The Role of School Leadership

FOCUS ON SCHOOL LEADERSHIP

Throughout these initiatives, the unit of analysis for considering and responding to the data remains the school level. NTC recognizes that teaching and learning conditions are about schools, not individuals, and it will take the entire school to improve them. By maintaining this focus on school level findings, the data provide an impetus for complex conversations regarding the climate, conditions and culture of schools and how they affect student learning and teacher retention. School leaders, including principals, assistant principals, school reform teams, and teacher advocates are best positioned to review and use the data to facilitate conversations and action that lead to a more positive environment for everyone.

ROLE OF THE PRINCIPAL

School principals typically play the largest role in framing the working conditions of a school, and are in the position of most leverage to lead school change efforts. However, it should be noted that administrators are themselves sometimes restricted from making the decisions they need to transform the school environment. Many report having little control over critical matters that impact school environment, such as teacher hiring, assignment, curriculum, transfers, schedule, etc. Principals are also often juggling heavy directives from federal, state and district initiatives, and have much of their day spent on issues related to implementation and compliance of mandated programs that are tangential to school environment issues. All of these factors impact a school leader’s ability to be effective in developing and maintaining a highly functioning school.

The Teaching and Learning Conditions Survey therefore prioritizes data that focus on the working conditions for principals, targeting district-based challenges and opportunities for creating effective school environments. By disaggregating the data at the school and district level, principals, district leaders and teacher advocates are able to open up conversations that help improve access to the resources, processes and support necessary to create change from the district to the classroom.

ADDITIONAL DATA POINTS

Ultimately, the results from the survey will help create an entry point that allows all educators to achieve a similar understanding about the extent to which positive teaching and learning conditions are present, and will inform efforts to improve these conditions. However, for school environments to continue to grow in a positive direction, school leaders will need to engage in ongoing collection of data (beyond perception-based questions) and facilitate ongoing conversations that focus on the specific contexts of the school. By triangulating multiple data-points, school leaders, faculty and staff will be able to get the most accurate understanding of their environment, and the best leverage points for improvements.

SUPPORT FOR SCHOOL LEADERS

The School Leadership Division of the NTC provides a number of trainings, materials and other resources that can support school principals in building the skills they need to transform school environments into places where teachers and students can thrive. You can view these links in our School Leadership area.