Leadership Week, The Big Finale: Getting Serious About Leadership

Last in a series of articles about the changing role of the principalship. For others, see here.
The last article about leadership from the December 12th Education Week that I’d like to talk about is by M. Christine Devita of the Wallace Foundation called “Getting Serious About Leadership.” It’s a general paean to the importance of improving school leadership, but there are some good points that deserve more attention. Consider:

The importance of having high-quality teaching in the classroom is a given. But we often fail to recognize that it is the principal alone who can ensure that the teaching and learning in every classroom are as good as they can be.

This is a fairly pervasive train of thought that I’ve noticed the past few months; here in Washington State, for example, it’s a cornerstone of the education platform of gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi. I think in part it’s a capitulation, because the reality of school improvement is that it’s easier to make one principal better than it is 30 teachers. As a later quote says,

If leadership is in fact the critical bridge to having school improvements pay off for children, we need to understand how to better prepare principals to lead the increasingly complex institution we call school, so that all children can learn to high standards.

Principal leadership begets student achievement. It’s a subtle change in the conversation, but an important one.

To back up the article Ms. Devita uses two different reports: “How Leadership Influences Student Learning” by Ken Leithwood and the exceptionally well written “Preparing School Leaders for a Changing World” by Linda Darling-Hammond.

One quibble I have comes when the article turns to how best support principals:

New York City’s school system has set demanding criteria for would-be principals to enter its leadership academy and to get a job leading one of the city’s 1,400 schools. Once selected, candidates are regularly evaluated and permitted to remain in the program only if they demonstrate required competency at periodic intervals, through assessments using various experiential processes such as simulation and role-playing.

It’s yahbut season. If you believe the blogosphere (and hey, who doesn’t?) graduates of the leadership academy are given far more flexibility than they deserve in some cases, and many believe that the system is reluctant to pull the plug on bad leadership academy graduates because it makes the system look bad. It’s a program that ideally would do what it’s designed to do; I’m just wondering if the evidence is out there.

To all the principals out there, past, present, and future—I salute you.