Leadership vital for schools to excel, education reformers say

By Julie Z. Giese
News-Sentinel staff writer

River Oaks Elementary School Principal Judy Bullard spends her days juggling at the Galt school.

Heaps of paperwork, behavior problems, bus schedules, teacher observations, recess monitoring, parent calls: The job duties of a principal can be endless.

	Jerry R. Tyson/News-Sentinel
	River Oaks Elementary School Principal Judy Bullard, center, helps students Diana Amaral, left, and Cory Souza select prizes after they each had won a game of bingo.

Despite the workload, she’s quick to handle or delegate to others immediate concerns at the 700-student school.

That gives Bullard time to concentrate on important projects — like raising student achievement, she said.

Under Bullard’s leadership, the school has rated near the top of California’s school rankings at a 9 on the 10-point scale known as the Academic Performance Index.

Bullard modestly deflects responsibility for the school’s success. Instead, she credits the academic achievement to River Oaks’ more than 30 teachers.

“If I didn’t have really good teachers, the school wouldn’t work,” she said.

But education reformers aren’t as quick to dismiss the role of leadership in school academics. Excellent schools have principals who manage not just cafeteria operations and bus schedules, but the quality of instruction at the school as well. With more schools looking to improve student achievement, the role of principals has come under close scrutiny by school districts.

In Texas, where an elaborate testing and evaluation structure has been in place since the 1980s, leadership has been flagged as a crucial ingredient in elevating test scores. Sonny Donaldson, superintendent of a high-poverty district in Houston that has enjoyed dramatic success, said principals are at the center of any progress — or stagnation.

“You can’t have a specialist parachute in from the central office and talk to the teachers about a new English program and expect good results over time,” Donaldson said. “It is the principal who must be the instructional leader.”

For Bullard, instruction has always been her primary focus.

Bullard taught elementary school for 11 years before becoming a school administrator. She prefers a team approach to leading the school. “It’s too big of a job, too much responsibility to do it all alone,” she said.

She likens her job to that of a director, guiding the vision of the school.

“But it can’t just be me. We all have to value high achievement,” she said.

That model of the principalship is also being embraced in Lodi Unified School District, said Rich Ferrara, associate superintendent.

The district will train administrators on how to grade classroom instruction during a two-day session this summer.

The training is part of an effort to provide principals with skills needed to meet the increasing job expectations, Ferrara said.

Some national administrator groups have sketched out qualities principals need to be strong educational leaders, including having good communication skills, the ability to plan and build team support, creativity in problem solving, good listening skills and modeling expected behavior.

Those qualities are similar to models of leadership which have long been used in the business sector.

Suzanne Tacheny, California Business for Education Excellence’s executive director, said leadership is critical to any organization, including schools.

Businesses have long relied on dynamic leaders to be successful and have worked to cultivate leaders by investing in training, Tacheny said.

CBEE, a coalition of major employers and business organizations, is advocating legislative changes to address the need for educational leaders.

In the next decade, more administrators will be retiring or approaching retirement with few candidates to replace them, she said.

The group is lobbying state officials to provide incentives to recruit and retain school and district leaders and improve leadership development and training programs.

“The state has invested heavily into training teachers,” Tacheny said. “There needs to be an equal focus of support for administrators.”

Gerald Tirozzi, executive director of National Association of Secondary School Principals, supports the effort to reinvent the role of school administrators.

“For a long period of time, principals were recognized for management skills more than being instructional leaders,” he said.

Tirozzi said managing school functions is important, but it shouldn’t be the focus. “That is not what principals were put on this Earth to do,” he said.

Instead, principals need to know about assessment, curriculum and instruction to improve school academics, Tirozzi said.

Some colleges and universities have already shifted to training candidates as instructional leaders.

“In order to meet the demands of performance-based systems, they need to be strong instructional leaders,” said Kathy Kimball, director of administrator preparation programs at the University of Washington.

The Danforth Educational Leadership program started 13 years ago to address the shortage of school principals, Kimball said. It’s a collaboration between the university and a handful of surrounding school districts.

Some 32 students learn the leadership ropes by spending half their time in schools practicing theories and skills studied in class during a year-long internship.

The program teaches students how to manage the challenging job by prioritizing and delegating tasks, she said.

“We’re teaching them to make responsible choices,” Kimball said. “What could be more important than making sure children get the best instruction?”

Bullard couldn’t agree more.

She doesn’t let logistics run her school, she said. “I prioritize my day and time so that I can concentrate on how we can get these kids where they need to be.”

Bullard said her favorite time is still spent in the classroom, rewarding students for their hard work and observing teachers.

“I will always be a teacher at heart,” she said. “I still see myself as a teacher to the staff and kids. I just have a larger classroom now.”