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Our Work: Success Stories

McREL’s Balanced Leadership helps leaders nationwide make
a difference

With its focus on schools as the key unit of measurement for accountability, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 has, in effect, rewritten the job description for the nation’s 90,000 school principals.

No longer are principals expected to simply manage their buildings —doing such things as coordinating buses, handling personnel concerns, communicating with parents, and a myriad of other duties. They must now also serve as instructional leaders—guiding their schools and students to ever higher levels of performance.

As much of the weight of NCLB lies on their shoulders, principals have taken heart in the findings from a McREL’s 2003 meta-analytic research study titled, Balanced Leadership: What 30 Years of Research Tells Us About the Effect of School Leadership on Student Achievement, which show a strong, positive relationship between effective leaders and student success.

“We are definitely feeling pressure to make sure our scores are going up,” said Karen Swenson, principal of Lincoln-McKinley Primary School, a Grade 2–3 school in Havre, Mont. “I find it really nice to know that as a principal, I can make a difference in student achievement.”

Providing guidance from rigorous research
Swenson and thousands of other principals from around the nation have taken part in McREL’s Balanced Leadership™ program. This program is the result of McREL’s three-year effort to translate our research findings into a 10-session leadership development course designed to help leaders balance three key components of effective school leadership:

1. Focus: using research to ensure school improvement efforts target changes that are most likely to positively influence student achievement
2. Community of purpose: building common vision and sense of “collective efficacy” throughout a school
3. Change management: understanding the implications of change for different stakeholders and adjusting leadership behaviors accordingly

Developing school leaders nationwide
By the end of 2006, more than 3,000 school leaders in 24 states and Australia had participated in Balanced Leadership sessions. McREL delivered most of these sessions to groups, or consortia, of school leaders, who participated in a series of ongoing sessions sponsored by states, intermediate agencies, or districts. These consortia not only reduced the costs of participation, but also created opportunities for school leaders to learn from one another.

“The collegial learning components have been powerful,” said Dan Courson, principal of Deer Valley Middle School, in Phoenix, Ariz., who participated in a consortium sponsored by his district, Deer Valley Unified School District. “We have have few opportunities to work collaboratively in exploring leadership principles outside of McREL’s work. We learn from each other in discussion, case studies, and mentorship roles.”

Focusing on the “right” things
Harvard scholar Richard Elmore has written that “knowing the right thing to do is the central problem of school improvement.” Often, school leaders focus their improvement efforts on changes that that are unlikely to raise student achievement.

The Balanced Leadership program helps school leaders focus their schools on 11 school, classroom, and student influences that McREL research, reported in the popular ASCD publication, What Works in Schools, identifies as having a strong relationship to student achievement.

“McREL Balanced Leadership sessions have helped me focus on the important factors that influence student achievement,” said Karen Stout-Suenram, principal of Kessler Elementary School in Helena, Mont., who participated in a Balanced Leadership consortium sponsored by the School Administrators of Montana. While experiencing increasing enrollment of at-risk students, Kessler Elementary has also seen rising achievement scores.

Creating successful school communities
Balanced Leadership sessions also help school leaders create what McREL calls a “community of purpose”—one that works together to develop and maintain an unwavering vision for success. As principals readily admit, keeping their school communities focused on their vision is no small task.

“There’s always someone walking through your door and saying, ‘Gee, we should trying this, or, Wouldn’t it be nice to do that?” observed Karen Swenson. “After going through the Balanced Leadership sessions, I really get the importance of maintaining that unrelenting focus so that you stick with something long enough for it to make a difference.”

Another key to creating a purposeful community is building a sense of “collective efficacy”—an infectious, “can-do” attitude among staff that encourages them to put forth the effort needed to effect change in their classrooms.

“I’ve begun to see how low or high collective efficacy can be a barometer of whether a change initiative will be successful or not,” said Dan Courson, principal of Deer Valley Middle School in Phoenix. “So I am working on our campus to build collective efficacy.”

Managing change
Any change worth making is difficult. That’s why Balanced Leadership sessions also help leaders learn how their staff members might perceive the change they are trying to lead. For some, a change can be a relatively straightforward, “first-order” change. For others, it can be a more challenging, “second-order” change. For leaders, knowing how people perceive change and responding accordingly can be the difference between finding success or watching even best-laid school improvement plans unraveling.

“From a macro-view, what I would say is most different for us now is what we do with the community when it comes to change,” said Diane Frost, superintendent of the Asheboro (North Carolina) City Schools, which has provided Balanced Leadership to leaders of all of its schools. “We now look at our work with a completely different lens. We are not only concerned about the task before us, but also about the viewpoint of every stakeholder involved, from parents to teachers to aides to bus drivers and the business community.”

For example, Frost’s district leadership team paid careful attention to how stakeholders in their community viewed two key efforts her district undertook last year—re-drawing elementary attendance lines and developing a new strategic plan. As a result, both efforts went smoothly.

Better leaders, better schools
In 2006, more than 2,200 school leaders participated in Balanced Leadership sessions. More than 9 out of 10 of these participants rated the quality of these sessions as good or excellent and many report that the sessions have helped them become better instructional leaders.

“This is probably the best professional development I’ve had since I became a principal in 1990,” said Barbara Dobbs, principal of Deer Valley High School in Glendale, Arizona. “It’s the most worthwhile training that I’ve had. It’s applicable, it makes sense, and it gets results.”

Many participants report that the sessions have a cumulative effect, having increasing meaning and influence as they go further into the program. “When I started year two, it was as if a light went on,” said Swenson. “The concepts fell into place and suddenly made sense. I am able to think in terms of focus, first- and second-order change, leadership responsibilities and all the rest of it. Most important, it has helped me refine my skills to focus on increasing student achievement, and take the steps necessary as a leader to provide the best education for all students.”

Dobbs, Swenson, Stout-Suenram and other Balanced Leadership participants have reported seeing upswings in their students’ performance and attribute these increases, in part, to their improving knowledge and skills as instructional leaders.

“The role of principal is not as daunting to me now,” reported Karen Stout-Suenram. “While I would not say I am [a] completely balanced [leader], I know when to step up and step back and how to lead and grow through a complete change cycle. Thus, [my school] has had greater success in implementation of second order change.”

Thus, in the end, it seems the most powerful lesson for principals from Balanced Leadership may well be their first-hand knowledge that while much is riding on their shoulders, they can carry the weight and make a difference for their students.

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