In my view, Learning Forward (known until recently as the National Staff Development Council) stages the nation’s premiere conference for professional developers and for school and teacher leaders interested in improving their craft.
Each fall I look forward to early December and the opportunity to explore literally hundreds of workshops and seminars. This year, even with the tough economy, there were more than 2,700 educators present, representing every continent. It’s really energizing to be in a setting with people who have come eager to learn and interact with each other.
Thanks to my long association with NSDC/LF, I serve on the Conference Program Planning Committee, which is charged with identifying and selecting the keynote speakers and distinguished lecturers, and for reviewing applications for the small group sessions.
Another pleasant duty is to help introduce conference speakers and make sure they feel welcome. This year I did some of the intros for the distinguished lecture series, including Catherine Augustine from the Rand Corporation and Ann Jaquith, an associate of Linda Darling-Hammond at Stanford University.
Dr. Augustine’s address focused on Rand Education’s ongoing studies of effective school leaders, including a 2009 report on cohesive leadership. Rand has identified key barriers to ensuring an effective system of school leadership, including the difficulty that high needs schools have in attracting and retaining effective principals; challenging working conditions in many schools, and a principal pool where many potential leaders lack all the skills they need to be successful. Her studies have also documented the desire of principals for more autonomy over hiring, developing and supporting effective teachers.
To improve school leadership, Rand recommends that policy makers and system leaders:
• Develop school leaders from within through residency programs for aspiring principals;
• Allow new principals enough time to prove themselves;
• Consider incentives;
• Mitigate the effects of principal turnover by strengthening school culture and emphasizing distributed leadership;
• Work deliberately to retain effective leadership at the district level;
• Give greater autonomy to proven principals in hiring, developing, and removing teachers;
• Return state assessment results earlier, accompanied by support and the expectation that this data will be used to improve instruction;
• Provide principals with meaningful, high-quality, differentiated professional development and support – particularly in the areas of leadership for learning, human capital development, and fundraising.
• Improve principal evaluation systems, using cutting edge standards that include a student achievement component.
In my next post about the Learning Forward conference, I’ll report on some interesting research presented by Ann Jaquith, indentifying the kind of professional development that actually leads to improved student achievement. In a third and final post, I’ll highlight some fascinating findings presented by Andy Hargreaves — a noted expert on school and district leadership – whose study of 18 high achieving organizations surfaced 15 common factors leading to success, including one he calls “The Fantastic Dream.”
