Group items tagged

"leadership requires a vision. Without a vision to challenge followers with, there's no possibility of a principal being a leader"

The relationship between the teachers' and administrators' vision is important.

Administrators' vision tends to encompass the whole system or as described by Manasse (1986) their vision is an organizational vision. Teachers' vision appear to focus primarily on the individual or personal actions for school change

vision is "based on personal or personalized professional values"

"visionary leadership demands a clear sense of personal and organizational values"

The first value Aplin identified was that the instructional programs were "the highest priority of the system and decisions were assessed as to whether they enhanced or threatened it"

The second value this superintendent had was "equity in person relationships and instructional decisions

"Practices of delegation, teaming, flexibility of process and incremental planning with extensive communication" (p. 11) was the third valu

"The fourth value held was the need to retain a high level of local control

.The fifth value disclosed was his belief that the quality of decision is improved if there has been free and honest disclosure among interested parties"

"the specific value that each superintendent seemed to exemplify was simply 'the children come first'"

This loyalty includes a keen understanding of the community's values as well as consistent participation in community activities.

while there was little difference between the activities of effective and ineffective principals, the meanings they attributed to their activities were significantly different.

They found that personal background factors, such as type of education, and organizational factors, such as school size, were more important than values.

"Principals in the high-SES effective schools expected an academic emphasis and task orientations in classrooms but encouraged teachers to implement a broad curriculum. Their counterparts in the low-SES effective schools implemented a more narrowly defined curriculum and allocated more time for basic skill instruction"

"The primary rewards for most teachers come from students' academic accomplishments -- from feeling certain about their own capacity to affect student development"

Hallinger and Murphy (1986) reported that even when the low wealth schools were achieving, teachers' expectations were lower than those for students at wealthier schools; they believed they had minimal parental support and therefore assigned less homework and stressed the basic curriculum.

Differences in curricular and instructional practices suggest that the manner in which staff implement curriculum and instruction is filtered through their perceptions, beliefs and expectations concerning student ability and community background

Effective superintendents believe that students come first; effective principals believe in meeting the instructional needs of the students. Teachers value working with students and believe that they have an impact on their achievement. They have the shared belief that students' learning is of primary importance. The literature revealed that these individuals' also shared a common value. They valued the human resources -- the contributions, talents, and efforts -- of others in their organization.

the cellular organization of schools keeps teachers physically apart from other professionals in the school. This isolation then impacts teacher attitudes and limits the relationships between teachers, students, administrators, and the community -- relationships that are essential factors in the change process.

Structures in the school that contribute to teacher isolation and the feeling that the individual cannot make a difference are indeed barriers to school improvement efforts.

Secondary students, in particular, must cope with a structure with which no worker in the real world would be saddled (Shanker, 1989). Shanker (1989) describes some of these conditions: They're put into a room to work with 30 or more of their peers, with whom they cannot communicate. The teacher gives them their tasks, and, when the bell rings 40 or so minutes later, they have to gather up their belongings and head to another "work station" for a whole new set of tasks with a new "supervisor" who has a different personality and, very likely, a different method of operation. This routine is repeated six or seven times a day�All youngsters are expected to have sufficient motivation and self-discipline to get down to serious work on day one in anticipation of a "reward" far down the road -- something most adults need all their fortitude to accomplish. (p. 3)

Spady (1988) believes that the organization of schools around the calendar, the clock and the schedule, exerts a pervasive influence on the thinking of those who work and study in them. This focus on time, along with the legal mandate to keep students in the custody of the school for fixed periods of time, may result in teachers adopting the unproductive syndromes of "putting in time" and "covering material" (Spady, 1988).

In a 1987 study, Pittman and Haughwout estimate that the

dropout rate at a school increases one percent for every 400-student increase in the high school population.

benefits to the curriculum gained by size of enrollment peaked at 400 students

In large schools a breakdown occurs in communication, feedback about performance, and staff involvement in decision making (Hallinger, Bickman, & Davis, 1990).

According to Fullan (1991), the working conditions of teachers in the vast majority of schools are not conducive to sustained teacher innovation

To improve teacher performance, the work environment must enhance teachers' sense of professionalism and decrease their career dissatisfaction.

Sarason (1982) reports that the untested assumption that few others think the same way keeps school staff from expressing ideas for improving the school.

This vast array of regulations runs counter to the findings of Chubb and Moe (1990), who found that schools with a greater percentage of academically achieving students have "substantial school autonomy from direct external control" (p. 183)

Basic education policy should be shaped at state and district levels, but the day-to-day decision-making should shift to the local school, according to a report of the Carnegie Foundation (1988). This report concludes that what is needed is school-based authority with accountability at the school level.

According to Burns, transformational leadership is "a relationship of mutual stimulation and elevation that converts followers into leaders and may convert leaders into moral agents