Executive Performance Coaching for School

The Model: Executive Performance Coaching for School Leadership Teams

The Case for Shared Leadership

In an era of high accountability paired with schools that are increasingly more challenging to lead, the imperative for strong leadership–shared leadership is paramount. As stated in 2002 by Linda Lambert, leadership expert, “The days of the principal as the lone instructional leader are over. We no longer believe that one administrator can serve as the instructional leader for an entire school without the substantial participation of other educators.” More than a decade later, effective principals have come to understand that developing the leadership capacity of the school community is an important aspect of sustaining a results-focused school culture.” Further, district staff must also understand the necessity to lead, coach and develop principals and members of their team much differently in order to achieve improved student outcomes.

The National Institute for Urban School Improvement (NIUSI, 2005) describes the school leadership team as “a school-based group of individuals who work to provide strong organizational process for school renewal and improvements” (p. 2). It is through the establishment of “shared or distributed leadership” that the school leader is able to build structures of accountability and joint ownership for multi-faceted leadership to take hold in a school. TranscEnDence Educational Partners’ model for school leadership team development is grounded by four key elements aimed at elevating and broadening capacity for shared leadership through a targeted professional development/coaching framework across three levels of the school system organization:

  • Campus Leadership Teams
  • District Office Executives
  • Aspiring Leaders

Campus Leadership Team Development

Campus Leadership Teams are an intregal vehicle for distributed leadership at priority schools. Most often these schools have existed with limited resources and a lack of synergy around a shared vision for instructional leadership. A clearly defined vision and actionable behaviors around instructional leadership and advancing student outcomes is paramount to assisting these schools in turning the page towards success. TranscEnDence Educational Partners offers a comprehensive professional development model for school leadership teams focused on four pillars of targeted support:

  • Monthly face-to-face professional development sessions for school leaders and their instructional leadership teams centralized around ten (10) themes of school improvement.
  • Strategic development and execution of a Campus Improvement Plan (CIP) tracked monthly by an Executive Coach assigned to work with a campus.
  • Monthly visits conducted by an Executive Coach aimed at strengthening school leaders and their instructional leadership teams based on campus goals and school improvement targets.
  • Collaborative development of a Power Walk/Classroom Observation Model — using a research-based instructional framework — that develops a shared vision of effective instruction and explore strategies for improving instruction throughout the school.

TranscEnDence Educational Partners has designed a professional development framework centered around ten (10) modules that are equally beneficial for school leadership team development. To ensure alignment between principal development and equipping campus leadership teams in assisting at the campus improvements with equal access to the knowledge and resources necessary for impactful shared leadership, monthly professional development sessions for Leadership Team members will center around the implementation of the identical targeted leadership development themes the school leader is trained on.

Development will include development of campus leadership team members to ensure an understanding of targeted school improvement content, that teams are able to collectively understand and rate campus performance on a customized implementation scale as well as exit each session with a campus action plan for improvement(s). An assigned Executive Coach will guide and monitor team development and the execution of the action plan in real-time. Targeted professional development topics for campus leadership teams include:

Module #1: The Power of Leading with a Mission, Vision, Values and Goals Mindset

This critical module serves as the foundation for strong school leadership. In this thought-provoking, assumption-challenging session school leaders will come to understand the importance of understanding the necessity to lead through a shared mission, collaborative vision, sound and equitable values and data driven-oriented goals.

Module #2: Cultivating Leadership in Schools: Connecting People, Purpose & Practice

Central to school leadership is the ability for a leader to build capacity beyond oneself. This module focuses on providing school leaders with the structures, framework, tools and resources to build capacity across all levels of a school organization inclusive of campus leadership teams as the driver of school change. This module also includes a focus on establishing key partnerships with stakeholders to drive change.

Module #3: Building a Bridge to School Reform

This highly-charged interactive module forces school leaders to examine their personal leadership practices alongside the progress or lack of progress in their schools. The module pushes leaders to examine their personal mental models and day-to-day leadership behaviors against a wall of research on transformational leadership to include: driving for results; action-oriented leadership practices; continual analyzation of data; development of and revisions to action plans based on data; driving a team towards results; the ability to challenge organizational norms without losing leadership influence; getting the right people on the bus; halting all unsuccessful strategies; and leveraging influence inside and outside of the school organization.

Module #4: Establishing a Unified Culture of Excellence & Achievement

Marrying elements of academic and school culture research, this module exposes school leaders to the imperative for explicit work to be done around the establishment of sound approaches to teaching and learning that focus on valuing the academic press alongside positive cultural norms in a unified and coordinated manner. Designed around the work of national culture-climate researchers and practitioners Deal, Peterson, Fisher and Muhammed, this highly relevant module empowers school leaders to be the key drivers of the change process through a deep understanding of the interconnected nature of establishing a healthy school culture to yield strong academic achievement results.

Module #5: Leveraging the Power of Teams through a Professional Learning Community Culture

The overarching PLC imperative associated with this session includes the essence of a true Learning Community that embraces a laser-like commitment to the learning of every student. School leaders will come away with a clear understanding that a clear mission and vision works to support a PLC culture, and leaders will be able to recognize the systems and processes that must be in place to ensure that a high level of learning for ALL students. Action oriented outcomes from the session include the school leader:

Module #6: Observing for Instructional Excellence

This module focuses on the necessity for the school leader to regularly observe the quality of both instructional and social-emotional interactions between teacher and students that have been proven to contribute to students’ academic achievement and social competencies. School leaders will explore multiple dimensions of teaching including the provision of emotional support, effective classroom organization, use of time, and quality instructional support as the hallmarks of effective classrooms; regardless of the grade level or subject. Leaders will learn how to provide meaningful feedback to teachers based on the level of their current classroom practices and glean strategies to improve areas of teaching that have direct links to student achievement.

Module #7: Differentiated Coaching to Drive Instructional Improvements

This module will engage school leaders in the proper and most efficient manner in which they must differentiate coaching methodologies when observing classrooms for effective and efficient outcomes; thus providing customized and targeted feedback that drives changes in teacher behavior through self-evaluation and the setting of teacher professional goals.

Module #8: Leading through the Lens of Assessment “For” Learning

This targeted module focuses on pushing school leaders to examine, study, and answer five critical questions that work to ensure sound classroom assessment practices inclusive of: the “why” behind assessment; “what” is assessed; “how” learning is assessed; “how” results are communicated; and “how” students are involved in the assessment process?

Module #9: Real-Time Data Improvement Processes

School leaders must ensure that data analysis takes into consideration academic and operational data points that significantly impact student achievement alongside core testing data. Supplemental data such as student/teacher attendance, parent participation, disciplinary and out-of-class suspension data, etc., are key levers of change a school leader must consider as impacting student achievement performance. This interactive module will aid school leaders in guiding their staff in administering responsible and useful Data-Driven Decision-Making (DDDM) as a key lever to student achievement improvements.

Module #10: Harnessing the Power of Data

School leaders must ensure regular, systematic conversations with teachers and staff about the results of their classroom assessments which are proven to lead to increased student achievement through targeted data analysis processes. This action-oriented, tool-driven module provides a tangible model for using achievement data to increase teacher reflection about student performance that leads to meaningful adjustments in instruction.

Executive Coaching for Leadership Teams

Also, central to the development of campus leadership teams will be an assigned Executive Coach assigned to each campus team whose bi-weekly focus will center around leaders being able to:

  • Identify and establish clear roles for leadership team members.
  • Understand and plan for the implementation of best practices in developing and sustaining instructional leadership teams.
  • Develop the capacity of the team’s shared understanding of effective instruction using an instructional framework.
  • Create a shared theory of action related to developing instructional leadership teams.
  • Consistently collect and analyze instructional data through walkthroughs and looking at student work.
  • Establish systems for collecting instructional data to improve instruction throughout the school, including knowing how to determine their staff’s professional development needs.
  • Define team meeting structures and purposes of meetings for their school-specific plan.
  • Develop a framework for problem solving that relies on data to define a problem.
  • Maximize the distributed leadership model to shape, implement and refine promising campus practices.

Development and Support for District Office Staff

Consistency of focus and attention to priority campuses is critical to the role of district staff charged with leading school improvement efforts. While the overarching focus of campus improvement rests with the principal and leadership team, the role of district staff is key in ensuring that senior executives are armed with the knowledge, resources, tools and support required to drive, oversee and champion the work of priority schools. Parallel role re-visioning and professional development for district staff is a key component of TranscEnDence Educational Partners’ leadership team support model in conjunction with the development of the principal and campus leadership teams.

There is clear evidence that where there is a lack of coordination between school and district leadership, there is heightened potential for conflicting or competing goals to emerge which directly undermines distributed leadership initiatives at the school level. Central to the district’s role is that of providing clear communication around theories of action while providing direction and guiding and supporting campus improvements in teaching and learning. Central office staff also serve to provide clarify district versus school roles in the execution of instructional initiatives. Doing so however can be extremely challenging when senior staff is charged with leading school improvement efforts across many priority schools with vastly different needs and areas for growth and improvement. To that end, TranscEnDence Educational Partners aims to provide an avenue for development, problem solving and support for senior district leaders.

The Executive Fellows Group is designed to develop and support senior executives serving in the role of supervisor leading improvements for priority campuses. These leaders will participate in ten (10) monthly sessions to learn and to share their knowledge and skills focused on coaching around school improvement. The Executive Fellows Group will work together to deepen their knowledge as a professional learning community and to learn and apply tools, strategies, and skills to drive campus improvements. The major areas of focus include:

    • Building internal capacity of senior executives around school redesign and reform elements.
    • Development of a Community of Practice (CoP) to shape ideas and options through shared observations, inquiry, and dialogue around co-designing district and campus improvement plans.
    • Networking with fellow senior executives to build alliances and forums for sharing of ideas.
    • Articulating a vision for Professional Learning Communities (PLC) and the development of structures for implementation across all priority campuses.
    • Development of facilitation skills and healthy group practices in working with campus PLCs.
    • Structures to facilitate committees and PLC coordinator meetings around reform design and teaching and learning.
    • Strategies to coach committees and PLC staff in facilitation skills, techniques for organizing effective meetings, healthy group practices and teaching and learning.

Further, monthly Executive Fellow network meetings, school technical assistance visits and professional development will serve as the anchor for TranscEnDence Educational Partners’ support structure with goals for development of executives that of broadening expertise in:

  • Facilitating the development of a shared campus vision and mission.
  • Collecting and using data to identify campus goals, reflect upon instructional effectiveness and promote professional learning at priority campuses.
  • Facilitating a system that ensures alignment of curriculum, instruction and assessment.
  • Promoting continuous and sustainable improvement and use of data to identify goals, reflect upon instructional effectiveness and promote professional learning at priority campuses.
  • Identifying data aligned with tracking campus improvement goals.
  • Working with building and/or supervising principal to thoroughly understand data sets and its importance to develop effective ways of using data to promote professional learning.
  • Creating clearly defined goals for student learning that are based on the assumption that changes in adult instructional practice will improve student learning.
  • Creating a culture in across all priority schools for professionalism such that teachers actively seek data regarding student achievement to inform their instruction.

Aspiring Leaders

According to a 2000 study entitled, The New Look in Principal Preparation Programs, disappointment in traditional and theory-based preparation programs, coupled with the public demand for increased expertise in the principalship, has produced a wave of new and redesigned principal preparation programs. The study found that atypical principal preparation programs incorporate the following components: entrance requirements aligned with the demands of the principalship, are built around a cohort model, clear performance-based standards, opportunities for individualization for each aspiring principal, an assessment of skills, emphasis of reflective practice, and continuous program review with input from practitioners.
Petzko (2004) asserted:

“The capacity to improve schools depends on the quality and effectiveness of the leaders in each school. The national outcry for school improvement, the anticipated retirement rate of current principals, and the increased accountability of the position demand that comprehensive professional support systems be designed and implemented for all stages of the principalship.” (p.21)

A 2010 Rainwater Leadership Alliance study of atypical principal/school leader preparation programs across the country revealed similar design elements:

  • Clear set of skills, knowledge, and dispositions that a principal must have in order to drive high levels of student achievement for all children.
  • Rely on strategic, proactive, and targeted recruiting strategies to ensure that they have strong candidate pools and pipeline programs from which they can select candidates most likely to thrive in their programs and grow into effective principals.
  • Are highly selective and establish clear criteria and rigorous processes to evaluate applicants’ disposition, skills and knowledge. Candidates are required to demonstrate their skills through experiential events to evaluate whether candidates’ behaviors and actions match their stated beliefs.
  • Believe that training and development need to be experience, giving trainees authentic opportunities to lead, make mistakes, and grow. This includes the coordination of coursework, school-based residencies, on-going assessment, coaching and feedback.
  • On-going support for new leaders to help them grow on the job is essential to drive school-wide improvements that lead to improved student achievement results.
  • A continual use of data to assess the effectiveness of their programs and the quality of the work of the principal on the school campus.

There is ample research to support the need to reconfigure and redesign principal preparation, and that existing leadership preparation programs are in dire need of improvement (Hale & Moorman, 2003). To that end, TranscEnDence Educational Partners aims to provide a three-year Aspiring Leadership Academy aimed at providing a pipeline of leaders trained in best practices around leading whole school reform.

Yearly Objectives and Program Elements

Year 1 – The objective of Year 1 is for Fellows to build instructional leadership and anchor this learning in the real world. The crucial elements of year one in the academy are a cohort structure and ongoing coaching for each fellow by a seasoned Executive Coach. Academy Fellows begin with an intensive monthly development sessions delivered by highly-skilled practitioners and national leadership experts. Over the course of the school year, Fellows remain in their current roles while having opportunities to shadow campus leaders and conduct Action Residency that provides practical experience to build upon training topics.

The Residency includes both shadowing and a research project that benefits the host school and expands and solidifies the Fellows’ understanding of school leadership in action. Fellows also meet one day and one evening per month as a cohort to continue their development as instructional leaders and to advance their action research. In Year 1, Fellows are assigned individual Executive Coach/Mentor for ongoing support, advice and reinforcement. Year 1 culminates with a two-week early summer placement with a corporate partner that exposes Fellows to applicable business practices.

Year 2 – The objective of Year 2 is to put the skills learned in Year 1 into practice by assuming a more prevalent leadership role in a school based on a readiness to do so. Following an intensive 2-week summer planning session to prepare Fellows for their next assignments, members of the cohort are employed as principals or in other leadership positions in schools. Intensive support during the early years as a school leader is crucial. The executive coaching relationship continues with weekly coaching and peer support is continued and expanded with regular, facilitated monthly cohort sessions. Fellows are expected to stay in their assigned school for at least three years to measure impact and provide leadership continuity across the district.

Year 3 – The objective of Year 3 is to solidify leadership skills and to build a campus leadership team, in order to build school stability through succession planning. The executive coaching relationship continues in Year 3 and is expanded to include all of the members of the school’s leadership team. Facilitated sessions with school teams reinforce the leadership skills of the principal and build school-wide capacity focused on instruction.