Leadership for Student Learning

Distributed leadership cultivates collective ownership of both successes and problems, as well as responsibility for results, Ms. Neuman and Mr. Simmons remind us. Leadership is the job of the entire education community, and learning becomes the focus and primary value for every member. IN ALL of its work, the Annenberg Institute for School Reform takes as its starting point that the purpose of schooling is to ensure high-quality education for all students.1 But as professional publications and the popular media continue to point out, many schools and districts are failing to help all students learn. Despite the implementation of a bewildering variety of school reform efforts and programs - many focused specifically on increasing student achievement - far too many students still do not receive an education that will help them to reach their full potential. Over the course of the past five years, the Annenberg Institute has worked with thousands of practitioners from hundreds of schools across the country, representing a broad cross-section of schools in terms of size, student population, location, and levels of achievement. Our experience in professional development2 has led us to conclude that the less-than-successful outcomes of many reform programs can be attributed (at least in part) to a lack of appropriate leadership focused on student achievement. Traditionally, the responsibility and authority for setting the pace for the organization, controlling the budget, and determining the priorities have belonged solely to the administrators in a school or district. Time and again we have watched the sincere efforts of practitioners to promote continuous improvement in teaching and learning fall victim to the inattention - or, worse, the opposition - of school or district leaders. And by the same token, we have seen innovative and potentially effective administrators stymied in their reform efforts by the lack of a responsive system or school staff. In the most effective schools that we have worked with, every member of the education community has the responsibility - and the authority - to take appropriate leadership roles. Leadership in these schools and districts has been reconceptualized to include all facets of the school community. The definition of "leader" has been broadened to encompass teachers, staff members, parents, and members of the entire education community. The move toward shared leadership has led schools and districts to examine what they believe, how they are organized, what school culture is like, who is included in the school community, and what the expectations are for everyone's work. Many people have shared the work of - and the commitment to - setting clear priorities, developing a shared vision, examining professional practices, providing a strong accountability system, and reorganizing school or district structures to support student achievement. In our experience, when the authority and the responsibility for these decisions are shared, real improvements take root and survive, and students' opportunities to achieve at high levels are increased. Reconceptualizing Leadership Roles For many decades, school and district leadership has been assigned primarily to a single person - the principal or the superintendent - whose responsibilities are largely managerial: keeping order in the school, managing school schedules, monitoring the budget, making sure the buses run on time. This traditional system has institutionalized the appointing and anointing of formal leaders, often marginalizing those with more flexible leadership styles and discouraging teachers and district personnel from assuming significant but informal leadership roles. At the same time, teacher union organizations have developed equally formal and hierarchical systems, often working at cross purposes to the education system. None of these systems has had as its core a focus on student achievement. …