New Thinking About InstructionalLeadership

I School leaders matter for school success.

Numerous studies spanning the past threedecades link high-quality leadership with pos-itive school outcomes. Recognition of the im-portance of school leadership has led to in-creased attention to recruiting and preparingschool leaders. Many new principal prepara-

HORNG tion and development programs emphasize the4NA LOEB role of principals as "instructional leaders."

This emphasis on instructional leadership wasdriven in large part by the effective schools

at improve movement of the 1970s and 1980s and has sincehievement been renewed because of increasing demands

re likely to that school leaders be held accountable for stu-

cipals who dent performance (Hallinger 2005). However,

are strong while broad agreement exists on the impor-

anizational tance of instructional leadership, there is lessconsensus on what instructional leadership ac-

s than are tually is. Some construe instructional leader-

hools with ship as synonymous with classroom observa-Nho spend tionsand direct teaching of students and teach-

their time ers. Informed by observations and interviewsobserving in hundreds of schools, we call for a differentSoobservn view of instructional leadership, one that in-

ssrooms or cludes broader personnel practices and re-

y coaching source allocation practices as central to in-teachers. structional improvement.

Traditional Ideas

R&D appears in each issue ofKappan with the assistance ofthe Deans' Alliance, which iscomposed of the deans of the

education schools/colleges atthe following universities:Harvard University, MichiganState University, Northwestern

University, Stanford University,Teachers College Columbia

University, University ofCalifornia Berkeley, University of

California Los Angeles,University of Michigan,University of Pennsylvania, andUniversity of Wisconsin.

The traditional instructional leadership lit-erature emphasizes teaching and learning as-pects of school leadership. This research gen-erally concludes that a strong, directive prin-cipal, focused on curriculum and instruction,is essential for effective schools. Writers in thistradition have characterized successful instruc-tional leaders as "hands-on" leaders, engaged

EILEEN HORNG is associate director of the Institute forResearch on Education Policy and Practice (IREPP) atStanford University, Stanford, Calif. SUSANNA LOEB isa professor of education at Stanford University and direc-tor of IREPP.

with curriculum and instruction issues, un-afraid to work directly with teachers, and of-ten present in classrooms.

Out of this literature has arisen a prototypeof ideal instructional leaders - outstandingteachers, inspired to use their exceptionalteaching skills to impact student learning.Leaders could mentor their teaching staff byobserving practice, providing pointed feed-back, and modeling instruction when neces-sary. Although this is an appealing portrait ofthe ideal, this model is actually poorly suitedto the reality of many of today's schools. Thatreality includes large high schools servingsome 3,000 students with courses ranging fromAdvanced Placement Calculus to servicelearning. No matter how extensive the teach-ing background of a school leader, could any-one have the content knowledge and relevantexperience to coach one beginning teacher inhow to engage students in British poetry ofWorld War I and another on how to differ-entiate instruction in general chemistry? Evenif school leaders have the requisite expertise,imagine them finding the time to regularlyobserve 250 teachers or provide extensivehands-on mentoring on curriculum and in-struction.

Different Ideas

A different view of instructional leadershipemphasizes organizational management forinstructional improvement rather than day-to-day teaching and learning. On its face, thisreconceptualization may appear to underesti-mate the importance of classroom instruction.After all, isn't day-to-day teaching and learn-ing at the heart of good classroom instruction?Of course, it is. However, the quality of teach-ing in a school, in many cases, can be affectedonly marginally by a principal's involvementin the classroom. School leaders can have atremendous effect on student learning throughthe teachers they hire, how they assign those

66 Kappan November 2010 kappanmagazine.org

BY EILEENAND SUSAI

Schools th•student ac

are moihave prin

orgmanager

scprincipals

more of

clasdirectl•

m Ill

i

teachers to classrooms, how they retain teach-ers, and how they create opportunities forteachers to improve. Organizational manage-ment for instructional improvement meansstaffing a school with high-quality teachers andproviding them the appropriate supports andresources to be successful in the classroom.

A recently released six-year study of schoolleadership commissioned by the Wallace Foun-dation concludes that school leaders primarilyaffect student learning by influencing teachers'motivations and working conditions. By com-parison, a leader's influence on teachers' knowl-edge and skills has far less effect on studentlearning. Thus, the authors caution againstconceptions of instructional leadership with anarrow focus on classroom instruction (Louiset al. 2010).

Our research at Stanford University hasreached similar conclusions. We have exam-ined school leadership in great depth in threelarge urban school districts: one on the EastCoast, another on the West Coast, and a thirdin the Midwest. In these districts, we surveyedmore than 800 principals, 1,100 assistant prin-cipals, and 32,000 teachers and did more than250 full-day observations and comprehensiveinterviews of principals. Despite the differ-ing contexts and district policies representedby these three districts, we consistently findthat schools demonstrating growth in stu-dent achievement are more likely to have prin-cipals who are strong organizational managers.These principals do not fit the conventionaldefinition of instructional leaders, but they dofit the new, expanded definition of instruc-tional leadership that includes organizationalmanagement.

Organizational Management

What does it mean to be a strong organiza-tional manager? Strong managers develop theorganizational structures for improved in-struction more than they spend time in class-rooms or coach teachers. Strong organiza-tional managers are effective in hiring and sup-porting staff, allocating budgets and resources,and maintaining positive working and learningenvironments. Schools that demonstrate aca-demic improvement are more likely to have ef-fective organizational managers. In one of ourstudies, we examine principals' self-reports oftheir efficacy on 42 separate school leadershiptasks. The efficacy of a principal's organizationalmanagement skills consistently predict studentachievement growth. Furthermore, evalua-

tions of principals by their assistant principalsconfirm this finding (Grissom and Loeb 2009).

In another study, we use observations ofhow principals use time rather than reports oftheir efficacy. Our findings remain consistent.We shadowed principals for full school days,recording how they spent their time in five-minute intervals. We find that when principalsspend more time on organizational manage-ment activities, school outcomes are better, in-cluding student test-score gains and positive

Strategicprincipals donot have aone-size-fits-allapproach.

Effective organizational managersstrategically hire, support, and retain

good teachers while developing orremoving less effective ones.

teacher and parent assessments of the school'sinstructional climate. In contrast, time spenton day-to-day instructional activities - suchas classroom observations - are marginally ornot at all related to improvements in studentperformance. In fact, time spent on day-to-dayinstructional activities is often negatively re-lated to teacher and parent assessments. Un-fortunately, we also find that, on average, onlyone-fifth of the principals' time is dedicated toorganizational management activities. In com-parison, almost a third of their time is spent onadministrative tasks - such as managing stu-dent discipline and fulfilling compliance pa-

kappanmagazine.org V92 N3 Kappan 67

perwork - that do not appear to be related toimproved school outcomes (Horng, Klasik,and Loeb 2010).

In two other studies, we find that managingpersonnel is one of the most important respon-sibilities of strong organizational managers. Ef-fective organizational managers strategicallyhire, support, and retain good teachers whiledeveloping or removing less effective ones. Inone study, we use value-added methods to ex-amine the relationship between the effective-ness of a school and the recruitment, retention,

other roles. And that's something that we'vebeen able to use to keep teachers on staff whomight be going somewhere else.

Other principals in our study describedhow effective organizational leaders strategi-cally use professional development as a way toreward and retain effective teachers. For ex-ample, one principal reserves funding for hermost effective teachers to take advantage ofprofessional development opportunities thatallow them to fulfill more ambitious teaching

Schoolsdemonstrating

growth in student

achievement aremore likely to haveprincipals who are

strong organizational

managers.

and development of its teachers. We find thateffective schools are able to retain higher-qual-ity teachers and remove lower-quality ones. Inaddition, when teacher vacancies do arise,these effective schools are better able to attractand hire higher-quality teachers. We also findthat teachers who work in more effectiveschools improve more rapidly than do those inless effective ones. School leaders' organiza-tional management practices - particularly, inthe area of personnel management - appearto play a critical role in improving schools(Beteille, Kalogrides, and Loeb 2009).

In another study, we find that these person-nel management practices are particularly suc-cessful when applied strategically (Balu,Horng, and Loeb 2010). This happens whenefforts to recruit, support, retain, develop, andremove teachers are clearly targeted. For ex-ample, a principal we interviewed explains howhe targets retention efforts on exceptionalteachers:

There are some teachers that I have for lead-ership roles that don't exist in the regular [dis-trict] guidelines, like department chairs or

goals. Interestingly, many of these principalsalso illustrate how they strategically use pro-fessional development with poorly perform-ing teachers. In some cases, they use profes-sional development as coaching to help low-performing teachers improve, and in othercases, they use it as punishment to encouragelow-performing teachers to transfer elsewhere.As an example of the former, one principal cre-ates school-level professional developmentsessions focused on specific areas where someof his teachers need improvement. As an ex-ample of the latter, another principal describeshow she encourages a poorly performingteacher to leave:

I started documenting her from the first weekof school, and I've had meeting upon meet-ing with her. I made her do a lesson - I don'tmake anybody [else] here do a daily lesson ora weekly lesson. I've been in her classroom.It's a one-year thing, and she's not comingback.

When strategic organizational managershave poorly performing teachers, they make aneffort to understand why individual teachers

8

68 Kappan November 2010 kappanmagazine.org

aren't performing satisfactorily and targetteacher development (or removal) efforts ac-cordingly. One principal whom we observedand interviewed describes two poorly perform-ing teachers at her school: "One teacher putsin a lot of hours, but she's just not getting theresults. The other person just doesn't workvery hard." She later explains that she has re-ferred the hardworking but ineffective teacherto the district's peer assistance and coachingprogram, whereas she directly monitors theother teacher to motivate him to work harder.Strategic principals do not have a one-size-fits-all approach to supporting teachers.

Two other studies contrast the traditionalview of instructional leadership focused on cur-riculum and instruction with our broader viewof instructional leadership focused on organi-zational management. In the first study, wecompare principals who spend more time do-ing informal classroom observations with thosewho spend less time doing so. We find no evi-dence that the frequency or duration of princi-pals' classroom walkthroughs relates to the in-structional climate of the school or studentachievement (Ing 2008). In the second study,we examine the role of principals in supportingteachers by creating collaborative work envi-ronments. Here we find that teachers led by ef-fective organizational managers are more likelyto turn to school leaders and other teachers forresources or advice on how to improve theirteaching practice. This use of school resourcesfor instructional improvement is particularlythe case for novice teachers. Conversely, prin-cipals who are poor organizational managersare more likely to have teachers who look out-side the school for support (Horng, Loeb, andMindich 2010). Strong organizational man-agers consequently are able to support class-room instruction without providing that sup-port directly to individual teachers. Instead,they develop a working environment in whichteachers have access to the support they need.

Implications for Policy, Practice

Strong instructional leadership is essentialfor a school to be successful. However, definednarrowly only in terms of curriculum and class-room instruction, instructional leadership isunlikely to result in increased student learningor other desirable outcomes. Our studies havefound that growth in valued school outcomescomes more from organizational managementfor instructional improvement than it doesfrom principals' time observing classrooms or

directly coaching teachers. School leaders in-fluence classroom teaching, and consequentlystudent learning, by staffing schools withhighly effective teachers and supporting thoseteachers with effective teaching and learningenvironments, rather than by focusing too nar-rowly on their own contributions to classroominstruction. K

REFERENCES

Balu, Rekha, Eileen L. Horng, and Susanna Loeb.

"Strategic Personnel Management: How School

Principals Recruit, Retain, Develop and Remove

Teachers." School Leadership Research, Working

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"Effective Schools: Managing the Recruitment,

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Grissom, Jason, and Susanna Loeb. "TriangulatingPrincipal Effectiveness: How Perspectives of Parents,

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(CALDER), Working Paper 35. Washington, D.C.: The

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Hallinger, Phillip. "Instructional Leadership and the

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Time spent on day-

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teacher and parent

assessments.

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