0.5 Goduto, l., babo, g., & Leake, d. (october 2011). a proposed

Ncpea education leadership review: portland conference special edition, volume 12, number 3 (october 2011)

Overview: introduction

In the current context of accountability and school reform, expectations that principals act as highly effective instructional leaders have risen steeply in school districts throughout the State of New Jersey. While virtually all districts purport to support school improvement, the challenge of focusing intently on student achievement is deceptively difficult for school leaders. Simply raising the bar every year does not constitute a strategic plan for improvement . Setting and maintaining high expectations sometimes means making tough decisions to remove employees who are not able or willing to perform at necessary levels because they lack expertise or beliefs that all groups of students can achieve at higher levels and meet college- and career readiness standards (Reeves, 2009; Stine, 2001;&Leithwood, Begley&Cousins, 1994). Central to the discussion of school improvement is the need to provide actionable feedback through a viable system of evaluation (Kaplan, Owings&Nunnery, 2005).

This proposal to revise the current approach for evaluating school building leaders in the State of New Jersey is based on a simple three part premise : First , of all the resources that can be marshaled in the students’ behalf, the overall talent and composition of the teachers and school leaders matter most (Leithwood, Louis, Anderson, 2004; Wahlstrom, 2004). Second , an effective system to evaluate principals and teacher leaders is essential if schools are to become communities of learning for both students and educators (Portin, Feldman&Knapp, 2006). And third , the most powerful forms of accountability are standards based and embedded in the daily work of principals and teacher leaders (Leithwood et al., 2004; Murphy, 2002).

The executive board for the New Jersey affiliate of the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration affirms that a community of learners and scholars is built around high expectations in which all members use their talents to make schooling in New Jersey a world class experience. As a result, the evaluation process for school leaders should function within this context and recognize the importance of accounting for the complexities of learning (and by extension teaching and leading). Given the current accountability trends based wholly or partly on high stakes standardized test scores and value added measures it is critical that any evaluation of school leaders avoid the temptation of relying exclusively on any single measure and instead promote a formative and summative system that is job embedded and standards based . That is, an evaluation system that uses multiple forms of assessment (see Appendix A; Figure 1) that varies the types of data collected to obtain a holistic view of the leader’s performance (Portin, Feldman&Knapp, 2006).