Staff and Leadership

When Data Calls for Change
The fall out
At the end of the meeting Nancy, an experienced teacher, walked into her office and said, “I have never been so humiliated in all my life – you have trampled over my professionalism.” Mrs. Counts told Nancy that professionalism was also about professional honesty. She apologized for Nancy’s hurt feelings but did not apologize or back down from the review.
She wasn’t feeling that perky when she drove home that night. She sensed that the teachers would be planning an exit party for her.
On the other hand, the board was completely open to the review findings. They’d had a sense that things could be better. They saw the findings as opening an opportunity for improvement. They were absolutely determined that the teachers should be given all the support they needed to make changes in response to the review. So, she knew she had the support of the board and senior leadership team, but the new dilemma was how to pull the teachers into favor.
During the final days of the third semester everything seemed fine on the surface, although she could feel the tension. Three teachers complained to the deputy principal about the “insulting” review. The same group, led by Nancy, researched to see if principals were entitled to review their school.
So, what to do? There were so many issues crowding in.
Preparing for the DESE visit
How should she handle the DESE visit? Should she give them the literacy review data, or should she protect everyone by trying to hide it, and then if they identified the problem say, “Well actually funny you mention it, but we’ve identified this problem as well and this is what we propose to do.” The stakes were high. A poor DESE report would once again cause the community to lose confidence and faith in their local school.
If she was really honest there was also hint of professional ego thrown into this mix too. She knew she had an extremely rigorous DESE team reviewing the school. She had no doubt that they would immediately identify the problem of literacy underachievement. Mrs. Counts anticipated that they would then, and rightly so, expect to see evidence of leadership to address these issues. She couldn’t professionally justify not disclosing the data. That course of action would mean DESE would have limited or no confidence in her ability to resolve the issue. She wondered what would happen if the school received a discretionary review? Would the parents take their children and leave as they had done years earlier? The school’s enrollment would go down.
On the other hand, if the board and she negotiated with DESE they might be able to find a win-win way forward without coming under public scrutiny again, this time for poor literacy achievement.
If they could work it this way Mrs. Counts could protect the staff, gain commitment to change and protect the school community’s trust in the school. Such an approach would also protect the board. But how to proceed?
Reflective questions 2
The principal is confronted by a number of complex and competing issues as she endeavors to make changes that address under-performance. A key factor is that teachers have not “listened” to what the data is saying about literacy in the school.
• How would you have tackled presenting the data to staff? Why?
• What leadership qualities and practices come into play in a challenging situation like this? Describe them.
• How does a leader’s self-awareness determine his or her actions? Why is it important to know yourself in order to lead others? How does what you value contribute to your leadership decisions?