The Frontier of Educational Change: Leadership of Standards-based Student Grouping

• In Event: Roundtable Session 90
  In Roundtable Session: Improving the Landscape: Avenues Toward Student Achievement

Abstract

This qualitative study examined the actions of district and school leaders in changing from a traditional age-based grade level structure to a standards-based student grouping model in a Rocky Mountain school district using Whitaker’s (2010) nine strategies of change. Based on interview, observation, and artifact data collected over five years, the findings identify specific leadership actions that advanced fundamental cultural, structural, and procedural changes in schools and classrooms across the district regarding student achievement of the state’s learning standards, as well as the challenges encountered in the change process. Because of the variance in size, diversity, and socioeconomic status of the three communities which comprised the school district, the findings address contextual factors that promoted or impeded the change process.

Author

• Linda R. Vogel, University of Northern Colorado