quick to cry “unfair.” Quite frankly, they’re right.

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Another facet of student behavior bears on both the climate of the learning environment generally, as well as individual student learning specifically. Researchers have documented the importance of student engagement in both the teaching/learning process, as well as the social aspects of the learning environment. Student engagement is important all along the learning path, but becomes especially significant at the middle grades and secondary school levels.

Climate of High Expectations for Success. In the effective school, there is a climate of high expectations in which the staff believes and demonstrates that all students can obtain mastery of the school’s essential curriculum. They also believe that they, the staff, have the capability to help all students obtain that mastery.

What are some of the important implied notions in the high expectations for success correlate? The words for success in the description needs emphasis because there are a lot of people who believe that simply raising the standards in a school communicates higher expectations to students. Quite frankly, there is a world of difference between high standards and high expectations. High standards are those externalities that we ask students to meet, i.e., graduation requirements. An expectation is the internal belief that the adults have that the students can and will meet those higher standards. Expectations are crucial.

Frequent Monitoring of Student Progress. In the effective school, pupil progress over the essential objectives are measured frequently, monitored frequently, and the results of those assessments are used to improve the individual student behaviors and performances, as well as to improve the curriculum as a whole.

Unfortunately, the results of the assessments often do not get back to the school in time for the teacher and principal to be able to make much use of those data. We are often asked, “How frequently should you monitor pupil progress?” The answer depends on how frequently are you prepared to adjust your instruction. If you don’t ever intend to adjust instruction, then why bother monitoring at all? The only justification for monitoring without adjusting is if you perceive your mission to be that primarily of sorting and selecting students.

Positive Home‐School Relations. In the effective school, parents understand and support the basic mission of the school and are given opportunities to play important roles in helping the school to achieve its mission.

It’s pretty clear that schools can be effective in having the students master the basic skills curriculum without extraordinary levels of parent involvement and support. It is also is much easier if parents are part of the collaborative team and are seen by the school as partners in the education of their youngsters. That’s a much more difficult task today because of our mobile society and the increase in two‐career and single‐parent families, as well as the distances some children travel to school.

Opportunity to Learn and Student Time on Task. In the effective school, teachers allocate a significant amount of classroom time to instruction in the essential curricular areas. For a high percentage of this time, students are actively engaged in whole‐class or larger group, teacher‐directed, planned learning activity.

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This simply says that kids tend to learn most things that they spend time on. If you want your students to master certain curricular objectives and goals, one of the first prerequisites is to assure that they spend time on them. We see instance after instance where students are held accountable for outcomes over which they were never taught. This is patently unfair and must be changed.

Time on task implies that each of the teachers in the school has a clear understanding of what the essential learner objectives are, grade‐by‐grade and subject‐by‐subject. Once we are clear on what students should be learning, students must be given the time to learn it. This can be tricky because interruptions in the day‐to‐day flow of routines in the classroom and in the schools seriously and significantly detract from our ability to be effective for all of our kids.

In summary, the Correlates of Effective Schools provide school improvement teams with a comprehensive framework for identifying, categorizing, and solving the problems that schools and school districts face. And because the Correlates are based upon the documented successes of effective schools, they offer hope and inspiration to those struggling to improve. If the schools from which the Correlates are drawn can do it, any and all schools can as well!

A Brief History of the Effective Schools Movement

As previously noted, the body of work that has come to be known as the Effective Schools Movement (ESM) was prompted by the publication of the Equal Educational Opportunity (EEO) Study by distinguished sociologist James Coleman in July, 1966. The study had been commissioned by the United States Congress for the purpose of assessing the status of education among minority children in the United States. Without question, the EEO study was a high‐ profile study and captured the educational headlines for some years to come.

Probably the most significant sound–bite that came from the press conference where the study results were announced was, “When it comes to the education of minority and poor children in American, schools don’t make a difference.” The EEO study and the question of whether or not schools make a difference in the achievement of children began what has turned out to be a decades‐long movement with no end in sight. The quest to answer this question has evolved through several significant stages. Understanding these changes helps to understand where the movement is today and where it is likely to go in future.

Phase I: Identification (1960s – Mid‐1970s)

The best, perhaps only, evidence that could actually challenge the EEO findings that schools serving poor and minority students don’t make a difference was to identify schools that did seem to make a difference for poor and minority children. At its core, the best way to conduct such studies was to find a pair of schools with similar size student bodies, similar proportions of minority and poor students and comparable resource inputs but with one of the schools demonstrating significantly higher measured achievement than the other. The key question was, “Could such high achieving schools be found?”

Several researchers, initially operating independently of one another began to go in search of schools that seem to defy the Coleman conclusion. During this period, Ron Edmonds, one of the 12

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major researchers identified with Effective Schools, was at Harvard University serving as the Director of the Center for Urban Studies. Wilbur Brookover and I were at Michigan State University. Because Ron Edmonds had gone to Harvard from his position in the Michigan Department of Education, he knew the Michigan State University team through earlier collaboration on different projects. Through collaboration and by sharing the body of original studies, our work began to form the knowledge base for the Effective Schools Movement.

Michigan was one of the first states to develop and administer statewide, curricular‐based, criterion‐referenced assessments of all students in selected grades in all public schools. As a result, the State of Michigan was one of the first states where the search for effective schools was even feasible, as a practical matter. While the Michigan assessment results were routinely made available to the schools after being scored, the computer technology was limited. Nevertheless, it was possible, but not easy, to examine the achievement profiles of the schools on the state assessments relative to the demographic profile of the students who attended each school. For example, we could estimate the number of poor children attending the school by examining the number of student receiving free or reduced‐price lunches. The goal was to find those schools with high concentrations of disadvantaged students (minority or nonminority) and find a comparable school where the input profiles were similar but the achievement profiles were not as positive.

Phase 2: The Descriptive Phase (1970 – 1980)

The search for and identification of the effective schools in the early studies captured the interest of the research community. The educational practitioners were only mildly interested in this sort of academic research, but it did prompt them to ask, “How did these schools do it?” Or, “In what ways are these schools different than most other schools serving poor and minority students?”

The second major phase of the Effective Schools Movement we have called the descriptive phase because the focus was on studying the inner workings of these schools to determine why these schools were clearly “outliers” when it came to the education of poor and minority children. The Correlates of Effective Schools came about during this phase of the Movement. To do this, we identified pairs of comparable schools, one of which met the criteria for effectiveness and one that did not. The next step was to send the field research team into the schools to conduct interviews, surveys, and direct observations without specific prior knowledge of their achievement history. When the field research team returned from the schools, we recorded everything we learned about the set of effective schools on one wall and the data from the comparison schools on the other wall. Then we asked the question, “What characteristics do the effective schools have in common with each other, but are not shared by the comparison schools?”

Ron Edmonds published the initial study in which he identified and described what he called the five characteristics of effective schools. His findings were quickly validated in other studies of the effective outlier schools. Sadly, the effective schools movement specifically and the educational research and policy communities were delivered an devastating blow with the news that Ron Edmonds passed away at the young age of 49 in 1983.

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It noteworthy to point out that the effective schools research studies in both the identification and descriptive phases of the movement in the United States focused primarily on elementary schools. In England, the initial study that received wide acclaim was an effective schools study of secondary schools. These findings were reported in a book titled, Fifteen Thousand Hours: A Study of Secondary Schools and Their Effects on Student Achievement (1979, London, UK: Open Books). In the ensuing years since the earliest studies, the mosaic of effective school studies has been filled in on both sides of the Atlantic as well as in several other countries.

Phase 3: The Prescriptive Phase (1985 – 1995)

When the studies describing the effective schools correlates began to make their way into the professional education literature, the world of the effective schools researchers changed dramatically. The telephone began to ring “off the hook” with calls from local school leaders (principals and superintendents). The question was no longer focused on how the effective schools were different. Now the question turned to, “Can you come to our school or district and guide us as to how we can make our schools effective?”

The MSU team was honored by the request but bit unsure as to how to a respond. Here was the problem. Remember, when we found effective schools “in nature” as it were, they were already effective. Further, when we discovered the correlates of effective schools present and strong in the effective schools, they were already there when we arrived. The problem was we had no idea how the schools became effective or how the correlates came into place. It’s one thing to discover the outlier as it existed in nature, its quite another to tell someone how to create an effective school out of one that is not. Said another way, we had confidence in our descriptions, but that didn’t tell us what to prescribe in terms of process steps that interested schools should take. Here is how we resolved the dilemma, and it seems to have served us well.

We started with the assumption that if we were going to ask school leaders to use our research as a way of improving their school or district, we should use research to guide us in creating a process. So what research, we pondered, should we use to help frame a process for guiding the schools and districts seeking our help? We decided that there are three ways to conceptualize school improvement based on the effective schools research. Each conceptualization suggests a different body of research that should be considered. Fortunately, the findings from the three school improvement concepts were found to be interrelated and mutually reinforcing.

First, we said that if schools were going to become effective, the behaviors of the staff would need to change to some degree. In this case, school improvement equals “people change.” That conclusion led us to examine the research on effective staff development models and effective training models. Second, we said that if schools were going to become effective, the organization or system must change to some degree as well. That conclusion led us to examine the best available research on organizational development. Finally, we concluded that whether it’s people change or organizational change—we happen to believe it’s both—it must be planned change.

This led us to examine the best available models of planned change.

Some of our key findings from the study of the three different concepts and their supporting research include the following:

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Sustainable change requires the commitment by the people that have to do the changing.

Effective leadership is a necessary, but not sufficient condition.

Involving the people is one of the best and surest ways to build ownership, buy‐in and sustained commitment.

Change takes time and it is and must be viewed as a process not an event.

Leadership is critical in providing both the vision and the support for the changes that are needed to make it happen.

The prescription that emerged from the integration of the effective schools research findings with the guiding process principles led us to recommend that we organize the change process around a collaborative leadership team. We also suggested that the entire effort be data driven and results oriented. To increase the level of involvement and, at the same time, bring the research into the school collaborative, we suggested that correlate teams—one for each correlate—should be formed.

The number of schools and districts that purported to initiate programs of school improvement based on the effective schools research number in the hundreds, if not thousands.

We at Michigan State only worked with a relatively small percentage of the total, since others took up the challenge. We lead a variety of trainer‐of‐trainer programs since the task was huge and our capacity limited. What we don’t know is how many of the schools that claimed that they were implementing effective schools did so with real fidelity and quality. We are pretty confident that a lot of these schools and districts were implementing the concepts in name only. On the other hand, we have dozens, if not hundreds of cases where the process was implemented with care, and the results were impressive.

One of the interesting problems that we had to confront when it came to implementing the effective schools research had to do with the fact that it focused on the single school and not the school district, per se. For example, when someone would ask, “What is the role of the central office, superintendent, or board of education in creating effective schools?” Initially, we responded by saying that they were irrelevant! Our reasoning went as follows. When we found an effective school, it was likely in a district with many other schools, none of which were effective yet all had the same board, superintendent and central office. Furthermore, we proclaimed that a school staff could implement the correlates of effective schools at any time. No particular outside help or support was required, since no outside help or support was found to be associated with the schools that were already found to be effective. While our proclamation was literally true, we subsequently tempered our view.

It is true that schools come to be effective school‐by‐school and one school at a time. It is also true that it is very difficult to sustain the effective school as effective without the support of the central office, superintendent and board of education. If creating and maintaining schools as effective isn’t a district‐wide priority, the school will likely not be able to maintain its effectiveness status. Without broader based organizational support, school effectiveness tends to depend too heavily on the heroic commitment of the school leader or only a few staff. We have numerous cases where the principal of any effective school moved on for one reason or another and was replaced by someone who did not share the passion, vision, or values. When this happened, the school usually, and quickly I might add, returned to its earlier state.

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Phase 4: The School District (1985 – Present)

For the reasons discussed in the previous section, we made a mid‐course correction in our approach to assisting schools with programs of school improvement based on the effective schools research. After securing a grant from the U.S. Office of Education, the MSU team, in collaboration with local school‐improvement experts, developed an approach to effective school research based school improvement in which the intervention effort ran on two parallel tracks.

One track was designed to train and empower school‐level collaborative teams to plan and implement school improvement based on the research. The second track focused on a district‐ level leadership team, including the superintendent, charged with the responsibility with developing and subsequently implementing a district plan designed to support the school‐by‐ school process. Clearly, this dual effort was intended to increase the likelihood that schools that became effective would remain so even if the school leader changed.

We were fortunate to have had the opportunity to train and guide literally hundreds of school district teams through the effective schools process. The results represent good news and bad news. The good news was that many more schools were able to realize significant progress because they received assurances and support from central office and the superintendent. The bad news was that if the superintendent left, for whatever reason, as often as not, he/she would be replaced with a person who did not have the passion, share the vision, or offer the support needed to sustain the district effort. The net result was that now whole school districts that had taken “two steps forward” would quickly take “two steps back.” To this day, we struggle with building continuity and stability in the districts with whom we work. For you see, in spite of the of the accountability movement, district leaders are usually given the authority to put their own “brand” on the organization, regardless of whether the earlier “brand” was working or not.

Phase 5: Total System Alignment (1995 ‐ Present)

As we follow the history of the effective schools research movement from the earliest days to the present, it is easy to see how it has become more inclusive and expansive. For example, virtually every state has developed some results‐oriented accountability system. Many of the states have required or at least encouraged their schools to plan and implement programs of school reform based on the effective schools research and proven practices. In addition, most of the regional accreditation models require schools to document their school processes and practices based, in whole or in part, on the effective schools research. Needless to say, No Child Left Behind also contains many of the provisions that we have been advocating since the earliest days of the movement. With this being so, it seems reasonable to claim that most of the crucial elements of the system at‐large are now aligned and all are “pulling the wagon” in the same direction.

There is one part of the system that is still on the fence when it comes to alignment with the rest of the system: higher education. Higher education has a great deal of power and influence when it comes to public education. It controls who gets admitted to colleges, and it trains and certifies teachers and administrators. Unfortunately, if we are to believe our colleagues in the schools, most of these institutions are not yet doing what needs to be done to prepare students or staff for the schools and districts we need for the 21st century.

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The journey from 1966 to the present represents a history of successes in helping more schools to be more effective in helping more students to be successful. For that we can and should be proud. On the other hand, the journey from 1966 to the present is a story of starts and stops when it comes to sustainable change in our public schools. The resistance evidenced by the system‐in‐place all along the journey is testimony to the stability of the current system. Stability is good when the system is doing what we as a nation and people want. Stability becomes the enemy when it is not doing what we want and need and we know how to do it better.

Conclusion

There are six changes that have been influenced by the effective schools research and the school reform movement that it inspired. These changes are taken for granted today, but such was not always the case. These changes include:

1. The use of disaggregated data to simultaneously attend to quality and equity in our schools.

2. Judging the effectiveness of the schools by the results they achieve, not the processes or programs they utilize.

3. Becoming more data‐driven systems with leaders who have had to become knowledgeable about this approach.

4. The assumption that there must be collaboration and ownership among the staff in order to successfully initiate and sustain school improvement.

5. Change is clearly understood to be a process that is complex and takes time.

6. The understanding that, when it comes to sustainable change in schools and districts, there are no unimportant adults. We all have to be a part of the dialogue and the changes that follow.

Effective Schools Research and Practices Going Forward

Context Matters

This paper began with a description of the perfect storm that was about to engulf American public education. Don’t look now but we are sitting in the eye of that perfect storm!

Standards have been raised and more rigorous tests will follow shortly, the number of children living in poverty is increasing with no decline in sight, and the resources are strained to the limit.

No one can claim that we could not, or did not, see it coming. Researcher’s, futurists and writers have been describing the gathering clouds and forecasting the storm for a long time.

The final section will focus on the current state of affairs in and around No Child Left Behind since it appears to represent the educational policy “jet stream” that is significantly impacting educational reform at the state and local levels. The observations will focus primarily on where NCLB is headed as we approach the target date for achieving the mission of 100% of the students proficient or above by 2013‐14.

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No Plan B

In 2001, 92 U S senators and an equal percentage of the U.S. House of Representatives approved the truly landmark law, No Child Left Behind. In 2002, President Bush was quick to sign the legislation into law. The overarching aim was to assure that 100% of our school age children would be proficient or above in Reading and Mathematics by 2013‐14.

It should have occurred to someone that the mission might not be successfully accomplished by the announced due date. Surely, somebody should have been tasked to develop a contingency “Plan B” in the event that the initial plan comes up short. After all, a Plan B would be important, even if it were not immediately urgent, since the country could not and should not lose whatever progress had been made by that date. No such plan was developed. Even the mandated legislative reauthorization has failed to materialize and is mired in the gridlock that is Washington.

The central principle of leadership and continuous progress is to set a clear aim or goal and frequently monitor and adjust based on feedback for the front lines. Obviously, our policymakers seem to think that once the mission is announced everything else will somehow fall into place.

Educational Reform Models in the Crosshairs

Because the system has broken down and has ground to a halt, President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan have decided on their Plan B. They have decided to by‐ pass Congress and change NCLB by approving waivers from some provisions in the original law in exchange for specific state‐level commitments in areas of special interest to the President and Secretary, all perfectly legal. Is the wavier process a wise idea? Only time will tell whether this strategy advances the goal of 100% of our children scoring at proficient levels in Reading and Math.

From the vantage point of the various educational reform models generally, and Effective Schools Research and Practices specifically, the wavier process raises many caution flags. Some of the cautions that are greatest concern to effective school’s advocates include the following:

1. States are likely to seek, and be granted, waivers on the central mission itself. It is already generally known that some states are requesting a reduction in the percentage of its students who will be expected to demonstrate proficiency. They want the standard to be reduced from 100% to something less.

Mission statements are not intended to be descriptions of current reality but a description of a preferred future. The vision of 100% percent proficient is quite a different preferred future than a mission of 80% proficient, for example. Not only does it imply that we can live with a 20% non‐proficiency rate but it actually alters the nature of the work. The task now is to be sure that the “right” students succeed and the “right” students fail. It would be better to modify the time line for the mission, ease back on the sanctions but leave the aim clear and unambiguous.

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From the outset NCLB was supposed to represent a combination of pressure (accountability) and support (staff development and systems change). Most educators would agree that the accountability dimension got way out ahead of the support dimension. Maybe a more sensible approach would be to bring the two into the intended balance between pressure and support before we allow the mission to be compromised and probably corrupted.

2. We’ve all heard the expression, “Pick your poison.” The wavier process is being used as a substitute for the mandated Congressional reauthorization of NCLB. It may turn out that for all of its cautionary flags, the waiver process may represent the lesser of two evils. As this is being written, it is not clear that the Senate Committee on Education and Labor which will reauthorize the law would keep the requirement to analyze and report progress the various subgroups in a school.

Disaggregation of assessment results by subgroups is the heart and soul of NCLB. Many, many educators have said that they thought they knew their school, but the subgroup analysis opened their eyes to realities that were largely unnoticed and therefore ignored previously. What problem “finding” strategy would replace the various gap and trend analyses that have been used for nearly ten years?

A second provision currently under consideration in the Senate’s reauthorization would “scrap” the accountability standard known as Adequate Yearly Progress. If schools return to looking only at some measure of central tendency for the entire undifferentiated student group and then the observed measure of central tendency is judged against the standard that says, “We know you did your best,” we’ll have returned to the way things were in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Many of the advocates for these changes would argue that we are returning to the “good ole days.”

Unfortunately, the “good ole days” were not so good for a whole lot of our nation’s children.

3. States seeking waivers from the Secretary of Education will be required to develop a plan for addressing the needs of the lowest performing 5% schools in their state. If one does a little simple math, it’s easy to see the pitfalls in the targeted group. Don’t misunderstand, these schools need and deserve the intended help. The issue is not the schools that will be in the spot light, it’s the schools that won’t.

Here is the math: We have approximately 50 million students in K‐12 public education.

The students are distributed among 99,000 schools.

The average size of a school is approximately 555 students.

Five percent of the schools represent 5,000 schools or 2.8 million students.

There are 37.7 million students who are not proficient in one or more subjects.

With the waiver process approximately 35 million non‐proficient students find themselves at the mercy of the existing system and the moral commitment of those in charge of these schools and districts.

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It appears that the mission is being driven by resources and not our beliefs and values.

We can do better.

Three other dimensions central to the waiver process deserve some comment. Secretary Duncan (see Education Week, September 11, 2011) tries to reassure the advocates for these students that the wavier process requires the states to demonstrate how they are going to address challenges presented by this large and growing subpopulation of non‐proficient school age children.

1. States will be required to formally adopt higher, 21st Century standards.

Other than the political push and tug whenever educational standards are modified, this change, when implemented, may not have a positive impact on students who are currently one or two or more years behind in their academic achievement. Raising the bar alone does not empower one to jump higher.

Other changes have to occur. As a strong advocate for higher standards, it is important to remember that they only raise achievement when the change is accompanied by changes in the instructional delivery. The more rigorous assessments of the higher standards may leave non‐ proficient students and the teachers who teach them scratching their heads.

2. Parents should be given more choices.

Again, there is no problem with giving parents choice in selecting a school for their child to attend. Do you really believe that, given the “mean spirited” climate of our country, schools serving more advantaged students are going to welcome with open arms “those” students from the other side of town? For the last ten years, a limited numbers of charter schools have been created to give choice right in the neighborhoods. Some have exemplary results and most not so much. If choice and charters represent the silver bullet solution, why is the evaluative evidence still so “spotty”?

3. More rigorous teacher evaluation coupled with a merit pay component.

Implementing a more rigorous system for evaluating teachers as a central reform strategy is going to be disappointing at the end of the day for at least two reasons. First, focusing primarily on teacher evaluation assumes that the system in which the teacher is operating is structured for success, and the absence of success is the teacher’s fault. Virtually everyone agrees that the system in place was never designed to do what it is currently being asked to do. Without changing the system, it’s unlikely that the evaluation strategy is going to bear fruit.

Second, the teacher evaluation strategy reminds me of the old story about the farmer who tried to “fatten” the cattle by weighing them more frequently and with a more precise scale. The farmer knows that to achieve the goal, you have to feed the cattle more and different. I sincerely hope state leaders who will manage the waivers will take a lesson from the farmer and come bearing generous portions of staff development, mentoring, and proven practices.

I don’t want to be seen as completely skeptical without an alternative suggestion. Some charter schools are achieving stellar results. Some traditional public schools are also achieving 20

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stellar results. Why not start by examining success wherever we can find it and determine what these islands of success are doing and help more schools to follow their blueprint. Some would argue that we’ve already conducted that inquiry. It’s true. but the transfer of the lessons learned from the study of these stellar schools to all schools remains far behind.

The various educational reform models that are currently available, including Effective School Research and Practices, may be placed on the shelf because of the powerful forces that define our current political environment. If history is destined to repeat itself, the proven reform models will sit on the shelf until the political climate changes once again; and then they’ll be viewed as if they were new discoveries. Can’t we do better?

Suggested Readings on Effective Schools Research

Bliss, James R., William A. Firestone, and Craig E. Richards (Eds). Rethinking Effective Schools: Research and Practice. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1991.

Block, James H., Susan T. Everson, and Thomas R. Guskey (Eds). School Improvement Programs: A Handbook for Educational Leaders. Scholastic Inc., New York, NY, 1994.

Brookover, Wilbur B., Fritz A. Erickson, and Alan W. McEvoy. Creating Effective Schools: An In‐ service Program for Enhancing School Learning Climate and Achievement, Revised Edition.

Learning Publications, Holmes Beach, FL, 1996.

Bullard, Pamela and Barbara O. Taylor. Keepers of the Dream: The Triumph of Effective Schools.

Excelsior! Foundation, 1991.

Dispelling the Myth: High Poverty Schools Exceeding Expectations. Report of the Education Trust in cooperation with the Council of Chief State School Officers and partially funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Washington, DC (Website: www.edtrust.org), 1990.

Levine, Daniel U. and Lawrence W. Lezotte. Unusually Effective Schools: A Review and Analysis of Research and Practice. The National Center for Effective Schools Research & Development, Madison, WI, 1990.

Lezotte, Lawrence W. and Kathleen M. McKee, Stepping Up: Leading the Charge to Improve Our Schools, Effective Schools Products, Ltd., Okemos, MI, 2007.

Lezotte, Lawrence W. and Jo‐Ann Cipriano Pepperl. The Effective Schools Process: A Proven Path to Learning for All. Effective Schools Products, Ltd., Okemos, MI, 1999.

Lezotte, Lawrence W. Learning for All. Effective Schools Products, Ltd., Okemos, MI, 1998.

Mortimore, Peter, et al. School Matters. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1998.

Rutter, Michael. Fifteen Thousand Hours. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1982.

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Effective Schools Correlates and Teacher Leadership Preparation: How One Interdisciplinary, Practice‐Oriented Doctorate is Challenging the Status Quo

Harriet Bessette Interim Director, Doctoral and Specialist Programs Corresponding Author Associate Professor, Department of Inclusive Education Kennesaw State University Bagwell College of Education Kennesaw, Georgia

Traci Redish, Professor and Chair, Department of Instructional Technology Bagwell College of Education Kennesaw, Georgia

Nita Paris Department of Secondary and Middle Grades Education Bagwell College of Education Kennesaw, Georgia

Dawn Kirby Professor of English and English Education Department of English Kennesaw, Georgia

Abstract

Current literature is rife with criticism of education preparation programs lacking rigor, substance, and relevance – particularly in the area of leadership practice (Levine, 2005). Such programs are often perceived as ill‐equipped to address today’s pedagogical challenges, increasing the need for better focused and sustainable preparation models within higher education. In this article, the authors will present the Ed.D. in Teacher Leadership for Learning to illustrate the uniqueness of the program in the context of the links that we have identified between four key Correlates of the Effective Schools Research—Clearly Stated and Focused Mission on Learning for All; A Safe and Orderly Environment for Learning; Instructional Leadership; and Uncompromising Commitment to High Expectations for All—and the program’s performance objectives. These specific correlates not only dovetail with the fundamental principles of Distributed Leadership ‐ which contextually undergirds the program ‐ and the major constructs of our doctorate, but also hold significant implications for leadership preparation and P‐12 schools.

Key words: Effective Schools, teacher leadership for learning, leadership preparation, distributed leadership, doctoral programs

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Leadership practice in U.S. schools is in crisis. Faced with the well‐intentioned, but seemingly unattainable, mandate from No Child Left Behind (NCLB; Public Law 107‐110, 2002) that by 2014, all students will meet or exceed a state’s proficiency level of academic achievement in reading and mathematics, many educators see a challenge they increasingly believe they cannot surmount. Traditional and frequently outdated leadership preparation programs are ill‐matched to the pedagogical and financial challenges and needs of today’s schools. Their progressive failure has been long‐documented.

Exacerbating the crisis are ranks of formal school leaders, either unable or unwilling to meet school effectiveness demands, who are leaving the field at alarming rates (c.f., Guskey, 2007; Reeves, 2007; Wiliam, 2007). If Levine’s (2005) prediction is on target, traditional leadership attrition will only accelerate, with over 40 percent of the nationʹs school principals and superintendents leaving their jobs by 2015.

How did we get here?

Prompted by the national outcry of prominent scholars in the field that both traditional doctorates and traditional leadership preparation programs had failed to prove effective in improving our nation’s schools (Levine, 2005; Orr & Orphanos, 2010; Shulman, Golde, Bueschel, & Garabedian, 2006), we launched the Ed.D. in Teacher Leadership for Learning, an applied doctorate and the first of its type offered at our regional comprehensive higher education institution. The development of this doctorate spanned a three‐year period during which this program was designed to address the needs of students, communities, area schools, professional and content standards, as well as gaps in leadership preparation as noted both locally and nationally. Education faculty as well as Arts and Sciences faculty felt strongly that an appropriate new design would arise only from our collaborative, purposeful, transformative thinking; and, in turn, that a new design would help us and our doctoral students engage in the type of creative, constructive action needed to address the complex issues we observed in P‐12 schools.

This article will present the Ed.D. in Teacher Leadership for Learning to illustrate the uniqueness of the program in the context of the links that we have found between key Effective Schools Correlates (Owings & Kaplan, 2008) and the program’s performance objectives. We begin by presenting a brief overview of the first and second generation of Effective Schools Literature and the major principles behind Distributed Leadership. Next, we examine how the doctorate in Teacher Leadership for Learning aligns with four of the Effective Schools Correlates: (1) Clearly Stated and Focused Mission on Learning For All; (2) A Safe and Orderly Environment For Learning; (3) Instructional Leadership; and (4) Uncompromising Commitment to High Expectations For All. In the next section, we draw on the correlates as we present findings from a longitudinal study that elicited doctoral candidates’ perceptions of their leadership awareness, knowledge, involvement, and impact on learners. In the final section, we examine implications that the correlates hold for leadership preparation programs as well as P‐12 schools.

If, as Lezotte (1982) posited decades ago, the evidence that effective schools research is increasingly growing “as a framework for school improvement programs,” (p. 63), then we suggest that the later iteration of Effective Schools Correlates (Lezotte, 1991) is useful as a framework for studying the impact that candidates and future graduates of leader preparation

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programs ‐ as well as the programs themselves ‐ are having on P‐12 students in their schools and classrooms.

The Effective Schools Movement in a Context of Change

A “Golden Age” of school effectiveness research can be traced back to the mid‐to‐late 1970’s, beginning with Brophy and Good’s (1974) descriptions of the causes and consequences of effective schools. Their research, largely quantitative in nature, gave way to a veritable “laundry list” of effectiveness factors and serves as a staple for educational scholars, preservice teachers, and preparation programs. Brophy and Good’s seminal work, prompted by an accountability blitzkrieg that had been fueled by then‐recent special education legislation (PL 94‐142; Education for All Handicapped Children Act, 1975), served as a wellspring for subsequent studies. Findings from research conducted by Brookover and Lezotte (1979), Edmonds and Frederiksen (1979), and others—though sometimes contested (D’Amico, 1982)—suggested that particular characteristics, or correlates, related to school effectiveness could be targeted, triggering great interest and passion for further research. Purkey and Smith (1982) noted four fairly distinct groups of research studies in the literature—outlier studies, case studies, program evaluation studies, and “other” (p. 64)—and, while they were generally regarded as efficacious (Edmonds, 1982), each exhibited flaws. Subsequent claims of trustworthiness were met with challenges and rejoinders. Ultimately, the educational community embraced these claims as “seeds for school improvement” (p. 66) and precursors of the Effective Schools Correlates.

Among the research findings of this era, however, none appear to have been more significant than the five school‐level variables that Edmonds posited, correlates that would stand in testament to the Effective Schools Correlates that exist today. They are as follows:

• Strong administrative leadership with attention to instructional quality • High expectations for all student achievement • A safe and orderly climate conducive to teaching and learning • An emphasis on basic skill acquisition • Frequent monitoring and measuring of pupil progress so that teachers and principals are constantly aware of pupil progress in relation to instructional objectives (p.18)

The correlate that seemed destined to expand and become symbolic of major reform efforts in the following decade was one elaborated by Scheerens and Bosker (1997): Strong Administrative Leadership with Attention to Instructional Quality. Their “outlier studies,” which were sometimes characterized as having design and outcome irregularities, proved invaluable and what would become known as “Instructional Leadership” would remain a focus of future research well into the next decade or more.

Research in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s brought with it results that a more informed and eager constituency of researchers and scholars longed to see. Strong instructional leadership at the principal’s level, increased student achievement, and non‐negotiable expectations for principals evolved and increased (Hallinger & Heck, 1996; Leithwood, Louis, Anderson, & Wahlstrom, 2004; Pierce, 2000; Waters, Marzano & McNulty, 2003). Prompted by Effective Schools Research of the previous two decades, attention shifted from the characteristics of schools to the contexts of schools and the cultures within (Fullan, 1991; Hargreaves, 2003).

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Until recently, however, university‐based expectations had not changed and preparation programs in educational leadership remained static. Higher education seemed to be asking all the wrong questions – or not asking questions at all. Educators appeared unsure about how best to use various data to investigate educational and leadership practices. Not until the mid‐2000’s did scholars and practitioners began to consider seriously what constituted good data and the purposes for which it could or could not be used (Cochran‐Smith & Zeichner, 2005).

Effective Schools Correlates: Increased Significance Ten Years Later

By the mid‐1990’s, and prior to the implementation of NCLB, the modern American principal faced pressures no principal could have anticipated one or two decades earlier (Pierce, 2000). School principals had not been prepared to become instructional leaders – instead their responsibilities focused on managerial practices and administrative tasks that took precedence over instructional acumen (Pierce, 2000). Combined with the progressively challenging and often unrealistic expectations of school leadership, an ever‐increasing complexity of school environments gradually gave way to educators who began asking challenging, fundamental questions: What should school leadership look like? What constitutes effective leadership practice? What effect, if any, does school leadership have on student learning?

The face of school reform was changing and so were the Effective Schools Correlates (Lezotte, 1991). Inspired by a new wave of school improvement literature (Marzano, 2003; Wiggins & McTighe, 2007), the shift to a holistic view of school culture and contexts, and a Learning for All ideology that had its roots in the compelling reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 1997), the correlates underwent subtle modifications which held not‐so‐subtle implications for P‐12 education.

P‐12 schools in the U.S. faced unprecedented challenges in the years leading up to No Child Left Behind (2002), and the stakes for students and teachers alike had never been higher.

Classrooms hosted increasingly diverse student populations; and the number of culturally, linguistically, academically, and intellectually diverse pupils promised to rise. Another reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 2004 required states to ensure that all students be assessed on progress toward meeting academic standards. No longer was access to a generalized curriculum sufficient evidence of supporting student achievement.

Practitioners and school leaders needed to surpass this benchmark of equitable and excellent opportunity for academic success for all students. For this to happen, schools needed to adopt an ideology that valued a common vision of high achievement for all students, and all efforts needed to be centered on ensuring that every child would learn (Wiggins & McTighe, 2007).

To illustrate the impact of this transformation on American education, we note the original first generation correlate, Clearly Stated and Focused Mission, as an example. Failing to denote an emphasis on learning, it was transformed into the second generation correlate we recognize today: A Clearly Stated and Focused Mission on Learning for All. The new connotation indicated that pupil learning took precedence over the actions of the teacher or school leader. In what is now widely recognized as student‐centered learning (Schiro, 2007; Wiggins & McTighe, 2007), improved student learning for all students is clearly identified as paramount.

In another example, “uncompromising” and “for all” were not included in the initial iteration of the correlate, Uncompromising Commitment to High Expectations For All. This is 26

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significant, as high expectations are now inclusive of all students and the commitment to hold all students to high learning standards must be unwavering. Where once this objective was considered a hit‐or‐miss proposition, today it is a non‐negotiable. Simply put, teachers are accountable for ensuring that all students learn.

While this paper is not intended to serve as an in‐depth summary or review of the transition of the Effective Schools Correlates between 1985 and 1995, the examples above show an interesting trend: namely, the shift that was taking hold in identifying and applying effective changes in American schools (i.e., from discreet effectiveness characteristics to more inclusive and cultural approaches), and its subsequent impact on higher education institutions and their teacher and leader preparation programs.

Debate concerning expectations for school leadership, in fact, was no longer limited to P‐ 12 discourse. Faculties in higher education undertook similar discourse about preparation programs in order to better prepare the next generation of school leaders for real work in real work cultures. Still, while many faculty in educational leadership programs nationwide heeded the critics (Murphy, 2005), others did not.

As Chomsky asserted, ʺIf anyone at a university is teaching the same thing they were teaching five years ago, either the field is dead, or they havenʹt been thinking.” (Solomon, 2003, ¶12). This vacuum was seen by our institution as a unique opportunity for faculty to re‐cast the paradigm of school leadership through the conceptualization and implementation of a new, interdisciplinary, practice‐oriented doctorate with Distributed Leadership at its core.

Distributed Leadership as Context

Distributed Leadership School Practice—or Distributed Leadership, as it is more commonly known—finds its roots in traditional leadership practice, such as formal school leadership.

Various forms of leadership, such as transformational (Weber, 1978), transactional (Bass & Avolio, 1994), servant (Sergiovanni, 2007), and instructional (Glickman, Gordon, & Ross‐Gordon, 2010; Owings & Kaplan, 2008) have also been linked to school leadership. Leading scholars are no longer wary of asserting that Instructional Leadership is second only to teaching among school‐ related factors impacting learning (Harris, 2006; Lashway, 2003; Leithwood, Louis, Anderson, & Wahlstrom, 2004; Mulford & Silins, 2004; Murphy, 2005; Spillane, 2006). Not surprisingly, most agree that strong leadership “figures centrally in turn‐around school success” (Hulme, 2006, p. 1).

A distributed lens allows educators to study how leadership activity is accomplished and how it links to instructional change and increased student learning. Further, because one exclusive group or person seldom accomplishes transformative work, effective school leadership practices rightfully include multiple levels of teacher and specialist involvement that manifest as distributed leadership practices and expertise (Hargreaves & Fink, 2006). As Spillane (2006) points out, “Expecting one person to single‐handedly lead efforts to improve instruction in a complex organization such as a school is impractical” (p. 26).

Distributed leadership then describes, rather than prescribes, successful leadership practice in schools (Spillane, 2006). It forwards the proposition that both formal and informal leadership may be “stretched” over a number of constituents within a school. Describing the leadership practice, actions, and interactions of formal and informal leaders in schools who work 27

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in differing situations using various routines and tools is foundational to Distributed Leadership and a valuable way to examine the school as a cohesive unit or culture. The Distributed Leadership paradigm may be used by schools to diagnose areas for improving routines and tools, or for designing new and more effective ones for specific contexts. It frames the doctoral program in Teacher Leadership for Learning as an analytical tool or framework for thinking about and reflecting upon leadership practice in P‐12 schools (Spillane & Diamond, 2007) as well as provides a theoretical and contextual scaffold for teacher leadership.

The Ed.D. in Teacher Leadership for Learning

Criticism of leadership preparation programs in higher education is both widespread and onerous (Cibulka, 2009; Levine, 2005; Orr & Orphanos, 2010; Shulman, Golde, Bueschel, & Garabedian, 2006). Faced with competition from a growing number of alternative providers, as well as proving largely ineffectual in transforming P‐12 schools (Levine, 2005; Walker, Golde, Jones, Bueschel, & Hutchings, 2008; Walker, 2009), university‐based leadership preparation programs are under intense scrutiny to demonstrate effectiveness in P‐12.

At a time when university‐based leadership preparation programs faced stringent critics, our college decided to shape a new doctorate. Developing a program to surpass higher education’s existing standards and operating procedures was a key objective. Many of the foundational decisions about the goals, mission, content, and structure of the program were made in one year’s time. Contemporary research (Levine, 2005; Shulman, Golde, Bueschel, & Garabedian, 2006) simultaneously espoused strikingly similar goals and changes, affirming and authenticating essential Teacher Leadership for Learning program design elements.

In concert with the aims of the new doctorate were the principles of Distributed Leadership, especially those that spoke to empowering teachers to lead (Ackerman & MacKenzie, 2007; Harris & Muijs, 2003; Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001). With claims that teacher leadership builds teacher capacity, a sense of self‐efficacy (Harris & Muijs, 2003), and a natural bond between school and teacher leader effectiveness (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001), it is easy to understand how Distributed Leadership helped to determine the context within which we would prepare teacher leaders. As Lieberman and Miller (2004) reminded us, teacher leaders engage in:

• Developing strong commitments to their students through their life experiences and their own teaching; • Becoming inquirers into their own practice, helping them to become articulate about teaching and learning; • Providing leadership through their example of becoming lifelong learners themselves; • Taking risks by expanding their own comfort zones and modeling experimentation; • Inspiring their peers through their commitment to continually improving their practice; • Working hard at expanding their circle of peers and their own knowledge base; • Organizing novice and veteran teachers into communities of support; • Caring about the content and character of colleagueship as well as the content of subject matter; and

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•

Creating incentives for themselves and others to understand that learning to teach is a lifetime of learning to learn (p. 90).

These characteristics of teacher leadership are important to this discussion as it is teacher leaders who are optimally positioned to influence the conditions that reflect Effective Schools.

Four Effective Schools Correlates and Teacher Leadership for Learning

While the principles of Distributed Leadership provide the framework for preparing doctoral candidates to become teacher leaders, four Effective Schools Correlates ‐ Clearly Stated and Focused Mission on Learning for All; A Safe and Orderly Environment for Learning; Instructional Leadership; and Uncompromising Commitment to High Expectations for All – reflect the vital attributes by which teacher leaders and developing teacher leaders may steer their professional efforts. Of the seven correlates, these four have particular significance to this discussion as they provide a window into the most visceral needs for school effectiveness and change at all levels.

Further, doctoral candidates consistently point to observable traits in the workplace when judging their schools’ – and their own – leadership awareness, knowledge, involvement, and impact on learners. Major goal for our candidates throughout their doctoral program is for them to develop the ability to discern which tasks and activities accomplish the following: encompass all learners; ensure that student learning transpires within in a safe, non‐threatening environment; provide learner‐focused instruction; establish and maintain high expectations for all students; and support a mission of learning that is based on an unequivocal commitment to collaborative thought and discourse.

Built on major precepts connected to Distributed Leadership and Teacher Leadership, and reflecting the Effective Schools Literature, as well as the Georgia Leadership Institute for School Improvement (GLISI) Roles (2006), the performance standards that frame the doctorate are consistent with NCATE, SACS and University standards and have easily become performance objectives for core or foundational courses within the program. The program’s courses, designed experiences, and embedded assessments are tightly aligned with eight key performance standards that are objectives of the program. Table 1 shows alignment between the Teacher Leadership for Learning’s program standards and the following Effective Schools Correlates: Clearly Stated and Focused Mission on Learning for All, A Safe and Orderly Environment for Learning, Instructional Leadership, and Uncompromising Commitment to High Expectations for All.

A body of relevant literature is presented in the next section to link each of the above Correlates with Distributed Leadership, Teacher Leadership, and the Ed.D. in Teacher Leadership for Learning.

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Table 1 Teacher Leadership for Learning Performance Standards Standard 1: The student fosters an organizational culture that facilitates development of a shared vision, a plan for school improvement, and increased learning for all students.

Standard 2: The student implements sustainable educational change and process improvement.

Standard 3: The student creates 21st century learning environments that advance best practices in curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

Standard 4: The student engages in applied research that supports data‐driven planning and decision‐making for the improvement of schools and learning.

Standard 5: The student builds collaborative relationships, teams, and community partnerships that communicate and reflect distributed leadership for learning.

Standard 6: The student embraces diversity by demonstrating intercultural literacy and global understanding.

Standard 7: The student facilitates professional learning and development that enhance and improve professional practice and productivity.

Standard 8: The student exercises professionalism and ethical practice.

Effective Schools Correlates Clearly Stated and Focused Mission on Learning For All; A Safe and Orderly Environment For Learning; Instructional Leadership Clearly Stated and Focused Mission on Learning For All; Instructional Leadership; Uncompromising Commitment to High Expectations For All Clearly Stated and Focused Mission on Learning For All; Instructional Leadership; Uncompromising Commitment to High Expectations For All Clearly Stated and Focused Mission on Learning For All; Instructional Leadership

Clearly Stated and Focused Mission on Learning For All; A Safe and Orderly Environment For Learning; Instructional Leadership; Uncompromising Commitment to High Expectations For All Clearly Stated and Focused Mission on Learning For All; A Safe and Orderly Environment For Learning Clearly Stated and Focused Mission on Learning For All; A Safe and Orderly Environment For Learning; Instructional Leadership; Uncompromising Commitment to High Expectations For All Clearly Stated and Focused Mission on Learning For All; Safe and Orderly Environments; Instructional Leadership; Uncompromising Commitment to High Expectations For All

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Effective Schools Correlate: Clearly Stated and Focused Mission on Learning for All

In Schooling by Design: Mission, action, and achievement, Wiggins and McTighe (2007) present their rationale and methodology for turning a school’s vision into desired results. They offer their conception of a mission‐driven approach to schooling and a practical strategy for realizing that mission. They metaphorically denote the structures that support, inform, and renovate P‐12 schools as “pillars,” which include the following:

• A clear & constant focus on the long‐term mission of all schooling: enabling learners to achieve worthy intellectual accomplishment, as reflected in their ability to transfer their learning with understanding to worthy tasks and in their habits of mind; • A curriculum & assessment framework that honors mission (no more should “content coverage” drive our instruction); • A set of principles of learning that support all decisions; • Structures, policies, job descriptions, practices and use of resources consistent with mission; • An overall strategy that includes ongoing feedback & adjustment; and • A set of tactics linked to strategy, including a planning process that uses backward design to accomplish the key work of reform. (p. 3)

The authors assert that a school mission is the long‐term goal against which educators design and “constantly adjust” P‐12 education (p. 9). Much of what can be gleaned in the literature on school reform and on improved student achievement points to the school’s ability to articulate and institute a school‐wide mission of learning as the central focus. This message is echoed consistently throughout the literature and aligned with the first Effective Schools Correlate to be discussed: Clearly Stated and Focused Mission on Learning for All.

Similarly, in Connecting Leadership with Learning, Copland & Knapp (2006) urge that school leaders build a “Learning Agenda” by reframing their mission as one that clearly focuses on learning. Their framework, Leading for Learning, identifies five essential guidelines for reflecting, planning, and taking action toward improving P‐12 effectiveness, among them, a clearly stated and focused mission on learning for all:

• Establish focus (mission) on learning; • Build professional learning communities; • Engage external environments that matter for learning; • Share leadership (DL); and • Create coherence among all learners (from central office to pupil) (p. 37)

Promoting learning‐focused leadership is a central theme among proponents of Effective Schools Research. Owings and Kaplan (2008), who examined research by The Education Trust (2005) on high impact schools (i.e., those schools characterized by 60% or better low income student populations that “achieved at higher than expected rates for at least three years” (p. 19), concluded that four factors common to the ways in which the mission was addressed in these schools suggested school effectiveness. They are expressed in terms of:

1. How students were prepared for life beyond high school; 2. Focusing on academics; 31

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3.

4.

Administrators’ and teachers’ consistent focus on achievement goals; The school’s willingness to embrace external standards and assessments (p. 20).

Visualizing and implementing a Clearly Stated and Focused Mission on Learning for All is also central to Distributed and Teacher Leadership and influence the ways in which teacher leaders organize and conduct their instruction, interact with students, and negotiate the challenges and expectations that are placed on them, including those they place on pupils. As Mulford and Silins (2004) posit, a leader’s differential treatment impinges on teachers’ work and how students perceive their teachers’ work, which, in turn, affects student learning outcomes.

Students in the Teacher Leadership for Learning program are especially attuned to the first performance standard framing the doctorate: The student fosters an organizational culture that facilitates development of a shared vision, a plan for school improvement, and increased learning for all students. They understand and resonate with what it means to be “learning‐focused” and work diligently to nurture and sustain this integral mission within their schools. Using their local workplaces as “laboratories” for developing leadership awareness, knowledge, involvement, and impact on learners, candidates observe and evaluate their progress based on this critical standard. By engaging in school rituals, including curriculum planning activities, school improvement meetings, and revitalization of the school’s vision and mission, students learn to develop a shared vision and mission grounded by learner‐centered leadership as articulated and evidenced by the Effective Schools Research.

Effective Schools Correlate: A Safe and Orderly Environment for Learning

A safe and orderly environment is a fundamental need; but a safe and orderly environment for learning raises the stakes; that is, a safe and orderly school climate is necessary for all learning to occur. Students cannot learn in an environment that is emotionally, physically, or psychologically threatening. They thrive when they feel safe and trust that their teachers care for them deeply (Noddings, 1984), recognizing that the teacher’s primary goal is to help them learn. As Kaplan and Owings (2007) state, “Unless schools attend to this correlate, the impact of all other correlates will be minimized” (p. 20).

This correlate affords the possibility of positive school cultures, high expectations for learning, and increased student achievement in P‐12 schools (Marzano, 2003). We would argue that, in addition to the link that can be found between this correlate and Teacher Leadership for Learning Program Performance standards 1, 5, 7, and 8 (see Table 1), it may also be expanded to include adult learners (Marzano, Waters, & McNulty, 2005). Adults benefit from a strong sense of trust in their work environment. Trust is prerequisite for teacher and leader effectiveness and for teacher efficiency in schools. When formal and informal school leaders trust each other, they are able to work concertedly toward common school goals. Without a safe environment, pupils and teachers alike are not psychologically available for learning or teaching. Fostering learning for students, teachers, professionals, and school and district leaders has been a prominent theme in the literature for over two decades (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988; Tomlinson & Allen, 2000).

Students in the Teacher Leadership for Learning program not only resonate with this correlate in the workplace, but they also understand it on an elemental level as they move through their doctoral program, typically, within the cohort. The cohort model provides a setting conducive to collegial support and collaboration while supplying the infrastructure and fertile 32

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ground for students to form communities of practice. These communities of practice consist of individuals bound together by shared expertise, trust, and a passion for a joint enterprise (Wenger & Snyder, 2000). Doctoral candidates learn from each other by focusing on problems directly related to their work as both doctoral students and practicing professionals.

In EDL 8000, Foundations in Teacher Leadership for Learning, for example, doctoral students work collaboratively in teams comprised of students from each of six content‐based concentrations to develop an interview protocol that addresses key constructs of distributed and teacher leadership. Doctoral students then conduct an interview with a school leader and record and analyze the data prior to presenting the findings in class. For the culminating activity, doctoral students again work collaboratively in interdisciplinary teams and videotape themselves engaged in a thirty‐minute conversation related to closing the achievement gap in their schools.

The conversation derives from an authentic P‐12 school improvement item, is grounded in Effective Schools literature, and proposes specific action that reflects a distributed perspective. In this way, doctoral students are continuously connecting what they learn—or seek to learn—in the workplace with the program’s performance objectives.

Effective Schools Correlate: Instructional Leadership

The work of school leadership has never been more complex than it is today. In addition to the traditional job functions, school leaders are responsible for data driven curricular improvement, cultural differentiation, and performance expectations that reflect federal and statewide standards. The definition of success and quality has moved from a local to a national emphasis ‐ from curricular improvement to performance enhancement. Educational leaders are experiencing a shift in how their effectiveness is measured.

In the past, school leadership was the sole domain of administrators, and to some degree, remains that way. Today, the school leader’s most critical responsibility remains monitoring and measuring pupil performance against key indicators, managing and leveraging knowledge for all, and developing systems and processes for getting and keeping excellent teachers. The school leader must be an instructional leader who makes instructional quality the top priority of the school.

What, then, is the definition of Instructional Leadership? Over the last two decades, Instructional Leadership has gradually expanded and shifted to include a deeper commitment to schooling’s core: learning (Copland & Knapp, 2006; Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001). From DuFour (2002), who posits that schools need leadership from principals who focus on advancing student and staff learning, to Leithwood and Duke (1998), who espouse that leaders need to maintain an unrelenting focus on student learning, it is well documented that educational leaders must establish and maintain an unrelenting focus on learning among all constituents if school improvement is to be realized (Leithwood, Day, Sammons, Harris, & Hopkins, 2006).

While agreement on a true definition of Instructional Leadership may be elusive (Marshak, 2008; Marzano, Waters, & McNulty, 2005), research on what school leaders do to enhance the instructional capabilities of others (Harris & Muijs, 2003; Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001; Leithwood, Louis, Anderson & Wahlstrom, 2004; Lieberman & Miller, 2004; Spillane, 2006) is not.

Marshak (2008) and others (Blase & Blase, 2003; DuFour 2002; Nettles & Harrington, 2007; Spillane, 2006) point to a trend that paves the way for networks of shared and complementary 33

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expertise, greater stakeholder involvement, and increased professional development. This altered focus is part of a new paradigm of effective instructional leadership.

Instructional Leadership and Teacher Leadership

Doctoral students who are teaching in schools that emphasize student learning as paramount to any activity within the workplace, report that principals and teachers alike are actively involved in all aspects of the school to make this happen. Those who are teaching in contexts where teacher, principal, and administrator effectiveness is recognized at many levels characterize their colleagues as resourceful, bold, supportive and dedicated to the mission of student learning. Optimal school effectiveness, they report, is apparent when the principal, along with his/her teachers, conveys high expectations for student, staff, and administrator performance and makes learning (i.e., professional development) a priority for all professional educators in the building.

Harris (2006) would agree, recognizing leadership as distributed through the practices and activities within an organization, and inclusive of many, especially teachers, in the process.

The school leader’s greatest instructional efforts are most meaningful in the context of leadership that is not attached to specific persons or leaders; where all members of the faculty and staff are considered experts in their own right; and all constituents are regarded as important sources of knowledge, experience, and wisdom. Hence, effective principals systematically promote leadership throughout a school (Spillane, 2006) and build leadership practices into the fabric of the school culture.

Teacher leadership has blossomed in answer to the call for professional learning communities and shared decision making, collective learning and application of learning, and shared personal practice and peer review. Katzenmeyer and Moller (2001) affirm that within every school, “there is a ‘sleeping giant’ of teacher leadership, which can be a strong catalyst for making change” (p. 3). They go on to state that “Teachers who are leaders lead within and beyond the classroom, identify with and contribute to a community of teacher learners and leaders, and influence others toward improved educational practice” (p. 5). Comer (1987) identified these conditions more than two decades ago as part of the Effective Schools Movement.

Such conditions, or characteristics, frame the performance standards that support the doctorate in Teacher Leadership for Learning and underscore the program’s mission to prepare teacher leaders who (a) develop deep content knowledge in specific subject areas; (b) use this expertise to facilitate effective classroom instruction and improved student learning; (c) increase teacher efficiency and retention; (d) create and sustain safe and positive learning‐centered schools; (e) maintain high standards and expectations for all students; and (f) perform all professional educational duties in a spirit of inclusiveness, renewal, and in an ethical manner.

Returning to Table 1, it is clear that Instructional Leadership finds a strong connection to seven of the eight Performance Standards within the Teacher Leadership for Learning program.

Effective Schools Correlate: Uncompromising Commitment to High Expectations for All

The first generation correlate, Climate for High Expectations, spoke to expectations for how teachers should behave, act, teach, or provide learning opportunities for all children, as opposed to delivering a blueprint to ensure that learning would take place. As Owings & Kaplan note (2006), with the emergence of the second generation correlate, teachers “[have become] 34

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responsible for ensuring student learning to high standards as well as for using an increased instructional repertoire” (p. 22). Hence, ensuring learning has become the social, moral, and legal imperative of educators in P‐12 schools.

There is much support in the literature, as well as within the other correlates, for adoption of an Uncompromising Commitment to High Expectations for All, which reads, Those who are leaders empower others to become leaders who believe and demonstrate that all students can attain mastery of essential skills. This commitment is shared by professionals who hold high expectations of themselves (Owings & Kaplan, 2008, p. 21). This correlate is also closely aligned with the mission of the doctoral program in Teacher Leadership for Learning, which challenges teacher leaders to build a climate for high expectations for success for all P‐12 learners. Doctoral candidates in the program recognize that to have a profound impact on teaching and learning in P‐12 schools, all stakeholders in the school must be engaged in working toward a shared goal, as well as dedicated to holding high expectations for teachers, teacher leaders, and P‐12 students alike.

Documenting Our Results: Discovering A Natural Alignment

Another factor responsible in helping us observe the alignment between the aforementioned correlates and our program’s standards involved a longitudinal study that began in early 2007, starting with an extensive review of the distributed and educational leadership literatures. Our original research objective was to explore how well third‐year students in the doctoral program were able to integrate specific content matter, become involved in teacher leadership activities, and work towards facilitating effective instruction and improved student learning in P‐12 schools. As the program evolved and research in the field continued, we discovered a natural alignment between the Effective Schools Correlates and the ways in which our candidates were applying what they had learned. We discovered that several of the Effective Schools Correlates were guiding candidates’ professional efforts, linking the correlates to our students’ progress.

Participants and Context

The study began with 27 doctoral students, all of whom were academically engaged in the same learning cohort but professionally connected to various workplaces outside the university. All participants were professional, practicing Pre‐K – college educators in the southeastern region of the U.S., serving as content‐specific or special education teachers, school principals, curriculum directors, cluster supervisors, directors from collaborative agencies, assistant principals, and other mid‐level administrators. Their school contexts did not range greatly. Most worked in low‐to‐middle middle class communities within a radius of approximately 80 miles from the university. All but three students successfully completed three years of the doctoral program (approximately 60 hours) at the time of the last data collection.

Methods

Qualitative methods were used to gain insight into the varied ways in which students conceptualized and internalized leadership knowledge, involvement, and impact within their schools. Their academic program required that they provide evidence of recognizing, identifying, and in some cases, stimulating effective leadership practice in their local contexts.

Data sources included interview transcripts, videotaped interviews, self‐report inventories, and a 35

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range of compelling data such as personal written reflections, exam responses, field notes from class observations, and formal and informal conversations between and among doctoral candidates and faculty (planned and unplanned).

Data were collected in year one and again in year three. Candidates addressed questions such as, Has your doctoral coursework contributed to your understanding of distributed leadership and/or the study of leadership, and if so, how? and In terms of building collaborative relationships, teams, and community partnerships that communicate and reflect leadership for learning, would you place yourself at the novice, mid‐range, or enlightened stage of development? The data included candidates’ reflections, rationales, and evidentiary materials ‐ such as memos, emails, written correspondence from colleagues ‐ in documenting their knowledge, involvement, and impact on P‐12 students.

Analysis In order to address our research objective, data sources were analyzed using inductive coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1990), consistent with the constant comparative method. Large patterns began to emerge related to the different ways in which candidates internalized and acted upon their distributed leadership roles in their schools. Students looked at the culture of their school workplaces, examined how well their school’s vision and mission statements were reflected in classroom practice, and the ways in which instructional and/or teacher leadership was having an impact on P‐12 student learning. In some instances, students described the actions of their principal, or formal, leader; these were designated as instructional leadership activities. Actions perpetuated by the candidates themselves, their peers, or colleagues working in an informal leadership capacity were designated as teacher leadership activities.

Using pattern coding (Miles & Huberman, 1994), analyses continued as researchers elaborated a cognitive map, or schema, based on “repeatable regularities” (Kaplan, 1964) within the data. With each re‐reading of the data, it became obvious that the majority of the candidates were successfully integrating new understandings in the workplace, becoming more attuned to their teacher leadership roles and involvement, and gradually more adept at recognizing the impact their roles were having on students, colleagues, and the schools themselves.

Results Five fairly distinct phases which, at first, were not easily distinguishable from one another, but which the researchers theorized as levels of functioning, emerged. They were named as follows: Non‐participator or Mute, Inductee, Initiator, Inviter, and Instigator or Provocateur. These levels began to take shape based upon students’ awareness of the presence of distributed and/or teacher leadership in their workplace, knowledge of distributed and/or teacher leadership, involvement as a teacher leader, and their impact on P‐12 students and teaching colleagues. The first level was one of “passiveness,” in which candidates did not understand distributed leadership roles (theirs or others’) in a meaningful way and was labeled, “mutism.” The data from year one suggest that the majority of the candidates (41%) operated at the early stage of Inductee; that is, they had a solid understanding of distributed leadership, could identify it in their schools, were able to recognize its outcomes in terms of effectiveness conditions and attributes present in the workplace, and could apply it to their own learning.

As candidates began to develop their capacity to evoke change, they were seen as operating at a higher level, that of Initiator. This level was characterized by candidates’ shifting spheres of influence (emergence of adaptive expertise). Candidates at this level were able to 36

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envision change at their schools based on school effectiveness conditions, yet had not actively adopted a leadership role in bringing about that change. Additionally, they were able to recognize the impact that instructional leadership was having on their students, fellow teachers, and school culture.

At the Inviter level, candidates were able not only to identify their own small advances toward a leadership role, but they became increasingly proactive in establishing conversations around goal‐setting and professional development (e.g., book studies, leadership groups) and demonstrated greater adaptive expertise in their leadership activities for the purpose of improving student and teacher learning. Gaining confidence and creating mindfulness toward inviting others to pursue actively distributed leadership roles, candidates at the highest level – Instigator ‐ participated in activities and discussions departing from the status quo. Figure 1 depicts a gradual shifting from year one to year three in the levels at which doctoral candidates were performing as developing teacher leaders in their local contexts. At the Inductee level, doctoral students’ knowledge and involvement decreased in year three to 13.5% from 41.0%, while students functioning at the Instigator (highest) level more than doubled. Gains were noted at the Initiator and Inviter levels as well.

Instigator, Mute, 7.5% 7.5%

Instigator, 19.0%

Inviter, 29.0%

Inviter, 22.0% Inductee, 41.0%

Mute, 9.5%

Initiator, 22.0%

Initiator, 29.0%

Year 1

Inductee, 13.5%

Year 3

Figure 1. Doctoral Students’ Leadership Awareness, Knowledge, Involvement, and Impact on P‐12 Learners

Findings These data suggest that although the five levels were hierarchical in nature, candidates often floated between and across levels. We found that they internalized their leadership roles within their current work settings; contextualized the impact those roles were having on their students, colleagues, and school culture based largely on Effective Schools literature; and connected these understandings to current doctoral coursework. We presented initial data that 37

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indicated (1) positive attitudinal and dispositional changes towards distributed leadership practice, as evidenced by anecdotal and written data; (2) gradual but dramatic expansion of distributed leadership knowledge and functionality by our students to other settings, allowing them to bring their lived experiences from our program into their work settings and apply it to broader constituencies; and (3) alignment to Effective Schools Research as candidates assessed the impact their actions and others’ were having on student and teacher learning (i.e., Inviter or Instigator levels).

Among the various data sources gathered for this longitudinal case study, those that produced the most animated and visceral responses from this cohort of 27 participants (in year one; 24 participants by year three) were the videotaped stories that students offered in response to structured interview questions designed to elicit their perceptions of the Ed.D. program and the impact their learning was having on their teaching and/or leadership practice. We found that students who once held a passive role in their schools became active in their local contexts, volunteering to lead book studies or forming a committee of colleagues interested in developing closer ties to formal leadership. In other words, they were developing into teacher leaders.

In retellings of local situations and in discussions in classes, doctoral students demonstrated the extent to which they were honing their understanding of distributed leadership practice—intellectual growth and applied knowledge that appeared to be socially mediated by conversations, readings, reflections, and exchanges with cohort members, colleagues, and professors. We noted how they gained confidence in their abilities to act as teacher leaders and future teacher leaders in their schools. Clearly, their gains in confidence and efficacy, along with new understandings of the kind of work that needed to be done in their schools signaled a shift in how they were conceptualizing their professional teaching and leadership roles. When asked in videotaped interviews what differences they had seen in the condition of their schools, their P‐ 12 learners, their colleagues, and themselves, candidates stated the following:

• I have become a leader in my school…I am a department chair and instructional lead teacher.

That’s unusual for one who teaches in a self‐contained classroom.

• My leadership conscience has broadened…I want to step out more and put it forward.

• I have been a positive influence on other practitioners…I’ve influenced my students through teachers.

• I’ve encouraged my teachers to choose for themselves what practices will have the greatest impact on their students.

• My students are changing the climate of the school and are now advocating for themselves.

• I indirectly influence students through the teachers I supervise.

• I empower teachers to work together, encourage them to work in groups, and use data to drive their instruction.

• I am a model for my students…I build my students up.

These year three findings not only suggest a trend towards more provocative levels of awareness, knowledge, involvement, and impact on student and teacher learning as candidates move through the program, but also a shift towards Instructional Leadership at the Inviter and Instigator levels of functioning. We acknowledge that this trend may also have resulted from factors outside of the university (e.g., conditions within the school, school culture, changes in leadership, personal attributes, etc.); however, it seems reasonable to conclude that it was a 38

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combination of university as well as P‐12 school factors that (1) contributed to candidate growth and (2) made evident commonalities between Effective Schools Correlates and the goals of the Teacher Leadership for Learning program.

Summary and Implications

This article examined the Effective Schools Literature within the context of an applied doctorate in leadership preparation, Teacher Leadership for Learning, to illustrate the links between major constructs of the doctorate and four key Effective Schools Correlates ‐ Clearly Stated and Focused Mission on Learning For All; A Safe and Orderly Environment For Learning; Instructional Leadership; and Uncompromising Commitment to High Expectations For All (Owings & Kaplan, 2008).

This program was designed to “go against the grain” of traditional doctorates and leadership preparation within higher education institutions, and prepare teacher and school leaders to change the face of ineffective P‐12 education. The authors discovered that the program not only challenged the status quo, but found common ground with specific Effective Schools Correlates as well as Distributed Leadership.

These connections are significant in that (a) they bridge educational aims and intent across various levels and contexts for the purpose of creating highly effective P‐12 schools; (b) they highlight gaps in leadership preparation programs currently in existence while serving as a caveat for those yet to be developed; and (c) they warrant closer examination and evaluation of leadership preparation programs by faculty who prepare formal and informal P‐12 school leaders due to the high stakes nature of their work. Hence, the authors offer the following implications related to leadership preparation, P‐12 education, and the Effective Schools Correlates:

Bridging educational aims and intent Despite the call for teacher and leader preparation to be in alignment with the needs and goals of P‐12 schools, the two often seem to operate in vacuums with aims and intents that can be vastly disparate. What created the chasm between higher education and P‐12 isn’t nearly as important, though, as the goals they share for actuating school effectiveness. Our experiences and those of our doctoral students suggest that the Effective Schools Correlates are the mortar that join the two entities. The correlates offer a wellspring of opportunity for lived experiences, theory, and practice‐based knowledge to coalesce and form powerful conduits for learning and leadership among P‐12 and university professionals alike.

Identifying gaps in current leadership preparation programs Findings from our longitudinal study in which the authors sought to identify if, and how, doctoral candidates were internalizing and applying their knowledge of Distributed Leadership and Teacher Leadership to become engaged members of their local school contexts, strongly suggest that four Effective Schools Correlates in particular ‐ (1) Clearly Stated and Focused Mission on Learning For All; (2) A Safe and Orderly Environment For Learning; (3) Instructional Leadership; and (4) Uncompromising Commitment to High Expectations For All ‐ guide candidates’ professional efforts in their schools. We found that doctoral candidates not only internalized their leadership roles in their current school settings; they also contextualized the impact those roles were having on their students, colleagues, and school culture based largely on the Effective Schools literature and connected these understandings to current doctoral coursework. We noted a clear alignment to specific Effective Schools Correlates as candidates evaluated their actions and the impact of their actions on others relative to leadership effectiveness.

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While our doctoral students appeared to be knowledgeable of the Effective Schools Literature and corresponding correlates, we found that they seldom utilized the correlates in a proactive or intentional way at the coursework level. Within their schools, however, students moved beyond anecdotal reference of the correlates to discuss more deeply the impact that the correlates were having on P‐12 pedagogy.

This knowledge has helped us recognize anew the importance of the Effective Schools Correlates and, at the same time, identify gaps in existing leadership preparation programs, including our own. Further, if evaluation of student performance would continue to be aligned with instructional expectations based on specific performance standards, why might the Effective Schools Correlates not be among those standards?

Continual process of evaluation It is widely acknowledged that highly qualified formal and informal school leaders are those who are best prepared to assume the daily challenges of promoting educational equity and increased achievement among all learners, sustaining a highly effective, competent, and motivated work force within the school, and managing an ethically, morally, legally and pedagogically sound school culture that is learning‐focused and mission‐driven (Davis, Darling‐ Hammond, LaPointe, & Meyerson, 2005). To remain viable, the programs that prepare formal and informal leaders for such crucial roles must engage in a continual process of self‐examination and program evaluation, as the stakes only increase for P‐12 education.

Institutions granting doctorates in education need to continually examine, evaluate, and adjust their programs, as we have done and continue to do, in a perpetual process of refining and rethinking our curriculum, our coursework, and our own effectiveness as facilitators of learning.

Now more than ever, colleges and universities that offer leadership preparation programs for teachers and administrators need to provide candidates with a comprehensive and embedded curriculum that, at the very least, addresses the Effective Schools Literature and its accompanying correlates.

Conclusion

As partners with P‐12 schools and as advocates of continuous improvement in teaching at varying levels and across varying contexts, university faculties have a responsibility to ensure continuous improvement in the preparation of P‐12 teachers and leaders. Questions such as, In what ways are we ensuring that our programs remain appropriate for leaders working in the changing contexts of contemporary P‐12 schools? are important to institutions of higher education. Current conditions and contemporary thinking about the purpose of learning for all indicate that it is time to develop and implement applied programs in higher education that challenge the status quo of traditional doctorates, are capable of offering relevant and challenging curricula, and prepare formal and informal leaders who are increasingly more able and willing to lead.

We believe the Effective Schools Correlates warrant a more prominent role in leadership preparation. With the correlates intentionally and conspicuously at the forefront of teacher and leader preparation programs, educators are likely to be better equipped to deliver the kind of effectiveness that P‐12 schools need and its learners deserve.

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Changing the Face of Professional Development through Professional Learning Communities

Lisa Jo Vernon‐Dotson Duquesne University School of Education

with

Robert Rodrigues and Karen Belcastro Chartiers Valley High School Chartiers Valley School District Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Other Contributors: Scott Crimone; Terri Flynn; Katy Getman; Dave Harhai; David Peters; Jaime Sherry; and Lisa Trainor

Abstract In this article, the authors explored one high school’s journey toward full implementation of a teacher‐led, district‐wide school reform initiative. Through a distributed leadership model known as Commitment of Leadership Teams (COLT), professional learning communities were used to promote all teachers as leaders by empowering their participation and encouraging their collaboration through creating teams of leaders. The authors, a local university professor and school personnel immersed in the process, documented the impact of their professional learning communities on professional development opportunities and aligned their experiences according to the context, process, and content standards outlined by the National Staff Development Council and operationally (re)defined “professional learning communities.” The authors also documented outcomes for student achievement. The results and conclusions delineate the necessary supports and key components which led to their successes.

Key words: professional learning communities, distributed leadership, university partnerships, collaboration, professional development, student achievement

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Changing the Face of Professional Development through Professional Learning Communities

In today’s schools, traditional top‐down management and heroic leadership models are being overshadowed by shared leadership models which emphasize collaboration through the distribution of leadership, shared problem‐solving, and participative decision‐making by teams of stakeholders in schools (Copeland, 2003; Leithwood & Riehl, 2003; Vernon‐Dotson, 2008; Vernon‐Dotson, Belcastro, Crivelli, Lesako, Rodrigues, Shoates, & Trainer, 2009). Leadership teams in schools empower and encourage teachers to come together as professionals to engage in dialogue around shared knowledge base about students, teaching, and learning (Lieberman & Wilkins, 2006). Through distributed leadership models such as professional learning communities, teachers and administrators are able to identify their own professional development needs and meet specific professional development standards delineated by professional organizations (i.e., National Staff Development Council [NSDC]). The ultimate goals of teacher leadership and teacher development are enhanced teaching and improved student outcomes.

The NSDC The NSDC is a non‐profit professional organization dedicated to improving education through professional growth of school personnel. In 2001, NSDC revised their 1995 Standards for Staff Development. These standards were designed to “provide direction for designing a professional development experience that ensures educators acquire the necessary knowledge and skills” (NSDC, n.d., About the Standards, para. 3). Focusing on improving the learning of all students, the NSDC Standards are divided into three categories: Context standards, process standards, and content standards. These standards emphasize the importance of effective professional development that is results‐driven, standards‐based, and job‐embedded.

Professional Development in Schools Teachers should be encouraged to come together as professionals in order to engage in dialogue around shared knowledge base about students, teaching, and learning (Lieberman & Wilkins, 2006). Over the past few decades, the focus of professional development in schools has shifted, moving away from teachers learning in isolation to the development of more collaborative professional learning environments that serve to promote quality teaching (Thibodeau, 2008; Vernon‐Dotson & Floyd, 2008). Schools are no longer focusing solely on administratively mandated, school‐wide inservice training models but on empowering teachers to assess their own learning environments and plan to meet the needs of all students within that setting (Vernon‐Dotson & Floyd).

What is well documented in the literature is that the “one‐shot” workshop approach to professional development of teachers is ineffectual, at best (e.g., Darling‐Hammond, 2005; Deshler et al., 2001; Hadden & Pianta, 2006; Klingner, 2004; Lieberman & Wilkins, 2006). The historical “sit and get” routines where teachers are passive participants receiving information from experts is no longer acceptable (Deshler et al.; Sandholtz, 2002). Unfortunately, professional development in most schools still resembles this traditional deficit model of inservice training.

According to Deshler and his colleagues, in order to have student success the education personnel working with them need validated interventions (i.e., evidence based practices) and effective, sustaining, supportive professional development. Likewise, Darling‐Hammond (1997) stated, “[I]n any successful professional development process, teachers will not simply receive knowledge but also generate new knowledge about students, learning, and teaching” (p. 10).

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Accordingly, successful professional development currently is based on constructivism (Hord, 2009) and adult‐learning principles such as self‐directed activities, creativity, and experimentation (Haar, 2003).

Distributed Leadership Spillane and Diamond (2007) described distributed leadership as a practice distributed over leaders, followers, and their situation. Distributed leadership is not a management technique, per se, but a perspective whereby all members of the educational community provide sources of knowledge, skills, and insights (Vernon‐Dotson, et al., 2009). In a distributed leadership model, developing a climate of shared purpose, respect, and teamwork is an ultimate goal. A distributed model promotes the school district’s vision for the future to be dispersed and implemented (or distributed) across the entire educational community.

Empirical research concerning the effects of distributed leadership on teachers is relatively scant (Harris, Leithwood, Day, Sammons, & Hopkins, 2007). That which does exist is overwhelmingly positive; however, it should not be assumed that distributed leadership models are always a good thing (Harris, 2008). Hargreaves and Fink (2006) cautioned that distributed leadership has the potential to “enhance the sustainability of deep and broad learning or disintegrate into the kind of turmoil that sucks the energy and enthusiasm out of students and staff” (p. 136) and the impending power to “emerge as a dynamic community practice…[or] sabotage a school’s efforts at improvement” (p. 137). Although poignant, these warnings fail to outweigh the benefits of positive daily interactions between school leaders and members of the organization which allow problem‐solving and decision‐making to be managed by those vested in the education process (e.g., Hargreaves & Fink; Harris; Harris et al.; Sergiovanni, 2007; Spillane & Diamond, 2007; Vernon‐Dotson et al., 2009). Therefore, “Distributing leadership across schools and other organizations isn’t just common sense; it is the morally responsible thing to do” (Hargreaves & Fink, p. 97).

According to Mayrowetz (2008), the field of educational leadership has endorsed the usage of distributed leadership; however, researchers have not yet agreed on a common definition or usage of the term. Further, he promulgates that “these significant discrepancies allow researchers to talk past each other” (p. 425). To assist in alleviating some of these discrepancies, we aim our work toward “the idea of distributed leadership as a human capacity development strategy…[which] has promise as a link to school improvement” (Mayrowetz, p.

432).

Professional Learning Communities The human capacity building definition of distributed leadership (Mayrowetz, 2008) plays an important role in identifying and understanding those conditions necessary for professional learning communities (Harris, 2008; Hord, 2008; 2009). Hord (2008) defines professional learning communities as “professionals coming together in a group – a community – to learn” (p. 10). They are groups within schools which afford staff and administrators opportunities to engage in distributed leadership practices (Hord, 2004; Lieberman & Miller, 2007; Little, 2007; Vernon‐Dotson, 2008; Vernon‐Dotson et al., 2009).

In professional learning communities, members meet regularly to engage “in joint work, critical reflection, and problem solving” (Lieberman & Miller, 2007, p. 105). They collaborate toward a common purpose and take collective responsibility for achieving their goals in a 46

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collegial manner (DuFour & Eaker, 1998; Hord, 2009; Lieberman & Miller; Little, 2007). Educators in professional learning communities participate in intentional learning in order to become more effective in teaching so children learn well (Hord, 2008).

Professional learning communities provide “the most promising context for continuous professional learning” (Hord, 2008, p. 10), but they are not widely practiced and research knowledge on the concept is scarce. According to Hord (2008), the development of professional learning communities has prodded many shifts in the roles of the teacher. These roles follow a continuum from professional isolation to professional learning communities and include five distinct phases: teachers as sole proprietors, teachers as teammates, teachers as collaborative workers, educators as learners, and educators as learning professionals. New professionalism in education requires planned and purposeful efforts to reach higher levels of mastery in data‐driven, outcome‐oriented, team‐based approaches that raise levels of achievement for all students (Hord, 2004; Vernon‐Dotson, 2008).

Research and current literature affirms that teacher quality is the most significant influence on student learning (e.g., Darling‐Hammond, 1997; 2005; Hord, 2004; 2008; Klingner, 2004; Thibodeau, 2008). The role of professional learning communities in a distributed leadership model offers a new perspective to professional development by affording teachers three specific opportunities: 1) to interact and collaborate with colleagues, 2) to evaluate and reflect on their instructional practices, and 3) to expand their existing knowledge. Educators embrace professional development that is embedded in professional practices that are results‐oriented and data driven (Slepkov, 2008; Van Horn, 2006). This type of high quality professional development is essential for increasing the knowledge, skills, and dispositions of educators in order to enable a focus on school improvement and leadership development, simultaneously.

In order to adequately address issues of change, schools must build collective responsibility among faculty and staff to cooperate, collaborate, and work toward their mission.

A school’s success in educating all students depends on the commitment and competence of the individuals working together within the school (Dexter, 2001; Thibodeau, 2008; Vernon, 2003).

Moreover, professional “learning communities can provide the atmosphere, the tone, and the direction needed to develop and maintain a professional development process for which staff and students can benefit” (Haar, 2003, p.30).

Purpose If school improvement is to be constant and effective, all personnel must take responsibility for improving the whole school while focusing on their own leadership development. Through distributed leadership models like professional learning communities, school leaders can promote all teachers as leaders by empowering their participation in school reform efforts, inspiring them to become competent in their practice, encouraging their collaboration, and creating partnerships both within and beyond the walls of the school for the benefit of all students (Van Horn, 2006; Vernon, 2003). Educators can increase their productivity if they learn to work together as professionals within the learning community (Wald & Castleberry, 2000).

The purpose of this article is to describe the development of teacher‐initiated professional learning communities in one high school and the impact the process had on professional development and student outcomes. First, a team of teacher leaders (the co‐authors and 47

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contributors) document their journey toward full implementation of a teacher‐led, district‐wide initiative: implementing a distributed leadership model via professional learning communities known as the Commitment of Leadership Teams (COLT). Secondly, these teachers who were immersed in the process from its inception provide concrete examples of how professional development at their school has changed through this venture. To do this, the authors and contributors align their experiences according to the NSDC (2001) context, process, and content standards.

General Method

Chartiers Valley School District is a member of the Superintendent Research Collaborative of Southwestern Pennsylvania which is housed at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Established in 2005, this collaborative serves as a catalyst for research partnerships that utilized School of Education faculty to facilitate superintendent‐initiated research projects.

In 2006 the superintendent and a high school teacher leader (second author) of Chartiers Valley School District in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania were introduced to a Duquesne University School of Education faculty (first author) with experience in evaluating leadership teams. Over the past five years, the first two authors have worked closely in documenting the process and collecting data for the purpose of evaluating the effectiveness of the district’s school reform effort known as COLTs. During the 2008 school year, five teachers, representatives from each of the four schools within the district, formed the first writing team facilitated by the first two authors.

The high school COLT leaders (contributors), led by the co‐authors, wanted to share their unique story. This is the second of four writing teams across the district. All are focused sharing their perspectives of the profession learning community process.

The District and School

The boundaries of Chartiers Valley School District encompass four local municipalities which prior to 1965 operated as four independent school districts. Approximately six miles southwest of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the four communities (or boroughs) served by Chartiers Valley School District are largely residential with some commercial and industrial installations.

With over 30,000 residents, the district has an enrollment of approximately 3,400 students in kindergarten through twelfth grade. Although still a minority today, African‐Americans were among the earliest community residents. At present, the great majority of the citizenry are second and third generation diversified groups, primarily of European ancestry. Recent developments of new housing in Chartiers Valley have brought many families from the Middle East and India.

Chartiers Valley High School has 87 teachers with a current student enrollment of 1,133.

This population consists of 82.9% white, 7.2% African‐American, 2.7% Asian/Pacific Islander (including those from China, Japan, Korea, Philippine Islands, India, and Vietnam), and 5.2% “other” (including Hispanics, Saudis, and Kuwaitis). The population of students receiving free or reduced‐priced lunches has grown from 18% in 2000 to 22.3% of the population today.

From 2000 to 2009, state standardized test scores for the Chartiers Valley High School students in reading and math have steadily increased from 51% proficient or better in reading and 48% proficient or better in math to 65% and 73% proficient in reading and math, respectively.

Although steady increases in all scores of the Pennsylvania State Standardized Assessments are noted, the school has also seen more prominent increases for specific populations. For example, 48

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the largest group of minorities in the high school is those considered “Economically Disadvantaged”. In reading, this group increased from not making Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) at a 47.5% at proficient or better in the 2008‐2009 school year to meeting AYP at 51.9% scoring at proficient or better (meeting AYP target with Safe Harbor, a designation for sub‐ groups which reduce number of students performing below proficient by 10% or more). A more dramatic improvement was noted in mathematics for this group. Those considered “Economically Disadvantaged” increased from 26.8% in 2008‐2009 to 43.9% in 2009‐2010 – again meeting AYP using the Safe Harbor designation. Further, graduation rates for Chartiers Valley High School was 98.87% (state average is 90%) for 2010, which increased from 96.38% according to the previous year’s statistics while the attendance rate has been stable at 96.06% compared to the state average of 94% (Pennsylvania Department of Education, 2010).

Context of COLT Professional Learning Communities COLT origins. COLTs are professional learning communities that began as a grassroots effort by teachers in a medium‐sized suburban high school in southwestern Pennsylvania. The process of teacher leaders collaborating with other teachers and administrators to develop a stake in the issues impacting their school and their students has now been embraced by the entire district and school community. The support and endorsement of the Chartiers Valley School district superintendent, central office and building administrators, and the school board were integral to the success of COLT at the high school and throughout the district. The next sections provide an overview of our COLT beginnings as well as a snapshot of today’s Chartiers Valley High School COLTs. (For a complete history of the COLT process in Chartiers Valley School District, see Vernon‐Dotson et al., 2009.)

Our story. Prior to 2000, we launched two major school reform initiatives over the course of a decade. The impetus for these changes came from the increased national awareness for schools to alter the way they function. Two examples of school‐wide initiatives provide insights to the internal workings of our high school at that time. First, the integrated studies block project created cohorts of ninth and tenth grade students with two teachers in a double‐block arrangement integrating English and social studies. This involved over 50 percent of our students in the school and approximately 16 teachers. The connection between the disciplines was theme‐ based. The flexibility in time (85 minutes) allowed for creative interdisciplinary lessons. For the first time, teachers began to open their classroom doors and work collaboratively for student success.

Future Life Experiences program (FLEX) is the second example. FLEX became a senior year performance exhibition (i.e., paper, product, presentation) along with a four year progression of career and community service opportunities as a graduation requirement. This has been steadily maintained, improved, and adapted to the changing educational landscape. FLEX has been touted by the Pennsylvania Department of Education for being comprehensive, highly organized and monitored, and of high quality. This initiative involved all faculty members in some capacity as teachers of the process, mentors to students, or judges of the exhibitions. Our students, school personnel, and community have embraced Senior Exhibition Day as a day of celebration.

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Three interesting characteristics surfaced as a result of these 1990’s initiatives. These initiatives: (1) have been sustained and expanded; (2) were teacher‐driven; and (3) created the capacity for continuous improvement.

We worked together to ensure that each project was carefully nurtured, piloted, launched, and revisited for consistent upgrading and to also adjust to the agenda of a 21st century education. The process of change was carefully navigated and our administration, school board, students, and community were brought on board in a slow, but lasting manner that is indicative of successful and sustaining work. Most importantly, we, the teachers, owned the processes and the products. Our roles as owners of good practice and our willingness to work closely with administration to address student achievement in thoughtful, meaningful ways were embedded into the culture of our high school.

COLT process. With a strong tradition of collaboration already established, a small group of teacher leaders (the contributors) led by the co‐authors, sought another way to galvanize the faculty and enhance this established culture. At the start of the new millennium, our principal and two teachers visited a local high school in the region where learning communities known as teacher leadership teams were in place. These teams were composed of teachers and built around teacher‐created topics concerning the school and student achievement.

A structure that could be replicated was observed. After hearing about the teacher leadership teams, we viewed the process as a means of providing a laboratory to nurture new teacher leadership and a venue for developing and improving the skills of the existing teacher leaders.

We became the original teacher leadership team at the high school and became actively involved in a regional organization, the Agenda to Promote Educational eXcellence (APEX).

APEX was a private, nonprofit organization housed in the School of Education at Duquesne University that promoted leadership from the ranks. The APEX organization provided keen intellectual support, resources, direction, and a venue in the formative days of COLT and other initiatives in Chartiers Valley School District. The implementation of modified professional learning communities moved to the forefront of the focus of our APEX leadership team. It was a natural movement for a school with a decade of culture in teacher leadership. By the 2003‐2004 school year, our high school COLTs were born (the colt is also the mascot of the school).

The high school COLTs began with 10 teams in the 2003‐2004 school year. Today, all 87 of our high school teachers and six instructional aides serve as members of 12 professional learning communities. The COLTs and their membership are flexible. Teachers always have the option to present ideas for new teams as the needs of the school and students change. On a yearly basis, COLT members also have the option to switch membership to other teams so that their expertise can be shared. This evolving nature of COLT has contributed to the ongoing success of our professional learning communities. Table 1 provides a list of all COLTs, their goals, and major achievements. As COLTs reach their goals and are no longer needed, members join other or develop new COLTs. Therefore, some of the COLTs listed no longer exist.

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Table 1: Selected Examples of High School COLTs COLTs Dates CAPA (Community and Parent 2009‐present Alliance)

Primary Goal Improving communication with parents.

Developing cultural diversity awareness among our students and faculty.

Studying the book Habits of Mind and promoting its concepts to the faculty.

Designing a template for individual student planning for success.

Major Accomplishment(s) • Developed a cadre of parents who will meet with the COLT team on a regular basis.

• CVTV (internal TV station) featured interviews with the ESL student population.

• Professional development offering for the faculty.

Global Awareness

2010‐present

Habits of Mind

2010‐present

MAPS (My Action Plan for Success)

2010‐present

Scheduling

2003‐present

Addressing time management issues focused on increasing instructional time

Professional Development

2004‐present

Safety

2007‐present

Wellness

2007‐present

Senior Topics

2008‐present

Promoting professional development for teachers by teachers Assessing safety issues as they • arise on campus • Promoting positive, healthy environment throughout the school Preparing seniors for the transition • from school to post‐high school activities

FLEX

2003‐2010

Reviewing and refining of senior project and capstone experience

• Will participate in a consortium of Western Pennsylvania schools in conjunction with the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

• Examination schedules revised • Schedules for two hour delay (e.g., inclement weather, COLT days) adjusted • “Best Practices” seminars instituted during inservice training days

•

Updated and practiced procedures for evacuations Newsletter published with facts and food ideas all promoting a healthy lifestyle Seniorpalooza established (an event where speakers from the community are organized to address student determined topics ranging from date rape to managing finances) Updated proposal, guidelines, and rubrics submitted to School Board for approval

In the 2006‐2007 school year, through the encouragement and support of our central office administration, COLT was implemented across the entire school district. The school board, superintendent, and assistant superintendents were prepared to enhance the efforts of COLT through tangible validation. The enthusiasm for this teacher‐led, professional learning community initiative was invaluable and exhibited the importance of teacher leadership in Chartiers Valley. Two powerful results ensued. First, instituting the COLT district‐wide allowed for the entire district to embrace teachers as leaders. Second, it helped to align all teachers from kindergarten through the twelfth grade.

Beginning in 2010, a new central administrative team was put into place, and there was a change of principals at the high school. These changes could have threatened the viability and presence of COLT and its mission of teacher leadership. Rather, the new administration wholeheartedly endorsed COLT. In the Fall 2010, when a two‐day strategic planning process took place, COLT was prominently referred to in the Mission Statement with the commitment to “shared leadership.” It has since been deemed as the vehicle by which the district rolls out its entire vision. In Chartiers Valley, to be a COLT Leader is regarded as a leadership position. Many teachers who aspire to lead but do not wish to leave the classroom can move into the ranks of the COLT leaders. In fact, the district convenes a one‐day retreat for vision implementation, and the 51

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participants are district administrators, department heads, and COLT leaders. It is distinctive to be a COLT Leader.

COLT today. Today, nearly 42 COLTs exist across all four schools within our school district. All COLTs either address student achievement directly or indirectly (coined by one co‐ author as “enablers of student learning”). Essentially, the focus of COLTs can be categorized into three broad categories: academics, basic operations, and culture. The work of COLT then drives the professional development thrust of the school district. Yearly, the work of COLT in conjunction with the Strategic Plan dictates the substance of professional development. At our request, two hour delayed starts for students were scheduled into the district’s yearly calendar and four two‐hour periods during inservice days are designated as “COLT time.” On these mornings, all teachers meet in their respective COLT communities to discuss and act on their COLT priorities. Each team has one or two COLT leaders who are a part of the school’s teacher leadership team. The teacher leadership teams are responsible for facilitating the COLT and acting as the liaison between the COLT, other leadership team members, and the administration.

At the high school, the co‐authors and contributors make up the teacher leadership team.

We use COLT as a means to promote all teachers as leaders by empowering their participation and encouraging their collaboration through creating teams of leaders. Via the COLT process, teachers at Chartiers Valley High School continue to collaborate, analyze our operations, and adjust our practices to meet the needs of our students. We are all participants in the school reform process.

Our Findings

Impact on Professional Development

According to Nelson and Slavit (2008), professional learning communities are an example of collaborative teaching inquiry, “a cyclical process that fosters an ongoing dialogue about classroom practices and student achievement” (p. 100). Further, they describe a professional development model of supported collaborative inquiry where teachers determine a focus for the inquiry, then proceed through stages of developing a plan for action, carrying out the plan while collecting and analyzing data, and determining the implications of their findings as they relate to their collective and individual situations. (p. 100‐101)

Paralleling this process, COLT members define their goals and set a plan into action, which include strategies for data collection and analysis. Because team members come from various disciplines, the findings emerge from opportunities afforded by diversity in decision making and are directly related to the context of the environment and specific situations throughout the school. COLT teachers talk; we collaborate above and beyond the allotted COLT time by critically reflecting on all aspects and implications of the inquiry. This promotes new understandings of each other and the context of our collective situation.

Prior to COLT, the words “staff development” or “professional development” were met with a collective groan from our faculty. In an earlier contract, teachers were required contractually to complete 30 hours of professional development per year. Even though as professionals, we knew it was necessary to engage in continuing education through workshops, classes, and presentations, what was often provided failed to meet our expectations or needs.

Professional development was something that was done to us, instead of being a collaborative, 52

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engaging process. These inservice sessions offered little interaction between the teachers and the speaker, from our perspectives lacked relevance, and were often conducted by individuals without a teaching background. Often what was offered was information in isolation with no practical classroom application, little to no follow‐up, and most assuredly no ownership by our faculty.

With the development of the COLT model, professional development has taken on a new meaning, and all of us at Chartiers Valley High School now have the opportunity to actually learn from each other. Interactions between the teachers, staff, and others who attend are commonplace and expected. As a result, attitudes toward professional development have changed. We are striving to become more effective and admittedly, “no longer plan personal days on inservice days.” Because of COLT, professional development is now a collaborative, meaningful process driven by teacher leaders. COLTs have initiated professional growth opportunities ranging from professional book talks to “teachers teaching teachers” to writing for publication.

We now view professional development as a process that is worthwhile, interesting, informative, and a choice. Teachers are given a menu of options regarding sessions that we want to choose on the inservice professional development days and we have the option to select our COLT learning community. A nice balance of options between COLT that help to carry out the district’s strategic plan and teacher initiative exists. What we do at Chartiers Valley High School through the COLT process aligns directly with The National Staff Development Council’s (NSDC) Standards for Staff Development (NSDC, n.d.).

Meeting the Staff Development Standards through COLT

The following sections align our COLT professional development process and activities to these standards. Specifically, we build on Mayrowetz’s (2008) recommendations for research on distributed leadership by focusing on professional development as it relates to school improvement and leadership development.

Context standards. Context standards refer to the framework of processes within the organization and the support necessary for the professional development to be successful. Our entire COLT process is a series of modified professional learning communities with goals that parallel the goals of our school and district. In fact, the district has engaged all teachers throughout the district in the COLT process. The goals of the district are centered on building teacher leadership in an effort to develop the whole student and maximize our efficiency in bringing about student achievement. Our professional learning communities were formed by addressing all issues related to student achievement. Some of the COLT teams impact student achievement directly (e.g., My Action Plan for Success (MAPS), Classrooms of the Future, Senior Topics, Pennsylvania State Standardized Assessment (PSSA)) or indirectly by promoting student achievement (e.g., Scheduling, Book Study, Motivation, Discipline).

Our leadership team has expanded each year. Some teachers who are not designated COLT leaders have stepped up to take on various leadership roles within our COLT learning communities. For example, a teacher on our Professional Development COLT created a computer program to facilitate the registration process. Prior to this, teachers completed student registrations through a paper process that was long and tedious. The new computer registration process has expedited the process with a nearly flawless system. Examples like this continue to 53

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happen due, in large part, to the school and district administrators who support the process that has demonstrated a focus on student achievement through tenacious intervention and adaptation.

Our school and district leaders have been partners in this massive K‐12 effort, urging consistent communication among teachers and between administration and teachers. For example, the high school leadership team meets weekly with their principals and plans are in order for all COLT leaders at each of the buildings to meet twice monthly with one session being attended by the COLT Facilitator. We believe this furthers communication within the building and throughout the district. The second author was released from some of his teaching duties and assigned as the COLT Facilitator for the district, solidifying the importance the district has attached to the effort.

Collaboration and professional learning are supported through various resources including time designated for COLT work, outside speakers and consultants, district involvement in consortiums and organizations, and COLT mini‐budgets for each school. When COLT was instituted at the district level at the request of the high school leadership team, the school board and superintendents secured a two hour delay for students bimonthly so that staff could collaborate within their COLT communities and work on their plans of action. When COLTs present new initiatives that impact the entire district, such as the Freshman Academy (COLT Transition), facilitators have been brought in to help COLT members see all aspects and brainstorm implementation steps. Support for adult learning is also demonstrated through the district’s involvement with The Consortium for Public Education, a private, non‐profit, regional organization committed to ensuring that every child in every community has the opportunity to receive a high quality public education. The Consortium funds yearly summer retreats and provides five release days per year for cohorts of teachers from schools across the region to network with other teacher leaders in other school districts with a focus on refining and sharing shared leadership processes. Finally, the district provides monetary support to each school through supplies such as books for the Book Study COLT and a small yearly budget for miscellaneous COLT activities.

Process standards. Process standards are focused on how the professional development is implemented. Prior to COLT being created, a survey regarding student achievement at our high school was distributed to all faculty members. Through disaggregating this data, our COLT learning communities were born. Each COLT was determined through priorities set forth by the adult learners to enhance student achievement. The PSSA COLT, for example, examined the results of student data (i.e., test scores) and determined that math was an area needing improvement. The test‐taking room (implemented by Student Responsibility COLT) was staffed with math teachers who served as tutors during their duty periods for students who wanted or needed the extra assistance. All COLT members are charged with monitoring their own progress while the COLT leaders are responsible for monitoring the COLT process. Formal and informal evaluations assist in sustaining continuous improvement which documents the constant flux in COLT communities and membership. We recognized early on that many teams would be short‐ lived (e.g., Increased Instructional Time COLT, Student Responsibility COLT) and others would need to address their issues for many years (e.g., Scheduling COLT, Professional Development COLT, COLT Transition). COLT is based on the needs of the school; as those needs change, so do the COLTs.

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The work of COLT embeds professional development into the daily operations of the school. In our high school, teachers readily talk to one another and to the students about student learning and other school issues. We use these conversations and multiple other sources (e.g., ongoing feedback, student data, evaluations, surveys, meeting agendas and minutes) to garner ideas for subsequent staff development, guide improvement, and demonstrate the impact of COLT. Further, the work of COLT is driven by research‐based practices. Our COLT process itself is grounded in solid decision making based on a constructivist approach where self‐initiated learning becomes an interactive, collaborative peer process. For more than 14 years, many teachers in our district have served on teams in outside organizations (e.g., Teacher’s Academy and Middle/High Forum), in addition to APEX and the Consortium. These organizations are devoted to assisting teacher teams in developing programs for school change through collaboration within the school and throughout the region. Our teachers repeatedly bring the knowledge and skills learned at retreats and through ongoing workshops back to the school and serve models for the entire High School faculty.

Change is often difficult, thus the COLT process has been implemented slowly and purposefully. This methodic process has gradually won over some of the cynics who originally were hesitant and anxious about the process and felt that COLT was “doing the job of our administrators.” COLT leaders modeled collaboration, critical reflection, and group problem‐ solving skills. We applied their knowledge of learning methods and change to obtain support and buy‐in from our peers who were naysayers.

Content standards. Content standards relate specifically to educators’ knowledge and skills. As members and team leaders of COLT, we are dedicated to appreciating all students and creating safe and supportive learning environments. Our Safety COLT has maintained a steady vigil over potential hazards or disturbances. Among their accomplishments was a school emergency evacuation plan. Further, our Student Responsibility COLT focused on procedural issues related to students missing tests. They created a test‐taking room that assisted in minimizing lost class time and disrupted instruction by establishing a learning environment that was more conducive to student learning. Chartiers Valley School District and our school leadership team hold high expectations for student achievement. The Rigor in the Senior Year COLT is one example of these high expectations. This COLT learning community envisioned the senior year as a transition into the world of work or college and ultimately, into life. Teacher assistantships, where students assist teachers in daily classes, were scheduled and our renowned “Seniorpalooza” was created. During this event, real life issues selected by our senior students were explored with community members who were experts on the topics. Employing internships with flexible senior schedules is now being piloted with a small group of students.

Professional Development COLT implemented two in‐service professional development days designed to deepen our knowledge and provide us with instructional strategies. Known as “Teachers Teaching Teachers,” this was a time when teachers were encouraged to share some of their practices with the rest of the staff. During these sessions, presentations ranged from our Book Study COLT sharing information from professional readings such as A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink and Why Gender Matters by Leonard Sax to sessions by our Technology COLT teaching the staff how to use Blackboard™ as an online assessment tool for making data‐based decisions. Other professional development sessions included individual teacher presentations and mini‐lessons on non‐verbal communication and backwards planning. Throughout these experiences, we were all learning from each other.

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The COLT process has increased faculty members’ awareness of the importance of communicating with and involving families and other stakeholders (i.e., the school board, parent groups, community members). In order to elicit the full support of the school board and share COLT happenings with the community, the COLT leaders have continuously provided updated progress reports at monthly school board meetings. Recently, the COLT leadership team has held meetings with parents to share and gather information regarding many of our school‐wide and district‐wide initiatives, including Rethinking the Senior Year.

Conclusion NSCD’s purpose statement, “Every educator engages in effective professional learning every day so every student achieves” (Mizell, 2007, p. 2), directly corresponds with our high school’s mission statement and is the core purpose of our COLT process. Further, Mizell (2007) acknowledged that the challenges for schools is the “effective professional learning” because of their tendencies to accept “professional development as a series of disconnected events with ambiguous results” (p. 2). The alignment of our teacher‐led teams to the context, process, and content Standards for Staff Development recognized by the NSCD, although not purposeful, did not happen by chance. It occurred as a result of vigilance on the part of teacher leaders within our system and the direct support we received. A third support is the collective belief system held by our administrators. In their words and actions, district and school leaders maintain that an inquiry process and collaborative environment are conducive to effective school change.

COLT is supported by all administrators at all levels throughout the district. These leaders acknowledged the axiom that those who are closest to the job know the job best and therefore recognize that our genuine understanding befits us as designers and leaders of professional development. As COLT members, we needed to see purpose in our work that was intrinsic to our belief system; we needed to be validated as a true support action – both internally and externally.

The COLT learning communities have been extremely successful in regards to changing the culture of our high school and the district. Our successes have led to a general feeling of empowerment to create change within the district and make all the schools as strong as they can be. In rebuilding the culture of the high school, we transcended our roles to design and implement feasible and effective constructs. The impetus for movement beyond simple structural changes including intellectual support and staff buy‐in (Nelson & Slavit, 2008), came from within COLT. Now our teachers are more inclined to step up to tackle issues and challenges.

Increasingly, the familiar comments are “That sounds like something a COLT could do” or “Now we have the time to get things done with COLT.”

Teacher leadership is typically associated with people in formal leadership roles (e.g., department chairpersons, program leaders) who work with the administration within the school.

At Chartiers Valley School District, leadership has been redefined and distributed across the entire faculty. Decision making and problem solving are managed by the interactions of all members (Gronn, 2002; Spillane & Diamond, 2007) and leadership is performed by the entire school personnel instead of a solo school leader (Copland, 2003; Elmore, 2004; Spillane, 2006).

COLT inspires “in the trenches” leadership which is the hallmark of teacher leadership. During the 2010‐2011 school year, three COLT leaders were asked to take formal administrative roles (i.e., Department Heads) and six high school COLT Leaders were inducted into the Instructional 56

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Cabinet. The Instructional Cabinet is a board of teachers who work with the individual schools’ administration to identify, discuss, and act upon issues pertaining to teaching and learning as they arise during the course of the school year. Instructional Cabinet differs from COLT in that it generally does not address long‐term district initiatives and it meets bi‐monthly during the last period of the day. However, it is another example of teacher leadership in our district and is seen as an example of formal leadership. Further, five high school teachers moved from the ranks to become COLT leaders.

As teachers in Chartiers Valley School District, we are not only collectively responsible for our own professional growth, we have created expectations that go above and beyond typical teaching duties, extending our leadership skills outside the four walls of our classrooms. Through COLT, teachers take action on school‐wide issues by defining their own professional development.

Professional learning communities are generally defined as groups of professionals coming together to study or engage in inquiry surrounding the quality of teaching and the impact of teaching practices on student learning and achievement (e.g., Dufour & Eaker, 1998; Harris, 2008; Hord, 2009; 2008; Lieberman & Miller, 2007). Although we agree with this definition, we realized that it fails to capture the full scope of our COLT process. In the context of the Chartiers Valley School District, specifically within the high school where COLTs originated, we propose the following description of professional learning communities – one that challenges the current definition by expanding it to encompass a building and district focus and not just a class by class emphasis.

Professional learning communities in Chartiers Valley School District are leadership teams consisting of teachers and support staff. They come together with administrators and collaborate on opportunities to improve overall school performance and the school environment. These professional learning communities provide opportunities that promote leadership among its members who are then encouraged and expected to take on the role of “creators of action” through the implementation of their own ideas.

Our COLT process opens communications across the school and the district providing various avenues for networking, professional conversations, authentic problem solving, and truly effective practice. We have changed the landscape of typical professional development.

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References

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Mayrowetz, D. (2008). Making sense of distributed leadership: Exploring the multiple usages of the concept in the field. Educational Administration Quarterly, 44, 424‐435. doi: 10.1177/0013161X07309480 Mizell, H. (2007, September). NSCD has a brand‐new purpose. The Learning System, 3, 2.

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Academic Exchange Quarterly, 12(4). 165‐170.

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Book Review:

Using Research to Lead School Improvement: Turning Evidence into Action

Scott C. Bauer and S. David Brazer (2012) Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Reviewed by

William A. Owings, Professor of Educational Leadership Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA

and

Leslie S. Kaplan, Education Writer, Newport News, VA

Organization of Using Research to Lead School Improvement: Turning Evidence into Action

The educational leadership world has its critics – some with good advice and some with suggestions from far‐left field. In this text, Scott Bauer and David Brazer, two associate professors from George Mason University, demystify how to conduct and use research. In the process, they ward off criticism that school leaders and leadership preparation programs are not rigorous or relevant in a complex world. This text effectively lays out a logical and sequential process for equipping school improvement teams with the knowledge to implement evidence‐ based decision making in schools. The ten chapters are divided into four sections ‐ Research and Leadership; Problem Articulation: Using Evidence to Find Improvement Needs; Building a Deep Understanding of the Problem; and Completing the Journey: Solutions, Actions, and Implementations.

Part 1 contains three chapters and provides a conceptual orientation of research and evidence‐based decision making. Chapter 1, A Structured Approach to Leading School Improvement, introduces the reader to the context for conducting research about schools and school improvement – moving from managers to instructional leaders. The authors advocate a shift in logic to using research knowledge along with analysis of the school’s data to engage in a systemic action planning process to improving instruction and student achievement – or action research. The authors advocate a four‐stage process consistent with Osterman and Kottkamp’s (2004) cycle of experiential learning.1 The four cyclical processes include collaborative problem diagnosis, root‐cause analysis, solution development and action planning, and reflective practice and evaluation.

Chapter 2, Research, Leaders, and School Improvement, discusses the value of research for instructional leaders in fostering change at the school level. Change, according to the authors, occurs only when teachers change their behavior and their students’ behavior in the classroom.

They introduce a conceptual framework for instructional leadership that includes leadership’s 60

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knowledge, actions, and outcomes. The readers are reminded that answers are not found in data – they are found in the interpretation of data, and the instructional leaders are responsible for making research practical.

Chapter 3, Involving Others, Forming a Team, considers the importance of collaboration in problem solving. A thorough discussion of who should be on the team ensues. The team should have a clear purpose – more of a clear goal orientation than a process orientation. When the goal is achieved, the team should be disbanded. The importance of trust and clear communication to high‐functioning team is reviewed.

Part 2, Problem Articulation, contains two chapters and focuses on expressing the nature of instructional problems, challenges, or gaps that the school should address. Chapter 4, Assessing the Local Solution, focuses on finding evidence of a school’s instructional problems.

The reader is encouraged to determine differences between aspirations and results, identify evidence of gaps between aspirations and results, and triangulate, or use multiple data points to fully establish a trustworthy argument about the nature of the instructional problem.

Chapter 5, Communicating a Message with Data, explains the importance of writing an effective Improvement Target Proposal, the document that explains to all constituents the school’s current instructional situation. The proposal includes an introduction, a discussion of the broad characteristics, an analysis of performance relative to aspirations, identification of a specific area needing improvement, a conclusion that reinforces the major concepts, and data displayed in charts, tables, graphs, or figures to help convey the data more clearly to the reader.

Part 3, Building a Deep Understanding of the Problem, contains three chapters that deal with questioning problems’ causes (not simply jumping to conclusions), systematically identifying those causes, and accessing research knowledge based on good research design from various published sources. Chapter 6, Getting to the Root of the Problem, explores root‐cause analysis, how to describe primary causes of instructional problems, and lead improvement teams in conducting root‐cause analysis using published research and school‐based action research.

Chapter 7, Finding Supportive Literature, provides an overview of appraising appropriate research material for the identified school problem. Means of determining high‐ quality research sources are identified, including journal articles, dissertations, and conference proceedings. These materials may be found on university research library websites.

Chapter 8, Understanding Research Design and Analysis, introduces readers to components of research articles, the difference between quantitative and qualitative research, understanding research design, and assessing research for its usefulness to the school’s unique projects. This one chapter would serve well as an introduction to research and research design.

Part 4, Completing the Journey: Solutions, Actions, and Implementation, contains the last two chapters and effectively sums up how to use the first three sections in the school improvement plan. Chapter 9, Identifying Solutions and Action Planning for School Improvement, guides the readers through the process of selecting a promising solution to the root causes of identified problem. A detailed “how to” for creating a sequenced action plan is proposed. Readers are reminded of Bolman and Deal’s four frames for evaluating the proposed solutions.2 61

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Author’s Orientation

Bauer and Brazer effectively organize each section of their chapters. Each chapter starts with learning outcomes. The tables and figures are well conceived and provide excellent visual supplements for the readers. Chapters have Activity sections that provide case study‐like situations for discussion points at appropriate junctures in the text. Conclusion sections review the principal chapter content. Supplemental material at the end of chapters contains helpful rubrics, worksheets, timelines, and tasks that help the readers implement chapter content.

The authors blend an academic’s and practitioner’s explanation of the school improvement planning process in the text. Grounded in theory and oriented to practical application, this text provides a step‐by‐step process and rationale manual for expanding evidence‐based decision making in schools and in leadership preparation programs. While wordy at times, the readers are anchored in a logical school improvement process.

Contributions to the Field

If educational leaders and educational leadership programs are to rise above criticisms of questionable rigor and relevance in a complex world, Using Research to Lead School Improvement: Turning Evidence into Action provides educators a model for transcending “tinkering around the edges” of school reform and making significant advances for teaching and student achievement.

The authors bring just the right blend of theory into practice that is much needed in schools and leadership preparation programs.

Review Authors

William A. Owings is currently a professor of educational leadership at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA. Owings has worked as a public school teacher, an elementary and high school principal, assistant superintendent, and superintendent of schools. In addition, his scholarly publications co‐authored with Leslie Kaplan include articles in National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) Bulletin, Journal of School Leadership, Journal of Effective Schools, Phi Delta Kappan, Teachers College Record, and the Journal of Education Finance. Owings has served on the state and international board of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), is currently the editor of the Journal for Effective Schools, and is on the Journal of Education Finance Editorial Advisory Board. He is a frequent presenter at state and national conferences and a consultant on educational leadership, school finance, and instructional improvement.

Leslie S. Kaplan a retired school administrator in Newport News, VA, has provided middle, high school, and central office instructional and school counseling leadership and program development. Her scholarly publications co‐authored with William Owings appear in numerous professional journals. She and Owings have also co‐authored Leadership and Organizational Behavior in Education: Theory into Practice, American Education: Building a Common Foundation; American Public School Finance; Teacher Quality, Teaching Quality, and School Improvement; Best Practices, Best Thinking, and Emerging Issue in School Leadership; and Enhancing Teacher and Teaching Quality. Kaplan is co‐editor of the Journal for Effective Schools, and also serves on the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) Bulletin Editorial Board. She

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is a past president of the Virginia Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development and the Virginia Counselors Association.

1 Osterman, K. and Kottkamp, R. (2004). Reflective practice for educators (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

2 Bolman, L., and Deal, T. (2008). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership (4th ed.).

San Fransisco: Jossey‐Bass.

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Book Review:

The Moral University Maurice R. Berube and Clair T. Berube. (2010) Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Reviewed by

Leslie S. Kaplan, Education Writer, Newport News, VA and William A. Owings, Professor of Educational Leadership Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA

Organization of The Moral University

Ethics and morality are about relationships – what we ought to do, requiring a judgment about a given situation and then doing it. Ethics and morality involve norms, values, beliefs, habits, and attitudes that we choose to follow—that we as a society impose on ourselves. As Pulitzer Prize winning author Thomas Friedman observed, “Laws regulate behavior from the outside in. Ethics regulate behavior from the inside out.” i Ethical and moral behaviors are voluntary. To behave ethically is to choose the “right” behavior whereas being moral is the ability to practice that right behavior. Morals refer to specific standards of right and wrong. Frequently, the two terms are used interchangeably. What is ethical is moral, and what is unethical is immoral.

Schools are supposed to serve moral purposes—nurturing young people’s human, social, and intellectual growth. This gives educators at all levels a moral responsibility to be proactive about creating and sustaining a safe and ethical environment in which to conduct education, to teach an appropriate curriculum, and, ideally, to extend moral practices into the larger society.

Within this frame, authors Maurice and Clair Berube look closely at their own work setting and ask, “Are colleges and universities moral institutions?” “Should they be?” In The Moral University, the authors argue that colleges and universities are moral by their natures and in varying measures. They consider the best examples of American universities operating in a moral fashion towards students, faculty, community, and the nation. While the narrative is university‐centered, the issues are relevant to K‐12 educators concerned with providing educational equity, providing meaningful learning for the whole child, and effectively serving their larger communities.

In a small, focused volume, The Moral University includes seven chapters covering 67 pages and a selected bibliography. Chapter 1, The Moral University, reviews the modern university’s evolution away from ethics and morality; how scientific perspective and specialization turned curricula into an objective humanistic religion; and viewpoints critical of the absent morality in late 20th century academia.

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Chapter 2, The Moral Curriculum, illustrates the evolving moral concern among universities with courses that involve moral reasoning or social justice; provides examples elite private, public, and religious American universities which offer such courses; describes contemporary research in moral reasoning; offers views from diverse scholars on the value of moral reasoning courses; and considers how to resolve the tension between moral reasoning and indoctrination.

Chapter 3, Leadership for Social Change, discusses how increased courses and programs targeting “social justice” generate political controversy; describes the senior author’s personal and professional experiences with social change; and reviews other social change leaders – including James MacGregor Burns, John Dewey, and critical theorists – who helped infuse morality and social change into the undergraduate curriculum; and shows how Trinity College and the University of Notre Dame infuse a social justice mission through its curriculum and students into their neighboring communities.

Chapter 4, The Community of Scholars, considers education’s dual aims – intellectual growth and career preparation – from a faculty perspective. Authors discuss how university faculty can enact teaching, research, and service in ways that support their moral leadership.

Students’ and administrators’ moral behavior also undergo analysis. Chapter 5, Gender Bias in Academia, brings a feminist perspective to challenge of behaving morally in universities, pointing to tenure, promotion and salary, Title IX, and women in science as arenas in which moral behavior have often been absent.

Chapter 6, The University and the Nation, asks whether the university should be servant to the political, military, or industrial state and gives examples of how most academicians have supported this close collaboration in ways which may compromise the university’s moral authority. Chapter 7, Toward a Moral University, examines the American service university and the increasing university‐led revitalization of surrounding neighborhoods; considers how professors can overcome their biases and become public intellectuals; identifies the mixed impact of student protest; and speaks to the need for universities to help students gain “meaning, understanding, and perspective as well as jobs.”

Authors’ Orientation

Maurice R. and Clair T. Berube make the case that universities are moral institutions with moral responsibilities to their constituencies – students, faculty, communities, and nation. They affirm that mounting evidence points to universities increasingly moral actions. And since faculties have longer academic lives than do either students or college presidents, the responsibility for continuing the moral tradition rests on them.

As a well‐known and highly‐regarded educator in the progressive tradition, Maurice Berube explicitly tells readers that he spent two decades as a social activist before becoming an academic. Prior to earning his emeritus status, Berube’s academic focus was working with Ph.D. students to design and produce action research for change in the urban community. He bolsters his position with like‐minded support from John Dewey to Henry Giroux. Co‐author Clair T. Berube’s professional experiences as a science educator bring a feminist perspective to the intersection of gender issues and university morality. Practicing what they preach, the authors cite several scholars who disagree with their views.

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Similarly, the authors note that consensus about schooling’s moral purpose remains ambiguous. Should moral development be merely an option for students or should it be integral to the curriculum? And since a moral standard depends on context, whose morality should be taught? In a fair‐minded discourse, authors try to move educators beyond their ambivalence and encourage them to address this question thoughtfully and carefully.

Contributions to the field

If education is about individual and societal improvement and passing on a worthwhile intellectual heritage, ethical and moral judgments are implicit in identifying, developing, and teaching the curriculum. The Moral University advances relevant lessons to thoughtful educators who want students to develop ethical character and behaviors essential to living in a democratic society. Translating these goals into daily realities is a major challenge for all educators.

This small volume gives educational leaders in all settings the opportunity to think about how schools can practice and promote moral behavior while recognizing the challenges to doing so.

Review Authors

Leslie S. Kaplan, a retired school administrator in Newport News, VA, has provided middle, high school, and central office instructional and school counseling leadership and program development. Her scholarly publications co‐authored with William Owings appear in numerous professional journals. She and Owings have also co‐authored Leadership and Organizational Behavior in Education: Theory into Practice, American Education: Building a Common Foundation; American Public School Finance; Teacher Quality, Teaching Quality, and School Improvement; Best Practices, Best Thinking, and Emerging Issue in School Leadership; and Enhancing Teacher and Teaching Quality. Kaplan is co‐editor of the Journal for Effective Schools, and also serves on the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) Bulletin Editorial Board. She is a past president of the Virginia Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development and the Virginia Counselors Association.

William A. Owings is currently a professor of educational leadership at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA. Owings has worked as a public school teacher, an elementary and high school principal, assistant superintendent, and superintendent of schools. In addition, his scholarly publications co‐authored with Leslie Kaplan include articles in National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) Bulletin, Journal of School Leadership, Journal of Effective Schools, Phi Delta Kappan, Teachers College Record, and the Journal of Education Finance. Owings has served on the state and international board of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), is currently the editor of the Journal for Effective Schools, and is on the Journal of Education Finance Editorial Advisory Board. He is a frequent presenter at state and national conferences and a consultant on educational leadership, school finance, and instructional improvement.

i

Friedman, T. L. (2008). Hot, flat, and crowded. Why we need a green revolution—and how it can renew America (p. 192). New York, NY: Ferrar, Straus, & Giroux.

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