Building Capacity in the Face of Urgency

Earlier this summer I was interviewed by a Seattle Times newspaper reporter who was writing a story about the Seattle Schools Superintendent who just completed her second full year on the job.  The school board was discussing a contract extension, and as you can imagine there were plenty of proponents and opponents for an extension.  I happened to be one of those proponents based first on my close understanding of the challenges she faced when she entered the job, the tough decisions she has made over the last two years, and the leadership direction of the district which is now rooted in the theory that in order to improve student learning we need most to improve the quality of teaching and leadership.   

The fact that a number of people had already lined up to denounce the contract extension is not surprising.  Unfortunately this dynamic is endemic to urban school district leadership.  Often, the roots of discontent lie in well meaning perceptions that change is happening either too slowly or too quickly.  In either case the sheer challenge of closing long standing academic achievement gaps along with the complexity of large urban districts makes it difficult for district leaders to fashion a strategy and communicate a message that resonates with everyone.

In some cases the discontent may be rooted in individuals being unhappy over a single event or issue.  These issues can include anything from the closing of schools to textbook adoptions to student and teacher assignment plans.  This can create a dynamic of single agenda politics and as more people become disenfranchised due to their single agenda not being honored or promoted, this just adds fuel to a growing fire.  The fact is that single agenda politics is just that – single – with little to no acknowledgement of the collective good.  And when the collective good is subjugated to single agenda politics, the historically underserved and marginalized students and families among us suffer the greatest consequences.  Single agenda motives are often masked by adeptly framing the argument in student achievement terms.  In some cases opponents of the superintendent may frame the argument as - the fact that too many students are still not achieving is prima facie evidence of the superintendent’s failed policies and practices.     

I pointed out to the reporter that one needs only to look at those urban school districts that have out-performed their counterparts in terms of overall student achievement as well as the closing of academic achievement gaps.  In every case the superintendent has been in place between five and ten years.  In other words, two years of leadership tenure is a woefully insufficient amount of time to evaluate whether a superintendent’s policies and practices have affected student achievement.  This is particularly true given that the only long term road to improving student learning lies in building the expertise of teachers and leaders.  It’s a capacity issue, and developing capacity takes time.      

Unfortunately the issue of time and capacity presents a challenging conundrum for school district leaders.  How do school district leaders act with urgency for immediate results when we know the development of expertise necessary to improve teaching is a long term process requiring a long term commitment?  It is this very conundrum that continues to spawn an endless plethora of quick fix programs, policies and strategies.  Yet in the end deepening one’s expertise to improve practice takes time.   That said, I believe school and district leaders can approach the development of expertise – both teaching and leadership – with the urgency and seriousness that the current educational situation demands.  While the short and long term measures of this leadership work must include various measures of student achievement, we need to identify other metrics that measure the extent to which teaching practice is improving every week – not every couple of months or every year.  CEL’s 5 Dimensions of Teaching and Learning Framework can be quite useful in this regard.  In particular, UWCEL faculty are hard at work developing an instructional audit tool based on the 5D Framework.  This tool (available in January 2011) will provide school leaders with an important measure of teaching practice as well as how students engage in the learning process.

The time and capacity conundrum is not impossible to reconcile.  School and district leaders can and must still act with the urgency necessary to close long standing academic achievement gaps.  And they can do so in ways that are true to a vision of building long term capacity.  It will require a fine blend of leadership tenacity and patience.  It is what makes leadership so challenging, yet also so rewarding when we see the success of our efforts.  I wish everyone a most successful 2010-11 school year!