10 Mindframes for Leaders: The VISIBLE LEARNING Approach to School Success

[00:01] SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.

[00:06] Announcer:

Here's your host, director of the Principal Center and champion of high-performance instructional leadership, Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:14] SPEAKER_02:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and my guest today is Dr. Raymond Smith, author with Julie Smith of Evaluating Instructional Leadership, Recognize Practices for Success.

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And now, our feature presentation.

[00:29] SPEAKER_02:

Ray, welcome to Principal Center Radio. Thanks, Justin. Nice to be here. So I have to ask, why do you think it is that this topic is so long overdue, that instructional leadership, what we've long seen as the core of the work of administrators, has not been something that we really take seriously? the evaluation of terribly seriously. I think maybe just in the last couple of years, this has been a topic that's risen to the top, risen to the forefront.

[00:58]

Why do you think that is, and what's your take on evaluating instructional leadership?

[01:02] SPEAKER_01:

The idea that the book puts forward is that effective school leaders must identify and leverage their big winner leadership practices. And to help describe the concept of identifying and leveraging big winner leadership practices, we need to draw on a principle taken from the field of total quality management called the Pareto principle. or what's better known as the 80-20 rule. So the 80-20 rule argument goes something like this. Roughly 80% of our leadership impact will come from only 20% of your leadership practices. Another way of saying this is that a significant few leadership practices will account for most of our leadership impact.

[01:51]

The biggest part of our leadership practices, say approximately 80%, will be so much less impactful that they will produce only 20% of our effect on learning and student achievement. So the question is, have leaders identified those significant few leadership practices that will account for their greatest impact on teachers and the academic performance of students?

[02:14] SPEAKER_02:

And as John Hattie says, know thy impact. And I think often you're right that we don't. I think a lot of school leaders are familiar with the ISLIC standards, the ISLLC, Interstate School Leadership Licensure Consortium, kind of a mouthful of an acronym. And I think...

[02:30]

We don't naturally think in terms of the Pareto principle. We think, okay, I have these six responsibilities, and I know they're in draft form being revised right now. I've got a copy on my desk. But we think these are the standards, so I need to kind of allocate my time to each of them. And I might not do that evenly, but if I'm going to be a responsible leader, I need to at least make sure that each of those areas has enough attention. So how do we manage that issue of really capitalizing on where the big opportunities are, where those big Pareto principle optimization opportunities are, while still kind of covering all of our bases?

[03:07] SPEAKER_01:

Well, anyone who has ever sat in the principal's chair knows that a school leader's most precious resource is time. What we're urging in our book for school leaders to do is to be more selfish as how they spend their time. Generally, school leaders tend to spread, as you said, their leadership time and energies around, investing in a variety of activities that seem worthwhile, but their impact varies dramatically from one set of leadership practices to another. A few leadership practices aimed at a limited number of goals say two to three, end up making the major contributions to their leadership impact. Just think how much school leaders could improve their leadership impact by allocating their professional leadership time and resources more strategically.

[04:02]

In other words, spending their time, their energy, and their influence in high payoff, big winner areas. So in our book, we promote a focus on Vivian Robinson's research with her colleagues, Lloyd and Rowe, and an article they published in Education Quarterly, Volume 44, Number 5, called The Impact of Leadership on Student Outcomes, and where they did an analysis of differential effects on leadership types. Essentially, what they discovered was that that there when they looked at two different types of leadership transformational leadership and instructional leadership they determined that instructional leadership was four times more impactful than transformational leadership and And so when I'm talking with principals and helping with leadership development, it's not about focusing just on instructional leadership at the exclusion of transformational leadership qualities, because certainly we want leaders motivating teachers and removing obstacles and barriers

[05:15]

Those kinds of things that are transformational in nature. The issue is getting leaders to say, okay, in our time management, where do we then begin to zero in on those things that matter the most? And so we understand that establishing a shared vision and goals and expectations is very, very impactful. Strategically resourcing our resources available and ensuring staff and teacher effectiveness. But leading and participating in teacher learning and development is the most impactful. So how are we getting principals to do that effectively?

[05:59]

So it's really getting them to be more stingy with their time as they're allocating their time to those areas that matter the most.

[06:11] SPEAKER_02:

Well, in terms of accountability, I think there's a tension in districts especially that kind of have their act together well and have theories of action about how leadership functions, how leadership impacts student learning. A tension between over-specifying You know, what principals should be doing, how they should be spending their time and kind of, you know, versus preserving autonomy and giving people the flexibility to do what they need. So within kind of what we know matters, what's your perspective on that? the appropriate response of people who supervise and work with principals. If I'm a director and I supervise all of the middle school principals in my district, what's the best role for me to play in helping people capture that leverage that's there in focusing on those certain practices and allocating less time to leadership actions that are not going to have the same impact?

[07:09]

versus just kind of micromanaging? Because I think that's the fear that we all have, is that in creating alignment, in creating common expectations for implementing best practices, we're just going to be kind of removing people's autonomy and removing the flexibility that they need. So how do we strike that balance?

[07:25] SPEAKER_01:

Well, having been a central office leader myself, I think part of the problem is getting central office leaders to understand their role, and part of their role is to help sitting principals preserve time and focus on the things that matter the most. So as school leaders, we actually have too many demands on our time, and this fact seriously complicates the time management strategies we can employ. It also causes stress and severely stunts our instructional leadership development. To have a significant impact, we must simplify, and central office has to help leaders do that. What this comes down to is deliberately managing the demands on our professional lives, saying no to the many urgent but non-impactful leadership practices so we can say yes to the impactful ones.

[08:21]

Instead of spreading ourselves too thin, responding freely, I think, to the odds and ends that consume our day and week, we need to decide on what really counts. Downsize our daily activities. and don't blunt our impact quotient by trying to do too many things at once. It's only by sharply focusing ourselves on leadership practices that matter the most can we achieve the critical mass of energy required for significant impact I think it's important to bear in mind, Justin, that the primary fuel source for our ability to impact learning for all and increase student achievement comes when our leadership energy is contained, compressed, and channeled. It's simply a matter of giving ourselves more fully on a much more narrow front that leadership power accumulates quickly when there are fewer ways for it to escape.

[09:21]

And central office leaders need to help minimize the ways leadership power escapes. and support principles in doing that.

[09:31] SPEAKER_02:

I love that metaphor and actually kind of made up a term for it. I call it ergonomatics and if you've been through the instructional leadership challenge, actually get out a big gas tank, a carbon dioxide tank and illustrate this idea that when our time is under pressure, that's when it's actually able to do the most. If I have kind of an empty calendar for the day, as a principal, that would always scare me when I had no appointments, nothing on the calendar, and I could just, intuitively, I would think, wow, I can really work on all those big projects that I had been putting off, or I can get caught up on all the stuff I was behind on. But inevitably, what would happen in those days is they would just fall apart. If the day was not spoken for, everyone else would speak for it and it would disappear in little conversations here that didn't go anywhere and little distractions there.

[10:26]

And in contrast, I was talking with Doug Fisher recently, who's probably a mutual friend of ours, who is the principal of a school, kind of an instructional leader in a school that he helped found, who is a university professor, an author, a consultant, a speaker, wears all these hats and does all of them well. And I said, Doug, how do you, how do you do all this? And he said, you know, Justin, busy people get more done. And I think the nice thing about being a principal is that you're always busy, but the, so we get a lot done, but the question that I think you're raising for us so well is what are we getting done and how are we making sure that that impacts instruction? Because there's, there's no shortage of things to keep us busy and there's no shortage of forces directing our attention and our energy away from the things that actually matter into, you know,

[11:17]

you know, we're, we're around to solve everyone's problems from their perspective. And, uh, and, and that's not necessarily where the leverage lies. So let's talk about, uh, some of those areas a little bit that are, that are backed up by the research on, uh, instructional leadership and what causes instructional leadership to have an impact. Um, what specifically should we be doing now? Like I've, I've read, uh, Paul Bambrick Santoya's leverage leadership, and I'm sure a lot of our listeners have as well, where he actually lays out some sample calendars, uh, for instructional leaders in his organization and walks you through the process of putting in some of those big pieces. But what should those big pieces be that we want to make sure are occupying our attention and filling our calendars so that we can have the impact we want to have?

[12:03] SPEAKER_01:

I was talking with Mike Schmoker one day, and he made the comment, he said, you know, the fastest way to improved student achievement is improved instruction. And so to go back to your question, putting principles as close to instruction as possible I was reading, or have read, as I'm sure you have, the research by Karen Seashore Lewis that came out of the Wallace Foundation, I think in maybe 2008. And in that very, very thick and significant piece of research, they basically came out and said, effective school principals are In the classroom, conducting classroom observations 20 to 60 times a week.

[12:56]

And these are short, more formative kinds of things with observations, with feedback going back to teachers. And I might add some kind of a systematic way for leaders to know that teachers are receiving the feedback and using it to improve their practice. I mean, it goes back to time management and that. It's getting principals out in the classrooms with teachers so that they understand their concerns and know how to support them. And if we're using effective feedback the way that the research suggests, it's as much a matter of principals giving teachers feedback as it is securing feedback from teachers about what they know, where they have misconceptions about instructional practices.

[13:49]

We want, as principals, all teachers to take to scale within our school.

[13:53] SPEAKER_02:

Right. And I think that's such a critical practice. Another one that we talk about in the Instructional Leadership Challenge, just from the perspective of, as you said, getting feedback and listening. And something that Kim Marshall said in his book, Rethinking Teacher Supervision and Evaluation, that has stuck with me for years is, is this idea that we can't just coach the heck out of our teachers and expect that to produce the results we want for our school. And I think it's easy to read a book like leverage leadership and get the idea that it's our job as instructional leaders to just run around kind of fixing little things. Like every day, it's my job to, uh, to go into a teacher's classroom and add a few points to their capacity, you know, and just kind of like, you know, stack on a few bricks.

[14:38]

But Marshall's perspective is, is a little bit different that, uh, That's not where the growth really comes from. I want to segue into the next topic in your book around leading and participating in teacher professional development. This is something else I say in the challenge that as an instructional leader, it's not just that you're providing feedback and it's definitely not just that you're making random suggestions. Hey, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? You can do that 20 times a day or 20 times a week and really do nothing to improve instruction if you're just making little suggestions.

[15:14]

What I think we're touching on is the ability to connect where teachers' growth opportunities are with what's happening in the classroom that they need feedback on and link that to the school-wide professional development that we're doing. So talk to us a little bit about the best way for us as administrators to be involved in professional development and to make sure that that's achieving the results that it needs to.

[15:37] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's a great question. There's a couple of links. First of all, we have to go back to the idea of resourcing strategically, and we have to go back to goal setting. So if we attempt to set too many goals, I mean, we suggest two to three, no more than two to three. In my work with Doug Reeves and a number of others, we did some research out in Clark County a number of years ago where we came in and basically a colleague of mine and I reviewed 350 school improvement plans and gave them feedback on each one of them. And basically what we found is if you had more than six goals, six priorities.

[16:27]

You had no priorities. So the rule of six, I would narrow down to the priority of two or three. So focus on two to three things and then resource those things strategically. So your use of time, money, and resources on those two to three things only, which then goes to your question of professional development. The professional development has to be approached from the same standpoint that we ask teachers to approach instruction in the classroom, and that is that it takes anywhere from 24 to 27 bouts of instruction, distributed practice, if you will, for students to reach 80% mastery. Well, if you're taking Each of Marzano's nine instructional practices that work, classroom instructional practices that work, and doing one per month, you're not practicing with teachers what you're asking teachers to do with kids.

[17:29]

So we need to really narrow the professional development down to maybe two pieces of professional development that we want teachers to take deeply and implement, which means that we've established relationships Let's say it's effective feedback that we want all of our teachers in every classroom, regardless of content area, to be practicing with kids and principals with teachers, by the way. So we received some professional development on effective feedback and feedback. And part of that then is that there's a rubric that we've identified that says, this is what it looks like to be implementing effective feedback at the proficient or higher level. So then you've equipped your teacher with a self-assessment, but you've also equipped the principal with a tool that they can use to go into the classroom, look for those pieces of practice going on, provide feedback to the teacher,

[18:29]

So it's a year-long process to get really good at providing feedback at the right instructional level for your kids, as well as providing feedback to your teachers at the right instructional level for them. In a nutshell, to your question, it's really narrowing the focus to two to three things and then going deeply with those. And it's the principal sitting there and participating in the workshop with teachers and not just hiring the consultant to come in or purchasing the books that they're going to use to do a book study.

[19:06] SPEAKER_02:

Right. I think our learning really does play a critical role, not just in terms of role modeling, not just in terms of being able to provide feedback, but actually grappling with the same issues. I'm really coming to the idea that instructional leadership is first and foremost, about listening and gathering the information that you need. And there's a great book from the 70s by Henry Mintzberg called The Nature of Managerial Work. And he talks about how we play all these roles as leaders. Some of the roles are symbolic.

[19:38]

You have to go to graduation and present the diplomas because, hey, you're the principal. And others are decisional. You're going to be involved in making hiring decisions. And some of those decisional roles that we play can't be played effectively without information. And I think we often put ourselves into the decisional role without giving ourselves the information we need. So I think professional development, being in classrooms, really are two of the key things that we need in order to move our staff forward.

[20:09]

So I'm really... really linking up with a lot of what you're saying. If I could ask, because our focus today is on evaluating instructional leadership and supporting instructional leaders in developing that focus and doing what they need to do. If I'm a director, if I'm a central office leader or a superintendent in a smaller district, and I'm responsible for supporting principals and holding principals accountable, my temptation might be to look at all of the areas of responsibility or to look at whatever our district level priorities are.

[20:43]

And that might not quite line up with the focus that a school or a principal has. Where do you see the opportunities for us to kind of see our role differently in supporting principals? If I'm a central office leader, how should I revise my understanding of my role in order to more effectively support principals in developing that focus that we're talking about today?

[21:08] SPEAKER_01:

That's a great question. I work with a school district, a very large school district presently, 230 schools in the district, a large cadre of area superintendents that have a responsibility for 12, 13 schools. they had a wonderful opportunity to kind of change their role, especially in light of the research currently on leadership and what's most important, whether you look at the Wallace Foundation or whether you look at Robinson's work or Hattie's work or Kenneth Leithwood's work. The idea that that central office is there to support principles uh... central office needs to understand the same research that that uh... principles are operating on that is where where are their practices most uh... strategically leveraged and and then

[22:16]

it's establishing a common language around that. So if central office leaders understand that it is instructional leadership, then I want to preserve your time principles in in engaging more often in those practices. Part of it goes back to the rubrics that we've developed in our book to help central office understand what leaders in schools should be doing in practicing those things. constantly monitoring and measuring principals' roles in those areas, expecting to sit down with principals periodically and listen to them talk about the impact that they're having and how they're focusing their time.

[23:09]

So, you know, looking at principles deliberate practice which we talk about in the book which is a professional growth plan basically that that we believe all leaders should engage in not just those that are are on on academic watch your or tenuous in nature with the uh... this the district So you have these plans on a page almost that principals are working to show the relationship between their practice and the impact that they're having on kids. That's what this is all about and I think that's what central office leaders ought to be focusing their time and energy on and it's minimizing the other central office stuff that in many ways gets in the way of principals' work.

[23:55] SPEAKER_02:

So it almost seems like a process of, and tell me if this is along the same lines as what you're saying, a process of helping principals figure out how they influence student learning and really honing in on those key practices rather than doing, I think, what we typically do in strategic planning, which is to say, okay, what are all the things we're responsible for? And, you know, for for demonstrating that we do the bases that we cover and what are all the things that we currently do and how can we justify each of those categories as being covered? I mean, I think if you if you look at a lot of strategic plans and I suspect you kind of ran into this issue in evaluating all of those the school strategic plans, you see a lot of kind of justification of what we're already doing and a lot of kind of showing that bases are covered. But it seems like the real leverage is in

[24:47]

honing in on that theory of action. And that's a term I learned from my mentor, Michael Copeland, who was involved in a lot of those Wallace studies around instructional leadership. This idea that you have to know why what you're doing is supposed to work. And you may be wrong about that, but you at least have to be clear about it so that you can find out when the data comes in if you're right, if it is making an impact. And what I hear you saying is at the evaluation level, when we're evaluating instructional leadership, we have to be really clear on whether the instructional leaders we're working with are clear in their own minds about that.

[25:24] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, not only clear in their own minds, but looking at the results that they're getting. So part of it is... getting very clear, as you said, sharp on the idea that this is where we want you focusing your time and energy, and this is what we're going to do to help you do that and support you in that. It's also, I think, growing each other's capacity and the knowledge and skills that instructional leadership involves.

[25:54]

It's a catch word, and I think it almost, people believe it has some universal understanding, and I think we sat people down in a room and said, okay, what are the qualities of instructional leadership? They'd be all over the map. Getting clear as a district what instructional leadership means, and in very concrete and specific terms, basically practices, and then making sure principals are skilled and you increase their, you take those things to scale within the district, I think is really what is most critical.

[26:35] SPEAKER_02:

Well, Ray, it has been a pleasure to speak with you today about instructional leadership and how instructional leadership works and can be supported within schools and districts, a topic that I know is near and dear to your heart and mine as well. So the book is Evaluating Instructional Leadership, Recognized Practices for Success. Thank you so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio, Dr. Smith.

[26:56] SPEAKER_01:

Thank you, Justin. Appreciate the opportunity to talk about the book.

[27:01] SPEAKER_00:

And now, Justin Bader on high performance instructional leadership.

[27:05] SPEAKER_02:

So high performance instructional leaders, what did you take away from my conversation with Dr. Raymond Smith? I think one of the most important things he said early on is around time being our most scarce and precious resource. If we're going to have an impact on student learning, that impact is going to take place in real time and it's the one resource we can't get more of. So in the High Performance Instructional Leadership Network, one thing that we've always been focused on is helping you optimize your use of time, helping you be more efficient with technology, helping you allocate that time to the right work, helping you use the high performance triangle to align strategy, tools, and habits to achieve high performance, to have that impact that you wanna have. But we're also realizing that as one person, your impact is inherently going to be limited.

[27:55]

And if you want to have a high leadership culture, if you want to have a school where multiple people are exercising instructional leadership, including staff, including students, then you have to build capacity. And when you build that capacity, that's where the huge results come from. If you look at a high-performing school, it's not a school where the principal is just a superstar and everyone else just kind of coasts. It's a school where...

[28:18]

Leadership is distributed and it's coming from lots of places to achieve multiple goals at the same time. So this is a big shift in our emphasis in the high performance instructional leadership. And I want to encourage you to check out what we're offering for schools now. We've been under a model where individual participants can join the network, but we're shifting to a model. that's based on student enrollment and that covers everyone in your school. And a couple of resources that I want to highlight that we're including in the network now are some materials around goal setting to help you set goals for your system, for your school, for yourself, for your staff, and for students to walk each of those groups through that goal setting process.

[29:01]

And also around decision making to help you develop a decision making matrix that can purposefully, intentionally involve more people in decision-making and leadership, because that's what distributed leadership really means. So check out the High Performance Instructional Leadership Network at principalcenter.com slash leadership.

[29:20] Announcer:

Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.