Instructional Leadership

Instructional leaders have strong vision and values that orient all school activities around student learning and academic growth. They create a sense of urgency and excitement about teaching and learning. They maximize the effectiveness of any curricular approach through leading adult learning about instruction, and have deep knowledge of the curricular approaches they are implementing in their schools. Instructional leaders organize the resources of time (through school programming) and money (through school-based budgets) to support their instructional agenda.

Spending most of their time in classrooms, observing instruction, modeling lessons, and developing capacity in their school buildings, instructional leaders know good instruction when they see it and know how to develop it when they do not. Instructional leaders create time for teacher collaboration through scheduling and programming, and guide that collaboration. They know how to recognize the assets in their school communities and to build on those assets for the purposes of student learning. They actively disseminate best practices within their school communities by encouraging inter-visitations, scheduling coaching and support where it is needed, and focusing all professional activities toward the purpose of improved student performance. Instructional leaders also look outside the school for exemplary practices or new approaches, and use outside experts to build instructional capacity inside the school.
Instructional leaders know how to analyze student performance data and use that data to determine what teachers need to learn, where to start when implementing a new approach, and how to measure whether the implementation is effective at getting students to meet performance standards. They teach their staffs how to analyze and use student assessment in their teaching. Instructional leaders know how to implement new approaches strategically by analyzing student performance data and observing teacher practices, by planning a focused entry point that addresses a compelling need, by involving key staff in early implementation, by generating enthusiasm for early successes, and by spreading the initiative to other staff members and other areas for improvement through powerful communication, persuasion, and sense of purpose.

Instructional leaders set clear standards of behavior and model that behavior in their interactions with all members of the school community. They value parent and community participation in the instructional agenda. They make the language of schooling accessible to parents and community members. They take time to explain new curricular approaches as the basis for building relationships.