Great New Resources for Principals

I'm always looking for new tools and resources for principals and as the school year ends I would like to share a few with you.

Blogs for Principals - There are some incredible resources available at several blogs designed just for principals. Here are some of my favorites.

Get Organized! http://frankbuck.blogspot.com. This site is devoted to making life easier through organization and time management and is written by Frank Buck author of Get Organized! Time Management for School Leaders.

Leader Talk http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/LeaderTalk/. This Education Week blog is written by school leaders for school leaders and provides interesting commentary and useful ideas for leading your school.

Effective Principals, Effective Schools http://effectiveprincipals.blogspot.com. This blog shares strategies used by principals to positively impact their school. The author of The Principalship from A to Z maintains the blog.

I hope you find these resources helpful and would enjoy hearing from you about other great sites for ideas to improve our schools.

Evidence Linking Small Schools and Student Achievement

For the past decade there's been a growing movement to create small learning communities and small schools with the belief that they will positively impact student achievement and school climate. Most Oregon GEAR UP schools are relatively small and will be interested in the findings of an Oregon initiative funded by The Gates Foundation and the Meyer Memorial Trust.

The Oregon Small Schools Initiative (OSSI) reported in their initial evaluation that small schools have a positive impact on student success and that "despite high rates of poverty and other barriers to success, . . . small school students generally perform as well as or better than non [small school] students." The report also said that "students enrolled at a small school for multiple grades will, on average, have better outcomes" than those there for fewer years. The complete report is available at http://www.e3smallschools.org/documents/Statewideoverviewreport_FINAL4_8_10.pdf.

The Oregon Small Schools Initiative provides many resources to support improvement and work with your community to improve student learning. Check our the things that they offer. I'd like to hear from you about your experience with small schools.

Caring for Students and Their Families

The current economy has impacted students and families in significant ways. A recent report from the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth reported that in over half the states there has been a 50% increase in homeless students since 2007. The nation's official poverty rate was 13.2% and for children younger than 18, 19%. The US Department of Agriculture found (Nov 2009) that food shortages, even outright hunger characterize the current economy. The number of Americans running out of food each month rose to 16% of the population.

Schools are responding in respectful and caring ways to this crisis. I recently learned about a program at Mitchell School in Ann Arbor, MI. About 60% of Mitchell's students qualify for free or reduced price means. The staff works with Chartwells, the district's food service provider, and with Food Gatherers, a local non-profit organization to gather food and pack backpacks that students take home on Friday. Principal Kathy Scarnecchia says that keeping students "fed and healthy" helps them to be more successful in school. Students return the empty backpacks on Monday.

What a wonderful way to support students, their families, and commit to the success of every student.

Productive Student Work Groups

Some form of group work has been part of most teachers' classrooms forever. The challenge is how to make sure that groups are productive and contribute to student learning.

It is important to build both individual and group accountability into every task assigned to a group. Each student must be responsible for his or her contribution and the group must be responsible for the overall task.

A recent study of the most successful group activities found six common characteristics. They included:

• Tasks that emphasized larger learning goals rather than discrete facts and knowledge;
• Teachers provided students with smaller tasks before asking them to tackle larger, longer and more complex tasks;
• Timelines for both individual and group responsibility were explicit in each activity;
• Each task was broken into interim steps or parts so that individuals and the group could monitor their progress toward completing the larger task;
• Students were asked to evaluate their individual work as well as the group's work;
• Teachers included both individual and group evaluations when determining a grade for a project. (Frey, Fisher & Everlove, Productive Group Work, 2009).

It is also important to be sure students have the skills to work collaboratively. Skills at active listening, offering constructive feedback and considering different perspectives are critical.

Because I use groups a lot when I teach I am always looking for resources to make the groups productive. Recently I found a rubric from the authors of Productive Group Work that helps to assess the quality of student groups. It is available at http://www.fisherandfrey.com?page_id=20.

Expand Leadership Capacity

There are many ways to nurture leadership skills among your staff. It involves creating a school with a variety of leadership roles, opportunities for inquiry and reflection, and a chance to learn and develop new skills.

You can develop leadership by asking someone to work closely with others as part of a committee or leadership team. You might invite a teacher to shadow a school leader for a day and then talk with them about their observations. Or you might challenge them to work with others to solve a "real-life" problem in your school.

The following ideas are adapted from a NASSP publication, Practical Suggestions for Developing Leadership Capacity in Others (http://www.principals.org/Content/topic/56566).

Expand their skills and knowledge base

• Invite them to work on a project outside their area of expertise;
• Ask them to screen and interview potential employees
• Encourage them to attend district level meetings with you.

Provide opportunities to observe and reflect

• Encourage them to maintain a journal and reflect on the "good," "bad," or "flawed" leaders they know and observe;
• Talk with them about how and why you handled a situation as you did.

Support their participation in professional development

• Ask them to serve as a mentor of a new teacher;
• Encourage them to join and be involved with a professional organization;
• Ask them to present information to the staff after attending a conference or other professional development activity.

Expanding leadership capacity is an important role for principals. It recognizes the contributions that employees, other than administrators, can make to improving your school. I'd enjoy hearing from you about the ways you build leadership capacity in your school.

Accountability for Students

Students also share accountability for their own learning. They should be actively involved in their own learning, make decisions about their learning and be held responsible for asking questions, being clear about the expectations for their work, and for completing assignments.

Sounds simple but it is much more complex. Many schools provide students with the support they need to be successful. Here are some strategies that support students and help them to be accountable for their work.

• Provide exemplars for all work and rubrics that students can use to assess their success on assignments.
• Adopt a grading policy of A, B or Not Yet.
• Provide opportunities for students to revise and resubmit work.
• Include support and scaffolding in classroom instruction.
• Include engaging instructional activities connected to real life
• Provide quality and timely feedback on student work.
• Act consistently on the belief that each student can learn, will learn, and your power to help them do so.

Increasing accountability for students is important. But it requires that teachers and principals look closely at their instructional practices to assure that they provide students with the support they need to be successful.

Dealing with Stable or Declining Resources

No issue impacts schools more intensely than the current economic malaise. Every school I visit is being impacted by stable or declining resources. At the same time they are more accountable than every before for a high quality educational experience for all students.

Almost universally the issue becomes one of how to be both more efficient and more effective. You are expected to sustain your efforts at improvement while being even more efficient with your resources.

Generally there are three responses. You can identify areas where you might reduce expenditures. You can also consider an alternative way of doing some of the things you are already doing.

Or you can prioritize what you are doing. This is almost always difficult because in the process you are seen as valuing one program more than others. When you prioritize you must anchor your decision in your school's vision and mission. For example, you would not want to eliminate programs that provide additional support to students if your vision is one where every student is expected to achieve at higher levels.

You do not need to set aside your vision during tough economic times. But you might need to reconsider how you provide essential supports. You may want to work with other schools or districts to share professional development. You might want to ask a local business leader to support your advocacy efforts with families or community. You might want to increase your efforts to identify volunteers, such as senior citizens, to work with students.

These challenging decisions are almost always better when teachers, families, and other stakeholder groups are included. I'd enjoy hearing from you about how you reconcile the need for greater efficiency and greater effectiveness.