District Administration - June 2012 - (Page 52)

Principals as Instructional Leaders Principal Beverly Jarrett Principal Beverly Jarrett, background, at Far West High School in the Oakland(Calif.) Unified School District, meets in April with her leadership team to discuss the district’s budget needs. the beacon that people look to when they say, ‘What do we do next?’ … We all wish we had assistants, we all wish we had specialists, but we don’t.” Jarrett in Oakland says she doesn’t mind. “The instructional role is the most important role, and it’s the one I enjoy the most—more than all the other roles you have to play, from facilities manager, to social worker, to mental health therapist,” the sixth-year principal says. Katherine Konopasek, principal at Adlai E. Stevenson Elementary School in the Chicago Public Schools, says she’s always considered herself an instructional leader. “If you become a principal to get out of the classroom, you’ve made a serious mistake,” she says. Training Helps Shift Domenech feels that superintendents need to ensure principals have the proper training to take on that instructional leader52 June 2012 ship role. For example, if principals are not experts in reading but their schools are having problems with reading performance, he says they must “beef up” their knowledge of reading methodology, and techniques and programs. Flannery believes that principal-preparation programs don’t do enough to ground principals in day-to-day realities and that their impact is dimmed by the time gap that sometimes occurs between training and practice. “The other issue is, if you look at the reality of today’s accountability in schools, how many people [teaching] in universities have worked in [K12] schools with accountability?” he says, adding that university programs recently have been trying to upgrade their relevance. Budget cuts have also impacted training that involves out of state travel in many districts. “Budgets have been cut so much in so many states, we don’t have that opportunity,” Monson says. Konopasek doesn’t believe Chicago Public Schools does enough to give principals such training, having shut down a professional development center and making plans to deliver training directly to schools. The district is in transition, she says. “But what to do this year?” In the Oakland district, data coaches have helped principals get up to speed on and analyze the benchmark tests that students take three times during the year to measure their progress. “You find out exactly where students are, rather than making the assumption that if it’s been taught, they know it,” Jarrett says. “It’s a better way than looking at [state tests] at the end of the year.” Principals in Oakland also have had the benefit of results-based budgeting for at least nine years, Jarrett says, giving them the ability to decide how to spend all monies outside of Title I and other categorical grants. These remaining state and local District Administration

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - June 2012

District Administration - June 2012
Contents
From the Editor
News update
Arts update
District Profile
Administrator Profile
Geography Ed for a Flat World
Her Own Brand of Education Reform
Finding a Cure for Senioritis
Principals as Instructional Leaders
CIO news
One Tablet Per Child?
Changing Lives With Assistive Technology
Going Mobile
Student Counsel
New Directions
Product Focus
New Products
Online Edge

District Administration - June 2012