Every school district is feeling the pressure to ensure higher academic achievement for all students. A focus on professional learning for an administrative team not only improves student learning and achievement, but also assists in developing a systemic approach for continued success. This is how the Fox Chapel Area School District in…

Imagine, for a second, a school where teachers see themselves as leaders and work together to ensure that all children have access to engaging, high quality instruction every day. How might these teachers define teacher leadership and articulate its purpose? What suggestions would they offer about how teacher leadership can be grown and supported?…

Denver Public Schools, one of 14 districts that receive funding from The Wallace Foundation to improve principal effectiveness, is also one of a number of districts around the country emphasizing the development of principals' managers in the central office. The principal's job has changed over the last decade, going from a role that…

Fort Wayne Community Schools continue to increase student learning and meet state and national standards and expectations annually based on several factors that have made a difference for educators within the system: district and principal leadership, learning teams, effective learning designs, and deep commitment to a culture of learning. Fort…

Implementing teacher evaluation systems across the United States has created both challenges and opportunities to improving teacher quality. Lessons learned at the state level illustrate a wide range of challenges with system implementation, including value-added growth scores, implementation timetables, and human capital demands (McGuinn, 2012),…

The author spends a lot of time thinking about good professional learning vs. typical professional development. Based on her 20-plus years of experience, as well as a bit of inspiration from Reuben Duncan, assistant superintendent in School Administrative Unit 29 in Keene, N.H., she shares what she considers to be the ten best ways to waste…

Linda MacDonell is the assistant superintendent of the Instructional Services Division of the Orange County (California) Department of Education and over the years, Delores Lindsey served as MacDonell's leadership coach. In this article, they talk about their experiences as external/internal partners building internal capacity for culturally…

Much has been written about the disconnect between education research produced in graduate schools of education and the practice of school leaders. In this article, the authors share one story of an external partnership that promotes the development of a principal's capacity for complex problem solving and the early research that suggests this…

When the author became principal of Acton Elementary School in Acton, Maine, in 2003, he spent the summer interviewing staff members. Staff in this small, rural elementary school overwhelmingly expressed a desire for opportunities to learn collaboratively. The teachers described a school culture where staff did not work together but instead worked…

The author had been an elementary administrator for about nine years when she first heard about the SAM (School Administration Manager) project. SAM is a national pilot project funded by The Wallace foundation to better understand how principals spend their time and to develop strategies to help principals focus more of their time on teaching and…

Beverly Hall has been superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools since 1999. Before coming to Atlanta, Hall was state district superintendent of Newark Public Schools, deputy chancellor for instruction of New York City Public Schools, superintendent of Community School District 27 in New York City, and a principal in Brooklyn. Hall chairs Harvard…

Facing a superintendent change in 2006-2007, Decatur Public School District 61 in Illinois was already confronting the major challenges of a widening student achievement gap, increasing dropout rate, and schools not meeting Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). From the beginning, Superintendent Gloria J. Davis professed several simple beliefs that…

A generation of principals has heard the mantra that they should be instructional leaders, but rarely have they been encouraged to be learning leaders. While an instructional leader pays attention to the planning, implementation, and evaluation of instruction, a learning leader focuses on what is learned and how it is learned. These roles are not…

More than 10 years ago, the author wrote her first version of "The Power of One" for the "Journal of Staff Development." She described her personal journey of discovering how one person could make a huge difference in the face of what appeared as insurmountable challenges. She described ways in which she had made such a difference and told,…

In this article, the author describes how an Oregon district redefines coaching roles to find a balance between school and district goals. As director of improvement for North Clackamas School District in Milwaukie, Oregon, near Portland, the author's role of coaching the coach was new, and the coaches welcomed the immediate feedback. Through the…