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District Insight on Supporting Principal Effectiveness

What Are We Learning?

In 2011, The Wallace Foundation launched a $75-million five-year initiative to help six urban school districts develop a much larger corps of effective school principals and to determine whether this improves student achievement across the district, especially in highest needs schools . The six districts are Charlotte-Mecklenburg; Denver; Gwinnett County; Hillsborough County; New York City; and Prince George's County.

The Initiative focuses on four key parts of the pipeline:1.Defining the job of the principal and assistant principal. 2.High-quality training for aspiring school leaders. 3.Selective hiring.4.Leader evaluation and on-the-job support.

The Wallace Foundation Principal Pipeline Initiative

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Almost every state and district in the country is attempting to develop effective systems that evaluate teachers and school leaders in order to improve instructional and leadership practice and increase student learning. Developing effective evaluation systems are, in fact, a high priority of both the field and the federal government. The key role of the principal in teacher evaluation is one of the most important lessons from the first generation of Wallace work. However, today’s principals are struggling to find the tools, time, resources, and capacity to effectively teachers and be strong instructional leaders. If districts hope to develop effective evaluation systems, then what kind of tools, processes, organizational structures and practices are available that can help principals effectively evaluate teachers and be strong instructional leaders?

Problem Statement

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Project

• The first step of this project was to better understand the contexts, promising practices and challenges related to the role of the leader in teacher evaluation.

• The main data source were pipeline district leaders who completed a 47-question survey and participated in post-survey interviews during January and February of 2012.

• Participants included Directors, Chief Technology and Information Officers, and their staffs.

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Project Additional data included:

• CCSSO sent a 6-question survey to 24 states in the State Consortium on Educator Effectiveness during January and February of 2012 and received 13 responses.

• National SAM Innovation Project (NSIP) distributed a 17-question survey at the 5th Annual SAM’s Conference in January 27-30, 2012 to 249 principals and received 105 responses.

• Interviews were conducted with Jackie Wilson, Delaware Academy For School Leadership and Carol Seid, Representative on the NAESP and NASSP Committee on Principal Evaluation.

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Strong Voices“Think about what’s going to have the most impact on teaching and learning…What is really going to get to the heart of what that teacher is doing every day in the classroom with students.” (School District Administrator)

“…the strengths include a grassroots effort involving teachers, principals, superintendents, parents, and education partners coming together to establish guiding principles, common language and understanding, as well as collective agreement on the purpose and intent of the effectiveness system.” (State Agency Administrator)

“Throughout, what we have done is reversed the way we’ve always done business.” (School District Administrator)

“You can’t fire your way to excellence, you have to develop it and our evaluation system lends itself to doing that.” (School District Administrator)

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The System Matters!

Compelling Vision Of Evaluation

Stakeholder Collaboration

Organizational Support

Leadership Skills

Instructional Leadership

TimePLC Hierarchy of Evaluation Needs*

Promising Practices, Challenges, and Ways To Overcome Those Challenges Exist At Every Level OF The System

* With Apologies And Thanks To Abraham Maslow

The System MattersTheme #1: Develop A Compelling Vision Of What Good Evaluation Is And Why It Is Important

• A common understanding of the purpose of the new evaluation system• Clear focus on teacher and leader effectiveness and student growth• Strong integration between teacher evaluation and teacher and leader

professional development • Use of multiple measures, including increased formative assessments• Utilize tools that increase the time that principals spend assessing

instruction and developing teachers• Adapt state evaluation instruments to the context of each district • Collect student artifacts and student data as part of the evaluation• Work with teachers to identify practices and behaviors in the classroom that

make a difference

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The System MattersTheme #2: Establish Clear Communication And Strong Collaboration Among All Stakeholders

• Include everyone (teachers, principals, community) in the design of the evaluation system

• Take time to pilot, obtain feedback, and engage in continual improvement• Keep feedback loops open between principals, teachers, district, and

other stakeholders• Increase state and district collaboration so that districts have the local

flexibility to recognize context and encourage innovation• Work with universities to develop instructional leadership skills in the

pipeline for aspiring principals

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The System MattersTheme #3: Ensure Organizational Structures of Schools & Districts Support Principals

• Realign central office to support principals and protect principal time• Increase the effectiveness of principal coaches and supervisors• Streamline and make the evaluation process as efficient as possible• Move some administrative duties to the central office • Push school-based budgets to principals to give them more flexibility to

focus the resources on their priorities• Identify ideal ratio of principal/assistant principal to teacher to conduct

evaluations

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The System MattersTheme #4: Develop and Implement Effective Ways To Strengthen Leadership Skills• Increase the effectiveness of principal coaches and supervisors• Implement effective professional development for principals including strong

learning communities and networks• Provide on-going support rather than one-time training• Develop common language of effective practices (shared framework and rubrics)• Focus on calibration of observations so that there is strong inter-rater reliability

across principals• Ensure that principal coaches work with the principal in every stage of the

evaluation, including providing teacher feedback• For large school districts, train principals in small groups or networks• Start small by focusing training on just a few indicators within the framework used

to evaluate teachers

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The System MattersTheme #5: Help Principals Manage Their Time Effectively

• Using the SAM process to successfully provide time and conditions for teacher to improve teacher practice

• Use tools and technology to make the evaluation process more efficient (e.g. Lawson, iPads, Truenorthlogic, Dashboards)

Theme #6: Instructional Leadership

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Leading Change In Evaluation: Need-By-Need

Using this Framework of Evaluation Needs helps us begin to understand more about how states, districts and principals view the promising practices, challenges and ways to overcome those challenges at every level of the system.

Clearly, there is much more we need to know about the promising practices and challenges throughout the system.

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Three Main Challenges

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The Lack Of A Compelling Vision Of

Evaluation

The Need For Stronger Leadership Skills Not Enough Time

Lack of clarity and distrust about the

purposes of evaluation

Some principals do not know what effective instruction

looks like

Principals have large case loads and new evaluations

are time-intensive

How to measure student growth with validity &

reliability in all grades/subjects

Inadequate time paid to instructional leadership

Principal’s time as instructional leaders is

disrupted by management responsibilities and central

office duties.

Lack of alignment between state and district evaluation

frameworks

Implementing new evaluation and common core standards are over-whelming principals

Training for principals on new forms of evaluation is

time-consuming

Some Promising Practices

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Compelling Vision Of Evaluation

• A strong emphasis on teaching practice and support

• Includes observation tools , protocols, rubrics

• In-depth feedback to teachers

• Includes measures of student growth

• Includes multiple measures of teacher effectiveness

Some Promising Practices

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Leadership Skills

• Extensive, comprehensive and timely professional development for principals

• In-person and virtual support to principals

• Training and support for principal coaches and supervisors

• Supporting principals with strong learning communities and professional networks

Some Promising Practices

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Time

• Use technology to help with evaluation

• Remove management duties to allow focus on instructional leadership

• Differentiated schedule for teachers receiving evaluations

• Implement the SAM process

Hillsborough County Public Schools

Organizational Support Leadership Skills

Hire and train principal coaches to support and develop principals

Provide weekly coaching with a released “full time” coach for first and second year principals

Train principal supervisors in effective supervision to include professional development and evaluation of principals

Provide monthly leadership institutes with new principals as part of a 2-year induction program

Create an administrative support center to field calls to free up time for principal supervisors to be in schools and to help principals solve parental concerns

Implement four development programs as part of our principal pipeline (Future Leader Academy, AP Induction, Preparing New Principals, and Principal Induction) with a focus on instructional leadership

Plan regular calibration exercises for all observers Monthly Principal PLCs to discuss and learn from problems of practice

Include central office in observation training to provide support to principals and use on-line system for capturing observation data

Provide prescriptive professional development aligned with evalaution results and principal professional development plans

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Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District

Compelling Vision of Evaluation

Leadership Skills Time

Multiple measures of teacher effectiveness being designed by teachers for 2013-2014 implementation• Content Pedagogy• Hard to staff schools and

subjects• Professional Learning

Community• Student Learning

Objectives• Student Survey• Teacher Observation• Teacher Work Product• Value Added Model

Principal Induction Program for principals in their first five years• Consultant Coach• Education Leadership

Institute• Innovation Institute• Leadership Capstone

• Strategic Coach for principals who need additional support

• Zone Support Consultant to help principals establish strategic plans that align with their evaluation

• SAM process implementation

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Conclusions

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• We need to know more about the promising practices, challenges, and ways to overcome those challenges at every level of the system.

• We need to find strategies, tactics and tools to help strengthen the communication among states, districts, principal, teachers and others involved in evaluation.

• The perspectives of principals is crucial and we need to find ways to increase their participation in these conversations.

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The Leader & Teacher Evaluation PLCName Title District/Organization

Anthony Douglas Director Office of Human Capital Management Prince George's County Public Schools

Briggs Kerri Director of Education Reform George W. Bush Presidential Center

Canole Mary C. Consultant/Facilitator CCSSO

Cannon Joanna Chief Strategic Officer for The Division of Talent, Labor, and Innovation New York City Department of Education

Chapin Florence Executive Director, Office of School Leader Effectiveness New York City Department of Education

Copland Michael Senior Program Officer Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Davis Frances Chief Human Resources Officer Gwinnett County Public Schools

Eleusizov Aiesha Consultant The Wallace Foundation

Everson Keith Director of Employee Evaluation Systems Gwinnett County Public Schools

Grossman Tabitha Program Director, Education Division National Governors Association Center for Best Practices

Hendee Roberta "Bert" IL Coordinator, SAMs Assistant Director, LUDA

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The Leader & Teacher Evaluation PLCName Title District/Organization

Jobe MaryAnn Director, Leadership Development American Association of School Administrators

Loera Patricia Senior Program Officer Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Martin Anne Director, School Leader Effectiveness New York City Department of Education

Morgan Rashidah Director of Leadership Strategy Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools

Shellinger Mark Director National SAM Innovation Project

Steele David Assistant Superintendent for Information and Technology Hillsborough County Public Schools

Stern Jennifer Executive Director, Teacher Performance Management Denver Public Schools

Vu Ky Program Officer Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Winograd Peter Facilitator NYC Leadership Academy

Implications for Your Work

Small Group Discussions:• Each group will spend 15 minutes reacting to what

we just heard using the following guiding questions:1. To what extent do you agree with the promising

practices? Are there any you would add?2. To what extent do you agree with the challenges?

Any to add?3. Do you have additional suggestions for ways to

overcome the challenges?

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