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8/22/2019 What the Learning Leader Will Do for You

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Introduction: What The Learning Leader Will Do for You

I love watching people select books. I always wonder what makes prospective readers linger on a title,

briefly examine the cover of one and replace it on the shelf, then select another and flip through its

pages for several minutes, and finally pick up another and take it home. Although my observations are

hardly scientific, my strong suspicion is that the decision to select a book is made quicklywithin a fewseconds. The author must respond to every reader's questions:

Why me?I have specialized needs and I'm tired of the generic pabulum about education,learning, and leadership.

Why this book?Of all the books available on Amazon.com right now, 16,971 address leadershipand 3,199 address leadership in education. What makes this book worthy of my time?

Will it work?Spare me the undocumented historical speculation or the education liteaphorisms. I need substance, evidence, and practical application.

If you ask direct questions, you deserve direct answers.

Why you?If you are a leader or educator in a complex organization, then you have already concluded

that the myths of the singular heroic leader and teacher are unsatisfying and fundamentally flawed. You

know that the complexities of your organization and the enormity of your responsibilities demand

performance, not platitudes. You want a solid intellectual framework that acknowledges the work of

other researchers, but you want a new insight that will provide intellectual rigor and organizational

energy. Above all, you want the answer to challenges that are facing you right now. You have an

immediate need to improve communication within your organization, enhance staff morale, and

increase performance at the individual and organizational levels. You are modest enough to know that

you cannot achieve the objectives alone, but you are confident enough to know that one person can

serve as a catalyst for the entire organization.

Why this book?There are many excellent books on leadership, and well over 100 other scholars are

cited in the following pages. But there is also a lot of tripe masquerading as leadership insight. If you and

other leaders and educators in your organization apply the lessons of this book, it will change your

professional practices in profound ways. From conducting strategic planning, to running meetings, to

evaluating projects, teams, and individuals, to organizing your leadership team and involving parents

and community members, the Leadership for Learning Framework will help you reconceptualize your

role and that of your colleagues. You will simultaneously discover strengths and acknowledge

limitations, and you and your organization will be more resilient, less stressed, and more successful.

Will it work?The Leadership for Learning Framework is the result of extensive fieldwork and research.

As I have done in my previous 19 books, I use authentic cases and real data. This book introduces a new

and previously unpublished study that is the result of a detailed analysis of student achievement,

teaching practices, and leadership planning for approximately 300,000 students in more than 290

schools. This is in addition to previous research and fieldwork from all 50 states and Canada, as well as


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my work in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. In other words, this is not ivory tower theory or

abstract musings. Leadership for Learning is a framework for success, not a silver bullet or a feel-good

reassurance that all is well. The framework will encourage those who are discouraged because it

provides specific guidance for the most difficult schools, and it will challenge complacent schools to

differentiate between being effective and being lucky.

What is the Leadership for Learning Framework? Consider the diagram in Figure 1.1 (Reeves, 2002a). On

the vertical axis is the Achievement of Results. If you have high results, you are effective; if you have

low results, you are ineffective or so goes the conventional wisdom. But such a superficial analysis does

not distinguish between those who achieved high results through luck and through professional

effectiveness. On the horizontal axis are the Antecedents of Excellence, those observable qualities in

leadership, teaching, curriculum, parental engagement, and other indicators that assist in understanding

how results are achieved.

Figure 1.1The Leadership for Learning Framework

Educators in the upper left quadrant, the Lucky quadrant, teach students who achieve high results,

probably true before these students walked into school in the morning. These teachers and leaders are

unable to link their professional practices to results because they do not know how their practices

influence achievement. In these demoralizing environments, there is so much self-congratulatory

backslapping and protestations of excellence that the inhabitants of the Lucky quadrant fail to


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recognize that a doll, television, computer game, or superior teacher could all achieve similar reading

test results if these students are already reading fluently when they walk in the door of a 1st grade

classroom. These Lucky schools treat their best teachers shabbily, because they do not recognize their

extraordinary qualities. Those who choose the path of least resistance, who prefer popularity over

effectiveness, or who decimate a forest with worksheets will achieve results similar to those who work

their hearts out, analyze individual student results, challenge their high-achieving students, and

encourage and coach their lowest-performing students. When challenges arrive, however, student

achievement plummets. Lucky is nice while it lasts, but in a changing environment, lucky isn't enough.

In the lower left quadrant are the Losers. These leaders engage in stunningly self-defeating behavior by

doing the same thing and expecting different results. Not only do they have low results on the vertical

axis, but they are clueless about the antecedents of excellence on the horizontal axis.

The best example of this behavior I have recently encountered was a middle school in which more than

80 percent of the students were not reading on grade level. When I asked the leadership team how

much time had been devoted to reading in the previous year, they replied,Thirty-seven minutes every

day. Now, however, they were equipped with data that showed the error of their ways. Surely it would

be obvious to the most casual observer that they needed to change their curriculum, schedule, and

teaching practices, right? I innocently inquired, So, now that we know how serious this situation is, how

much time will you be spending on reading next year? The stunning response: Thirty-seven minutes

every day.

Leaders and teachers who say, I'll do whatever is needed in order to improve student results, as long as

we don't have to change the schedule, modify the curriculum, improve teaching practices, or alter

leadership behavior, are in the Loser quadrant. I might as well tell my physician that I am committed to

losing 30 pounds as long as I can maintain a diet of fried chicken and martinis, sleep through my exercise

class, and have a tailor who will adjust the waistband of my pants.

I have previously written about belligerent indifference (Reeves, 2001a) and have, not surprisingly,

received some hostile responses to my use of the phrase. What better terminology is there for

professionals who persist in leadership and teaching practices that are not working? We will not lure,

cajole, bribe, or persuade people in the Loser quadrant to move to the right side of the matrix. We can

only jolt them into a moment of extraordinary discomfort with this simple but profound question: Is it

working? The Loser's answer is, at the very least, honest: I don't know. Implicit in this confession is

the absolution that performance failures must be the fault of anyone except themselves. The fault for

poor performance, if it lies anywhere, is with the students, their parents, their ethnicity, their culture,

their environment, their peer group. It is anything except the professional conduct of the leaders and

teachers involved in their education. This is the path of determined impotence and selected

victimhood. At the very least, it represents a decidedly unpleasant way to lead a professional life. At

the worst, this attitude characterizes the classic blame the victim mentality, in which the assaulted

student deserves punishment for dressing provocatively, the poor student reaps the seeds of indolence,

and the illiterate student has chosen the path of irresponsibility and failure.


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Blaming students and their families for poor achievement is a very small step removed from blaming the

rape victim for the assault or the unemployed for their poverty. In the latter case, the victims deserved

their fate due to lack of effort, planning, and preparation; in the former case the victims deserved their

fate due to their choice of apparel or boyfriends, or their choice of education and professions. Shouldn't

the readers of fashion magazines have known that the advertisers conflated sex appeal with irresistible

enticement? Shouldn't the steelworkers of the 1960s have known that their jobs would be exported?

Shouldn't the computer programmers of the 1990s have known that the doors of economic opportunity

would evaporate with the speed with which information travels from corporate headquarters in New

York to programming centers in Asia? This is not a polemic about trading policies or women's fashions,

but only an observation that trade policies do not render hardworking and well-trained workers

incompetent dolts who deserve homelessness any more than fashion trends render aspiring models

punching bags who deserve abuse. No one chooses failure, and the presumption that failure is a choice

is deeply rooted in the need to elevate blame over responsibility.

The preceding paragraphs do not mean very much unless the remainder of this book offers a

constructive solution. Fortunately, a significant body of research, including new research, suggests thatthere is hope. The primary conclusions of that research are as follows:

1. Leadership, teaching, and adult actions matter. This is not aphoristic pabulum, but statisticaltruth. While it is true that demographic variables are directly linked to student achievement, it is

also true that adult variables, including the professional practices of teachers and the decisions

leaders make, can be more important than demographic variables.

2. There are particular leadership actions that show demonstrable links to improved studentachievement and educational equity. Our research suggests, for example, that excessive

emphasis on school improvement plans is misplaced unless those plans are associated with very

specific elements:

1. Inquiry: the degree to which leaders correctly analyze the underlying causes of deficiencies andsuccesses in student achievement and equity. Successful inquiry attributes the causes to adults in the

educational systemteachers, school leaders, and policymakers. Unsuccessful inquiry attributes causes

to students. In other words, blame the victim is not only morally reprehensible but statistically untrue.

2. Implementation: the degree to which the specific elements of school improvement processesare implemented at the student and classroom levels. Successful planning processes recognize that

implementation is never a binary variable that leads to the unenlightening report that We

implemented the program or We did not implement the program. Rather, effective implementationis a continuous variable in which leaders recognize that there are degrees of successful implementation

that are subject to quantitative and narrative description.

3. Monitoring: the degree to which the implementation and frequency of an initiative is stronglyassociated with improvement and equity. While the Total Quality Management movement of the 20th

century and its predecessor, the Taylorism movement of the 19th century, have given monitoring and

measurement a sometimes unsavory reputation, the present study reminds us that plans without


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monitoring are little better than wishes upon stars. It is important to distinguish carefully between

appropriate and insightful monitoring and monitoring that equates to a compliance drill for external

authorities. The former, in the educational context, can be described as assessment, while the latter is

testing. Assessment is designed to improve teaching and learning, provide immediate feedback for

students and teachers, and focus on specific objectives. Testing, by contrast, is designed to provide an

evaluation with feedback that is typically late, unfocused, and destructive. While there is a broad

consensus that many classrooms are over tested as a result of a cascade of national, state, and district

tests that are devoid of practical classroom insights, I would suggest that those same classrooms are

woefully under assessed.

3. Leadership is neither a unitary skill set nor a solitary activity. The Leadership for LearningFramework engages a variety of skills and people throughout the organization, whether or not

their official job titles suggest a leadership role.

Now that we have our framework, let us consider how Leadership for Learning can work for you.

Note: If you are conducting a book study with your colleagues, you can download a free book study

guide atwww.MakingStandardsWork.com,www.LeadAndLearn.com, andwww.ascd.organd also find

free access to information needed to apply the lessons from this book to develop your own Leadership

Map.

Table of Contents

Copyright 2006 by Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. All rights reserved. No

part of this publicationincluding the drawings, graphs, illustrations, or chapters, except for brief

quotations in critical reviews or articlesmay be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any

means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage andretrieval system , without permission from ASCD.

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