VIEWPoint Strong leadership the key to high performing schools


A true leader will find a way to move an organization forward by cultivating the collective strengths of the people within the organization itself. By Chris Adams


F


or as long as California stakeholders have attempted to hold schools and districts accountable, studies have been created that have also attempted to identify what makes a school or district “high performing.”


Is there a clear set of data that can point us to a path of stu-


dent success that can be replicated by all schools and districts? Will the answers be different after Common Core and SBAC are implemented? In my recent experience as superintendent of


Coast Unified School District, the district was fortunate to be chosen as one of the six districts profiled in the 2012 “Raising All Boats” study conducted by the American Institutes for Re- search, School Services of California, and sup- ported by the California Comprehensive Center at WestEd (cacompcenter.org/resources/school- district-improvement). The K-12 districts studied were identified as


• staff resistance to change/lack of buy-in to improvement ef-


forts; and • relationships with the teachers’ union and staff who were


not the right fit. What do these strategies and challenges mean for the leaders


of our schools today as public education in California faces some of its greatest changes over the next few years? Clearly, the literature has been consistent –


“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” – John Quincy Adams


high performing in “raising all boats” because all schools, students and subgroups within the districts were per- forming substantially better than statistically predicted over a four-year period. The central focus of this study was one of the first of its kind


“designed to increase the understanding of the district’s role in school improvement and the factors contributing to the success of districts and their schools.”


Strategies to achieve “turnaround status” This work followed up the 2011 study completed by the same


group of research partners that delved into the work of Turn- around Schools. When the leaders of districts that participated in these two separate studies were asked for the strategies that caused their schools to achieve “high performing” and “turn- around” status respectively, the answers revealed definite simi- larities: • strong leadership (instructional, district, school); • clear instructional vision and process (strategies focused on


student subgroups, support for struggling students, and student engagement); and • an emphasis on collaboration. It is interesting to note that the challenges cited within both


studies are also eerily similar: • budget cuts;


whether a school or district is high performing, or on its way to high performing: strong leadership is a key ingredient to its success. Successful leaders provide a vision, and are


able to communicate the vision in a way that helps others implement the vision. And while the studies showed us that the strat-


egies of success for high-performing and turn- around schools can be categorized as similar, the path that each successful school and district took was different. A one-size-fits-all approach may


not always work because each system will have different stake- holders and differing needs.


Moving the organization forward Successful leaders must build relationships with all stake-


holders that create a culture of honor where everyone’s input is valued; yet strong leaders also recognize that while everyone wants to have the opportunity to provide input, not everyone will want to participate in the change necessary to move the or- ganization. The true leader will find a way to move the organiza- tion forward by cultivating the collective strengths of the people within the organization itself. Lastly, and perhaps above all, the leader must be an eternal


optimist. It seems in today’s society everyone wants to tear down and find fault with leaders, but the successful leader will work through this to create a shared culture of ownership, where ev- eryone excels together. n


“Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut


through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.” – General Colin Powell


Chris Adams is ACSA’s assistant executive director, Educational Services. January/February 2014 17


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