Matching Leadership Practices to School Needs: Identifying Distinct Stages of Development to Improve Student Achievement

• In Event: Roundtable Session 10
  In Roundtable Session: Improving Our Understanding of School Leadership: Using the Urban Excellence Framework for Research and Practice

Abstract

This paper describes characteristics of specific stages as well as pathways that schools tend to take as they move to different stages; these learnings can be used by leaders when they are determining their school-wide and school-based action plans.
In our findings, implementing stage 1 practices often focus on bringing schools out of chaos, implementing systems and creating stable cultures. For schools implementing stage 3 (the strongest stage), the practices focused on institutionalization/student ownership. These stages are not stagnant or fixed and most schools have practices that are in different stages of development. For example, schools may have stage 2 culture practice in place, but may be in stage 1 in terms of instructional rigor. There is not a direct correlation to student achievement data results and the stage of a school - having high student achievement may not mean that a school has all stage 3 practices in place. A school that has stagnant student achievement scores may need to implement Stage 1 practices even though 70% of their students are proficient.

Author

• Lori Taliaferro, New Leaders