|
Welcome to the Leadership Section of the GDEO website The vital role of leadership with Goldfields’ schools: During the past decade, a growing body of evidence has demonstrated the impact of leadership on student achievement. School leaders assume a myriad of responsibilities that are important in running a school, but many of these duties are not essential to improving student achievement. For example, such issues as maintenance, finance, are important, but not necessarily essential in terms of improving student achievement. In an era of accountability when student achievement is paramount, and evidence of the effects of leadership on student achievement continue to accumulate, it is not enough to just know what it important; principals must also know what is essential. Leaders and leadership is critical to school and student improvement. School leaders are in direct contact with the school’s teachers, the very people who can make a difference to what students learn and achieve in our schools. The change agents As Professor Richard Elmore states – “Reading the literature on the principalship can be overwhelming, because it suggests that principals should embody all the traits and skills that remedy all the defects of the schools in which they work. They should be in close touch with their communities, inside and outside the school; they should, above all, be masters of human relations, attending to all the conflicts and disagreements that might arise among students, among teachers, and among anyone else who chooses to create conflict in the school; they should be both respectful of the authority of district administrators and crafty at deflecting administrative intrusions that disrupt the autonomy of teachers; they should keep an orderly school; and so on. Somewhere on the list one usually finds a reference to instruction, couched in strategically vague language, so as to include both those who are genuinely knowledgeable about and interested in instruction and those who regard it as a distraction from the main work of administration. But why not focus leadership on instructional improvement, and define everything else as instrumental to it? [The only] skills and knowledge that matter in leadership are those that can be connected to, or lead directly to, the improvement of instruction and student performance.” - (page 14) Building A New Structure For School Leadership (2000)
|
