Education Week - January 21, 2015 - S15

EDUCATION WEEK n
January 21, 2015
Shaping Strong School Leaders > www.edweek.org/go/principals
| S13
visor role. (The Wallace Foundation supports
coverage of leadership, arts education, and
extended- and expanded-learning time in
Education Week.)
Jody Spiro, the foundation's director of educational
leadership, said the new attention
on the position has moved the focus beyond
Wallace-supported districts, and that school
systems nationwide are recognizing how important
principal supervisors are in ensuring
that schools improve.
Deeper Trust
Among the districts forging ahead is the
125,000-student Duval County school system
in Jacksonville, Fla. In 2013, it started
to overhaul the principal-supervisor role to
one focused on instructional leadership, and
it aligned the supervisors' work with the district's
achievement goals, said Superintendent
Nikolai P. Vitti.
Last year, the district cut the supervisorto-principal
ratio to 1-to-20, from 1-to-40.
Mr. Vitti hopes to reduce it even further. Supervisors
are expected to spend 80 percent
of their time in the schools. To ensure that's
the case, no districtwide meetings are scheduled
before 1 p.m. Supervisors are also now
assigned primarily by school levels-by elementary,
middle, and high schools-and not
by geography. Grouping supervisors by grade
levels fosters deeper collaboration, learning,
and problem-solving among principals in
similar environments who face similar challenges.
It also makes it easier to coordinate
meaningful professional development.
Duval County also created the Four Pillars
of Instructional Leadership, which defines
the hallmarks of good instructional
practices for principals and supervisors. It
then teamed up with tntp, formerly The
New Teacher Project, a national nonprofit
that trains teachers for posts in low-income
schools, and the University of Florida Lastinger
Center for Learning, to offer professional
development on the new standards
and instructional coaching for both principals
and supervisors.
At minimum, communication between the
district and principals about district goals
and initiatives has improved. That has led
to deeper trust and greater ownership at the
school building level, Mr. Vitti said.
"You have to focus on principals, regarding
instructional improvement," Mr. Vitti
said. "There is no question that you have to
work with your teachers and build their capacity,
but if that is not echoed, and driven,
and owned at the school level by the principals,
then you likely will be seeing very little
return on investment because it's not being
implemented with fidelity on the school level."
In Denver, which is part of the Wallace
Principal Pipeline Initiative-a $75 million
project to help build effective urban
school leaders-supervisors oversee only
eight or nine principals. In the city's lowest-performing
schools that are undergoing
major improvement efforts, the ratio of supervisor-to-principal
is 1-to-4. (See related
graphic, Page S4.)
When the district reduced the number
of principals that managers had to oversee
from 15 to eight three years ago, officials were
responding to the research, feedback from
principals on their needs for professional
development and support, and the ability of
the supervisors to effectively coach and lead
teams, Superintendent Tom Boasberg said.
"It's to allow for more time for coaching
and feedback in an extraordinarily difficult
and complex job; it really was that simple,"
he said.
Mr. Boasberg said the program is working.
Since focusing on the principal pipeline,
Denver students have shown the highest
year-to-year growth of the 20 largest districts
in Colorado, he said.
While the improvement cannot be attributed
solely to changes to the principal-supervisor
role-a host of other initiatives were simultaneously
at play-Mr. Boasberg said that
he does not doubt the emphasis on principal
managers has had an impact. Teachers have
been awarding principals higher marks in the
district's annual perception surveys in recent
years, he said. Principals have been doing the
same for their supervisors, and principal turnover
is also down, Mr. Boasberg said.
Last year, 90 percent of teachers who responded
to the survey said they had a "moderately
effective" to an "extremely effective"
principal, up from 85 percent in 2013.
Districts hoping to transform the principal-supervisor
role may face funding challenges.
They either have to find the money
to pay for those positions in existing allocations
or pursue grant funding. While the new
Omaha positions were included in the school
system's budget, the district received about
$700,000 from the Sherwood Foundation and
Lozier Foundation to help with professional
development for the supervisors.
Building a trusting relationship between
the principal and the supervisor can also
be tricky, but districts must be clear about
goals and expectations and emphasize that
supervisors are at the schools to work with
principals, not to hand out edicts, superintendents
said.
'Candid Conversations'
Dan Bartels, the principal of Alfonza
W. Davis Middle School in Omaha, had no
such problems with his supervisor, Pamela
J. Cohn, a retired principal who had hired
him as a teacher when he first started in the
district.
But even before Ms. Cohn and her colleagues
got to the business of supervising
their charges, they met informally with the
principals to discuss goals and expectations.
For Mr. Bartels, that meeting was followed
at the beginning of the school year with a goalsetting
session, during which he and Ms. Cohn
discussed his target for the year (increasing
student engagement), how he planned
to achieve it, and the measures he intended
to use. The two also discussed the school's
strengths and weaknesses, the changes that
needed to occur to correct those weaknesses,
and how they would gauge progress.
Mr. Bartels said he appreciates the daily interactions
with his supervisor-by telephone
and email-that go beyond the one-on-one
sit-downs or troubleshooting. Ms. Cohn also
facilitates monthly principals' meetings and
peer-coaching sessions, he said.
"My executive supervisor and I can have
some candid conversations about where I am
[and] where I need to be," Mr. Bartels said.
"And it's refreshing to have that personal relationship
with one person."
Ms. Cohn said she tries to visit three to
five classrooms in her school visits, during
which she observes not just teachers in the
classrooms but how engaged students are in
the lessons. Those observation sessions are
followed by a 20- to 45-minute debriefing
session with the principal and a summary
email to the principal reiterating the points
covered earlier in the day.
Ms. Cohn said she thinks the supervisors
are already making a difference, but
she would recommend adding coaches to
the team and further reducing the number
of principals they oversee-something with
which Mr. Evans already agrees. n
Pamela J. Cohn, who oversees 26 school
leaders, observes a 7th grade science class
at Alfonza W. Davis Middle School in Omaha.
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Education Week - January 21, 2015

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