What if a school leadership candidate told the interviewing committee, “We will not introduce anything new! We will improve the effectiveness of how we work to improve the quality of our student achievement results!” Would you support that leader?

In our culture of consumption, every version of something new must be bold and innovative. The world’s most recognized brand name is our best example. Each year’s new Apple product rollouts exemplify this requirement. New displays, new functions, and new features make the new product better than the old. With high anticipation, we look forward to the annual Apple rollout of “new and improved.” Even if you have last year’s version, you no longer are in on the best of what is new. In fact, in every industry, including education, the words “new and improved…” precede every big announcement.

How does this work in selecting school leaders?

Currently, our local school board is hiring a new high school principal. Each candidate in the interview process fervently explains that she or he will bring the most benefit to the leadership position. “Pick me,” is the constancy between all candidates. “This is what I will do for you” is the variable that board members listen for and weigh in their hiring decision. Board members want to know what new and innovative thing a candidate gives the district that other candidates do not.

I once was a candidate for principal and superintendent positions selling my “new” ideas and I also was a school board president listening to candidates sell their “new” ideas. From both sides of the interview, the storyline was the same. Leaders are hired based upon how well the candidate identifies district needs and wants and translates those into statements of “new” leadership.

Interview for outputs not inputs.

In hindsight, we ask candidates the wrong questions. We seek leaders who can provide new inputs into our educational systems. Instead, we should be asking new leaders how they can improve the outputs, the results of instruction, in our schools. Just one two-part question matters. How will you improve the teaching/coaching/directing/mentoring to improve the educational achievements of all our children?

Instead of seeking leaders with new inputs, seek leaders who can assure the effectiveness of the professionals in your school to improve the quality of the school’s outputs – its student achievements.

What do we know?

Improving school outputs is not first, second, or third on a principal’s to do list. Principals typically self-report their daily time partitioned in these tasks:

• Administrative tasks – 15-21%
• Student affairs – 20-25%
• Curriculum and teaching – 25-29%
• Parent/Community interaction – 10-15%

The partitioning of these tasks supports the status quo of a school. The principal pays attention to the business of the school environment when spending time on administrative tasks, student affairs (discipline), and parent/community interactions. Given, each of these task categories is important, but status quo maintenance does not move the student outcomes needle. Too many principals spend too little time on the most important purpose of the school – student educational outcomes.

We get what we settle for from leadership, so raise the bar of what we settle for.

A principal’s primary focus should be on the effectiveness of the instruction, coaching, directing, and mentoring of students. To affect student achievement outcomes, new leaders must focus on what teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors do. To impact achievements, they need to improve professional performances that directly affect student outcomes.

So, what can a new principal do to have a positive impact on student achievements? We know from educational research that everything our teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors do can be calibrated for its impact on student learning in academics, activities, arts, and athletics. A school leader who causes teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors to increase the use of higher impact instruction and to decrease the use lower impact instruction can move the student achievement needle.

What to do?

Start with acknowledging that teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors share the same major task – how to teach children to be competent and improving performers in curricular classrooms and studios, playing fields and gymnasiums, activity venues, and student life. They are instructors, first and foremost. This starting point is significant because very few school leaders consider coaches, directors, and mentors as teaching children. As a generalization, the quality of coaching, for example, is never considered for its pedagogy. Sadly, coaching effectiveness relies singularly on each athlete’s native talent and seldom on talent development.

Second, use educational research. John Hattie provides our starting point. His study of typical school/classroom practices and calibration of their impact on student achievement gives us a ranking of the typical ways teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors “teach” children. See the link below.

Visible Learning – Hattie’s Research on Effect Size

My first take in reading Hattie’s work was clouded by my past understanding of teacher effectiveness studies. I was and still am a practitioner of teaching strategies aligned with learning objectives – direct, inquiry-based, problem/project-based, and implicit methodologies. I had not considered all the aspects of school-centric practices in Hattie’s study. Now, I believe they are the new starting point for improving student outcomes. Increase our capacity and use of higher impact activities and decrease the use of lower impact strategies.

Third, change our concept of the principal as an instructional leader. Instead of being the school’s teacher of teachers, the principal is the school’s empresario of school improvement. The principal causes improvement in student outcomes to happen. Causing positive things to happen is a powerful administrative skill set.

For one, principals neither have the time nor the preparation to teach teachers how to improve pedagogy, coaching, directing, or mentoring. But they can work with their school board to bring experts to the school or send school staff to the experts to learn and improve their high impact strategies.

Fourth, begin a new annual reporting of student achievement that includes all academics, student activities, the arts, and athletics. These are the scope of what students engage in in school, so report on their reality. And stop hyperventilating on annual student performances on state-mandated assessments of reading, ELA, and mathematics. Granted, annual school report cards report reading, ELA, and math for disaggregated groups, and include attendance, discipline, and graduation data. But the governmental view of school achievement exists only for schools and states to receive federal money.

What does this look like?

Use the 25+% of a principal’s current daily commitment to curriculum and instruction to

• Helping teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors to understand and use data-based research on effective teaching practices. All staff need to see the principal’s big picture – We all are teachers and we all can improve student achievements by using higher impact teaching strategies.
• Collaborating with the school board, school district leaders, and the school leadership team to teach teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors how to optimize their use of high impact strategies. Do not assume that all “teachers of children” know the top ten strategies on Hattie’s list. Do not assume that their recognition of the strategy is the same as knowing how to effectively use the strategy. Teach or improve the capacity of all “teachers of children” in how to use high impact strategies.
• Change the principal’s use of daily “walk throughs” around all the school from innocuous comments to reinforcing effective practices and diminishing ineffective practices. Most teachers report that traditional “walk throughs” and notes left in mailboxes are in the “ineffective” practice category.

Effective leadership is not bright and shiny – it is hard earned and endurable.

Most teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors rely on the “teaching” methods they learned in their educators licensing program. Although teachers are required to engage in continuing education, PD is conducted as a check-off requirement. Very little PD is directly connected to the practices that improve the effectiveness of teaching related to student achievements in academics, activities, arts, or athletics.

Consequently, a principal’s initiative to increase and improve the use of highly effective practices and diminish the use of ineffective practices will be “new.”

New is a hard task. New inputs face the age-old trial of change theory. Schools, as institutions, have built-in buffers against change initiatives. School traditions, past practice, standardized training of educators, time, and money are all barriers to novel changes in the system of things. Change theory tells us it takes five to seven years to implement and embed significant changes.

The Big Duh!

Yet, new is required for real change to happen. When school boards hire new school leaders, they must take care that they are bringing a “new” to the school that really will have an impact on the most important things – student achievements.