Communicating the Value of Leadership and Administrators

1. 2018 ISFIS Conference June 15, 2018 Communicating the Value of Leadership and Administrators Margaret Buckton, ISFIS

2. “Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you” ― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

3. Are arrows pointed at administrators? • Elimination of state funds for administrator mentoring • Not eligible for TQ salary/PD funds • Proposals to limit AEA chief and superintendent pay • Proposals to require administrator contribution to health insurance • Proposals to limit contract buy-outs • Elevating teacher input and control (TLC leaders prohibited from evaluating) • Ineffective leaders’ stories get more attention, seem like the rule rather than the exception

4. Why the arrows pointed at administrators? • Think of the common use of the word “administrator”. . . . • What does it mean to the general public? • FDA, VA, SSA . . . .what notions are generated by thinking about the word, “administration” . . . • Talk to a neighbor – generate two words that describe what the public thinks about administration

5. What words did you come up with?

6. Are arrows pointed at training and professional development? • TQ Committee process must approve state supplement PD expenditures (did not change during chapter 20 and 279 rewrite in 2017) • 36 hours of “collaboration” time can’t come out of prep time or minimum instructional day, but can come out of PD time and is still required (may be part of your TLC plan) • TLC structure related to mentoring, PD, collaborative work is catching on, but there may still be some reticence from some teachers. How involved are administrators? • Additional PD now required July 1, 2018 for suicide prevention/postvention and for emergency planning. There will be others proposed. • Arrows are probably justified for the PD that doesn’t look much like the Iowa Professional Development Model and isn’t effective

7. Why are arrows pointed at training and professional development? • Staff concerns • instructional time is scarce • lack of autonomy or independence, don’t want to expose their lesson plans and practice to scrutiny • It’s really hard work • Initiative of the day – like all the others, this, too, will go away • Parent concerns • instructional time • child care and safety (early release challenges) • Teacher “free time” • State level policy maker concerns • Constituents (staff and parents) complain • Time is money and PD costs money

8. Why the arrows pointed at PD? • In-service, early outs, PD, terminology • What does it mean to the general public? • Talk to a neighbor – generate two words that describe what the public thinks about professional development

9. What words did you come up with?

10. Advocating for Leaders and Improved Teaching • What do school leaders do and what happens to schools without good leadership? • How do we make the case for resources (time and money) for improving teaching?

11. AASA Opinion: Brad Saronwww.aasa.org/content.aspx?d=12674Communicating the Value of District Leadership “The fiscal condition of schools today has all stakeholders in a competitive mode of hyper-justification. The reality is that everyone and every program is potentially on the chopping block. This leaves school boards and school leaders with the responsibility of having to assign priority and importance to education programs in order to figure out what to cut and how to keep our ‘school house doors’ open for kids just one more year. One unfortunate upshot of this destructive process has been a dilution or compression in district-level leadership.”

12. AASA Opinion: Brad Saronwww.aasa.org/content.aspx?d=12674Communicating the Value of District Leadership “. . . part-time, interim, dual-role and multi-district superintendents are not uncommon, especially in small, rural school districts. In suburban and urban districts, central-office staff are becoming an endangered species. While school boards are doing their best to reduce staff and programming in ways that minimize the negative impact on kids, they are doing so with withering access to the knowledge and experience of capable leaders to help them navigate the pitfalls of special interest groups, their own personal biases, and the misinterpretation of district-level leadership.”

13. Saron’s questions to us: • Do you see administrative compression and dilution at the expense of best practice? • Do you see special interest groups corrupting the role and purpose of district-level leadership? • Do you see school boards and school communities struggling to understand, communicate or defend the value of leaders? • What disastrous consequences do you see as a result of administrative compression?

14. Saron concludes: “Simply, if school boards or school communities are considering reductions in district-level leadership, they should have access to resources to help them carefully consider the possible effects and consequences.”

15. Budget Pressures • Tough budgets, low SSA percentage increases for 8 of the last 9 years combined with declining enrollment. • Most school boards and communities set a criteria to “protect the classroom” from budget cuts and avoid increasing class size. • Even in Iowa? With declining enrollment and reorganizations, aren’t Iowa schools spending relatively more dollars on administration?

16. Audience Poll: • Are relative administrative expenditures going up or down? • Let’s check

17. Executive Admin History

18. DE Annual Condition of Education Report 2017

19. Administrative Expenses Based on Enrollment CategoryAnnual Condition of Education Report: 2011 & 2018

20. DE Annual Condition of Education Report 2017

21. DE Annual Condition of Education Report 2017

22. How Do Iowa Schools Compare? Data from ESTIMATED NUMBER OF INSTRUCTIONAL STAFF MEMBERS IN PUBLIC ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS BY TYPE OF POSITION http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/NEA_Rankings_And_Estimates_FINAL_20120209.pdf and https://www.nea.org/assets/docs/2016_NEA_Rankings_And_Estimates.pdf

23. Workload: Iowa K-12 Supervisors ISFIS calculation of ratio uses NEA Rankings and Estimates data on staff category

24. Span of Control “Private sector management to employee ratio is 12:1 with administrators to teacher ratio in education at 20-25:1.” The Value of Administrators, prepared by the Professional Leadership Committee for MASA, March 2008

25. http://www.nationalforum.com/Electronic%20Journal%20Volumes/Lunenburg,%20Fred%20C.%20The%20Principal%20and%20the%20School%20-%20What%20Do%20Principals%20Do%20NFEASJ%20V27,%20N4,%202010.pdfhttp://www.nationalforum.com/Electronic%20Journal%20Volumes/Lunenburg,%20Fred%20C.%20The%20Principal%20and%20the%20School%20-%20What%20Do%20Principals%20Do%20NFEASJ%20V27,%20N4,%202010.pdf

26. Nature of the job • Heavy workload at a fast pace (51-53 hours a week, process 20 pieces of mail a day, tour buildings daily, attend meetings, handled emergencies and disruptions) • Little time for quiet reflection: engaged in at least 149 different activities per day, half of which took less than 5 minutes. Significant crises are interspersed with trivial events in no predictable sequence. • Oral communication: 70-80% of time spent in interpersonal communication.

27. Administrator’s Job • It is the administrator’s job to attain goals by working with all school stakeholders in an atmosphere of a professional learning community (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, & Karhanek, 2010). • This involves planning, organizing, leading, and monitoring.

28. Planning: What to do . . . • Provides staff with sense of purpose and direction • Outlines the kinds of tasks they will be performing, and explains how their activities are related to the overall goals of the school (Oosterlynck, 2011) • With this info, staff know how to use their time and energies efficiently and effectively • Without it, they respond to job responsibilities randomly, wasting valuable human resources

29. What to do . . . Planning: • Planning is also a prerequisite to other leadership functions (Goodstein, 2011). • Planning is the basis for monitoring and evaluating actual performance (McDonnell, 2011). • Initial plans become benchmarks or criteria against which to measure actual performance in the monitoring step. • Unless plans are formulated and mutually agreed on, there is relatively little value or basis for measuring the effectiveness of the school outcomes (Lunenburg & Irby, 2006; Lunenburg & Ornstein, 2008). • Comparing planned and actual results provides the principal with a sound basis on which to make necessary adjustments in the school's plan of action.

30. What to do . . . Planning: • The challenges facing schools have changed significantly as new demands have been placed on them. Their environment has become uncertain and even hostile. • Strategic planning, a subset of the public policy process, could be an ideal technology for shaping the future of education (Boschee, 2009). • Given the contextual constraints on educational policy (social, economic, and political), the challenge for educational strategic planners is to understand the internal and external boundaries and to use this understanding to design policies that could facilitate change in student achievement and the very structure of schools (Marzano & Waters, 2010).

31. Organizing: Designing the structure of the organization to meet plans/goals How to do it . . . • Organizational chart • Policies & procedures for authority relationships (chain of command) • Hiring and training • Communication networks (what to communicate, direction of flow, reducing barriers to communication) • Coordinating schedules and cross training, substitutes to avoid disruption in work flow

32. Leading: Designing the structure of the organization to meet plans/goals • Facilitating, collaborating or actuating which entails guiding and influencing people (Northouse, 2010) • Communicating goals to staff members and infusing them with the desire to perform at a high level (English, 2008) • Motivating entire departments or teams as well as individuals Why staff should want to do it . . .

33. Monitoring: comparing expected and actual results and taking corrective action Did we do it? How do we know ? • Walking around to see how things are going, talking to students, visiting classrooms, talking to faculty • Designing information systems to check on quality of performance (implementation logs or benchmark tests for example)

34. Is the Best Advocacy Strategy to Be Effective and Successful Leaders? • Luthans made a clear distinction between the terms “effective” and “successful” • An administrator's effectiveness was measured by subordinates' evaluations of their satisfaction, commitment, and unit performance • Administrative success was determined by how fast the administrator had been promoted up the administrative hierarchy • Luthans then ranked them - Less than 10 percent of the administrators were labeled as both effective and successful. In fact, effective and successful administrators turned out to be behavioral opposites.

35. The Value of AdministratorsPrepared by the Professional Leadership Committee for MASA, March 2008

36. Risks of Administrator Loss This presentation provides talking points for some of the key educational services and outcomes at risk when districts lose personnel at the administrative level:

37. Community Relations • Less public relations, communication, personal touch, and visibility at events • Less time to meet parental needs

38. Staff Services • Less effective teacher supervision and evaluation • Less teacher support in resolving conflicts and disciplinary matters

39. Staff Services • Less protection (buffer) from outside distractions offered to teachers • Less time for planning professional development & mentoring

40. Instructional Leadership • Less curriculum oversight and alignment • Less use of data to improve student achievement • Less proactive measures and forward thinking • Less research and implementation of best practices • Less collaboration = more simplistic top-down decision-making

41. Instructional Leadership • With less time to lead, administrators will be relegated to the “tyranny of the urgent” that prevents true school improvement

42. Student Services • Less preventative discipline • Student safety is compromised due to less supervision, less policy enforcement, and reduced communication

43. Student Services • After-school activities falter and are lost • Less student mentoring

44. District Impact • Weaker relationships with students, staff, parents, and community • “Maintenance only” mode – just enough to get by • Less accountability across district • Inconsistent application of Board policies • School improvement and strategic planning efforts neglected

45. District Impact • Increased liability regarding at-risk and special education students • Fines and lost revenue for late and inadequate compliance reporting • Increase in administrative turnover

46. Consider This… • Private sector employee-to-management ratio is 12:1 • Teacher-to-Administrator ratio is 22:1

47. Consider This… • Who has a motive to want less supervision?

48. Consider This… • By nature, a large part of the job is policy enforcement, so the lack of allies is not surprising • …but that does not mean that those roles and other duties performed are not vitally important to the success of students

49. Consider This… • Many responsibilities are already consolidated making the jobs of administrators that much more challenging.  Pressures coming from both external and internal expectations increase yet most still strive to get things done well.

50. Consider This… • Increase in federal and state accountability has increased the workload. Over 250 reports are due each year from school districts • …and the number is growing