By Michelle S. Karns

In a Time Magazine article last summer (August 23, 2007), David van Biema wrote that Mother Teresa, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, had a crisis in her faith for 50 years. She was plagued with doubts and struggled with unending spiritual questions. However, every day she got up and served the poor of Calcutta to the best of her ability because she had faith that it was what she was supposed to do. In spite of her personal dilemma, she did the work. It is what leaders do.

In my experience, it is also what the best principals do. They are available at their buildings long before the students arrive and early enough to meet teachers coming through the office to sign in. Checking in with staff is how the school leader reminds faculty that the challenges are real and the goals are attainable. Leaders reinforce good work and the expectations that shape it.

Two Sacramento City Unified School District schools, Tahoe Elementary and Will C. Wood Middle, began the Comprehensive School Reform process during 2003-2004. For Katie Curry, principal of Tahoe Elementary, this was her first principalship, while Jim Wong, principal of Will C. Wood, is a veteran educator with a 35-year career. They both have faith in reform efforts.

I am convinced that leadership in public education requires faith in the people that are doing the work and faith that the children learn. Whenever the data push the uncertainty button, it is faith that motivates continued positive action. There has to be a reservoir to tap for the will to continue when the demands outweigh the resources.

Many valued educational theorists postulate what it takes to lead a public school in this age of accountability, Program Improvement and the achievement gap. They provide lists of the competencies (skills) necessary and describe the relationships (will) that leaders have with staffs, stakeholders and students. Having worked with Katie and Jim throughout the CSR, I thought it might have merit to capture what they did to move their schools during the reform effort. Was their leadership focused on will or skill?

An introduction to the principals

Looking at dapper principal Jim Wong today would never give you an indication of his humble beginnings as a youth in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1950s. As a child he lived in neighborhoods that were rife with excitement linked to gangs, gambling and another side of life. His parents attempted many geographic moves to provide safety for the family. Ultimately, Vallejo became his home. Education became the means to personal emancipation.

Jim was driven to make a difference with children by his mother. She believed teaching was an honorable career and a great contribution. He started with 20 years in the classroom as a science teacher and then moved to being an administrator for the last 15 years. He came to Will C. Wood in 2002 to make the changes necessary to provide an educational environment for a very diverse student body with an API of 546. He knows it is his last assignment.

Principal Katie Curry thought all the big decisions she had to make were over when she got married and had a great job in business. Surviving a random act of violence dramatically changed her life circumstances and made her more cognizant of others in need. She decided to make a career shift.

Teaching fit her image of something she could do to make a contribution to those in need. She found she was really good at thinking like a teacher while in her credentialing program. When she got to her classroom, she loved the kids and they thought she was a great teacher, even though she was strict. Katie became a resource teacher, a reading specialist and a staff developer. When a Hewlett Packard grant funded reading coaches, she helped coordinate the effort at the district office. From this position, she was asked in 2000-2001 to take on a principalship of a decile 1 school in the last position of the district rankings, Tahoe Elementary, with an API of 556.

Two very different types of educators with dissimilar experiences in one district have led their schools through a reform process resulting in gains and changes. Using the accountability systems of AYP and API, the quantitative gains are:

Will C. Wood

2002-03 API: 546

2006-07 API: 684 (+130 points)

Tahoe Elementary

2002-03 API: 556

2006-07 API: 716 (+160 points; out of PI)

These numbers quantify an effort that they don’t explain or delineate. They do not capture the people or their hours of diligence and hard work. The work is as follows:

• Safe and orderly environment: The first phase of work at both Will C. Wood and Tahoe was stabilizing and managing the campus to create a safe and orderly environment. Both principals understood the importance of first impressions and eliminating the sense of chaos. While Jim and Katie are very different in style and presence, they are very similar in intensity and drive. They are very visible on site, constantly in dialogue with students, staff and parents, and know their students by name. Sustaining an improved environment is a huge jobfrom site cleanliness to safety, to discipline policies, to relationships. It is a lot to do while staying focused on teaching and learning. Leadership assessment: will then skill.

• Prosocial culture: Both school sites are highly invested in student-teacher relationships. This investment is manifested in how frequently the faculty praise students and give them feedback. Students are validated and acknowledged for achievement through formal and informal recognition protocol that provides both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. Students are acknowledged for skills other than academic; working with the students is seen as the center of what is to be done at the school. The school staffs have been diligent in reducing uncertainty and increasing consistency in all aspects of operations. Most importantly, the students at both schools seem to have a clear understanding of the expectations for behavior and know what they need to learn to make it at their grade level or in the course that they are taking. These elements have made it possible for the schools to build positive relationships, which are not typically quantifiable. Leadership assessment: will and skill.

• Faculty collaboration: Both schools have relied on the skills and the wills of their faculties to get the real work of reform done. At both sites, collaboration has been a key tool to create change and manage implementation. Borrowing the concept from Craig Jerald, “collective teacher efficacy” has emerged from the teachers’ positive beliefs about their teams, the value of their work, and the ability of the individuals to implement it. Teachers talk about teaching and learning with each other, with the coaches, and with the principal. Using collaboration throughout the reform process seems to have contributed to teacher commitment at the school. Leadership assessment: will and skill.

• Explicit direct instruction and frequent assessment: Both schools have reintroduced guidelines for mastery teaching and direct instruction to faculty. Both have focused on improving first instruction using standards-based curriculum consistently, implemented at a high level. Student engagement strategies and student-centered practices ensure all students access to learning. By frontloading the content to students, improving instructional delivery, restructuring guided practice and using assessment to drive instructional adjustments, each site has become more responsive and capable of educating all students. Leadership assessment: skill to build will.

• Trusted guides: Each principal has had external supports that helped to shape and nurture the change process. The external consultants have also provided the principals with coaching and have helped to ensure that the reform is research based. More than anything, these supports provide the principals with responsive guidance. That is, the services have evolved as the needs have emerged in the process of change. Leadership assessment: will and skill.

Reform campaigns

Will C. Wood and Tahoe use overarching campaigns to drive the CSR reform effort. At Will C. Wood, the campaign was literacy, and at Tahoe it was “cultural proficiency.” The campaigns were selected as a result of data, faculty discussions and instructional need.

At Will C. Wood, the literacy coach has worked with the language arts department to improve what they teach and how they teach it. They revised their course of study to ensure comprehensive standards coverage that all language arts teachers implement according to the design.

Implementing a common course of study, common programs and common assessment have allowed the team to look at results with a common perspective to answer a very simple question, “What does the data say about how well we are teaching students?”

Another aspect of the literacy campaign is the free and voluntary reading program. The FVR has a goal that the students read a million words, which research indicates will provide increased competency in fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. The school became a haven for readers and the campaign impacted annual test scores, with all subgroups meeting the language arts targets in 2006-2007.

Connecting with the students

From Tahoe’s API and AYP numbers, you won’t see fully engaged children. However, you may be able to decipher that the school is no longer in Program Improvement. You could find that Tahoe has moved from a decile 1 to a decile 4 school since the reform process started, and that all the teachers are highly qualified.

When the teachers described how Katie leads the school, they reported an open-door policy, clear expectations, passion, data and sociogram studies, support for students, and great professional development that gave them the latest research, intrapersonal reflection, and provided a collaborative focus.

Since Tahoe students were ethnically, linguistically and economically diverse, the site staff opted to focus on cultural proficiency as a moral and ethical framework for instructional practices. Randall Lindsey brought the Cultural Proficiency model and training to Tahoe. His work helped the faculty shift focus from what was “wrong with the students” to “how can we connect with this student?” If you were to analyze the data deeply enough you could see the impact of the Cultural Proficiency training that has been the hallmark of the Tahoe reform. Tahoe is closing the achievement gap!

The CST data indicate increasing student performance equity. The numbers do not tell the personal insight gleaned from an increasingly “culturally proficient” faculty, which was the overarching goal of the 2003-2004 reform effort. Tahoe has become an educational community for all kinds of learners. The Tahoe teachers have noticed that they have evolved into a different kind of faculty. Characteristics of cultural proficiency identified by the faculty were:

• They are knowingly moving away from “blame game” descriptions when talking about students; they engage in more discussions about cultural differences and their value; and there is a noticeable increase in informal discussions about students.

• Positive and informal family contacts have tripled since the onset of the program. Most families are visited at least once during the year by the classroom teacher.

• Student achievement is increasing for all demographic groups.

• The staff expresses greater comfort with the many differences among themselves and in regard to students/families.

• The teachers report increased use of multicultural materials and more classroom discussions of students’ own cultures.

• Culture and family variables are always considered during Student Study Team meetings.

Perception that benefits will exceed the cost of change

Significant changes in performance and the development of new skills require a belief that the replacement strategies will garner benefits that exceed the costs of the change. That belief comes from inside the teacher. I don’t think it is possible to make it happen from the outside-in. I think that is why there are so many schools that are still stuck in decile 1 and 2 in spite of the sanctions, threats, and fear-based interventions.

I can again liken the challenge to Mother Teresa’s continued work in spite of her personal doubts and struggles. She believed in the mission and got up every day to do the work necessary to move closer to achieving the goals. Her will provided her the strength to continue regardless of the trials she had to face daily. Her skills enabled her to fundraise, organize the convent, manage the public and media attention and monitor the services to the poor, all of which were necessary for the work to be completed in a meaningful manner.

From my experience, Katie and Jim wake up every morning with the will to do what is morally and ethically right for children and they have the ability to develop the skills needed to make it happen.

If Katie and Jim are typical of successful principals, I think the will, or the ability to negotiate relationships, precedes the skills of leadership. Through the relationships and connections, other work is generated. Leadership skills are developed and perfected in a climate of caring when stakeholders are invested in each other’s success.

School leadership is a choice

I don’t think that the capacity to lead with “will” is innate or inborn. I do think it is a choice to be a school leader. Leadership starts with the principal’s willingness to be reflective and aware of the barriers and biases that might interfere with the quality of the connections that they make among their staffs. Authority and power are not synonyms for leadership.

The skills can be taught only if educators are willing to take risks and face adversity, challenges and disappointments by sorting to the positive. Perhaps the question is not whether leadership is inborn or teachable, but rather is the leader able to mesh will with skills so that the teachers want to get up every morning and serve the children they have been entrusted to teach?

Michelle S. Karns is a school improvement consultant and student advocate. She can be reached at mskarns@pacbell.net.