What is the idea?
The Wallace Foundation will work with the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), the Education Commission of the States (ECS) and the National Governors Association (NGA) to create and support six "leadership issue groups" over three years. The issue groups would bring together states and districts (mainly Wallace sites) with outside experts and key organizations to address critical issues that have emerged as major challenges for improving education leadership. The work of the issue groups will result in strengthened implementation of the work in the participating sites and publication of reports detailing lessons and actionable ideas that can inform and move the field.
CCSSO, ECS and NGA will serve as facilitators for the groups and will work with Wallace staff to identify the participating states, districts and appropriate experts. This grant will also enable several other key leadership organizations to add their knowledge and expertise to each issue group and to help disseminate the results of this effort to their constituencies.
What is the major focus?
The analysis of state and district work to date as well as the proposals from new Wallace states reveal strong interest in tackling six issues that are critical to the success of the goal of strengthening education leadership on a wide scale. Over the next three years, each issue group's participants will share what they are doing and learning; pilot experimental approaches to each issue; employ experts in the field to advise and improve these experiments; capture, analyze and publish what is being learned at each site and across sites; and engage additional partner organizations to make the work smarter and disseminate the reports nationwide.
The six critical leadership issues are:
- Using data effectively to make better decisions that improve leadership policies and practices that enhance the quality of teaching and learning;
- Developing methods of allocating (current and new) resources (money, people, time) and changing incentives (such as salary increases for leading or teaching in low achieving schools) to eliminate counterproductive policies and practices and to encourage effective leadership and teaching behaviors that result in improved student learning;
- Redefining the roles and responsibilities of school leaders and ensuring they have the authority to get the job done;
- Identifying and fostering the particular leadership skills and strategies needed to transform high school leadership and results;
- Developing ways to assess leadership behavior and improve results; and
- Redefining the roles and responsibilities of school boards and investigating ways to improve district governance structures.
How will the work advance the strategy?
These groups will mark an important advance in our leadership initiative by providing innovation sites with the means to work together and with top experts - rather than in isolation - in tackling critical leadership issues. This will improve the work in those sites and facilitate the analysis and spread of effective ideas and practices among the participating states and districts. Investing in analyzing, documenting and disseminating the collective work on the six leadership issues will accelerate and broaden the impact of initiatives beyond the states and districts directly funded.
This work will lead to a wealth of publications that will be of high value to policymakers and practitioners as they seek solutions to the six identified issues. Delaware has been invited to participate in two Leadership Issue Groups which are: Roles, Responsibilities & Authority of School Leaders and Assessing Leadership Behavior
