They are actively learning. Ledford believes this influences principals' feeling about their own effectiveness. It's clear that they feel they can make a difference in the student achievement in their schools. They are much more confident about their own knowledge and their own skills,'' she said. It used to be that we spent our time talking about the discipline code, talking about policies, going over this detail and that detail.
Principals meet for a full day once a month with the day divided into two learning pieces.
During the morning, principals share a common learning period. For two years, the mornings have focused on writing in the middle grades. The district's writing specialist has spent 18 hours with principals, teaching them about writing standards and what classrooms should look like if students are writing to high standards. After two years of this work, Ledford was anxious to examine the results in the state's writing assessment. Even though we know what the inputs have been, we don't know how much has been implemented.