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Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership July 21, 2016

The 7 Qualities of Learning-Centered Leadership

A revolution is taking place in school leadership. New policies call for higher academic standards and accountability. So-called “accountability systems” include more methods to develop and monitor school change. Researchers have joined the fray, adding their opinions about the reinvention of instructional leadership in schools.

More focus on student results leads to local changes aligned with the performance goals of the educational system. The general presumption is that these changes will come automatically, since public reporting of school outcomes creates pressure for reform. The development of direct incentives that yield innovation, efficiency, and solutions to performance problems will also be a source of change.

Accountability systems force the development of standards required for improved instructional and assessment practices. They also act as incentives for participation in the process. This simple logic of an accountability system is compelling, providing an irresistible rationale for educational reform.

The recent debate in the U.S. on the legitimacy of using standardized tests to gauge student learning has led to new leadership efforts and spending to help schools achieve better test scores. These efforts have pressured new instructional leadership, characterized by school analysts, researchers, and school leaders focusing on data in their decision-making. This new instructional paradigm was envisioned earlier in research.

This new instructional style has also been called “learning-centered” leadership. It began with a push by state education leaders to process student data from available achievement tests. Private companies enjoyed financial benefits, selling data reporting systems to schools to help them sort the data. State education leaders hired consultants, who created data analysis workshops and data retreats to instruct school leaders on effective data use. School leaders adopted new school reform plans and curricula coordinated with state learning standards, resulting in far-reaching changes in student learning. Positive results only happened when practitioners were willing to change their ways and conform to the new standards.

The biggest problem in data-driven decision-making is the implementation of new accountability practices. Most schools already had active, working internal accountability systems. Schools already made decisions based on data, such as class attendance, test scores, student discipline, available budgets, and teacher reputations. Administrative reliance on these old internal accountability systems has caused the most resistance to reforms in school instructional practice.

To use data to improve student performance, leaders need to factor in external accountability instead of traditional methods. This new model improves on traditional practices such as teacher evaluation, professional development, curriculum design, and building new cultures of learning. Older techniques will have to be changed to address the challenges of contemporary schools.

Practical systems rely on two-way information flow, connecting classroom practice with external accountability measures. This requires stronger links between teaching and leadership, teacher collaboration, learning matched with current instructional goals, and close monitoring of instructional outcomes. To succeed here, the leader must assist students in taking tests, avoid favoring test preparation over learning, and justify instructional practices changes to the community.

Here are seven factors to consider when doing this:

Data Acquisition: Data acquisition refers to the processes of seeking, collecting, and preparing useful information for teaching and learning activities. The data gathered and processed at this stage comes from student test scores. However, other fields of information are needed to inform teaching and learning. Data storage is a vital element of data acquisition. There is a need to use local data systems, since the NCLB Act, when it was active, required certain information on student performance. Schools have created a retail demand for data storage and data analysis products.

Data Reflection: Data reflection is the manipulation of student learning data toward improved teaching and learning practices. DDIS data reflection is a structured opportunity for both teachers and leaders to make useful sense of data, rather than guessing “what works.”Data reflection can be done at a school-wide level, grade level, or even in subject-area meetings. Problem framing is a vital element of data reflection. This involves active thought on how data can improve outcomes, leading to a plan of action.
Program Alignment: This involves matching the school’s instructional program to the content and performance standards in classrooms. Program alignment is an essential part of planning for instructional leadership, probably the most sensitive part of DDIS, in order to influence the outcome of the new policies.
Program Design: It is through program design that the school’s policies, plans, and procedures are defined in such a manner that reported problems are addressed. Curricula, student service programs, and instructional strategies are modified to improve student learning. Program design also involves the inspection of the school’s access to budgets and grants, for starting and maintaining a new program.
Formative Feedback: Feedback is always a crucial in the adoption of new strategies. The DDIS model creates a continuous and timely flow of information, designed to improve student outcomes. This feedback is different from data acquisition and reflection. It applies to information gathered to measure the school’s progress measured in terms of student performance.
Test Preparation: This last part of the DDIS model consists of activities designed to assess, motivate, and develop student academic abilities, as well as strategies to improve performance on state and district assessment tests. Test preparation covers a wide range of issues, such as test formats, testing skills, and addressing weak areas, as well as test preparation.“Teaching to the test” refers to study content, called “formulaic instruction.” It is teaching students topics that are tested, without regard to holistic learning. Leaders in schools across the U.S. have changed multiple aspects of school life to gear their instructional programs toward test content. Schools where the DDIS mode was put into action didn’t narrow their curriculum to the test content. The researchers noticed instead that, in schools with DDIS systems, there were rich instructional systems designed to help students meet state exam standards.

A DDIS system of instructional leadership is insightful, innovative, and results-oriented. It increases precision in predicting student outcomes and developing key areas of study relevant to academic improvement.

Improvements and changes in instructional leadership have kept it relevant, even in the face of other leadership styles. It is accepted that schools must practice some level of instructional leadership. Instructional leadership remains a crucial aspect of the school setting.

Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership, list, Matthew Lynch July 17, 2016

3 Reasons Why School Districts Should Revitalize Underperforming Schools

As we’re still working with an ever-growing achievement gap, it’s worth considering who should be the key players in reforming our lowest-performing schools. School districts need to take some of the lead in this. Let’s look at why:

School districts have the power to emerge from bureaucracy and make a true difference.

There are many questions and critical issues facing schools as districts evolve from their bureaucratic roots. These questions include the roles that should be kept at the district level, those that should be eliminated, or those that should be passed on to others. Districts also have to look at new functions they may wish to take on and the capabilities needed to assume these functions. At least initially, they will need to determine whether decisions should be made at district level, school level, or elsewhere.

Districts have the power to reach out.

There is also support for districts to take action to discover common interests between schools and the community, through ongoing outreach. Districts need to find ways for people to meet and discuss how to further common interests and work on them cooperatively in order to break down barriers. This type of outreach empowers families and communities, making them useful assets to school systems. Building relationships within the education system and holding open conversations are excellent ways to foster engagement.

Districts are familiar with the unique challenges of their schools.

In the United States, there are low levels of achievement among students from low-income backgrounds and students of color. This is in contrast to the fact that students in educationally supportive states and those from advantaged backgrounds easily rival students from across the world. To put this into context, nine year-olds from White, advantaged backgrounds read as well as thirteen-year-old Black and Hispanic students. In addition, even though funding has increased, it has done so unequally and the achievement gap has grown.

Typically, schools that serve a large number of “minority” students face big issues, which put them at a disadvantage when compared to other schools. They have to deal with lower budgets, larger classes, and often less qualified teachers and school leaders. The effect of this has been to create an “educational debt” that negatively affects the students in these communities. Major efforts are needed to address this issue. Recruiting great teachers is important, but it is not the whole answer. Systemic elements are needed to support the work of talented educators. It is not the people who are at fault: it is the system that needs an overhaul.

As Ted Sizer once put it, “The people are better than the system.” We have come a long way in understanding how to create more effective school leaders and build a national commitment to educational leadership. However, we are not there yet. We need leadership to forge all of the various elements of school reform today into well-functioning systems that make sense for those working hard to achieve results for students.

Click here to read all our posts concerning the Achievement Gap.

Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership, Policy & Reform June 27, 2016

Private Schools and the Law: Tips for Private School Administrators

Note: The following guest post was by Anthony Ashton, litigation partner at the law firm of DLA Piper LLP (US) in the Baltimore office. He conducts annual trainings for educators and administrations and regularly advises them on legal matters. He has served on the Boards of multiple schools, and is a former teacher and guidance counselor. Contact information: [email protected]

Whether the job title is Principal, Headmaster, Head of School, or Dean, the top administrator of a private primary or secondary school is effectively the CEO of a company. CEOs of most successful companies are aware of the laws that apply to their businesses, and budget annually for legal services. A smart CEO regularly consults with the company’s in-house general counsel or what is effectively outside general counsel. Even small private schools typically have multimillion dollar annual budgets. Despite this, many schools have exactly $0 built into their budgets for legal services. Because numerous and varied laws apply to, and have the potential for devastating effects on schools, presumably, this missing budgetary item is due to a failure to appreciate the need for, and usefulness of, competent legal advice, rather than apathy for the law. This article will explain why best practices include annual training for faculty, staff, and administration on key legal topics, and regular access to legal advice.

At its core, education is a service industry. Unlike other service companies, schools have two subsets of clientele, parents and students, who have divergent legal obligations, legal rights, and legal standards of behavior. For example, although they are not the recipients of the services provided by schools, parents are contractually obligated to pay tuition. Despite the fact that students have no obligation to pay tuition, schools owe a legal duty to students to ensure students’ safety while on school grounds or at school-related activities.

Tip One: Annual Risk Management Training

A school can breach this duty by failing to protect a student from harm caused by school employees, fellow students, and even the student herself. Although the law requires adults to protect themselves by acting as reasonably prudent persons, children are required only to act as reasonable persons of their age would act. In short, children are allowed to behave as children. This lowered standard of care also applies to how children interact with one another. It is incumbent upon school personnel to act in a manner that reduces the risk to students and, in turn, the school’s potential liability. Consequently, risk management training should be a part of school personnel’s annual training, and should occur as close as possible to the beginning of each school year. Assuming a school has an attorney on retainer, this should be included in the legal services provided. The adage “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” is especially true in the school setting. It is easy to criticize actions after an injury or complaint from a parent. The goal is to avoid such injuries and complaints. Training faculty, staff, and administrators to conduct a risk/benefit analysis (consider the best and worst probable outcomes) before each interaction with children provides great protection for the students and, as a result, the institution.

Tip Two: Annual Training Regarding State Reporting Obligations

Because many states have reporting obligations related to suspected child abuse and neglect, a school may breach the legal duty to a student by failing to protect a student from harm that takes place outside of school and unrelated to school activities. Reporting obligations may require school personnel to report suspected abuse from parents or other household members. In short, the school may be obligated to protect a member of one group of its clientele from a member of the other group of its clientele. Reporting suspected abuse may result in embarrassment to, and anger from, the person ultimately responsible for paying tuition and determining whether the student remains enrolled at the school. Thus, there is an inherent conflict of interest. The law, however, does not care about this conflict. Next, there may be reluctance to report because abuse subjectively may be associated with lower income, less educated families, rather than the population served by the school. The law, however, does not care about the socio-economic background of the child or suspected abuser. A firm understanding of the legal reporting obligations is a must, and training on this topic should take place annually.

Tip Three: Have a Copy of Child Custody and Visitation Court Orders

Schools also may be drawn into disputes between feuding parents. Divorced or divorcing parents may argue as to who is permitted to perform child pick-ups, agree to fieldtrips, or make other educational decisions. As a consequence, the school may be caught in the middle of two members of one group of clientele. It is important that schools: (1) know whether there is a court order regarding custody and visitation; and (2) be able to understand the legalities of any such order. Again, the best practice would be to have an outside counsel on retainer to explain the implications of these court orders. Court orders will typically set forth if one parent has primary custody or the parents have shared custody, who may make educational decisions, who is responsible for paying tuition, etc. By being able to knowledgably refer to a court order, school personnel potentially can avoid being intimidated by parents seeking to take actions contrary to the court order. A typical example of such an action involves Parent A attempting to deny Parent B visitation or custody rights because Parent B is delinquent in spousal or child support. Parent A may instruct the school not to allow Parent B to pick up the child from school. The school, however, has no authority to stop a parent from acting in accordance with a court order.

Tip Four: Annual Sexual Harassment Training

As with all service industry companies, schools are labor intensive. Accordingly, sexual harassment training for all employees related to how they interact with each other should take place on an annual basis. In addition, each school should have a written policy addressing the protocol for reporting, investigating, and handling allegations of harassment. In recent years, the media and, consequently, the public at large has become enthralled with student-teacher sex scandals. Accordingly, there should be annual training related to inappropriate interaction with students. Training should include guidelines regarding dealings with students in person, via telecommunications devices, and social networks. School personnel should avoid being placed in any situation where they have to deny wrongdoing, and explain their actions. School personnel must be hyper-vigilant in ensuring, not only that there is no improper interaction, but that there is not even the appearance of such. The cardinal rule should be: “perception is just as important as reality”.

Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership, Matthew Lynch June 11, 2016

Social Constructivism and Leadership

While most current literature is directed toward the use of social constructivism in educational organizations, it can be used by leaders of organizations both inside and outside of the educational sphere to bring about growth and communication. One example of this is in the use of metaphors to further the understanding of followers, which allows them to build their own knowledge base as individual learners, and adapt to new and expanding concepts.

Metaphors are a force through which people create meaning. This is done by using one element of experience to understand another. Metaphors in this sense include anything symbolic to a person, which can be used to better their understanding and enable them acquire new ideas or concepts.

The active use of metaphors can also help the leader move the organization toward social constructivism. Through the constructive use of language, the leader can explore the communication practices of followers and their individual roles in the building of meaning, through the process of social interaction.

Individuals in the organization make sense of things when they communicate; that communication is viewed in retrospect, sense is made out of it, and the meaning is kept as knowledge and used to achieve organizational effectiveness. The brain normally forms thoughts as outlines, prototypes, conceptual metaphors, conceptual frames, and conceptual blends. As a result, the thinking process is not just the systematic use of symbols; it is the brain’s process.

People find it hard to identify examples of rational practices within the organization, find rational practices that have worked out as well as predicted, or feel that the existing rational practices explain what goes on in the organization. Making the connection between organizational structure and its processes is done through process leadership, which is defined as that earned by any member of an organization to lead the organization or its parts forward.

Metaphors can facilitate change by providing a bridge from what followers are familiar with to the vision of the leader. They are particularly useful because they represent the existing organizational view as seen by individuals within the organization. Discovering the views of followers will help leaders learn which policies and facets of the organization are seen in a negative way. Armed with this information, all stakeholders can compromise and work together toward building an organization that meets their shared expectations.

Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership, Matthew Lynch June 10, 2016

The Seven Principles of Sustainable Leadership

The main responsibility that all education leaders have created a learning system that engages students intellectually, emotionally, and socially. Sustainable leadership therefore goes beyond the temporary gains in achievement scores to create long-lasting, meaningful improvements in learning processes. Let us look at the particular principles that define sustainable leadership:

1. Sustainable Leadership Lasts

One of the major characteristics of sustainable leadership is that it involves planning and preparing for succession – not just as an afterthought, but from the first day of the school leader’s appointment. Sustainable leadership requires that leaders pay serious attention to leadership succession. This can be achieved through grooming successors for them to continue with reforms, and keeping successful leaders in schools much longer, especially if they are making great strides in promoting learning. It also involves resisting the urge to search for “irreplaceable charismatic heroes” to become the saviors of schools, including succession in all district and school improvement plans, and slowing the rate of principal turnover.

2. Sustainable Leadership Spreads

A suitable way for leaders to leave a lasting legacy in their schools is to ensure that they share and help develop their vision with other school actors. Leadership succession in this sense therefore means more than grooming one’s successor. It actually means distributing leadership throughout the school through its professional community so that others can carry the torch of school improvement after the current principal is gone.
Sustainable leadership cannot just be the responsibility of one person. The school is a highly complex institution, and no one leader can control everything without assistance. In summary, sustainable leadership is and must be a shared responsibility, if it is to be carried out with success.

3. Sustainable Leadership Is Socially Just

Another aspect of sustainable leadership is that it aims to benefit all students and schools. Sustainable leadership is conscious of the fact that the magnet, lighthouse, and charter schools and their leaders effect surrounding schools. It is also sensitive to privileged communities “poaching” from the local leadership pool. Sustainable leadership recognizes and takes full responsibility for the fact that schools affect each other in interlinked webs of mutual influence. In this aspect, and in knowing the above facts, sustainability is tied to social justice.

Sustainable leadership is not just about maintaining improvement in one’s own school,. School leaders who truly care about sustainability should accept responsibility for the schools and students and be aware that their actions have an effect on the wider environment.

4. Sustainable Leadership Is Resourceful

The systems of sustainable leadership provide certain intrinsic rewards while at the same time offering external incentives that attract, motivate, and retain the best and brightest in the leadership pool. These systems provide time and opportunity for school leaders to network, support, and learn from one another, while at the same time coaching and mentoring their successors. Sustainable leadership carefully utilizes its resources to develop the talents of its educators, instead of lavishing rewards on selected proven leaders. The systems of sustainable leadership take care of leaders while encouraging them to take care of themselves. Eventually, leadership is only sustainable when it sustains the leaders themselves.

5. Sustainable Leadership Promotes Diversity

Leaders who promote sustainability prepare and recreate environments that stimulate continuous improvement on a broad level. They enable people to adapt and prosper in increasingly complex environments by learning from each other’s diverse practices. Most innovative schools create and promote this diversity.
Sustainable leadership does not impose standardized templates on entire communities.

6. Sustainable Leadership Is Activist

Standardization has increased the problems that traditional schools had. Moreover, formerly innovative schools have lost their edge. In an unhelpful environment, sustainable leadership must include some sort of activism. Leaders must be willing to pursue improvement for their schools, even if it means being labeled as difficult.

7. Systems Must Support Sustainable Leadership

Most inspiring school leaders do more than manage change – they actively pursue and model a form of sustainable leadership. The measure of developing sustainability is the commitment to and protection of deep learning in schools by attempting to ensure that school improvements last over time, especially after the charismatic leaders have left. by distributing leadership and responsibility, considering the impact of their leadership on schools and communities in their neighborhood, avoiding stress and burnout, promoting and bringing about diverse approaches to school reform , and activism, leaders develop sustainability.

While most school leaders want to achieve the goals that matter and inspire others so as to leave a lasting legacy, they are often not responsible for their school’s failure. Most of the blame rests with the systems in which they lead. To institute change that matters, spreads, and lasts, we must ensure that the systems in which leaders work make sustainability a priority.

Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Teachers June 9, 2016

Reforming K-12 Education: How the Activists are Doing It

By Matthew Lynch

Activism when it comes to public K-12 education is flourishing. Laws regarding K-12 education are no longer simply handed down and enforced without pushback – student, parents, teachers and outside activists have a larger voice than ever when it comes to the decisions impacting the future of their public schools.

After some thought, I came up with the most impactful things (in no particular order) that education activists have done in the past few years when it comes to K-12 education:

Student-driven change. When it comes to the paths of their educations, K-12 public school students are standing up for their rights more than ever before and empowering positive changes in their learning experiences. In April, over 100 Chicago Public Schools students made news when they skipped their standardized testing to protest the tests instead. Speaking to the press, one CPS student said that the protest was designed to draw attention to the fact that “standardized testing should not decide the future of our schools and students.” Student-led zombie flash mobs took place in front of the Philadelphia School District headquarters to oppose the closing of public schools in the city. Hoards of students in other cities like Denver, Providence and Philadelphia followed suit and spoke out against the advance of high-stakes testing and school closing. They rallied together and marched relentlessly to prove their strong dislike against standardized testing – and the belief the effects are not a true measure of success in the real world. While there may have been some parental encouragement behind the scenes, these students appeared to act alone in their pursuit of a better public school learning experience.
Parents as reformers. In California, the parent-led “trigger movement” made waves as parents demanded more from failing public schools. Dessert Springs Elementary School in Adelanto is an example of a school that was transformed from a consistently failing school (students had reading scores in the bottom 10 percent of the state) to a public charter that better served its student body – all because parents took a stand and demanded the change. The Lone Star State had some big news this year when a coalition led by parents was successful in petitioning the state to reduce by two-thirds the number of tests required to graduate high school. In 2011, the state required at least 15 high-stakes tests on students prior to earning their diploma. Two years of hard work later, the Texas legislature passed an education bill reducing the number of tests to five.

Activists stepping up. During 2013, civil rights advocates found an audience with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. In January, these public-school supporters gathered in DC to discuss their grievances to the Department of Education. The Journey for Justice came as Chicago was on the cusp of closing around 50 schools, and New York and Philadelphia had voted to close more than 20 each. These activists had every right to speak up – research shows that the closing of public schools in urban areas has the biggest negative effect on Latino and Black students. Mass school closures often shake up communicates and disrupt children’s learning, among other effects on displaced students. Perhaps the biggest public school activism success story for 2013 was the teacher union-led Scrap the Map in Seattle. After months of protesting Washington’s mandatory MAP standardized testing at Garfield High School, a decision was made to make the test optional for students throughout the state. In 2013, public school activists came out en masse and took to their local, state and federal legislators to protest detrimental closings and other public school legislation.

Pushing for increased funding. In 2013, activists were vocal about the need for stronger programs in science, technology, engineering and math. Thankfully, President Obama listened. His 2014 budget includes $3.1 billion in investments in federal STEM programs – an increase of nearly 7 percent over the budget of just two years ago. Of that total, $80 million is intended to recruit 100,000 well-qualified educators and another $35 million is earmarked for the launch of a pilot STEM Master Teacher Corps. The rest of the money will go to supporting undergraduate STEM education programs and investment in breakthrough research on the way STEM subjects are best taught to modern learners. At the urging of advisors and activists, the president realized that demand for STEM-related jobs is there and the money allocated to STEM learning initiatives will better prepare today’s students for the worldwide workforce.

Supporting Race to the Top. Over the last 2 years, education activists have continued to support the president’s incentive-based Race to the Top program, which was launched in 2012 and it rewards states that are willing to reform their education models to best adapt to modern student learning needs. The Race to the Top initiative has raised standards for learning to reflect a push toward college and career readiness. Each year, the program gives even more in federal funding to states that prepare plans for reforming their student offerings and 2013 was a big year for it. To date, the program has allocated more than $4 billion among 19 states that have shared well-developed plans to improve learning standards, teacher effectiveness and struggling schools. The states that have been granted the funds represent 42 percent of all low-income students in the nation – making the initiative an effective way to close the achievement gap and equalize funding in areas where schools may struggle based on their geographical location.

Lobbying for college affordability. College affordability activists urged the president to make earning a college education more affordable for all Americans and convinced him that this will impact future K-12 classrooms. In August 2013, the President announced plans to assign a ratings systems to colleges by the 2015 school year that takes items like tuition, graduation rate, debt and earnings ratios of graduates and percentage of low-income students who attend into consideration. The grand plan? To base the amount of federal financial aid colleges receive on the rankings system by 2018. The overall principle is not to call out colleges but rather to make them more accountable to students, and to ensure that every American with college degree aspirations has the actual means to make it happen. Long term, this will impact the quality of teachers in the classrooms, particularly in urban settings where research has shown that the most effective teachers are generally those who come from the same background. More lower-income college students earning degrees will have a positive impact on the entire education system and the college scorecard initiative is a step in that direction.

What would you add to my list?

photo credit: Steve Rhodes via photopin cc

Click here to read all our posts concerning the Achievement Gap.

Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership, Matthew Lynch April 21, 2016

Entrepreneurial Leadership: What Schools Can Learn from Business Leaders

The U.S. education system is becoming increasingly modernized. Efforts in the business world to improve leadership were ignored by school administrators for a long time, but this is beginning to change.. Researchers are scrambling to propose models that would steer the education sector to new heights. Most of the efforts to improve leadership have sprung from the fact that now, more than ever, there is increasing pressure on school leaders from the government, communities, and various highly placed observers, all of whom are concerned about the state of education in America. This is especially true in light of reports that have found American education lacking when compared with other developed countries.

One of the new ventures being considered as a leadership solution is entrepreneurial leadership. One aspect of entrepreneurs that stands out is their positive influence on creativity and economic growth, both of which are commodities in high demand globally. School leaders can draw valuable lessons from entrepreneurs when it comes to being innovative, motivated, and goal-oriented.

Many studies have been dedicated to entrepreneurial leadership in the business sense, especially for small enterprises, but few have linked it to school leadership. Perhaps this is due to the fact that school leadership has traditionally been seen as separate, likely because the success of a school is not measured in dollars. However, among many other similarities, schools and businesses share an emphasis on obvious, measurable results.

The entrepreneur’s drive has been the main focus of many research studies. Schumpeter describes this drive as “the will to conquer,” “the dream and the will to found a private kingdom,” and “the joy of creating and of getting things done.” While these developments accurately describe an entrepreneur’s desire to succeed, they do not explain where the so-called “Schumpeterian entrepreneurial endowments” come from. This will be the basis for our focus on entrepreneurial leadership.

Recently, researchers have recognized that entrepreneurs do not successfully build new ventures without possessing effective leadership behavior traits. A good example of this is the requirement that business founders create a vision for their firm, and inspire or influence others to see and understand their dreams. This is a good trait for attracting employees and acquiring the necessary resources for growing their ventures.

Entrepreneurs have to set the initial goals in a way that rewards workers. They need to show leadership because they are founders of their ventures; there are no established standard operating procedures or tried and true strategies that they can fall back on when starting from scratch. This is the main difference between entrepreneurs and corporate managers, since the latter often have more well-defined goals, objectives, structures, and work procedures to guide them. This may be an advantage to entrepreneurs, since the problem of substitutes and/or blockers of leadership that are usually associated with the larger and more established organizations are less of an issue.

Though the importance of leadership in entrepreneurship has been established, there has been a lack of research on the forms of leadership behavior that are required, and which prove most effective. Additionally, much of the entrepreneurship literature on this kind of leadership has been one-sided, focusing mainly on empowering leadership behaviors. The failure to include the conditions caused by other behaviors, such as directive leadership, may be harmful to any entrepreneur. More specific research is needed to explore the benefits of entrepreneurial leadership for schools; after all, an educational breakthrough could be just around the corner.

Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership, Matthew Lynch, Policy & Reform April 19, 2016

Implementing and Sustaining School Reform

It is obviously hard to institute sustainable school reform when much of the reform undertaken in schools is the result of constant policymaking and changes mandated by incoming district administrations or temporary measures. Sustainability does, though, require changes to happen, as a “lack of change” speaks more of conservatism than reform. Essentially, sustainability means that improvements should be ongoing.

The evolution of transportation provides an instructive example. Transportation did not stop with the invention of the wheel. In the intervening centuries, transportation mediums were being developed, refined, and improved upon until they evolved into the industry we know today. The process has not stopped, nor should it. Innovation is always taking place, which means improvements are occurring. Our schools should emulate this type of process—school improvement should never end.

Let us consider five key points to sustaining school reform. The first of these is a substantial level of commitment, which stems from the belief that change is possible. There is, in fact, a great deal of power to be found in belief. Belief is what gives disadvantaged people the will to try to succeed and minorities the will to prosper. Conversely, the lack of belief can impede the success of reform efforts, regardless of how promising the proposed content of the reform may be.

If the will is not there, reform will not happen. Belief is just as important in school reform as in any other areas of life. If support, belief, and commitment are missing, then schools can paper over the gaps in the short term, but without the commitment of staff and faculty, the reforms lack stability. The likelihood of successful reform is, therefore, dependent on faculty and staff members embracing the implementation process of reform and sticking to it.

Reforms that originate outside of schools (e.g., reforms initiated at the district level) are by no means doomed to fail. Even so, district or other administrators need to make special efforts to assist teachers and other school staff in developing a feeling of ownership of the project in order to foster commitment and a belief in the efficacy of the reform.

Sustainable reform depends on the development of capacity. As our knowledge of cognitive science grows, we learn more about the ways individuals take in and process information. This knowledge has led to greater focus on how effective learning environments are built. Schools and districts are somewhat restricted in how they operate due to political, financial, and practical concerns, but they can still use their increasing knowledge to develop practices relevant to student learning needs and to structure learning environments to more effectively support these needs.

One absolutely vital aspect needed to sustain school reform is the time to accomplish it. It is a commonly reported issue that one of the most challenging issues schools and districts face is the need for time to plan and implement reform that would lead to improvements. No matter how successful the leadership of a school happens to be, leaders only have the same number of hours in a day as everyone else. Nonetheless, they likely have more demands on their time, which places them under pressure to maximize how their overcommitted time is used.

This issue often separates effective from ineffective leaders: the best ones will make much better use of their time, and have more control over it. Naturally, they will still come up against obstacles they can’t change, but they also have strict time management processes and will constantly evaluate how effective they have been in their use of time.

Sometimes the result of leader’s evaluation of time use will help them realize they are stretched too thinly. Effective leaders are able to delegate some of their leadership responsibilities to other staff members who can perform those functions with support. They also make sure that all the activities they undertake – particularly those relating to reform – will be structured around teaching and learning. Effective leaders will also make sure that their processes are efficient and that their actions will always work to further the goals of the school.

The actions of effective leaders may leave some staff or stakeholders feeling a little neglected or angry that they have not been given sufficient time with their leader. Ultimately, however, nothing comes without a cost, and it’s a case of weighing the benefits of spending time on reform against the costs of not focusing on other duties. The aim is to minimize the cost of actions while maximizing their benefit. This means that good planning and implementation are vital in order to manage time effectively.

Matthew Lynch published in Matthew Lynch, Policy & Reform April 15, 2016

Still a Stretch: Why Race to the Top Spending is Stunted

One of the education issues that President Obama has been the most vocal in reforming is America’s need to lead the world in number of college graduates. His administration’s Race to the Top initiative has already earmarked $4 billion for 19 states (serving 22 million K-12 students) to reform public education programs to improve technology, raise teacher accountability and heighten learning standards. Another 34 states have modified their laws to better reach these goals, and 48 states total have developed career and college-ready standards.

It all sounds good in a condensed summary, but upon closer review, Race to the Top has not had the intended impact. As the grant period comes to a close this summer, it is clear that reform has fallen short – particularly when it comes to student performance. A few areas that have not lived up to Race to the Top goals include:

College enrollment. While graduation rates are above target, the number of high school graduates enrolling in college or some other form of post-secondary learning has actually decreased. Proficiency on standardized testing nationwide has not risen as quickly as promised, either. There are exceptions, of course. North Carolina secured $400 million in 2010 to be used to advance public education through technology, teacher training and evaluation, changes in classroom standards and a focus on low-performing schools. The state still has about 25 million unspent dollars of the grant and is asking to extend the program by one more year. In 2013, the U.S. department of Education praised N.C’s progress.

Unused vouchers. In order to attract better teachers, Race to the Top grants are allowed to be used for vouchers created to lure high-performing teachers to low-performing schools. These vouchers have a relative amount of freedom-for-use attached, with vouchers being allowed to pay students loans, tuition, housing and other options. Unfortunately, many of these vouchers has gone unused by the districts. In 2012, only 35 of 106 schools eligible to receive bonuses for improved student performance received the extra $1,500 per teacher.

Poverty still too big a player. Many of the states receiving funding were targeted that way because of higher-than-average low-income students, or those living in poverty conditions that impacted their educations. The fact that Race to the Top does not address overemphasis on standardized testing and teacher accountability is a problem, according to people like Elaine Weiss of Broader, Bolder Approach to Education. Weiss’ group calls for better focus on poverty and the issues that accompany it, especially in urban classrooms, and believes that without that specialized attention in Race to the Top grants, the true problem of K-12 Americans becoming college graduates will never be addressed.

To be fair, the biggest grant-funded Race to the Top changes are largely unseen – at least so far. They are invisible to the general public. Some things are simply not cut-and-dry, or able to be seen in the short term. Some of the grant money that has been distributed has paid for summer institutes for teachers and principals where they were trained in the new Common Core standards.

Technology improvements like building Cloud infrastructures are still in infancy and have not truly been realized just yet. It is also too soon to see what positive changes recruiting high-quality personnel will have. In North Carolina, principals at underperforming schools have been replaced with better candidates to the tune of 87 percent. Race to the Top is not a failure; it has just not turned out to be the golden child of promise of its intention.

As the grant period comes to a close, it will be interesting to see if these issues are debugged and if more money is allocated.

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Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Teachers April 13, 2016

Enriching history lessons with visualizations

**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.**

A guest post by Patrick R. Potyondy

Let’s face it: Harry Potter is awesome. But my major sticking point, the thing that just nettles me each and every time I revisit the books (and I revisit them more often than I’d like to admit), is when Hermione and the gang visit “History of Magic.” Their “teacher” (scare quotes intentional) is so boring, he’s actually dead. He didn’t even notice he died! And he just continues to drone on and on and on and, well, you get the idea.

He represents, for better or worse, the lecture method of instruction. The students are vessels; his job is to fill them up with “knowledge.” Perhaps J.K. Rowling had such a teacher in her primary school days. Perhaps she just thought he was a fun character to write. In any case, we must continue to move beyond the lecture method of teaching history. We must embrace not just digital tools but visualizations to make students engaged.

There is little doubt that writing still dominates academic history. Graduate students must write theses and dissertations primarily presented in text format. Pictures, maps, and other visualizations can certainly be part of the whole, but these are peripheral characters to the star of the play—an original amount of text. Text is great as far as it goes. And as far as it goes is too often a miniscule number of other academic specialists.

But the visual is a different medium from text. And it’s one we’re increasingly working with. David Staley points out as much in Computers, Visualization, and History. Digital visualization, he writes, can be a “main carrier of the meaningful information.”

Visualizations, like maps, communicate information differently—and often more effectively—than text, as seen in this classic example: Harry Beck’s 1933 London Underground map.]

The public—and here I include students in this group—seem to wish to find that meaning and information through historical visualizations as much as, even more so, than text alone. Twitter accounts featuring “history in pictures” amass millions of followers. Slate’s popular “Vault” blog features visuals of archival finds that are a mix of the visual and textual. While scholarly historians might decry such fads, is it useful to simply lambast them, or is it more constructive to meet the public halfway, to help provide meaning and context?

A skilled teacher can make her or his lecture on the cruelties of enslavement riveting, but what would a narrative look like that presented itself primarily through pictures, maps, and graphs look like? It is one thing to stoically describe a whipping or lynching, quite another to view photographs of these events. If one aim of studying history is to better understand humanity, we’re only providing a partial view without engaging visualizations to their fullest and expanding extent.

Luckily for teachers, public digital historians have produced (and continue to) a number of excellent visual tools that students can engage with. One of my all-time favorite projects is “Hollow: An Interactive Documentary” found at http://hollowdocumentary.com/. While the phrase can be used too often, this truly is a tour de force. It is interactive and utilizes not only visuals but audio, too. It is heartbreaking yet hopeful. Through it, we connect with the people and their stories. We empathize. We understand. It presents a large amount of factual information, but in an engaging and thoughtful way.

An image from the Hollow: An Interactive Documentary

Another project I love—a book in fact—that illustrates the power of visual history is Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton’s Cartographies of Time. Asking “What does history look like?” the authors trace graphic representations of history from the 15^th century forward. They remind us that only recently have academics made history into a primarily textual discipline.

Visuals have long incorporated circles and tress (and text) to depict time and space as seen here in Girolamo’s Andrea Martignoni’s “Historical map of Italy” (Spiegazione della carta istorica dell’Italia), 1721. As seen in Cartographies of Time.

Students can get in on the act, too, as active participants and not only as more passive viewers. The research paper has long been a staple of high school and college history courses. It teaches skills worth knowing. But why not add in an assignment around presenting a narrative and argument principally through visual materials? Students could craft their own projects using primary and secondary sources, and thus develop visual, organizational, research, and argumentative skills all at once.

First, an example of the type of PowerPoint slide seen all too often in teaching. Can it capture the visual reality of enslavement—the effects of whipping or the gendered violence as seen in 12 Years a Slave?

The iMovie app is only one application of many that can be used by history classes to produce projects (WeVideo and Meograph are just two others). As part of a research project (not just a paper), students can utilize a number of online archival sources and libraries for primary source material as they craft historical narratives that utilize textual, audio, and visual elements. For an example of what iMovie can do, just check out some awesome projects which were produced by an undergraduate U.S. history course at Ohio State University as taught by Professor Lilia Fernandez.

Hopefully it’s been apparent that I’m not saying visuals should replace text. Books remain magical things in and of themselves, often without incorporating hardly any visuals at all. I only suggest that maybe it’s time we nudge text a little further to one side, to share the stage with pictures, graphs, maps, film, graphic novels, and any other number of visualizations.

And after all, there’s no reason that Rowling couldn’t have had her history professor spice things up a bit for those poor Hogwarts students. Just think of the visualizations one could do with magic!

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Patrick R. Potyondy is a history PhD candidate and graduate associate at The Ohio State University with interests in Public and Digital Visual History, Modern US History, the History and Foundations of Education, Early American History, and the intersections of race, ethnicity, and nation. He has also published the book chapter “Reimagining Urban Education: Civil Rights, Educational Parks, and the Limits of Reform.”