The Institute for Educational Leadership's bi-monthly newsletter:
IELeadership
Connections, Vol. 1, No. 4, March/April 2003
This
edition's topic: Solutions
Contents:
•
Solutions
(Commentary)
•
News from
the Field
•
Things
to Watch
•
Reader
Survey: Your Solutions?
Solutions
(Commentary)
DC's snowiest winter in recent memory has wreaked havoc
on area school schedules and testing plans. Unfortunately, it
doesn't seem to have had any effect on the finger-pointing season
that is in full swing, replete with snide comments and insider
smugness. Just about every group in the education stakeholder
pantheon is coming under fire, with some groups singled out
for particularly pointed attacks. We note that "insider"
as used here refers to the policy apparatus and not the interior
of schools, since many of the policy mavens appear to be out
of touch with the challenges and frustrations that leaders inside
K-12 education face, especially those involving the implementation
of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB).
These
frustrations were reflected in the resounding silence following
IELC's most recent reader survey, which asked, "What positive
changes are you starting to see as a result of No Child Left
Behind?" Only three brave souls responded, and all three
said that nothing good was coming from NCLB. The low response
rate may be partly that there is simply too much confusion in
the system to identify the positives. (Kudos to Chuck Laster,
Group Leader, Federal Title I Office, Student Achievement and
School Accountability Programs, U.S. Department of Education,
who answered some of the implementation questions at the IDEA
Partnerships meeting, "Ensuring No Child is Left Behind:
A Discourse Across Perspectives," on January 29th by saying
simply, "We don't know yet.") Education publications
are beginning to report some positive effects such as the state
collaborations addressing a variety of assessment issues listed
in the February 24th issue of Education Daily. (See "ED
Awards $17 Million for Collaboration on New Tests" for
the details.)
The
current situation is, by the way, a classic leadership scenario:
You are charged with implementing a top-down mandate requiring
significant system change with variable system capacity, inadequate
resources, and unknown unintended consequences. There are no
easy answers here. Hard choices will need to be made. Opportunity
comes with many new and complex challenges.
It
is with gratitude, therefore, that we turn to a new leadership
brief from the Learning First Alliance (LFA) to be released
later this month that casts a ray of hope across the soggy winter
landscape. Beyond Islands of Excellence: What Districts Can
Do to Improve Instruction and Achievement Across All Schools
summarizes the leadership factors essential for school improvement
from five school districts, which demonstrated significant improvement
in student achievement across grades, subjects, and racial/ethnic
groups. The districts:
•Created
a climate for change where it was safe to acknowledge poor performance
and safe to seek solutions. Leaders neither made excuses for
poor achievement nor wasted time placing blame. Rather, they
accepted the challenge of educating all children and made sure
that superintendents, principals, and other leaders shared this
goal.
•Determined that better achievement required better instruction.
As a consequence, they focused their resources on improving
instruction and instructional leadership.
•Determined that no single stakeholder could tackle instructional
improvement alone and extended the leadership from traditional
positions to others. Leadership was not simply shared; most
stakeholder groups sought to take on the elements of reform
that they were best positioned to lead.
•Recognized that success would take time and that they
would have to stick with their efforts for the long haul. Practitioners
were encouraged to try new ideas. Immediate results were not
expected. Board leaders supported superintendents over many
years and many initiatives. Leaders assessed the impact of their
efforts and made adjustments along the route.
So for you, the courageous leaders with the will to seek solutions,
this issue of IELC is focused on solutions--or at least some
hot leads. Let's start with LFA's contribution: The full report,
Making Sense of the System: District-Wide Efforts to Improve
Instruction and Achievement, the leadership brief described
above, and case studies of the five school districts (Aldine,
TX; Chula Vista, CA; Kent County, MD; Minneapolis, MN; and Providence,
RI) will be available on LFA's Web site (http://www.learningfirst.org)
on March 24th, the same day that it will be released at a forum
in the National Press Club. For more information on the publications
and/or to attend the briefing, contact Wendy Togneri at togneriw@learningfirst.org.
NEWS
FROM THE FIELD
The
Education Trust has published "ESEA: Myth versus Realities--Answers
to common questions about the new No Child Left Behind Act."
Available on-line at http://www2.edtrust.org/edtrust/product+catalog/special+reports,
this short document may help to dispel some of the confusion
among stakeholders about NCLB. It makes some important points
(e.g., it's unrealistic to expect student achievement to rise
while all other factors remain unchanged) and provides some
examples of innovative teacher recruitment and retention strategies
(in the publication's Endnote 3).
An interesting
report from the Abell Foundation, "The Invisible Dyslexics:
How Public School Systems in Baltimore and Elsewhere Discriminate
Against Poor Children in the Diagnosis of Early Reading Difficulties,"
discusses some knotty issues about children's reading difficulties
in layman's terms. A summary of the current research consensus,
general principles for early identification and intervention,
and preliminary ideas for a pilot project are presented. To
download the report, go to http://www.abell.org/publications/detail.asp?ID=76.
The
final report from Stanford University's Bridge Project, "Betraying
the College Dream: How Disconnected K-12 and Postsecondary Education
Systems Undermine Student Aspirations," was released March
4th at the National Press Club in Washington DC. This national
study highlighted findings from six states (California, Georgia,
Illinois, Maryland, Oregon and Texas) about the transition from
high school to post-secondary education. Three suggested actions
and several recommendations for improving policy and practice
are provided in addition to a summary of myths about higher
education held by students and their families. The report makes
the case that K-12 and higher education desperately need to
talk to each other, especially during reform efforts. The report
is full of data (e.g., bachelor degree completion rates by highest
level of high school math ranged from 8% for students who completed
math through algebra I, to 80% for those who completed math
through calculus.) The discussions of alignment issues for assessments
and curricula are also worthy of note. The report is available
at http://www.stanford.edu/group/bridgeproject/,
as are an executive summary and a policy brief. Additional resources
will be available later this month including a policy toolkit,
bibliography, and technical reports.
The
National Conference on State Legislatures Task Force on School
Leadership has a new publication, "The Role of School Leadership
in Improving Student Achievement." It's formatted as a
folder containing one-page summaries of a variety of issues,
including "School Leadership and No Child Left Behind."
Each summary ends with "Key Questions for Legislators"
that will be of interest to other stakeholders as well. Contact
Frances Groff at frances.groff@ncsl.org
or (303) 364-7700 for a copy.
"A
License to Lead? A New Leadership Agenda for America's Schools"
and "School Boards: Focus on School Performance Not Money
and Patronage" were released by The Progressive Policy
Institute at a forum on January 31st. Some people in the audience
seemed to like the reports, and others were definitely offended
by them. Decide for yourself by downloading either or both reports
at http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?knlgAreaID=110&subsecID=135&contentID=251239.
THINGS TO WATCH
"What
We Know About Successful School Leadership," a brief prepared
by the Task Force on Developing Research in Educational Leadership
of Division A of the American Educational Research Association
in collaboration with the Lab for Student Success at Temple
University and the University Council for Educational Administration,
was presented at an AERA/IEL Policy Forum on February 14th.
Copies are available at http://www.cepa.gse.rutgers.edu/whatweknow.pdf.
The full version will be published late in 2003, and IELC will
continue to monitor its progress.
In May
the Coalition for Community Schools, comprised of over 160 separate
organizations, will release a new report, Making the Difference,
which outlines the advantages of community schools and the conditions
for learning that they create. It reviews the research and presents
findings from evaluations of 20 community school initiatives
that demonstrate notable improvements in student learning, family
engagement, school effectiveness, and community vitality. The
report will be available on the Coalition's Web site at http://www.communityschools.org.
Send an e-mail to Meagn Lindsay at LindsayM@iel.org
if you want to receive a notice upon its availability.
"A
Tale of Three Cities: Urban Perspectives on Special Education"
from the Center on Education Policy notes that "The most
crucial issue for the IDEA [Individuals with Disabilities Education
Act] reauthorization is how to integrate special education with
the reforms underway in general education." Case studies
of special education in Chicago, Cleveland, and Milwaukee include
what's working, current compliance, and stakeholder perspectives
in those cities. To download a copy, go to http://www.cep-dc.org/specialeducation/talethreecities/talethreecities.pdf.
READER SURVEY QUESTION: YOUR SOLUTIONS?
We want
to know how you're dealing with the many challenges of NCLB,
particularly the "statistical anomalies" of good schools
that don't meet their Annual Yearly Progress goals. Quickly
define the issue, and then provide the solution. If you don't
have a solution, give us a recommendation or possible solution
for dealing with the matter. We're not far enough along the
NCLB implementation curve to have outcome data for new interventions,
but we know there are creative minds at work, and we want to
reveal them.
The
reader survey question is: What is your solution to an NCLB
challenge? Be brief, but specific.
Send
your response to survey@iel.org
with "survey" in the subject line. You can be cryptic
as long as we understand your point. Please remember that IELC
surveys are informal exchanges and are not intended to be "scientifically-based
research." We will collect your responses and use them
to inform future issues of IELC. We will not be able to provide
a personal response to each submission.
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Submission Deadline for the next issue: April
30, 2003
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ABOUT
IELEADERSHIP CONNECTIONS
IELeadership
Connections is a free bi-monthly e-newsletter focusing on leadership
for education. The editors are Mary Podmostko and Denise Slaughter.
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ABOUT IEL
For
more than thirty-five years, the Institute for Educational Leadership
(IEL)-a non-profit, nonpartisan organization based in Washington,
DC-has worked to achieve better results for children and youth.
At the heart of IEL's effectiveness is a unique ability to bring
people together to identify and resolve issues across policy,
program, and sector boundaries. As a natural outgrowth of IEL's
work, diverse networks have been created and nurtured.
Today,
IEL is working to help individuals and institutions increase
their capacity to work together to improve outcomes for children
and young people. We are building and supporting a cadre of
diverse leaders, strengthening the capacity of education and
related systems, and informing the development and implementation
of policies. IEL supports a national network of over 15,000
policymakers and practitioners, publishes books and reports,
facilitates meetings, produces seminars and conferences, and
disseminates ideas that have an impact on policy at all governance
levels. Please visit our Web site at www.iel.org
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