SHARING SUCCESS
Developing Leadership

Programs for

“Break-the-Mold”

Public Schools

Written for SERVE by

Bryan Hassel, Ph.D. and

C. Steven Bingham, Ed.D.
Associated with the School of Education,

University of North Carolina at Greensboro

First Printing, 2000

Edited by

Charles Ahearn, Director of Communications and Publications, SERVE

Donna Nalley, Senior Editor, SERVE

Corinda Marsh, Senior Program Specialist, SERVE

Stephen Chapman, Assistant Program Specialist, SERVE

Christy Casbon, Assistant Program Specialist, SERVE

Designed by

Craig Pierce, Graphic Designer, SERVE

Cover Designed by

Richard Emond, Graphic Designer, SERVE

The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of

the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, nor does mention of trade names,

commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.

This document was produced with funding from the Office of Educational Research and Improvement,

U.S. Department of Education, under contract no. RJ96006701.
Leaders Institute Participants

Introduction

Chapter 1: Design and Management

The Plan

The Information

The Resources

Chapter 2: Participants

Who Will Participate in the Institute?

How Will the Institute Recruit and Select Participants?

Chapter 3: Content

Broad Design Issues

The SERVE Leaders Institute “Learning Strands”

Alternate Frameworks for School Leadership Development

Specific Topics Addressed at the SERVE Leaders Institute

Combining Charter and Traditional Public Schools

Chapter 4: Delivery

Retreats

Remote Learning

Leveraged Learning

Chapter 5: Logistics

Site

Communications

Budget

Chapter 6: Evaluation

Goals

Roles of the Evaluation and the Evaluator

Methods of Gathering Information

Conclusion: Lessons for the Field

Start with Theory

Build on Participant Needs

Develop Cohorts of Leaders

Provide Opportunities for Reflection

Develop Core Staff

Pay Attention to the Environment

A Final Word

Appendices

Contents

2348

12

18

23

27

29

32

1
2 Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools

Leaders Institute Participants

Arapahoe Charter School, Arapahoe, North Carolina

Jennie Adams Janie R. Hardison

Sandy Hoag Robert P. Smith

Tanya W. Twichell

Carter G. Woodson School of Challenge,

Winston-Salem, North Carolina

Ruth Hopkins Rita Oti

Shanta Yelverton

Central Middle School, Whiteville, North Carolina

Beverly Drew Phyllis W. Fowler

Milton Frink

East Winston Primary School,

Winston-Salem, North Carolina

Gerald Clinkscales Tasha Holman

Forest Hills Elementary School,

Wilmington, North Carolina

June Mullen Lorraine Redderick

Cynthia Shields

Isaac Dickson Elementary, Asheville, North Carolina

Judy Sturgill Alida Woods

Lake Norman Charter School,

Huntersville, North Carolina

Janet Fort Jerilyn Griffith

Judy Martin Jennifer Tolles

Lakeside High School, Wilmington, North Carolina

Tom Brown Nancy Ledbetter

Mary Alice Settle

Maureen Joy Charter School, Durham, North Carolina

Celia Dickerson Maureen Joy

Bonnie Wright

New Century Charter School, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Lee Baldwin Kathy Keyser

Fran Sapir Nadette Welterling-Hugg

Nguzo Saba Charter School, Lenoir, North Carolina

Stephanie Banner Verdell Patterson

Michelle Vaught

Paw Creek Elementary School, Charlotte, North Carolina

Beth Blackwelder Judy Caldwell

Pat Wyn

Right Step Academy, Greenville, North Carolina

John Ross Natalie Smith

Cynthia Williams

Spaulding Monroe Middle School,

Bladenboro, North Carolina

Deborah Guyton Deborah Kelly

Vicki McLaughlin

The Downtown Middle School,

Winston-Salem, North Carolina

Connie Brown Debbie Hill

Luther Johnson, Jr. Bernard Roper

The Learning Center, Murphy, North Carolina

Karen Brinke Debra Intemann

Turning Point Academy, Durham, North Carolina

Judas K. Best Stacey Best

Ann McMillian Sterling Edwards

Youngsville Elementary, Youngsville, North Carolina

Denise Click Carol Davis

Marsha Timberlake

Thanks to Reviewers

John Dornan, North Carolina Public School Forum

Paula Egelson, SERVE

Nancy Fulford, North Carolina REL

Ronny Greene, SERVE

Joan Kozlovsky, Maryland State Department of Education

William Lewis, Public Education Forum of Mississippi

Wendy McColskey, SERVE

Wendy Russell, RMC

Jean Williams, SERVE

Special Thanks to Project Staff and Design Team

Staff:

Helen DeCasper, Director of Education Policy

Pam Finney, Senior Evaluation Specialist

Roy Forbes, Consultant

Bryan Hassel, Consultant

Art Hood, Assistant Program Specialist

Kathy Howard, Administrative Assistant

Abigail Peoples, Administrative Assistant

Linda Valenzuela, Education Technology Specialist

Design Team:

Gina Burkhardt, NCREL

Thelma Glynn, North Carolina Charter School Resource Center

Emily Hassel, Public Impact

Wayne Jennings, Designs for Learning

Eric Premack, Institute for Educational Reform

Tess Tiernan, Skills for Tomorrow Charter High School

Tom Watkins, Economic Council of Palm Beach County
Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools 3

Introduction

Today’s public school leaders face a daunting set of challenges. States and districts across the country are setting

higher standards for school and student performance—and holding schools accountable for achieving them. At the

same time, many states and districts are placing more authority in the hands of school-level leaders. Though these

trends are most evident within the charter school movement, conventional public schools in many locations are experiencing similar changes.

These new arrangements demand new forms of leadership from school principals, teachers, staff, parents, and other

members of the school community. School leaders need to guide stakeholders in a process of developing a shared vision of

the school; to devise curricular, instructional, and assessment practices that drive the school toward the envisioned state;

to marshal and allocate resources and operational systems in support of the vision; to select and motivate people to

achieve results; and to partner successfully with outside organizations. All of these jobs require competencies and skills

that have not always been an integral part of the traditional preparation of school administrators.

Under a contract with the U.S. Department of Education, SERVE, Inc., a non-profit organization affiliated with the

SERVE Regional Educational Laboratory and The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, developed a prototype

leadership development program for leaders of both charter and regular public “break-the-mold” schools. Two cohorts of

approximately 30 leaders in teams of three from ten schools participated in the SERVE Leaders Institute, an intensive, oneyear development program designed to build their capacity to carry out the new roles of school leadership. Naturally, the

process of designing and conducting the SERVE Leaders Institute yielded a wide range of insights about how to prepare

school leaders for the new challenges they face.

The purpose of Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools: Lessons from the SERVE Leaders

Institute is to distill lessons learned by the SERVE Leaders Institute so that they will be useful to individuals and organizations interested in designing similar programs for school leaders elsewhere. Intended audiences include officials of state

and local education agencies, representatives of charter school technical assistance organizations, and designers of leadership development programs in private organizations, universities, colleges, and other institutions. School leaders themselves

will also find some interesting material as they think about how to develop leadership capabilities within their schools.

The chapters in this resource guide touch on all the major aspects of developing and implementing a leaders institute

for the development of innovative, “break-the-mold” schools, including the following areas:

• Design and management—organizing the people to devise and carry out the institute

• Participant development—deciding who should participate and recruiting them to attend

• Content—establishing a curriculum for the institute

• Delivery—devising methods to deliver the curriculum effectively

• Logistics—organizing the logistics of the institute

• Evaluation—assessing the institute’s success

The concluding section offers some broad observations about the critical ingredients of successful leadership

development for innovative public schools. The appendices contain documents developed in the process of carrying out the

original SERVE Leaders Institute—documents others could use as starting points for developing their own materials. In

addition, many other Institute resources are available on the Institute website: <www.serve.org/leaders>.

If you have questions or comments about the SERVE Leaders Institute or this resource guide, please contact:

Dr. Steve Bingham

SERVE

Toll-Free (800) 755-3277

Telephone: (336) 334-3211

Fax: (336) 334-3268

E-mail: sbingham@serve.org

www.serve.org/leaders
4 Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools

The plan

Planning for professional development is primarily

nonlinear. Given a two-year contract, organizers for the

SERVE Leaders Institute began with the notion that best

efforts would get better as they tried out and refined

their practices. Institute staff often talked about “beating a

path as they walked.” What was clear from the beginning,

however, was the necessity for a design team comprised of

regional and national experts in school leadership, charter

school development, and organizational behavior to assist

in crafting learner objectives, content, delivery processes,

and learning environments for the Institute.

Goals and objectives

As a research and development project, the SERVE

Leaders Institute pursued the overarching goal of developing and testing in one state a replicable model predicted

to support school leadership in any state. (Chapter six of

this document reviews program goals in detail.) The first

charge of the design team, then, was to develop learner

Chapter 1: Design and Management

When deciding how to design and manage

a school leadership institute, three primary

issues must be addressed. First, organizers

need a plan. What are the goals and objectives of the

institute? What activities and processes will achieve the

goals and objectives? What are the deliverables and the

timeline? How will the institute be evaluated?

Second, program organizers need information. What

are the critical issues facing school leaders? How do

practitioners think a leaders institute might best address

these issues? What lessons can organizers learn from

previous leadership development programs?

Third, program organizers need human and material

resources. What expertise and experience will be required

to plan and perform the work of the institute? What roles

and responsibilities are assigned to the core staff and why?

What instructional materials, technology, and facilities are

required to accomplish institute goals?

This section addresses the above questions by broadly

describing how the SERVE Leaders Institute staff designed and

managed their work. Later sections flesh out the issues in

more detail. The following subsections focus on the plan, the

information, and the resources employed by Institute staff.

objectives and strategies based on stated goals. Commissioned for a total of four months, the design team

convened for two days in the first month to generate

ideas on the “what” and “how” of school leadership.

Continued refinement of the model was achieved through

electronic communication.

Activities and processes

The work of the design team resulted in a model

that provided objectives and learning activities for ten

school leadership teams at their home schools (termed

“remote” by the Institute) and at multi-day retreats twice

annually. In addition to remote and retreat activities, the

organizers wanted to provide ways for school leaders and

Institute staff to share learning with others. Additionally,

Institute staff built in evaluation, cohort application and

selection, and staff capacity-building as activities, understanding that not all leadership development programs

may incorporate every component of the SERVE Leaders

Institute. Appendix A shows the First Quarter of the

Institute Annual Plan for 1999 as a “slice-in-time” example

of how work might be organized.

Deliverables and timeline

Deliverables are products promised by the contractor and owed to the funding agency at some agreed-upon

time. To the extent that deliverables have a way of sustaining a program’s momentum, organizers of any leadership

development initiative—however funded—should consider designing them into the plan. The SERVE Leaders

Institute was responsible for delivering numerous products to the U.S. Department of Education, including

monthly progress and financial reports and documents

related to the completion of significant events and tasks in

the development of the leadership training model. Appendix B shows a breakdown of deliverables by due date.

The information

If leadership program content is to be relevant and

practitioner-driven, organizers need to design the course of

study around issues school leaders themselves perceive as

challenging. Delivery processes, too, must be informed by

how practitioners think a leaders institute might best

address those issues. Finally, organizers can be instructed

by findings from other leadership development programs
Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools 5

and practices. SERVE Leaders Institute staff gathered

information through a series of individual and group

interviews with principals and teacher leaders in charter

and innovative public schools and through benchmarking

studies of established educational and corporate leadership development programs. Each of the three information

bases is discussed below.

Critical leadership issues

During the design phase of the Institute, organizers

convened North Carolina principal and teacher focus

groups and interviewed selected leaders, posing two

primary questions: What are the critical issues facing

school leaders today? and How might a leaders institute

best address (for example, deliver a course of study

around) the critical issues? Among charter and innovative

regular public school leaders, the following ten issues

were identified as important:

• Managing time

• Managing stress

• Facilitating change

• Enlisting others in a vision and

building consensus

• Managing people and conflict

• Dealing with student accountability

• Understanding self and the need for

support networks

• Recruiting, hiring, and developing teachers

• Dealing with site-based management

• Managing finances and accounting

processes

Delivery processes

Organizers received numerous suggestions from

practitioner leaders as to the delivery of course content.

The following are ten of the most often cited responses:

• Go away for a few days in a retreat setting

• Convene retreats no less than one

month apart

• Facilitate learning post-retreat

• Provide mentors to shadow and coach

each leader

• Use technology to provide online forums

and e-mail

• Use problem-based learning

• Use hands-on, participatory learning

• Provide a framework to pull

everything together

• Make practical applications

• Benchmark curriculum and instruction

best practices

Benchmarking educational and corporate

leadership development

Benchmarking involves comparing the processes and

outcomes of other programs as a means of evaluating or

designing one’s own. Summarizing the programs that

SERVE Leaders Institute staff reviewed exceeds the scope

of this document. However, the review resulted in adopting a number of practices that may have otherwise gone

unnoticed. For example, the North Carolina Principals’

Executive Program’s rigorous training schedule served as a

model for Year One retreats.

Additionally, organizers reviewed seminal school

leadership documents to assist in designing content,

among them the professional standards articulated in the

National Policy Board for Educational Administration

(NPBEA) and the Interstate School Leaders Licensure

Consortium (ISLLC). Recommendations for leaders from

these two documents are listed in Chapter 3. The SERVE

Leaders Institute course of study and delivery design, then,

was a combination of leader-identified critical issues and

suggested pedagogy, lessons learned from established

educational and corporate leadership development

programs, and national standards documents.

The resources

Leadership institute organizers need both human

and material resources. People with specific expertise and

experience are required in planning and executing the

work. Organizers must assign various roles and responsibilities to core staff commensurate with the institute’s

goals. Finally, organizers must select and acquire relevant

instructional materials, technology, and facilities. Organizers at the SERVE Leaders Institute devoted considerable

effort to optimizing the links between people, core staff

roles and responsibilities, and materials.

If leadership program content is to

be relevant and practitionerdriven, organizers need to design

the course of study around issues

 which school leaders themselves

report as challenging.
6 Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools

Human resources:

Expertise and experience

Although there was some overlap, human resources

for the Institute were divided into three groups: design

team members, faculty, and core staff. Individuals selected

for the design team included the Institute director, an

expert in school leadership and a former public school

principal; a social researcher, experienced in working with

charter school applicants and developers; an education

technology specialist with expertise in website development and cyber-learning; a program evaluator experienced

in reviewing charter school applications; three charter

school operators or founders; an expert in charter school

finance; an organization development expert; and a charter

school accountability expert.

Faculty members were selected not only for their

expertise and experience but also their willingness to enter

into a long-term relationship with participating schools. The

faculty ranged widely from charter school developer to

assessment expert to school finance expert and everything

in between. (The faculty is discussed in detail in Chapter 4.)

Selected members of both the design team and core staff

served as faculty for one or two sessions.

Members of the core staff included the project

director, a social researcher, an administrative assistant, a

program evaluator, an educational technology specialist,

and a consultant. Most, but not all, members of the core

staff also served on the design team. Understanding how

the Institute was built proved extremely valuable in

performing the other roles played by the design team.

Human resources:

Core staff roles and responsibilities

Appendix A shows the various roles and responsibilities undertaken by SERVE Leaders Institute staff, as

noted in the “Person(s) Responsible” column. Taking the

lead in remote learning were the education technology

specialist, the social researcher, and the director. Retreat

production was the responsibility of the director, the

social researcher, the program consultant, and the administrative assistant. Leadership for leveraged learning was

performed by the consultant, the director, and the social

researcher. In evaluation, the program evaluator and

administrative assistant carried the load. Providing

leadership in the application and selection process was the

consultant and director’s job. Finally, building staff capacity

fell to the director. The core staff coordinated its efforts

through routine conference calls, electronic mail, and faceto-face meetings. Several additional comments will be

helpful to those who would replicate the SERVE Leaders

Institute. First, despite the assignment of primary roles and

responsibilities, the core staff cross-trained so that several

members could, and often did, perform the same work.

Second, all core staff were assigned to the program parttime. In full-time-equivalent (FTE) terms, the Institute

director began at .8 FTE (later reduced to .6 FTE), the

social researcher and administrative assistant were at

.5 FTE, and the education technology specialist and

evaluator were at .2 FTE. (The evaluator was later

reduced to .1 FTE.) The consultant’s time varied with

assigned tasks.
Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools 7

Materials

Materials refer to instructional

supplies such as textbooks, articles,

and notebooks; technology includes

computers, software, and audiovisual equipment; and facilities

include meeting rooms, dining

rooms, sleeping quarters, and

computer laboratories. Effective

management of materials was

particularly important in producing

the retreats. Although the administrative assistant prepared and sent

participant notebooks and relevant,

faculty-selected texts several weeks

prior to the first retreat, additional

materials were delivered at this

time. The social researcher acquired

meeting rooms and other facilities

and arranged for audio-visual needs

pursuant to faculty requests several

months prior to the retreats.

(Chapter 5 explains facility management in detail.)

The key to managing materials

successfully is for organizers to

realize their dependence on

external vendors and to identify

needs as far in advance as possible.

The SERVE Leaders Institute

experience suggests that it may be

best to assign no more than two

core staff members to this task.
8 Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools

Before designing the content and delivery of a

leadership institute for innovative schools, organizers need to know who will be “in the room” when

the institute begins. Will a single person represent a

school, or will people come in teams? How many participants will make up a single cohort of the institute? What

kinds of schools will be represented? Charter schools?

Innovative district schools? Both? Organizers also need to

make plans about how the institute will recruit and select

participants. How will the institute get the word out about

itself? If space is limited, how will the selection process

work? These issues, summarized in the sidebar below, are

the focus of this section of the document.

Who will participate in

the institute?

Any high-quality leadership development program

must be tailored to the specific people likely to participate

in it. One-size-fits-all approaches are destined to fit no

one very well. For this reason, organizers of leadership

programs need clarity from the start about who will

participate in what the institute offers. A clear picture of

the participants and their needs can help guide the design.

How many people will participate in the institute’s

activities during a given period? The SERVE Leaders

Institute aimed for cohorts of 30 people each. Organizers

wanted cohorts that were small enough to have fruitful

group discussions and to allow everyone to get to know

the other participants. But they also wanted cohorts large

enough to include many schools and a diverse range of

participants. Facilities considerations—such as the size of

meeting rooms and the availability of computer labs—also

have an impact on the ideal size of a cohort.

Composition of cohorts

The SERVE Leaders Institute invited only North

Carolina-based schools to participate. While there are

many aspects of school leadership that transcend state

lines, organizers selected the one-state focus because of

state-specific legal and operating issues and to enable

participants to forge relationships among themselves and

with North Carolina-based presenters. Within North

Carolina, though, the Institute sought to attract a diverse

mix of schools, including a range of grade levels, different

target populations, different geographic regions, rural and

urban schools, and, as discussed next, both charter and

traditional public schools (see Appendix C). Among

charter schools, the Institute only invited operating

schools to participate—not schools in the planning stages.

But the Institute welcomed charter schools that had

opened recently and those with longer track records.

PICTURE 4 PICTURE 4

Chapter 2: Participants

Design Issues Surrounding

Participants

Who will participate in the institute?

• Size of the cohorts

• Composition of the cohorts

• Types of schools

• The use of teams

How will the institute recruit and

select participants?

• Marketing and recruitment

• The selection process
Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools 9

states, charter schools comprise one set of innovative

sites, but many break-the-mold schools exist within

district systems as well. The SERVE Leaders Institute

sought to include both charter and district public

schools—six to seven charter and three to four regular

public—within each cohort. Organizers made this decision

because of the many common issues facing the leaders of

any public school seeking to chart a new course, whether

it be a charter or district school. They also wanted to

build bridges between the two communities, which are

sometimes in opposition. Charter leaders have a great

deal to learn from their in-district counterparts, many of

whom have ample experience navigating the challenging

waters of innovation within public education. By the same

token, conventional public schools can gain ideas and

inspiration from charter school leaders, who operate with

even greater freedom. Including both kinds of schools,

though, created a difficult design challenge for the SERVE

Leaders Institute: how to give the cohorts a common

experience while still addressing needs that were specific

to charter or regular public schools. Dealing with this

challenge is a subject of discussion in Chapter 3.

The use of teams

At the SERVE Leaders Institute, participants attended in teams of two to four people from a school (see

the sidebar to the left). The rationale for inviting teams,

rather than individuals, was several-fold. First, the SERVE

Leaders Institute wanted to promote a participatory,

inclusive vision of leadership for schools, in contrast to a

vision of a single leader. Having multiple people from each

school encouraged school leaders to examine their

challenges and devise solutions as a group, broadening the

circle still wider upon returning to the site. Second,

organizers wanted participants to do real work at Institute retreats—delving into their own school problems and

planning strategies for the future. The presence of teams

made this possible. Finally, organizers believed that

participants attending as teams would be more comfortable from the start, already knowing each other.

Many leadership programs, however, accept individual participants. The primary reason for doing so is to

expand the number of schools reached by the institute. If

a program has 30 slots, taking one participant from each

school makes it possible to serve 30 schools, as compared

to only ten teams of three per cohort at the SERVE

Leaders Institute. Allowing individuals to attend also

makes it easier for people to sign up; instead of having to

pull together several people who agree to participate, a

single person can decide whether to come.

Using Teams at a Leadership

Institute: Composition and Size

Institutes that choose the team

approach confront a pair of important issues.

Team composition

Which members of a school community

should be part of a team attending a

leadership institute? The SERVE Leaders

Institute left this decision to each school.

Most participating schools brought the school

principal or director and two teachers. But

other participants included assistant

principals, parents, community volunteers, and

(in the case of nonprofit charter schools)

members of school’s governing boards.

Though each school could select its own

team members, the SERVE Leaders Institute

asked schools to send people who played (or

soon would play) leadership roles in the

school—the content of the Institute centered

on issues of leadership rather than the

challenges of teachers in the classroom or

parents in the home.

Team size

How many people from a school

should attend? The SERVE Leaders Institute

reserved three spaces for each school but

built in some flexibility. Some schools sent

only two people, which opened up spaces

for other schools to send four. In setting a

size for teams, organizers must balance two

competing interests. On one hand, having

more people from a school community

involved is likely to magnify the impact of

the institute back at the school site. On the

other, if the overall number of slots is

limited, having larger teams means fewer

schools can participate.

Types of schools

As noted in the introduction, many different kinds of

schools are the site of innovation and independence in

today’s educational system. In North Carolina, as in other
10 Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools

How will the institute

recruit and select

participants?

With a structured plan for the size and composition

of cohorts and, if applicable, teams, a next step for

institute organizers is to recruit a pool of applicants for

the institute and select the cohort for participation.

Marketing and recruitment

Leaders of innovative public schools are busy. They

want high-quality professional development for themselves

and their staffs, but making the time to prepare for and

attend leadership retreats may seem difficult. The challenge is especially great in a smaller school, for which

sending a three-person team away for a few days can leave

a large hole in the staff. Consequently, a leaders institute

must focus a great deal of energy on marketing and

recruitment—on making the case to school leaders that

the experience will be worthwhile.

The SERVE Leaders Institute marketed the program

extensively across the state but never received a flood of

applications—enough to fill cohorts, but not enough to

have a large pool of applicants from which to select a much

smaller number of participants. In the process, though,

Institute staff learned a number of valuable lessons:

• Reach principals directly. Initial efforts to reach

principals through superintendents were not

effective, while direct mailings and personal calls to

principals themselves yielded more applications.

Superintendents may not pass on the information to

principals, or principals may be inundated with mail

from the central office. In the SERVE Leaders

Institute’s first year, in which superintendent

outreach was the primary form of marketing to

regular public schools, only a small number of

regular public schools applied. By contrast, 25

percent of the state’s charter schools, whose

principals had received direct mailings and calls,

applied.

• Work with organizations that can refer participants. With

all of the professional development opportunities

available, school leaders often do not know which

options will be the most useful to their schools. By

reaching out to organizations to whom principals

turn for advice—such as a charter school resource

center or principals association—an institute can

generate referrals.

• Target regular public school marketing to subgroups of

schools.The regular public schools most likely to be

interested in a leaders institute are those that are

charting some kind of unique course. Marketing

focused on a school known to be innovative—such

as schools involved in reform networks—can be

more effective than blanket marketing.

• Create incentives to attend.The SERVE Leaders Institute

paid all expenses incurred by participants, including

travel, meals, and accommodations. Working through

the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the

SERVE Leaders Institute offered continuing education

credits to all participants, creating an additional

reason to attend.

• Use high-quality materials to spread the word. In addition

to direct mailings to principals, the SERVE Leaders

Institute developed a full-color brochure and a very

detailed website (www.serve.org/leaders) to provide

additional information.

The selection process

The SERVE Leaders Institute conducted two annual

selection processes—one for each cohort of participants.

Each year, teams interested in participating in the SERVE

Leaders Institute completed a brief application form

(included as Appendix D). In addition to basic descriptive

SERVE Leaders Institute Selection Timeline, Year Two

October 1, 1998 Applications mailed to all North Carolina public school principals

November 13, 1998 Completed applications due to SERVE

December 1998 Selection committee reviewed applications, conducted interviews

January 8, 1999 Applicants notified of selection decisions
Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools 11

information about the school and team members, the

form asked teams to write narrative answers to six

questions covering topics such as the school’s mission, its

distinctive characteristics, a significant challenge the school

faced, and what the team hoped to gain from participation

in the Institute. SERVE, Inc. assembled a selection committee consisting of Leaders Institute staff and an external

reviewer with experience leading both regular and charter

public schools. The committee interviewed the principal of

each applying school by telephone and selected participants for the cohort. The selection committee applied a

set of criteria in judging each application, listed in the

sidebar above.

Organizers of the SERVE Leaders Institute learned

some valuable lessons in conducting the selection process.

During the first year of the Institute, some participants

were unable to follow through on their commitment to

participate. As a result, school teams changed from one

part of the Institute to the next. In response, the second

year application form (Appendix D) included two changes.

First, the application form itself listed the dates of Institute

activities. The form asked applicants to review those dates

and make sure they were feasible before submitting an

application. Second, the form asked each individual team

member to sign the application and provide contact

information (not just the name of the school principal). This

change aimed to engender commitment on the part of the

team members to participate. While these changes did not

eliminate all problems of teams changing over time, organizers of similar institutes should use these and other ways of

building commitment to participate at the outset.

SERVE Leaders Institute

Selection Criteria

• Desire and potential to create excellent

schools, as evidenced by ability to articulate

personal and organizational mission and

strategies for realizing goals

• Commitment to high academic standards

for all students, including at risk, as

evidenced by how their school’s current

design and aspirations embody such

standards

• Commitment to lifelong learning, as

evidenced by insight displayed in personal

strengths and weaknesses as well as

expressed desire to build on strengths and

address shortcomings

• Eagerness to share what they learn within

their schools and beyond, as evidenced by

statements about how they would spread

what they learn as they participate in and

after they complete training at the SERVE

Leaders Institute
12 Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools

Chapter 3: Content

Given the busy lives of school leaders, an institute

will only be able to engage participants for a

limited amount of time. School leaders may be

willing to turn up for the occasional weekend retreat and

do some amount of “homework” at school or in their

living rooms. But with the daily demands of running a

school, leaders will have only so much time to give even to

the highest quality programs. As a result, institute organizers need to prioritize their offerings with great care. Of

the vast universe of possible topics to address, what are

the most important?

This chapter outlines how the SERVE Leaders

Institute approached that question through the Institute’s

“learning strands” and the specific topics addressed within

each one. But, first, it is helpful to think about some of the

broad design issues surrounding the content of school

leadership development.

Broad design issues

School leaders are likely to arrive at the door of

a leadership institute with a wide range of needs. As the

SERVE Leaders Institute evolved, organizers came to

divide these needs into three categories. First, participants

needed to acquire expertise in various areas of school

leadership and practice. They came to the Institute hoping

to learn about new ways to assess students, organize their

schools’ governance, finance their operations, forge

partnerships with businesses, and so on. Second, participants needed to build personal skills and competencies as

leaders. Having expertise in the many topics important to

school leaders was not enough. Participants also wanted

to understand their own strengths and weaknesses as

leaders and discover what they could do to build on their

assets and overcome their challenges. Finally, participants

needed structured time to engage in planning about the

Examples of Needs Participants

Bring to an Institute

Acquisition of expertise

• What are cutting edge ideas about how

to assess the performance of students?

• What are some successful strategies for

motivating students to learn?

• What are some sources of funding for school

improvement?

• What are the characteristics of a successful

grant proposal?

• What are the laws governing the hiring and

dismissal of staff?

• What are the laws governing the disciplining of

students at school?

• What are effective ways to obtain favorable

media coverage for my school?

• What are some helpful models of committee

structures for organizing our school?

Personal development

• What are the critical competencies school

leaders need?

• What are my assets and challenges as a leader?

• Which leadership styles do I tend to use, and

how do those compare to other members of

my school community?

• How can I improve my leadership capabilities

and alter my leadership styles to get better

results?

Planning school futures

• How can we assess our school’s strengths and

weaknesses?

• What are the critical challenges facing our

school?

• What are some strategies we can follow to

address these challenges?

With the daily demands of

running a school, leaders will have

only so much time to give even to

the highest quality programs. As a

result, institute organizers need

to prioritize their offerings with

great care.

future of their schools. Participants viewed the Institute as

an opportunity to do some real work to move their

schools forward—examining their schools’ current

situations and thinking about how to improve. The sidebar

below provides more examples to illuminate the differences between these three categories.
Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools 13

These different needs are all important. School

leaders need to gain expertise in a broad range of areas,

they need to commit themselves to continual improvement

of their own personal capabilities, and they need to do the

real work of school improvement by identifying their

schools’ challenges and making plans to overcome them. All

of these needs are intertwined with one another. A school

planning exercise might identify a need to change the way a

school assesses its students’ performance; an expertiseoriented session on assessment might provide the tools

leaders need to begin making those changes. An expertiseoriented session on different ways to organize a school’s

committee structure might also prompt a leader to realize

his or her own need to develop group-process skills.

The SERVE Leaders Institute sought to address all of

these needs, but its orientation was geared toward expertise acquisition. Most of the Institute’s retreat sessions, for

example, aimed to provide participants with information

about important areas of expertise. But the Institute could

have taken a much different tack. For example, the focus of

an institute for school leaders could rest firmly on personal

development, with most of the sessions devoted to helping

participants assess their own leadership capabilities and

styles and offering practical capacity-building exercises.

Participants would spend less time than they did at the

SERVE Leaders Institute learning and talking about the daily

“stuff” of schooling, concentrating instead on their own

self-improvement as leaders. Alternately, an institute could

focus primarily on giving participants the time, structure,

and resources to make plans for the improvement of their

own schools. Such an institute might provide personal

development- and expertise-oriented sessions, as well, but

these would be tailored to needs participants identified in

the process of assessing their schools’ concrete needs and

making plans for change.

There is no right mix of these different ingredients.

The important point is for institute organizers to think

carefully about which approach they want to take. Decisions about these broad issues have great ramifications for

the detailed design of the institute’s content, so early

discussion of them is vital.

The SERVE

Leaders Institute

“Learning Strands”

In line with the SERVE Leaders Institute’s expertise

orientation, the Institute’s content fell into five “learning

strands” that corresponded to the major activities that

school leaders undertake. (A considerable body of research

and literature, listed in Appendix Q, informs and supports

the five-strand construct.) As illustrated in the puzzle below

left, these activities include the folowing:

• Visioning: articulating and enlisting others in a vision

of the school that drives all school activities

• Learning: setting organizational goals, selecting best

practices for instruction and assessment, and using

information to improve student performance

• Resources: generating income, allocating resources,

and monitoring school operations

• People: creating relationships inside the school

(including governance) that facilitate cooperation,

performance, and mutual satisfaction

• Relationships: establishing beneficial relations

outside the school with media, educational

authorities, policymakers, and other organizations

The puzzle signifies two important aspects of the

framework. First, organizers placed “Visioning” at the

center of the Institute’s design. Successfully leading an

innovative public school begins with a clear picture of the

sort of school leaders are seeking to create. All other

decisions—about how teaching and learning will happen;

how leaders will allocate and use resources; how leaders

will select, organize, and motivate the school’s people; and

what kinds of relationships the school will forge with

outside organizations—derive from this widely shared,

compelling vision of the school. Second, the interlocking

pieces of the puzzle indicate the fundamental interrelatedness of the learning strands. These activities are not

wholly distinct aspects of school operations that can be
14 Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools

broken apart and managed separately. Rather, leaders of

excellent schools pull the strands together into a coherent plan, all in service of the vision.

By design, the five strands represented very broad

concepts rather than specific areas of content. To add

more detail to the Institute’s design, organizers identified

several “learner objectives” within each strand (see

below). These learner objectives, as described in the

section below on specific topics, drove decisions about

the specific content to address in Institute activities.

SERVE Leaders Institute Learner Objectives

VISIONING: Articulate and enlist others in a vision that drives all school activities by

• Using knowledge of self, the school, and its environment

• Identifying barriers and levers of implementing vision

• Involving stakeholders in developing vision

• Communicating the vision through symbols, ceremonies, and stories

• Applying knowledge of the diverse learning needs of the school’s target population

• Applying knowledge of strategic planning in designing, implementing, and evaluating school improvement plans

• Applying knowledge of school culture and climate

LEARNING: Set organizational goals, select best practices for instruction and assessment,

and use information to improve student performance by

• Aligning organizational goals with vision

• Using research and craft knowledge to make instructional decisions

• Using multiple sources of data to improve student performance

• Selecting assessment tools that provide useful information about progress towards goals

• Applying knowledge of learning and motivation theories

• Applying knowledge of the role of technology in promoting student learning

• Applying knowledge of systems theory

RESOURCES: Generate income, allocate resources, and monitor school operations by

• Aligning the business plan with vision and goals

• Seeking out financial and other resources that support continual improvement

• Developing a budget process that ensures fiscal decisions align with school priorities

• Using technology to manage fiscal operations

• Applying knowledge of legal issues impacting school operations

• Applying knowledge of principles and issues relating to facilities and use of space

• Applying knowledge of potential sources of public and private funding for the school

PEOPLE: Create relationships inside the school (including governance) that facilitate

cooperation, performance, and mutual satisfaction by

• Taking a strategic, vision-driven approach to people-management

• Identifying and developing leadership and management competencies

• Identifying and assigning roles and responsibilities

• Selecting the right people for the right roles

• Setting performance expectations and developing, evaluating, and rewarding performance

• Building consensus and resolving conflicts

• Applying knowledge of legal issues impacting school governance and personnel issues

RELATIONSHIPS: Establish beneficial relationships outside the school with media,

educational authorities, policymakers, and other organizations by

• Identifying and determining interests of external parties critical to school success

• Forging beneficial partnerships with external parties

• Obtaining favorable media coverage of the school’s activities

• Marketing the school to prospective families

• Advocating successfully for policies that help the school achieve its vision

• Applying knowledge of effective communication strategies

• Applying knowledge of successful negotiation strategies
Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools 15

Alternate frameworks

for school leadership

development

The five-strand framework served as a useful

organizing device for the Institute, but there are certainly

other ways to break down the complex task of school

leadership. This section discusses three alternate approaches and provides information about where to

learn from others.

Northwest Regional Education Laboratory’s

Leadership Training Academy

When the U.S. Department of Education contracted with SERVE to create the SERVE Leaders

Institute, it contracted with another Laboratory

(NWREL) to do the same. NWREL produced “A Profile

of the Leadership Needs of Charter School Founders”

to guide its own development of leadership activities

for charter schools. The Profile identified six “content

areas,” analogous to the SERVE strands: Start-Up

Logistics, Curriculum Standards and Assessment

Development, Governance/ Management, Community

Relations: Internal and External, Regulatory Issues, and

Leadership Training Requirements (see Appendix E).

Though more charter-specific than the SERVE framework, the NWREL model covers much the same

ground, yet with a different vehicle.

Interstate School Leaders Licensure

Consortium “Standards for School Leaders”

Under the aegis of the Council of Chief State School

Officers, the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) crafted a set of six standards for school

leaders. For each standard, ISLLC detailed the knowledge

and the dispositions (beliefs, values, and commitments)

needed by a school leader to fulfill the standard. The

standards also include a set of performances by which

leaders can indicate their mastery of each standard. The

ISLLC standards are listed in Appendix F.

National Policy Board for Educational

Administration’s (NPBEA) “Performance

Standards for Educational Leaders”

The NPBEA’s standards enumerate 21 “domains” and

list numerous performance standards within each one. The

NPBEA’s domains are

• Leadership

• Measurement and Evaluation

• Information Collection

• Resource Allocation

• Problem Analysis

• Motivation

• Judgement

• Sensitivity

• Organizational Oversight

• Oral and Nonverbal Expression

• Implementation

• Written Expression

• Delegation and Empowerment

• Philosophical and Cultural Values

• Instruction

• Legal and Regulatory Applications

• Curriculum

• Policy and Political Influences

• Guidance and Development

• Public Relations

• Staff Development

For more information about these standards, contact

NPBEA at 573-884-8300 or

e-mail pbf2@tiger.coe.missouri.edu.

Other approaches

These three approaches are just a few of the many

ways designers of educational leadership programs have

framed issues of school leadership. Two online catalogs of

leadership programs link to many of the other approaches

in use:

• Institute for Educational Leadership Directory of

Leadership Development and Training Resources:

<http://www.iel.org/leader/directory.html>

• NPBEA’s International Resource Bank for Programs

in Educational Leadership: <http://www.npbea.org/

projects/international_resource_bank.html>

Specific topics

addressed at the

SERVE Leaders Institute

The SERVE Leaders Institute’s five strands were very

broad conceptions of the role of school leaders. Even the
16 Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools

learner objectives, which were more detailed, encompassed a great many areas of knowledge and skills.

Organizers faced the challenge of creating Institute

activities that were more focused on the highest priority

specific topics within each strand. The primary mode

through which the Institute addressed these topics was

one-and-a-half to three-hour retreat sessions led by

experts in the field (discussed in Chapter 4). As an

example, the sidebar below provides an overview of the

topics addressed in the “Resources” sessions that were

part of the Institute’s second year. The complete secondyear session topical outline is found in Appendix G. For

more information about the conduct of specific sessions

and the ways participants prepared in advance for them,

visit the SERVE Leaders Institute website at

<http://www.serve.org/leaders>.

RESOURCES

February Resources Sessions

Writing Proposals That Work, Part I Introduction to successful proposal writing:

learning terminology, identifying sources of funding,

reviewing successful proposals, and understanding

proposal components

Writing Proposals That Work, Part II Introduction to successful proposal writing:

understanding proposal components (Part II), what

reviewers look for, and tips for winning; includes

discussion of proposals participants are interested in

applying for

July Resources Sessions

Employment Law Overview Introduction to federal employment discrimination law:

assessment of participants’ current level of knowledge,

overview of the issues, and discussion of how to build

participants’ legal capacity

Facilities Planning (Charters) Introduction to a long-term facilities plan:

current year and long-term needs assessments, current

year and long-term cost estimates, and review of

options and strategies (Participants will leave with a

framework for developing their own long-term plan.)

Budgeting and Funding (Charters) Introduction to establishing a basic budget development

and fiscal management system: budget development and

monitoring, fiscal management policies and practices,

fiscal roles of administrative staff and board, maximizing

the school’s revenues, and aligning expenditures with

the school’s vision
Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools 17

Combining charter and

traditional public schools

The vast majority of the content of the SERVE

Leaders Institute was of interest to both charter and

regular public schools. Participants from the two types of

schools worked together within these sessions. However, in

a small number of cases, organizers came to the conclusion

that the two groups of schools needed different types of

help. For example, charter schools in North Carolina are

governed by nonprofit boards, a legal arrangement that

addresses numerous issues that do not arise in regular

public schools. Charter schools in North Carolina also have

much greater control over their financial resources and

facilities, making issues such as budgeting and facilities

financing high priorities. By the same token, regular public

schools face challenges that do not apply to charter

schools. For example, they are required to develop detailed

plans in areas such as school improvement, technology, and

school safety. To address these needs, the SERVE Leaders

Institute divided the two groups from time to time.

Since one of the Institute’s objectives was to forge

networks among all the members of each cohort—both

charter and regular—dividing the cohort like this had a

significant downside. Consequently, organizers arranged the

schedule so that during each cohort’s first gathering, all

sessions were for the entire cohort. Only in the second

retreat did charter and regular public school participants go

their separate ways for two sessions.
18 Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools

Whatever the content of a leadership institute, there are manydifferent vehicles available to

deliver it. Will participants come together for

one or more retreats? What will happen at

those retreats? What kinds of activities will

the institute design to convey the content?

What sort of work will participants do at

their own schools or homes to supplement

retreat activities? And how can the learning

that takes place in the institute be spread

beyond the core group of participants?

This chapter describes the issues

surrounding three modes of delivery used by

the SERVE Leaders Institute. Retreats formed

the core of the Institute’s design. Remote

learning aimed to ensure that participants

took what they learned at retreats back to

their sites. And leveraged learning sought to

make the Institute’s resources available not just to direct

participants, but to people nationwide with an interest in

leadership development for break-the-mold schools.

Retreats

Each SERVE Leaders Institute cohort participated in

two retreats—one in the late winter or spring and one in

the summer. Held at universities and conference centers,

the retreats ran from Thursday afternoon to Sunday

afternoon, and each consisted of a series of 90-minute

sessions, broken up by meals and breaks and covering the

variety of topics outlined in Chapter 3. Putting all of this

content together effectively raises some important design

issues for institute organizers (see the sidebar to the right).

Types of activities

SERVE Leaders Institute retreats featured many

different types of sessions, ranging from lecture-based and

whole-group discussion to small-group activities with

teams that mixed people from different schools and smallgroup work by school teams. Mixing these different kinds

of sessions appeared important for keeping participants

engaged in the work.

Matching the style of the session with the content

also proved important. Some topics, such as the ingredients of a successful grant proposal, lent themselves to a

format based on lecture interspersed with questions and

answers. Others, such as active learning strategies, called

for more interactive sessions in which participants

engaged in hands-on activities. Organizers of leaders

institutes should think carefully about the ideal format for

the delivery of each unique session.Though there are some

general principles that can guide thinking about the design

of activities (for example, the National Staff Development

Council’s Standards for Staff Development at <http://

www.nsdc.org/list.htm>), no one size will fit all of the

content designers choose to include.

Over the course of the Institute, one of the most

significant changes was a shift toward more sessions

devoted to planning by school teams—sessions in which

teams did the actual work of putting what they had

learned into practice by making plans for changes at their

Chapter 4: Delivery

Design Issues for

Leadership Retreats

• Types of activities to offer—lectures,

exercises, discussions, and team work

• Selecting a faculty

• Sequencing and pacing issues

• Annual timing issues

• Logistics

(the topic of the next chapter)
Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools 19

schools. Participants regarded these sessions as highly

valuable and consistently gave them high marks in evaluations. In retrospect, it is not difficult to see why. Most

school leaders’ lives at school are a whirlwind of activity,

with many competing demands on their time. Making space

to sit back and think about the school’s major challenges

and crafting responses to those challenges often takes a

back seat to more pressing issues. The retreat setting—

away from the telephone, the leaky roof, and the paperwork—creates a unique opportunity to do the work of

analysis and planning that is critical to school improvement.

For a complete understanding of the sessions

offered by the SERVE Leaders Institute, including sessionby-session descriptions, visit the Leaders Institute’s

website at <http://serve.org/leaders/strands.htm> and

select a strand from the puzzle graphic.

Selection of faculty

The SERVE Leaders Institute used a variety of

outside speakers as “faculty” for most of the Institute’s

sessions (see Appendix H). The advantages of this approach included exposure to a wide variety of resources

that could prove helpful to participants after they left

retreats and the involvement of a “top expert” in each

area of content covered. However, the approach also had

disadvantages. The resulting retreats were somewhat

disjointed, as one presenter after the next paraded before

the group. The busy lives of the faculty required the

Institute to design the sequence of sessions in line with

faculty members’ schedules rather than a logical progression. And Institute staff had less control of the actual

content (and conduct) of specific sessions, since outside

resources sometimes adapted pre-existing presentations

rather than designing tailored programs.

An alternate approach would be to employ a small

“core faculty” that would lead most of an institute’s

sessions, ensuring more consistency and flow within and

across retreats. Outside experts could still be used

strategically. For example, inspirational “my story” presentations were well received by participants in the SERVE

Leaders Institute, as were some big-picture panoramic

presentations by leading thinkers. Such sessions could

punctuate the core faculty’s central offerings.

Whether an institute uses a large, diverse faculty or

a small core, selecting the right people is critical. Some of

the criteria worth considering are

• Skill at delivering the particular type of

presentation needed

• Expertise in the content area

• Willingness and ability to adapt pre-packaged

presentations to the needs of the institute

• Knowledge of participants’ context (for example,

state legal framework for charter schools)

• Potential availability to work with participants

beyond the retreats

• Openness to the diversity of approaches likely to

exist in a group of break-the-mold schools

Sequencing and pacing issues

SERVE Leaders Institute retreats featured 18 ninetyminute sessions over the course of four days (see Appendix I

for a retreat schedule). Organizing these into a coherent

sequence that kept participants engaged proved challenging.
20 Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools

The issues that arose included the following:

• Length of the day. During the first retreat in 1998,

participants began working on Friday and Saturday at

8:00 a.m., breaking between sessions for 15 minutes

and for lunch and dinner. The retreats did not adjourn

until 9:00 p.m. Almost unanimously, participants said

these days were too long. By the late hours of the

day, participants reported that they were unable to

absorb the information they were receiving. In

subsequent retreats, Institute staff experimented with

different arrangements. Days ended earlier, wrapping

up by 7:00 p.m., and participants enjoyed more free

time away from the retreat altogether.

• Order of sessions.At the outset, SERVE Leaders

Institute staff attempted to order sessions so that

activities related to a particular “strand” of content

occurred sequentially. Maintaining this ordering at all

times, though, proved difficult. Schedules of presenters, the availability of computer facilities, and other

factors sometimes made it necessary to break

strands up. While such arrangements are probably

necessary, organizers can still work to ensure a

sensible sequence to retreat sessions so that

activities that build on each other occur in the right

order, even if they are broken apart in time.

• Timing of sessions.As noted above, in sessions directly

after lunch and toward the end of the day, participants

reported difficulty remaining engaged. Institute organizers can mitigate this problem by thinking carefully about

the types of sessions that are likely to “work” in these

low-energy periods. For example, sessions in which

participants have the chance to get out of their seats

and move around may be more suitable than straight

lecture formats during these times.

Annual timing issues

In addition to thinking through timing issues within a

retreat, organizers need to plan effectively the time of

year to hold retreats. While some timing issues are driven

by logistical considerations (discussed in Chapter 5), it is

also important to think about where retreats fall in the

context of the school year. In 1998, the first SERVE

Leaders Institute retreat took place in late April. Participants reported that this retreat came too late in the

school year. Opportunities for implementing change had

passed by then, and school leaders were distracted by

end-of-year activities such as state testing and commencements. In the following year, the SERVE Leaders Institute’s

first retreat took place in late February, instead.

In both years, the second retreat took place in late

July, a time of year with both pluses and minuses. On the

plus side, with most schools out for vacation, school

leaders can more easily spare the time to attend a retreat.

In addition, schools can immediately act on plans they

make at a late-summer retreat. On the minus side,

summer retreats may conflict with the vacation plans of

participants’ families. Several schools participating in the

SERVE Leaders Institute had to send different individuals

to the second retreat as a result. The increasing prevalence of year-round schools also complicates the scheduling of a summer retreat.

Remote Learning

While retreats provide an intense opportunity for

learning and networking, they cannot possibly meet all of

the learning needs of school leaders. The task of school

leadership is simply too complex to “cover” in the context

of even the most ambitious of retreat agendas. And since

adults learn best by “doing”—by applying what they learn

in more removed settings—any successful leadership

institute must include a component designed to spark and

structure learning outside of the retreat setting.

SERVE Leaders Institute staff dubbed this type of

learning “remote” due to the separation of participants

from each other and Institute faculty and staff. Although a

somewhat paradoxical title—since the work of remote

learning took place at the school site rather than in the

removed retreat setting—remote learning in the SERVE

Leaders Institute took several different forms, listed in the

sidebar below.

Preparation for retreats

Before attending retreats, participants read materials

and engaged in exercises to help them prepare. A listing of

many of the readings (ranging from the technical to the

inspirational) in the SERVE Leaders Institute learning

strands is included in Appendix J. In addition to reading,

participants had the opportunity to engage in exercises

designed to help them assess their current status or think

through important issues in preparation for the retreat.

 Remote Learning in the

 SERVE Leaders Institute

• Preparation for retreats

• Follow up on decisions and plans made at

retreats

• School culture audits

• Mentoring and coaching

• Internet-based resources and activities
Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools 21

Participants filled out assessments of their leadership

styles and capabilities, conducted environmental scans of

their schools’ settings, and put some thought into how

their schools were doing in forging partnerships with

external organizations. For a full account of exercises

conducted for the SERVE Leaders Institute, including many

of the actual instruments, visit the Leaders Institute’s

website at <http://www.serve.org/leaders/strands.htm>.

Each strand contains a list of retreat activities, including

details about how participants prepared for the session.

One of the issues faced by Institute designers was

how much “homework” to assign prior to retreats, in light

of the busy lives of participants. The initial retreat involved

about 25 hours of preparatory work, but feedback

suggested that this homework load was too great. Participants seemed satisfied with the reduced level at subsequent retreats. They did, however, express concerns that

the homework was not sufficiently connected to retreat

activities. Participants appeared willing to do preparatory

work if they thought they would have the chance to use

or process that work in the context of the retreat.

Follow up

Beginning with the initial cohort’s second retreat,

participants began to complete (within school teams)

“Sharing Plans” for each retreat session (see Appendix K).

In these plans, teams indicated how they planned to share

what they had learned with other members of the school

community. For example, teams might plan to offer a

similar workshop to all teachers, share certain readings or

materials with staff, or make a topic the subject of a PTA

meeting. These plans formed the basis for much of the

remote learning that occurred in participating schools. In

addition, toward the end of each retreat, school teams had

the opportunity to reflect on the event as a whole,

identifying a small number of priority areas they would like

to address upon returning to school. For example, teams

might indicate a need to focus on revamping the school’s

governance or committee structure, revise the way it

assesses student work, or encourage the use of more

active learning strategies by teachers. These priorities

formed the basis for concrete planning that began at the

Institute but was carried on at the site.

School culture audits

At each cohort’s first retreat, Institute staff provided

participants with a school culture audit (included as

Appendix L). This form—to be completed by as many

members of the school staff as possible—helps school

leaders understand the sort of culture that exists at their

school, pinpointing areas where leaders might want to

work for change. Each school that submitted completed

forms received a thorough data analysis conducted by

SERVE, complete with graphic displays of the results.

Schools in the first cohort had the opportunity to

administer the survey in two successive years, yielding

information about changes over time.

Mentoring and coaching

SERVE staff selected six outstanding principals from

the Institute’s first cohort to serve as “mentors” or

“facilitators” for second-cohort schools. Five of the

principals served as mentors to two schools each; the

sixth coordinated the process. Mentors and protégés

were linked based on a variety of factors, including

geographical proximity, grade-level configuration, schoolcommunity characteristics, curricular vision/focus, professional strengths and needs, stage of school development,

and pre-existing relationships.

Institute staff held a four-hour training session for

the mentors based on William Snyder’s “developmental

conferencing model,” which directs mentors to focus

on the following five aspects of the mentor-protégé

relationship:

• Defining (expectations, goals, and standards)

• Discussing

• Diagnosing

• Designing (development plans)

• Documenting (assistance and progress)

In practice, contact between mentors and protégés

was sporadic. Though they were compensated for their

involvement, mentors were themselves engaged in intense

growth experiences at their own schools—all of which, by

definition, were schools that were starting from scratch as

charter schools or breaking-the-mold in some way within

existing systems. Because of the demands on their time,

most mentors found it difficult to devote much effort to

helping their peers.

These relationships appear most likely to flourish

when organizers provide mentors and protégés with a

detailed structure for moving forward, with specific

timelines and expectations built in. Along with enhanced

training, such structure could yield more productive

mentor-protégé relationships than those developing out of

the SERVE Leaders Institute. But the central problem of

time demands on mentors would be a challenge in any

effort to use active principals as mentors for others.

Internet-based resources and activities

Institute designers used its website

<www.serve.org/leaders> for two kinds of remote
22 Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools

learning. First, participants could log onto the website to

review what had been presented at past retreats. Since

repeated exposure to material is central to learning, this

ability to revisit previously covered material was important.

In addition, Institute designers developed comprehensive

links pages for each of the five strands, enabling users to look

elsewhere on the Internet for information.

Second, participants had access to a private bulletin

board system, allowing them to post queries and comments for one another to read. In practice, the bulletin

board was not well used by participants. Though all of the

participating schools had access to the Internet, many

individual participants did not have easy access at school

or at home. Site visits by SERVE Leaders Institute staff and

specific sessions at retreats provided some technical

support to overcome these barriers, but they remained at

many sites.

For organizers of leaders institutes considering the

use of web-based interaction, some helpful tips include the

following:

• Access: Be ready to provide technical support to

ensure all participants have ready access to the

Internet and know how to use the interactive

system. Consider an e-mail “listserv” rather than

an online bulletin board. Since listservs send

messages directly to individuals’ e-mail boxes and

allow them to respond electronically, many users

find them easier to access.

• Facilitation: Rather than waiting for participants to

start discussions, organizers may need to “prime

the pump” by posing provocative questions and

providing important institute logistical information

and other similar data over the system.

Leveraged Learning

Because of limits on resources and a desire to work

with a right-sized group of people, most leadership programs reach only a fraction of the potential population of

participants. SERVE Leaders Institute designers, however,

undertook to spread its learning beyond the immediate

group of participants in the following three ways:

Website

Designed for participants and those interested in

creating their own institute, the SERVE Leaders Institute

website <http://www.serve.org/leaders> provides a wealth

of online resources, including information on Cohort I and

II participants, strand and session descriptions, and helpful

links to education organizations.

Conference presentations

To expose a wider audience to the SERVE Leaders

Institute, Institute staff and consultants also made presentations at several national and regional conferences, including

the National Charter Schools Conference (1999), the

North Carolina Annual Charter School Conference (1999),

the North Carolina Association of Researchers in Education

Conference (1999), the SERVE Regional Forum on School

Improvement (1998), and the Public Education Forum of

Mississippi Annual Legislative Forum (1998).

Collaboration

By working with other organizations, the Leaders

Institute was able to reach a much wider audience. In 1998

and 1999, Institute staff co-sponsored North Carolina’s

annual charter school conference, making its faculty and

sessions available to the wider charter school audience in

North Carolina.
Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools 23

A participant’s experience at a leadership program is

 shaped profoundly by how the event “comes

 together.” Behind-the-scenes planning is essential

to ensure that the site for retreat sessions is appropriate,

the institute communicates well with participants, and the

budget balances. This chapter discusses all of these

logistical concerns.

However, before launching into specific issues, a few

overarching pieces of advice are helpful. First, because

logistics are so important, be sure to dedicate considerable

staff time to making them work smoothly. Institute organizers may be tempted to think logistics are something that

can be handled on the side, between the principal duties of

designing a curriculum and recruiting a faculty. On the

contrary, the SERVE Leaders Institute had the best results

when one person devoted half of his or her time solely to

logistical support of the Institute. Second, advance planning

can smooth over many of the inevitable logistical difficulties.

Everything about planning leadership retreats—from finding

the right site to communicating details to participants—

benefits from an early start, leaving ample time to resolve

problems. Finally, strong relationships with vendors can

further smooth the path. In particular, forging a close

partnership with the provider of space can help identify

glitches early and resolve them satisfactorily.

Site

For institutes that bring participants together,

selecting and organizing the site is one of the most

Chapter 5: Logistics

important logistical challenges. SERVE Leaders Institute

staff experimented with three different site arrangements

and, in the process, learned a great deal about making the

site an effective component of a leadership institute. Site

selection involved a complex search that combined six

basic attributes, listed in the sidebar to the left. Though

these attributes were in some ways specific to the SERVE

Leaders Institute design, most institutes are likely to face

the same issues.

Classroom space

Probably the easiest of the attributes to find,

comfortable classroom space, is available in a variety of

venues, including conference hotels, universities, and

colleges. Some of the characteristics SERVE Leaders

Institute staff found important included the following:

Critical Attributes of a Site

• Comfortable classroom space

• Availability of computers for use by

participants

• Ability to provide meals and break

refreshments

• Ability to provide lodging for participants,

faculty, and staff

• Ample parking or transportation (in cases

where multiple sites were used)

• Location that is convenient to participants and

faculty
24 Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools

designed specifically for conferences. While SERVE Leaders

Institute participants gave high ratings to the more luxurious accommodations found in business hotels, the more

basic rooms offered by a university setting proved acceptable—and far less expensive. In both cohorts, the first

retreat’s lodging was in a business hotel, while the second

retreat’s was in a dormitory setting. The contrast from one

retreat to the next generated some negative comments

from participants, leading organizers to conclude that a

more consistent type of lodging is preferable.

Parking and transportation

For one of the four retreats, SERVE Leaders Institute staff selected a multi-site location: retreat activities

took place at a university, while participants spent the

night at a hotel several miles away. Participants had to

• Comfortable in-the-round, horseshoe, or other seating

arrangements that enable whole-group discussion

• Availability of additional spaces for

break-out sessions and small-group work

• Space for use of a variety of audio-visual aids,

including flip-chart paper, overhead projectors, and

video presentation equipment

• Acoustics that allow everyone to be heard without

amplification

• Adequate control of temperature and lighting

Technology

In contrast to workable classroom space, access to

computers is among the hardest-to-arrange attributes. The

challenge is especially great if, as in the case of the SERVE

Leaders Institute, organizers want participants to be able

to use computers actively during some sessions—rather

than just watching a demonstration of technology. Though

times are definitely changing, many conference spaces are

not set up to give multiple participants access to computers simultaneously, much less to the Internet. SERVE found

universities to be the best location for providing computer space. But universities present their own challenges.

If the institute meets while school is in session, obtaining

access to computers is difficult. Or participants may find

their sessions taking place in the midst of computer labs

filled with students unrelated to the institute. If the

institute meets while school is out of session, universities

may not have staff available to open and supervise computer labs, especially during off hours.

Meals and breaks

Any event planner knows that providing participants

with food and beverages is vital to success. Most facilities

that provide space for conferences and meetings are also

equipped to provide meals and refreshments during

breaks. But organizers should check into the arrangements carefully. Can meals be provided in a location that is

convenient to the classroom space? Can the classroom

space accommodate a place for refreshments during

breaks? Will the facility be able to meet the dietary needs

of participants?

Lodging

The sleeping accommodations attached to different

kinds of facilities vary widely. Conference centers and

hotels are likely to provide standard business-class hotel

rooms. Universities and colleges provide a range of accommodations, from dormitory space to more upscale lodging
Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools 25

drive in to the university each morning and find a parking

space before sessions began. This arrangement created

numerous difficulties. Participants, unfamiliar with the

setting, often arrived late to the first session. The lack of

available parking exacerbated the late arrival problem.

SERVE Leaders Institute staff highly recommend a unitary

site—one place where participants sleep, eat, and work.

But if multiple sites are necessary, one option to consider

is organizing bus transportation between venues. Though

costly, this approach eliminates many of the wildcards that

can lead to late starts and frustration for participants.

Convenient location

Access to the site by participants and faculty is the top

priority. If organizers are considering giving participants “free

time” during a retreat, it makes sense to choose a location

that affords participants something to do during their down

time. “Something to do” can mean different things in different

locations. In a true retreat setting, it might mean access to

outdoor activities. In an urban location, it might mean

proximity to shopping, restaurants, and tourist attractions.

Colleges and universities offer a wide range of amenities

within the campus, such as access to exercise facilities and

cultural venues. Keep in mind, though, that many of these

amenities may not be available when school is out of session,

and that organizers may need to negotiate access specifically

as part of the contract with the college or university.

Communications

Keeping in touch with participants was important

throughout the duration of the SERVE Leaders Institute.

The bulk of information about the Institute, however, went

out to participants in the form of two mailings about six

weeks prior to each retreat. The mailings contained

logistical information about the upcoming retreat, details

about what participants needed to do to prepare for the

retreat (and associated reading material), and a description

of what participants could expect at retreat sessions.

Examples of the “how to prepare” and “what to expect”

pieces appear as Appendix M.

Where feasible, materials were three-hole-punched so

that participants could include them in a cumulative SERVE

Leaders Institute three-ring binder. Participants received the

binder in advance of the first retreat; they could include all

supplemental materials as they received them.

Budget

It is important to reiterate that the SERVE Leaders

Institute was a research and development project whose

operation was bounded by contract with the U.S. Department of Education and SERVE, Inc. Consequently, not all

costs of the Institute will necessarily be reflected in an

ongoing program. As a point of reference, the categories of

SERVE Leaders Institute

Annual Budget

Description Estimated Total Cost Percentage of Total Costs

Salaries and Benefits $161,199 46.08

Consultants $ 68,000 19.44

Travel $ 47,900 13.69

Supplies and Materials $ 18,557 05.30

Postage and Communication $ 6,125 01.75

Printing $ 5,000 01.43

Rent $ 5,568 01.59

Total Direct Costs $312,349 89.29

Indirect Costs $ 37,482 10.71

Total Contract Costs $349,831
26 Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools

costs for the SERVE Leaders Institute are tabulated in the

table below.

The actual amount spent over the course of the two

years was only about 75 percent of the total contract costs

allocated. The savings accrued primarily from cost containment of travel and consultant fees and from the use of

university—as contrasted with commercial—facilities.

Actual costs of producing a retreat for 30 school

leaders—including materials, rooms, meals and breaks,

travel, and facilitator fees and travel costs—may also be

instructive. The table above shows a breakdown of these

expenses averaged over four retreats. These expenses do

not include salary or travel costs for SERVE staff.

Average Costs of SERVE Leaders Institute Retreat Activities

Description Average Cost Percentage of Total Costs

Materials (notebooks, texts, $4,410 19.9

printing, A/V rental)

Rooms for participants (3 nights) $5,332 24.0

Meals and breaks $4,197 18.9

Participant travel $1,614 07.3

Facilitator fees $3,448 15.5

Facilitator travel (airfare, $3,190 14.4

mileage, meals, rooms)

Total retreat production $22,191

Per participant

($22,191 divided by 30) $740
Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools 27

S

ince the SERVE Leaders Institute was a demonstration project funded by the U.S. Department of

Education to investigate strategies for school

leadership development, intensive evaluation was a critical

part of the initiative. But every program for school

leaders, however it is funded, needs to include an evaluation mechanism for both formative and summative

purposes. Organizers can use evaluation data to shape

future development of an institute and to report results

to funding agencies, partners, and potential participants.

The purpose of this chapter is not to discuss the

principles of program evaluation, a topic well beyond the

scope of this guide. Instead, this chapter focuses on some

of the specific lessons learned by the SERVE Leaders

Institute in the process of evaluating its activities. These

lessons center around three themes: an institute’s goals,

the role of the evaluator and the evaluation, and the

methods of gathering information.

Chapter 6: Evaluation

Goals

Any viable evaluation begins with the program’s

goals and examines the extent to which the program is

living up to its promise. Two kinds of goals typically guide a

leadership development program. First, organizers want

participants to be satisfied with their experience at the

institute. They want school leaders to come away from

institute activities thinking, “That experience will help me be

a more effective school leader.” Second, organizers want

school leaders to take what they have learned at the institute

and use it to make significant improvements in their schools.

It is not enough for participants to enjoy the experience and

regard it as valuable; they must also capitalize on the

institute’s activities in ways that benefit their schools.

Of these two classes of goals, the first set provides

an easier basis for evaluation. Using the variety of means

described in this chapter, evaluators can simply ask

participants to rate all of the institute’s activities. Evaluating the institute’s impact on the participating schools, by

contrast, is significantly more challenging because so many

factors impinge on what happens at a school, which makes

it very difficult to pinpoint the effect of any one intervention, such as a leadership program, on a school’s success.

To overcome this obstacle, institutes can focus their

evaluations not on broad measures of school success, such

as student test scores, but on more specific factors that

the institute explicitly sets out to affect. The following are

a few possibilities:

Curriculum-based goals

As described in Chapter 3, the SERVE Leaders

Institute was organized around five “learning strands”—

visioning, learning, resources, people, and relationships.

Each of these strands was based on a picture of a wellfunctioning school. Accordingly, it made sense to evaluate

the Institute, in part, on the degree to which participating

schools realized the ideals inherent in the five strands.

Evaluation questions for the SERVE Leaders Institute

included the following:

• Is there a clear vision that drives all school

activities? (vision)

• Is there evidence that best practices in instruction

and assessment are used to improve student

performance? (learning)

• Do fiscal plans support continual improvement of

the school? (resources)

• Do leaders create relationships within the school

that facilitate cooperation, performance, and

mutual satisfaction? (people)

• Do relationships with parties outside the school result

in positive outcomes for students? (relationships)
28 Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools

Expectation-based goals

As they applied to the SERVE Leaders Institute,

participants expressed their hopes and expectations—

what they wanted to accomplish as a result of participation. These expectations could form the basis for evaluation: To what extent did participating schools realize the

improvements they hoped to achieve as a result of

participating in the Institute?

Plan-based goals

A central part of the SERVE Leaders Institute was

giving school teams the time to make plans for the

improvement of their schools. At each retreat, school

teams set priorities and began sketching out plans for

tackling these priorities once they were back at school.

These plans, like participants’ expectations, could form a

basis for evaluation: To what extent did participants enact

the plans they devised through their work at the Institute?

Roles of

the evaluation

and the evaluator

Though the evaluation of the SERVE Leaders Institute

served summative purposes, the focus on the evaluation was

clearly formative—providing timely information that could be

used to improve the quality of the program immediately. The

evaluator served as an ongoing member in the design team.

Evaluation findings resulted in significant changes to retreat

activities, including some changes that occurred within

retreats as evaluations provided helpful feedback that could

be addressed immediately. To play this role effectively, the

person charged with evaluation had to be a “living evaluator”—someone whom the participants got to know and

trust as a person they could approach with ideas.

Methods of

gathering information

SERVE Leaders Institute staff used many different

mechanisms to gather information useful to the evaluation.

This section summarizes those deemed most important.

Session evaluations

At the end of each session of an Institute retreat,

participants filled out a form with a series of questions about

the session they had just experienced (Appendix N). The

form addressed overall impressions of the session, the quality

of the presenter, and the session’s likely impact on the

individual and school. On each of several dimensions,

participants were asked to rate the session as “Excellent,”

“Good,” “Satisfactory,” or “Poor.” In addition, the form gave

the participants the chance to answer open-ended questions

about what could be done to improve the session and other

issues. As a demonstration project, Institute staff found the

session evaluations to be essential. They provided a variety of

helpful comments, as well as quantitative information that

informed decisions about what kinds of sessions to keep and

drop. The downside of the session evaluations was the

burden they placed on participants, who quickly tired of

completing the same form over and over.

End-of-retreat evaluation forms

At the end of each retreat, participants completed

an overall retreat evaluation form similar to the session

forms (Appendix O). In addition, they reviewed a list of all

of the retreat’s sessions, offering quick comments such as

“drop,” “keep,” or “expand.” These end-of-retreat forms,

informed as they were by participants’ overall impressions,

were also valuable in planning subsequent retreats.

Evaluation discussions

Periodically, the evaluator took some time during a

meal to give participants the chance to offer oral comments about how the Institute was going. These discussions provided a different sort of input, since they allowed

participants to hear each other’s ideas, perhaps generating

thoughts that would not arise as participants worked

alone on evaluation forms.

Informal evaluation conversations

As noted above, the evaluator attended all retreats

and made himself or herself available to participants who

had comments about how the activities were proceeding.

On numerous occasions and in some cases, immediately,

informal feedback proved helpful.

Site visits

SERVE Leaders Institute staff and the evaluator conducted site visits to each school during their year of participation in the program. The site visits were not entirely evaluative

in nature; staff also provided coaching and support on technological issues. But the visits allowed the evaluator to see firsthand what was happening in schools, observe school activities

in progress, and speak with people outside the three-person

team attending the Institute. Site visits were especially critical

for gathering information about the impact the Institute was

having on participating schools since the foregoing methods all

focused more on participants’ levels of satisfaction.
Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools 29

The Institute’s

success at mixing

charter with regular

public schools,

professional staff with

board members,

principals with

teachers, and

paraprofessionals with

parent volunteers

demonstrates the

effectiveness of not

only the “big tent”

approach but of

demystifying

leadership itself.

S

everal broad lessons emerged from the SERVE

Leaders Institute that transcend any one of the

topics addressed in this resource guide. Staff of the

Institute explain these lessons in detail in “Designing

School Leadership Development Programs: Recommendations from the SERVE Leaders Institute,” a Spring 2000

article in AASA Professor. This concluding section distills

those lessons under six headings:

• Start with theory

• Build on participant needs

• Develop cohorts of learners

• Provide opportunities for reflection

• Develop core staff

• Pay attention to the

environment

Start with theory

One underpinning of the SERVE

Leaders Institute’s success was its

intentional communication of several

essential theories of school leadership.

For example, the Institute communicated

the idea that leader development—

understood as personal, expertise, and

organizational development—may be taught and

learned by anyone. The Institute’s success at mixing

charter with regular public schools, professional staff with

board members, principals with teachers, and paraprofessionals with parent volunteers demonstrates the effectiveness of not only the “big tent” approach but of

demystifying leadership itself.

On a related note, Institute staff taught that effective

school leadership involves shared learning, purpose, and

action, and that responsible leaders collaboratively construct schools where justice and democracy prevail. Having

invited school leadership teams to participate, Institute staff

demonstrated by design the importance of shared decision

making and action.

Finally, the Leaders Institute communicated the

notion that, although pedagogical, organizational, and

material resource issues are important, vision drives every

component of school leadership and leader development.

Recognizing that vision determines why an organization is

Conclusion: Lessons for the Field

doing what it is doing, our desire was to make leaders

more intentional.

By mentioning these particular theories, this resource

guide does not intend to suggest that they should be the

driving force behind all leadership institutes. Indeed, the

SERVE Leaders Institute benefited from other guiding ideas,

and others designing leaders institutes will begin with their

own theories. The point here is the importance

of using compelling theories to guide the

design and conduct of a leadership institute.

Just as a clear vision is vital to the success

of a school for children, a coherent set of

ideas is essential to the development of a

leadership program like the SERVE

Leaders Institute.

Build on

participant

needs

As Chapter 3 suggests, organizers

of leadership institutes face a range of

broad design issues as well as very

specific choices about topics to address.

While it makes sense to work out a

design in advance of running a leaders institute, designers

should leave room for adjustment and adaptation to the

expressed needs of actual participants.

One example from the SERVE Leaders Institute

illustrates this finding. A question that occupied organizers’ attention in the design phase was, “What is the right

balance between long- and short-term developmental

needs?” Although the Institute’s curriculum primarily

addressed long-range personal, expertise, and organizational development, participants wanted to focus more on

the “here-and-now” concerns of running a school. Informed by a framework that grew from research activities,

leader focus groups, and interviews with North Carolina

charter school principals, the original design team made

several assumptions about “leadership needs” and the ideal

content of the first retreat. Formative and summative

evaluations of the retreat led the Institute to adjust both its

thinking and the curriculum. Other changes over time in the
30 Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools

Institute included the addition of sessions

on technology, fundraising, discipline and safety,

and assessing personal leadership styles.

Develop cohorts

of leaders

Designers of leadership programs need

to ask themselves, “What will be left when

the program is over?” SERVE Leaders

Institute staff wanted to ensure that

learning continued beyond the life of the

Institute. Thus, organizers sought to create

opportunities for bonding and networking

among participants. By design, the Institute

brought teams of charter and public school

leaders together as a cohort to develop a

support system and provide networking opportunities

among members. The cohort approach allowed members to

share their unique learning experiences as a group and to

develop long-term support systems.

Provide opportunities

for reflection

What does it take to institutionalize new thinking

and practice? The SERVE Leaders Institute experience

suggests collegial dialogue is a first step. It was apparent

during the first retreat that the school teams wanted and

needed time to talk and process what they were learning.

To address this need, we added “team time” to the

schedule for Retreat 2 of Year 1. This time was a structured opportunity at the end of each day for school

leadership teams to reflect on each session and session

content, consider what they would like to share at their

schools, and plan ways to apply what they had learned.

Using a simple action plan design, teams documented the concepts, strategies, and tools learned in each

session to be shared with their respective schools.

Interviews with principals from Year 1 indicated that

school teams implemented many components of their

action plans—from strengthening publicity activities to

working with their board. One product of a Year 2 charter

school team was a restructuring plan later shared with

their board of directors.

In the hectic daily life of a school, it is rare for school

principals, teachers, and other leaders to find the time to sit

back and reflect on their work. The pressing crisis of the

moment tends to soak up any available time in the day. If

nothing else, a leadership program can provide school

leaders with the chance to take time to reflect.

Develop core staff

Just like running a school, planning and delivering a

professional development program requires a team of

individuals committed to making it work. Despite geographical, organizational, and temporal impediments,

organizers of the SERVE Leaders Institute realized that its

mission compelled them to create a learning organization.

Thus, building the Institute’s leadership team became a

priority. Institute staff achieved this in at least four ways:

hiring the right people, job cross-training, communicating,

and getting to know one another.

The Institute employed a staff of five part-time

professionals, including a director, a social researcher, an

educational technology specialist, an evaluator, an administrative assistant, and an outside consultant. Each person

brought not only unique strengths to the project, but also

a commitment to the team and a desire to contribute.

Although each individual was assigned specific responsibilities,

the structure created opportunities to cross-train in each

other’s work.

Communication was an essential part of building the

core staff and a prerequisite for problem-solving. Spread

out at varying intervals over a 500-mile geographic con-
Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools 31

A final word

Readers of this resource guide are likely to find

themselves in different circumstances from those faced by

the designers of the SERVE Leaders Institute. But for those

interested in devising helpful learning opportunities for

break-the-mold public schools, a common set of issues is

likely to arise. Though no two leadership institutes could—

or should—ever be the same, programs can learn a great

deal from one another’s experiences. This resource guide

aims to provide one piece of that knowledge base, a base to

which readers can add their own lessons as they develop.

tinuum, the team depended on

weekly conference calls to

stay synchronized. E-mail also

proved indispensable in the

transmission of documents

and deliverables and generally

keeping abreast of changes.

Finally, core staff used each

retreat as an opportunity to get

to know each other better. Living

and learning together (if only for

few days a year) is a way to build

a team that is not only effective

but that models trust and faith.

During retreats, staff typically

attended sessions, roomed, ate,

recreated, and debriefed

together. Many of the staff

regarded their experience with

the Institute as a highlight of

their professional lives.

Pay attention

to the

environment

What’s the setting got to do with it? Where professional development is concerned, all environments are not

created equal. Setting has the potential to contribute

slightly to or detract significantly from a leadership

program. SERVE Leaders Institute staff treated the setting

as an integral part of its design; sites were selected

carefully by staff and evaluated by participants and

facilitators.

Some of the specific lessons learned in the process

are the subject of Chapter 5. But the broad lesson to

emphasize here is that site transcends the logistical—it

can have profound implications for the experience of

participants. One example from the SERVE Leaders

Institute illustrates this point: the retreat environment that

was least ideal appeared to contribute the most to the

attainment of one of the Institute’s goals. The intense

schedule and facility shortcomings of the initial retreat—

and the constructive way they were handled by the staff—

combined to create a very cohesive group of participants.

They bonded through their shared discomfort in a way

the cohort of the second year, starting off in a luxury

hotel with a comparatively relaxed schedule, never did.
32 Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools

Activity Person(s) January February March

Responsible

Remote learning: Website LV/AH Post Year 1 Facilitate Post Year 2

development sessions 2 cohort/website use Retreat 1

sessions

Remote learning: Technical SB/LV Assist schools with

assistance CSRD proposals

Remote learning: Fostering SB Create partnerships

partnerships between cohorts 1

and 2

Retreat production: SB/AH/BH Refine session Deliver Retreat 1 Review Retreat 1,

Retreat I-Delivering content for 2.1 plan for Retreat 2

content

Retreat production: AH/AP Procure facilities, Coordinate Retreat Review logistics,

Reviewing and managing plan meals logistics plan for Retreat 2

logistics

Retreat production: AP/AH Procure rooms, Respond to partici- Review people/

Review and coordinate arrange travel, pants needs at resource issues

people/resources distribute books Retreat 1

Leveraged Learning: BH/SB Plan peer mentor Deliver peer Monitor online

Mentoring and sharing training and shared mentor and shared mentor-protégé

learning learning activity

Leveraged Learning: SB/AH/BH Present at NCS

Presenting/publishing and NCARE

Evaluation: PF/AP Collect Retreat 1 Analyze Retreat 1

Collecting/analyzing session data evaluations

Evaluation: PF Interpret overall

Interpreting/reporting Retreat 1

functioning

Application and Selection: BH/SB Interview and Review cohort 2

select cohort 2 selection process

Staff Capacity Building: SB Plan 1999 activities

SB Steve Bingham

BH Bryan Hassel

LV Linda Valenzuela

AH Art Hood

PF Pam Finney

AP Abigail Peoples

Appendices Appendices Appendices

Appendix A: First Quarter of the SERVE Leaders Institute Annual Plan for 1999
Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools 33

Due Date

Deliverable (or Time Frame)

1. Formulation of a design team that ensures a best-practices approach to school End month 1

leadership development based on public and private sector experience

2. Summary report of benchmark best practices chosen for possible inclusion in the End month 2

Institute

3. Summary report of focus group input into charter and other public school End month 3

leadership needs

4. An outline of Institute’s intended learning content, learning processes, learning End month 4

environments, and accompanying materials and tools

5. A list of core facilitators and trainers familiar with the Institute who may be End month 4

available for additional institutes elsewhere

6. List of first cohort participants likely to provide future leadership not only in their End month 4

school systems, but in the broader community and future learning institutes

7. A plan for leveraging and sharing primary cohort learning with other interested End month 4

groups and individuals

8. An outline of evaluation measures, methodology, and tools End month 4

9. Monthly, annual, and final financial and progress reports

Implementation Year 1 Implementation

Year 1 Period

1. Retreat logistics and learning materials End month 7

2. List of topics for learning clusters, “how to” process-map, and topics materials End month 7

 and tools to facilitate remote communication and learning in groups

3. Summary of lessons from first selection process and list of second cohort End month 12

members

4. Peer facilitators prepared to help next cohort End month 10

5. Summary of learning from first retreat and second retreat logistical and learning End month 10

materials

6. Sharing of leadership learning with other interested groups and individuals End month 12

7. Public forum materials End month 12

8. Monthly progress and financial reports Monthly

Implementation Year 2 Implementation

Year 2 Period

1. Report of evaluation findings from Year 1 End month 13

2. Revised Institute program outline for Year 2 End month 14

3. Retreat logistical & learning materials (revised) End month 15

4. Modified list of topics for learning clusters, “how to” process-map, and materials End month 24

and tools to facilitate remote communication and learning in groups

5. Peer facilitators prepared to help next cohort End month 17

6. Summary of lessons learned from second selection process and list of third cohort End month 17

members

7. Summary of learning from first retreat of Year 2 and second retreat Year 2 End month 23

logistical and learning materials

8. Continued sharing of leadership learning provided to primary cohorts with other End month 24

interested groups and individuals

9. Public forum materials End month 24

10. Annual and monthly progress and financial reports Monthly

11. Handbook containing Institute deliverables and step-by-step “how to” End month 24

instructions for replicating the Institute

12. At-least one journal-publishable article and provision of Institute deliverables to End month 2

the public via the Internet

Appendix B: Deliverables and Due Dates for Base and Implementation Year Periods
34 Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools

Type of team participants 8 principals/executive or managing directors 2 assistant principals

10 teachers 2 education directors/coordinators

1 guidance counselor 1 media specialist

1 testing coordinator 1 operations coordinator

2 others

Type of school 4 regular, 6 charter

Grade level 4 elementary, 3 middle, 1 elementary/middle, 1 middle/high school

School size Ranging from 60 to 693, average=288

Location 3 urban, 3 suburban, 4 rural

Percentage of students Ranging from 0% to 78%; average=37%

eligible for subsidized lunch

Percentage of ethnic minority Ranging from 4% to 100%; average=43%

students

Schools’ descriptions of some • Numerous parent contacts and a staff that is dedicated and willing to go

of the unique attributes of the extra mile to support the school and help the children

the schools • Calm, non-threatening environment

• Reduced class size (15 students per class) and flexible program for parental

involvement

• Small, community school with a great deal of community and parental

support and participation (parents directly involved in the instructional

program)

• Use of Accelerated School Model

• Extremely diverse students, faculty, and staff

• Mentoring program

Schools’ descriptions of some • Finding the balance between maintaining true hands-on learning and

of the unique challenges of “teaching to the test”

the schools • Getting the school on a year-round calendar—encouraging community and

school support of this effort

• Keeping students at their home school rather than going to a magnet school

in the area

• Operating in a temporary facility and accommodating the high percentage of

both gifted and learning-disabled children

• Meeting the financial needs of a first-year school

• Navigating the transition from a traditional school with management from the

top to a truly site-based-managed school

• Finding space for the school

• Enrolling a sufficient number of students to meet the state’s minimum

enrollment guidelines

Schools’ descriptions of the • Network with forward-thinking and innovative school leaders

main reasons for • Develop skills in community building within a school and learn how to

participating in leadership establish beneficial relationships outside the school with media, educational

program authorities, families, and other organizations

• Learn how to design curriculum which addresses the needs of students who

have been entirely alienated from traditional teaching approaches

• Select best practices of instruction and assessment

• Develop leadership skills and learn problem-solving strategies

• Develop a clearly articulated vision that helps focus all efforts toward

specific aspects of school improvement

• Learn more about current thinking and practices in state and national school

reform

Appendix C: Characteristics of Second Cohort Participants in the SERVE Leaders Institute
Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools 35

P.O. Box 5367

Greensboro, NC 27435

336-334-3211

800-755-3277 Toll-Free

336-334-3268 Fax

www.serve.org

Associated with

the School of Education,

University of North Carolina

at Greensboro An Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer

October 1, 1998

Dear School Principal:

Greetings! As a former school principal and current director of the SERVE Leaders Institute, I

am convinced that the education deregulation movement represents a unique opportunity to reengineer school leadership. Articulating shared vision, ensuring effective teaching and

learning, harnessing resources, and developing collaborative relationships in a context of

heightened autonomy and accountability demand extraordinary leader performance. Charter

schools, site-based management, and other deregulatory practices challenge us with compelling opportunities. But how do we develop the competencies to succeed?

Thanks to their participation in the SERVE Leaders Institute last year, 27 North Carolina

charter and district school leaders in nine schools enhanced their capacity to perform as

entrepreneurial school leaders. The Institute is again partnering school teams from across the

state to study with regional and national experts in a variety of fields, including instruction and

assessment, school finance and facilities, education law, organizational leadership, community

relations, instructional technology, and more.

Evaluating the first Institute, participants wrote: “The learning was practical and always led

by principle”. . . . “It balanced information and reflection” . . .”The experience was a great

value for such a short time period—well worth the effort!” . . . “We left recharged, refocused,

excited, and much more confident!” Considering improvements at home, participants targeted:

committee organization . . . board restructuring. . . hiring practices . . . teacher evaluation . . .

classroom dynamics and teaching practices . . . shared decision making . . . portfolio assessment . . . better communication.

Whether you are an innovative public school leader or the principal of a charter school, your

challenge is the same: doing the best you can with all you can get. In this time of transition,

take courage in recalling that the Chinese character for “change” is the same as that for

“opportunity.” I invite you to embrace both by applying for an all-expense-paid admission to

the 1999 SERVE Leaders Institute. The following pages contain details and an application

form to complete and return by November 13th. Best wishes!

Sincerely yours,

Steve Bingham, Director

(2) Enclosures

Appendix D: Application Packet to School Principals
36 Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools

SERVE LEADERS INSTITUTE

What is it?

The SERVE Leaders Institute is a two-year project funded by the U.S. Department of Education. Its goal is to

provide networking and professional development opportunities for North Carolina public school leaders who

are operating in a dynamic, innovative environment. Each year a different cohort of charter and other public

school leaders will be selected to participate. The Institute consists of the following:

Retreats:

Participants will attend two, three-day sessions over the course of a year in a retreat setting. The retreats

will be held in April and August.

Remote learning:

The Institute will facilitate communication among participants between retreats, extending learning

beyond retreat sessions. Participants will also have the opportunity to work on priority projects, identi

fied at the Institute, with the guidance of faculty and peer coaches.

Peer mentoring:

Some members of the first cohort will serve as peer advisors to participants in the second cohort.

Leveraged learning:

The Institute will disseminate its curriculum, tools, and processes as widely as possible so that school

leaders who are not part of the selected cohorts will still benefit.

What is the Institute curriculum?

The curriculum is based on a review of leadership research and best practices from the education and business

fields and focuses on the following learning strands:

• Visioning

• Organizational Planning

• Support Services

• Internal and External Relations

• Budget and Resources

• Instruction and Assessment

• Staffing

• Governance

Who can attend?

Selected leaders from North Carolina charter and other public schools can attend. In early 1998, the SERVE

Leaders Institute will select a cohort of up to 30 promising public school leaders. Approximately 21 of the

participants will represent charter schools, with the rest coming from other innovative public schools. Schools

will have the opportunity to send teams of up to three people. In 1999, the Institute will select a second cohort

of the same size and makeup.

...Appendix D continued
Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools 37

...Appendix D continued

APPLICATION FOR 1999 SERVE LEADERS INSTITUTE

Name of school

Name of LEA in which the school is located

Name of contact person for this application

Street address:

City State Zip Phone

Fax E-mail address

Is your school: Urban Rural Suburban Number of students:

What percentage are: members of ethnic minorities? eligible for subsidized lunch?

The SERVE Leaders Institute invites teams of up to three individuals from each selected school to attend. Each team

member must play a significant leadership role at the school. Please list below the names of all proposed team members,

brief descriptions of their roles (e.g. “principal”; “lead teacher”), and contact information. Each proposed team member must sign this form to indicate his or her commitment to participate, including full attendance at

two retreats on the following dates:

Retreat I February 25-28, 1999 University of North Carolina - Greensboro

Retreat II July 22-25, 1999 Davidson College

1. Name Role

Preferred mailing address

Phone E-mail address

Signature Date

2. Name Role

Best mailing address

Phone E-mail address

Signature Date

3. Name Role

Best mailing address

Phone E-mail address

Signature Date
38 Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools

On separate sheets of paper, please answer the following questions. Your answers to these questions will be used

both to select Institute participants and to shape the content of the Institute to meet participants’ needs.

1. In a paragraph or two, state your school’s mission.

2. Describe two positive aspects of your school that set it apart from most other schools.

3. Describe a significant challenge your school has faced in recent months or is facing at the moment. Explain

how the school’s leaders have dealt with the challenge and what you have learned from experience.

4. What does your team hope to accomplish by attending the SERVE Leaders Institute? Are there specific

capabilities you hope to develop? Are there specific areas of weakness in your school that you hope to

tackle?

5. Describe some ways in which your team could share what they learn at the SERVE Leaders Institute both

within your school and with other schools.

6. Explain the leadership role played by each of your proposed team members.

All Institute participants will be expected to engage in electronic communication with each other and with faculty before

and after the retreat sessions. To help us gauge the need, please indicate below if any of your proposed team members

would need either training or equipment in order to participate in this aspect of the Institute.

Your answer to this question will not affect your selection for participation in the Institute.

...Appendix D continued
Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools 39

◆◆ IMPORTANT DATES ◆◆

Application Due Date Applications must be postmarked by November 11, 1998

or received at SERVE by 5:00 p.m., November 13, 1998.

Applicants Notified of January 8, 1999

Selection Decisions

First Retreat February 25-28, 1999

Second Retreat July 25-28, 1999

Note: Full attendance at both retreats is required of each participant.

The SERVE Leaders Institute is committed to accommodating the special needs of all participants.

...Appendix D continued
40 Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools

Content Areas Topics of Knowledge and Skills

Start-Up Logistics Reality checks (political environment, fiscal feasibility, sustaining energy, relationships)

Writing a good application

Making things different (resource allocation, power structure, instructional changes)

Building organizational vision

Formation of core founding group

Establishment of a legal entity

Acquisition of a facility

Availability of necessary start-up financing

Acquisition of professional services (for example, legal, accounting)

Develop a business plan

Curriculum Standards Development of academically rigorous curriculum true to school vision

and Assessment Accountability and evaluation: Development of student and school measures of performance

Development Curriculum options

Renewing the charter

Governance/ Organizational structure: governance, management, operations

Management Personnel issues

Develop internal policies (finance, personnel, student discipline, child abuse, enrollment, etc.)

Evaluation of governing board

Managing growth

Liability issues (insurance, workers’ compensation)

Contracting for services

Community Relations: Dealing with controversy

Internal and External Dealing with interest groups

Media relations

Community relations

Relationships with district and/or sponsoring agency

Communicating parent expectations

Marketing the charter school

Regulatory Issues Equity in serving student populations

Special education requirements

Assuring health and safety

Individual rights

Religious issues

Student records and freedom of information

Civil rights regulations

Parental involvement requirements

State laws and regulations

Types of charter schools (for profit, private conversion)

Awareness of legal options

Leadership Training High-quality, structured information on student and program assessment plans and tools

Requirements The ability to share experiences and learn from other new charter school developers

The ability to talk with, and learn from, experienced charter school practitioners

Exposure to new ways of thinking about public education and their own role in improving public

education state-specific information

Source: Lane, B. and Ley, J. (1998, September). A Profile of the Leadership Needs of Charter School Founders. Portland, OR: Northwest

Regional Educational Laboratory. Order from NWREL by calling 503-275-9519 or access online at:

<http://www.nwrel.org/charter/deliverable/index.html>

Appendix E: NWREL’s Profile of Leadership Needs of Charter School Founders
Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools 41

Appendix F: ISLLC Standards for School Leaders

A school administrator is an educational leader who promotes the success of all students by

• Facilitating the development, articulation, implementation, and stewardship of a vision of learning that is

shared and supported by the school community

• Advocating, nurturing, and sustaining a school culture and instructional program conducive to student

learning and staff professional growth

• Ensuring management of the organization, operations, and resources for safe, efficient, and effective

learning

• Collaborating with families and community members, responding to diverse community interests and

needs, and mobilizing community resources

• Acting with integrity, fairness, and ethical behavior

• Understanding, responding to, and influencing the larger political, social, economic, legal,

and cultural context

For the full list standards, knowledge, dispositions, and performances, see <http://www.ccsso.org/isllc1.html> or

call the Council of State School Officers at 202-408-5505.
42 Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools

Appendix G: SERVE Leaders Institute Session Topics

Session Title Session Description

VISIONING

February Visioning Sessions

Orientation: Developing Leadership Understanding leadership capacity as broad-based, skillful

participation in leader work and determining where you and your

school are.

Your Values: Foundation of Vision Understanding the role of values in visioning. Evaluating how

your personal values “fit” your school’s values.

Making Your Vision Real: I and II Using storyboarding to create vision/mission statements and

strategic/action plans, with special emphasis on gap analysis.

(Part 2 is a continuation of Part 1 with special emphasis on

program implementation.)

JulyVisioning Session

Sharing Best Practices in Instruction Participants will share “what works” in their schools relative to

and Leadership (Regular Publics) teaching, learning, and leading.

LEARNING

February Learning Sessions

Aligning Goals with Vision Defining and clarifying student learning goals. Matching goals

with vision. Identifying and reconciling disconnects.

Aligning Practice with Goals Using instructional activities that ensure desired student outcomes,

including thematic instruction. Developing learning principles for

your school.

Are Our Assessments Informative? Understanding the role of assessment in learning, including the

North Carolina ABC plan. Evaluating how your school’s

assessments measure student progress.

Creating an Orderly Environment Participants will be provided with resources to develop a schoolwide discipline plan.

Learning with Technology I Participants will build a knowledge base about education

technology, examine their school’s current practices and policies

in the areas of engaged learning and technology, and establish

directions for writing, updating, or improving their school’s

technology plan.

Learning with Technology II Participants will increase their awareness of issues surrounding

inequities in school technology and develop a knowledge base of

infrastructure issues, enabling education leaders to facilitate better

decision making related to school technology.

July Learning Sessions

Active Learning Strategies Participants will experience multiple and specific strategies for

engaging students and maximizing learning in an interactive

format.

Project-based Teaching and Learning Participants will learn the characteristics and benefits of projectbased learning. Several models and examples of project-based

learning will be explored, and participants will become familiar

with the building blocks for designing technology-enriched

projects.

Gauging Effective Technology Integration Participants will use SEIR◆TEC’s Technology Profile Tool to help

them evaluate the effectiveness of school technology integration.

What is Quality Assessment? Participants will discover the characteristics of performance

assessment with attention on design, implementation, and

curriculum and instruction alignment issues.

Portfolios: The Good, Bad, and Ugly Participants will learn about student portfolios and their varying

uses. The facilitators and selected participants will provide positive

and negative examples of portfolios.
Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools 43

RESOURCES

February Resources Sessions

Writing Proposals That Work Part I Introduction to successful proposal writing, including learning

terminology, identifying sources of funding, and understanding and reviewing

successful proposal components.

Writing Proposals That Work Part II Introduction to successful proposal writing, including

understanding proposal components (Part II), what reviewers look

for, and tips for winning, also includes discussion of proposals

schools are interested in applying for.

July Resources Sessions

Employment Law Overview Introduction to federal employment discrimination law,

including an assessment of your current level of knowledge,

an overview of the issues, and a discussion of how to

build your legal capacity.

Facilities Planning (Charters) Introduction to a long-term facilities plan, including current year

and long-term needs assessments, current year and long-term cost

estimates, and a review of options and strategies. Participants will

leave with a framework for developing their own long-term plan.

Budgeting and Funding (Charters) Introduction to establishing a basic budget development and fiscal

management system, including budget development and

monitoring, fiscal management policies and practices, fiscal roles

of administrative staff and board, maximizing the school’s

revenues, and aligning expenditures with the school’s vision.

Budgeting and Funding (Regular) Publics Discussion of the principal’s role in the budget process and

examination of ways to operate successfully in the budget process.

PEOPLE

February People Sessions

Assessing Personal Leadership I Participants will review the results of their Myers-Briggs

assessments and discuss their relevance to leadership roles in

schools.

Assessing Personal Leadership II With the aid of two additional leadership assessment tools,

participants will explore how to grow as leaders and apply

appropriate leadership approaches to different situations.

Managing People Strategically Introduction to leading-edge thinking about how to support

missions and goals through people-management practices. Includes

group discussion.

July People Sessions

Benefiting from Personality Profiles Participants will learn how to use their personality style to

maximize growth of self and school organization.

Making Shared Decision Making Work Participants will learn about proactive approaches to dealing with

school problems and how to organize for successful shared

leadership.

Managing Performance Introduction to the performance management cycle used by highperforming organizations. Overview of the cycle: planning,

coaching/developing, evaluating and rewarding performance;

emphasis will be on the “planning performance” stage—clarifying

how individuals can best support the school’s mission and goals.

Also includes introduction to performance management tools

(including tools for clarifying roles and responsibilities at the

board and school-leader level).

Promoting Professional Growth Participants will review formative approches to staff evaluation and systems that

provide feedback to staff that promote continual improvement.

...Appendix G continued
44 Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools

RELATIONSHIPS

February Relationships Sessions

Using PR to Achieve Your Vision Participants will hear from a speaker with deep experience in

public relations for education institutions and have the chance to

hear their own PR challenges and opportunities.

Partnership in Practice Based on the results of participants’ needs assessments completed

by participants, an expert on school partnerships will lead a

discussion about creative ways to make the most of partnerships.

July Relationship Sessions

Planning for Safe Schools Participants will learn ways to organize and behave that will

maximize a safe, positive school climate. They will be afforded the

opportunity to share and discuss their own “safe schools plan” and

to receive helpful recommendations.

Working With Your Board (Charters) Participants will learn about critical principles for working

effectively with a nonprofit board of directors, with an opportunity

to apply these principles to their own settings. (Note: This session

is designed primarily for charter schools, which have legal boards

of directors, though all participants are welcome.)

Working with Parent Groups An elementary school administrator and community partnership

(Regular Publics) expert will help participants to learn how to work effectively with

parent organizations.

...Appendix D continued
Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools 45

Laura Benedict Non-profit organization finance expert, Director of North Carolina Community

Facilities Fund, Durham, North Carolina

Steve Bingham School leadership expert, Director of SERVE Leaders Institute, former public school

principal, Greensboro, North Carolina

Elizabeth Byrom Proposal author/management expert, Director of Technology in Learning, SERVE,

Durham, North Carolina (former public school teacher)

Yvonne Chan Charter school management expert, Principal of Vaughn Next Century Learning

Center, Los Angeles, California

Paula Egelson Teacher evaluation expert, Senior Research Specialist,

SERVE, Greensboro, North Carolina (former middle school teacher)

Madine Fails President, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Urban League, 20 years of experience working with

boards as a nonprofit executive director

Roy Forbes Assessment expert, HuCo Consulting, former Executive Director of SERVE,

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Thelma Glynn Private school founder and director, Executive Director of North Carolina Charter

School Resource Center, Durham, North Carolina

Linda Harrill Community and educational development expert, President/State Director of

Communities in Schools, Raleigh, North Carolina

Bryan Hassel Public policy and charter schools development expert, Public Impact, Charlotte, North

Carolina

Emily Ayscue Hassel Strategic human resources management consultant, Public Impact, Charlotte, North

Carolina

David Hostetler Education personnel expert, Editor of Education Law in North Carolina, Associate

Director of Principals Executive Program, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Mark L’Esperance School organization and climate expert, Assistant Professor of Education, East

Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina

Nancy McMunn Assessment expert, Research Specialist, SERVE, Greensboro, North Carolina

(former high school science teacher)

Vicki Parks Core curriculum expert, former charter school director, Principal of Michigan Avenue

Montessori School, Ft. Myers, Florida

Eric Premack Director, Charter School Development Center, Cal State University at Sacramento,

Charter, Friends National Network (California)

Dick Schultz Strategic planning and organization development expert, McNellis Company, New

Brighton, Pennsylvania

Mable Scott Marketing and public relations expert, former public relations officer, Guilford County

Schools, Public Relations at A&T State University, Greensboro, North Carolina

Linda Valenzuela Former education technology and computer networking expert, SERVE, Tallahassee,

Florida

Tom Watkins Charter school founder, Executive Director of Economic Council of West Palm Beach

County (Florida)

Katrina Wilson-Davis Disadvantaged youth education expert, charter school founder and director, Liberty

City Charter School, Miami, Florida

APPENDIX H: Faculty of the SERVE Leaders Institute, 1998
46 Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools

Appendix I: 1999 SERVE Leaders Institute Retreat Schedules

Retreat 1 Schedule

Thursday, February 25—Orientation and Day 1, Alumni House

Time Event Presenter

1:00 Hotel Check-in and Reception at the Alumni House

2:00 Orientation: Developing Leadership (VISIONING) Steve Bingham

3:45 Assessing Personal Leadership I (PEOPLE) Joe Bryson

5:30 Your Values: Foundation of Vision (VISIONING) Linda Proctor Downing

7:00 Dinner at the Alumni House and Team Time

Friday, February 26—Day 2, Alumni House/Bryan

Time Event Presenter

8:00 Assessing Personal Leadership II (PEOPLE) Joe Bryson

9:30 Break (Snacks and Beverages)

9:45 Aligning Goals with Vision (LEARNING) Vicki Parks and Katrina-Wilson Davis

11:15 Break

11:30 Aligning Practice with Goals (LEARNING) Vicki Parks and Katrina-Wilson Davis

1:00 Lunch at UNCG Dining Hall

2:00 Are Our Assessments Informative? (LEARNING) Roy Forbes

3:30 Break (Beverages)

3:45 Writing Proposals I (RESOURCES) Elizabeth Byrom

5:30 Writing Proposals II (RESOURCES) Elizabeth Byrom

7:00 Dinner on your own

Saturday, February 27—Day 3, Bryan

Time Event Presenter

8:00 Using PR to Achieve Your Vision (RELATIONSHIPS) Mable Scott

9:30 Break (Snacks and Beverages)

9:45 Creating an Orderly Environment (LEARNING) Mark L’Esperance

11:15 Break

11:30 Making Your Vision Real I (VISIONING) Dick Schultz

1:00 Lunch at UNCG Dining Hall

2:00 Making Your Vision Real II (VISIONING) Dick Schultz

3:30 Break (Snacks and Beverages)

3:45 Learning with Technology I (LEARNING) Linda Valenzuela

5:30 Learning with Technology II (LEARNING) Linda Valenzuela

7:00 Dinner at UNCG Dining Hall

Sunday, February 28—Day 4, Alumni House

Time Event Presenter

7:15 Hotel Check-Out

8:00 Managing People Strategically (PEOPLE) Steve Bingham

9:30 Break (Snacks and Beverages)

9:45 Partnership in Practice (RELATIONSHIPS) Liza McFadden

11:15 Break

11:30 Where Do We Go From Here?: Action Planning Bryan Hassel

1:00 Evaluation of Retreat I Pam Finney

1:30 Lunch at Alumni House
Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-the-Mold” Public Schools 47

Retreat 2 Schedule

Thursday, July 22—Orientation and Day 1

Time Event Presenter

1:00 Check-in and Orientation Steve Bingham

2:30 Planning for Safe Schools (RELATIONSHIPS) Mark L’Esperance

4:15 Working with Boards (Charter Schools) (RELATIONSHIPS) Susan Sewell

Working with Parent Groups (Regular Publics) (RELATIONSHIPS) Pandora Bell

6:00 Dinner at Vail Commons

Friday, July 23—Day 2

Time Event Presenter

8:00 Benefiting from Personality Profiles (PEOPLE) Patty Von Steen

9:30 Break (Snacks and Beverages)

9:45 Employment Law Overview (RESOURCES) Ken Soo

11:15 Break

11:30 Facilities Planning: Charter Schools (RESOURCES) Karen O’Mansky, Reginald Johnson,

and Bryan Hassel

Sharing Best Practices in Instruction and Leadership

(Regular Publics) (VISIONING) Pam Finney

1:00 Lunch

2:00 Budgeting and Funding: Charter Schools (RESOURCES) Karen O’Mansky and Reginald Johnson

Budgeting and Funding: Regular Public (RESOURCES) Jack Vogt

3:30 Break (Beverages)

3:45 Making Shared Decision Making Work (PEOPLE) Myra Best

5:30 Team Time/Planning (VISIONING)

7:00 Dinner at Vail Commons

Saturday, July 24—Day 3

Time Event Presenter

8:00 Active Learning Strategies (LEARNING) Dan Lumley

9:30 Break (Snacks and Beverages)

9:45 Project-Based Teaching and Learning (LEARNING) Linda Valenzuela

11:15 Break

11:30 Gauging Effective Technology Integration (LEARNING) Linda Valenzuela

1:00 Lunch

2:00 What is Quality Assessment? (LEARNING) Nancy McMunn

3:30 Break (Snacks and Beverages)

3:45 Portfolios: The Good, Bad, and Ugly (LEARNING) Nancy McMunn and Connie Brown

5:30 Team Time/Planning (VISIONING)

7:00 Dinner on your own

Sunday, July 25—Day 4

Time Event Presenter

8:00 Managing Performance (PEOPLE) Steve Bingham

9:30 Break (Snacks and Beverages)

9:45 Promoting Professional Growth (PEOPLE) Paula Egelson

11:15 Break

11:30 Where Do We Go From Here?: Action Planning (VISIONING) Bryan Hassel

1:00 Evaluation of the Leaders Institute Pam Finney

1:30 Lunch in the DuPont Room and Commencement Wachovia Principal of the Year

...Appendix I continued
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States and districts across the country are setting higher standards for school and

student performance—and holding schools accountable for achieving them. At

the same time, many states and districts are placing more authority in the hands of

school-level leaders. These new arrangements demand new forms of leadership

from school principals, teachers, other staff, parents, and other members of the

school community. Under a contract with the U.S. Department of Education, SERVE,

Inc., a non-profit organization affiliated with the SERVE Regional Educational Laboratory and The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, developed a prototype leadership development program for leaders of both charter and regular

public “break-the-mold” schools. Developing Leadership Programs for “Break-theMold” Public Schools: Lessons from the SERVE Leaders Institute distills lessons

learned by the Institute in a way that will be useful to individuals and organizations

interested in designing similar programs for school leaders elsewhere. Intended

audiences include officials of state and local education agencies, representatives of

charter school technical assistance organizations, and designers of leadership development programs in private organizations, universities, colleges, and other institutions. School leaders themselves will also find interesting material as they

think about how to develop leadership capabilities within their schools.

SHARING SUCCESS