Why School Leaders Need Vision

The concept of “visionary” leadership is defined and applied in this book, as “supervision in schools” requires a level of “SUPER VISION” that can be best developed through quality leadership, mentoring -- and mutual ideas, and support -- for adding more value to the school. This book shows just how vision is important and useful in all schools and districts. Time has thus come to find, build, and use high-quality visionary school leadership in its many dimensions; thus, this book takes at least ten different views (in the chapters) of the visionary roles and functions of education leadership in K-12 -- building on the roles, theories, and visionary actions of key players in the schools. No single perspective is enough, as all views must work in concert to the benefit of teachers and students, today. School leaders, moreover, need to have their own vision about the following: (a) what their work entails; (b) their school should be and look like; and (c) what their staff and students (and schools) can achieve.

Visionary leaders are those educators who are able to imagine a different future for their schools, teachers and students. Whether they are working to keep students engaged, ensure learning objectives are met, or develop new community partnerships, they must work collaboratively with students, faculty, and families to make this vision a reality.

Paul Bambrick-Santoyo (Managing Director of Uncommon Schools) shows leaders how they can raise their schools to greatness by following a core set of principles. These seven principles, or "levers," allow for consistent, transformational, and replicable growth. With intentional focus on these areas, leaders will leverage much more learning from the same amount of time investment. Fundamentally, each of these seven levers answers the core questions of school leadership: What should an effective leader do, and how and when should they do it. Aimed at all levels of school leadership, the book is for any principal, superintendent, or educator who wants to be a transformational leader. The book includes 30 video clips of top-tier leaders in action. These videos bring great schools to you, and support a deeper understanding of both the components of success and how it looks as a whole. There are also many helpful rubrics, extensive professional development tools, calendars, and templates. Explores the core principles of effective leadership Author's charter school, North Star Academy in Newark, New Jersey, received the highest possible award given by the U.S. Department of Education; the National Blue Ribbon Print version includes an instructive DVD with 30 video clips to show how it looks in real life. E-book customers: please note that details on how to access the content from the DVD may be found in the e-book Table of Contents. Please see the section: "How to Access DVD Contents" Bambrick-Santoyo has trained more than 1,800 school leaders nationwide in his work at Uncommon Schools and is a recognized expert on transforming schools to achieve extraordinary results.

You are a school administrator—a principal or maybe a district leader. You're doing everything "right"—poring over data, trying new strategies, launching annual initiatives, bringing in outside trainers. So why do the outcomes you seek still seem so far away? The problem isn't you; it's that you were trained in school leadership, and school leadership just isn’t up to the challenge. Each year, Robyn R. Jackson helps thousands of administrators stop wasting time and energy on flawed leadership approaches that succeed only with the right staff, students, parents, budget, and boss. As they have discovered, it's possible to transform your school with the people and resources you already have. The secret? Stop leading and start building! In this book, you'll learn to use Jackson's breakthrough Buildership Model™ to escape the "school improvement hamster wheel" and finally create the school your students and teachers deserve. The work involves a handful of simple shifts in how you approach . . . • Purpose: Instead of chasing tiny gains or the "next new thing" every year, you'll establish and use an ambitious vision, mission, and set of core values to galvanize your staff, keep everyone focused, and create true accountability for achieving your goals. • People: You’ll discover new ways to help every teacher grow one level in one domain in one year or less and, ultimately, develop high levels of both will and skill. • Pathway: Instead of trying to tackle every problem at once, you'll identify the biggest obstacle standing in your way right now and figure out exactly how to remove it once and for all. • Plan: You'll learn a new process for solution implementation that is iterative, cyclical, and capable of powering both short-term wins and ongoing transformation, year over year. When you stop leading and start building, you let go of the idea that you need to work harder to make your school "work better." You no longer settle for incremental improvement when what you really want is dramatic change and better learning outcomes for all. It's time to make the shift from leadership to buildership. Get ready to turn your school into a success story.

This book provides a new vision and theory of educational leadership. Robert J Starratt explores the `vision' element of leadership, and examines the policies, programmes and organizational arrangements which often impede this vision. Leaders with Vision provides a unique focus for principals and teachers who wish to exercise leadership in the ongoing work of school renewal.

Written by a practitioner for practitioners, this book gives concrete direction and practical guidance on how to become the vision-based leader your district and your schools need. Here is a precise, experience-based manual on what it takes to be a reflective education leader. From Vision to Practice is for educational leaders who want to make a positive difference in the work lives of the teachers and principals they serve.

How to Help Your School Thrive Without Breaking the Bank will help you improve your school without investing in externally developed, expensive, and time-consuming reform programs or initiatives. It's packed with replicable strategies and practical tools that educators in any school can incorporate to transform the culture and improve student achievement and professional practice. You'll learn how to * Hone your own leadership and grow new leaders among your staff; * Develop a vision and a mission for your school; * Promote excellence among both staff and students; * Make the most of your time and facilitate effective meetings; and * Mine and use data with purpose. For most schools, times are tough and money is tight—but school leaders must still focus on how to steadily improve student achievement. Academic performance will improve in the long term only if your school has a healthy culture marked by integrity, a strong work ethic, collaboration, and reflective risk taking. Strengthening those foundational elements will help you sustain positive change in your school, even in difficult economic times. The good news is that you already have the resources you need to help your school thrive. This book will help you to maximize them.

"This book examines a variety of pertinent topics that look at the present and future roles of technology in the classroom to assist educators, educational leaders, and instructional designers in establishing future-ready learning, today"--

Making Good Progress? is a research-informed examination of formative assessment practices that analyses the impact Assessment for Learning has had in our classrooms. Making Good Progress? outlines practical recommendations and support that Primary and Secondary teachers can follow in order to achieve the most effective classroom-based approach to ongoing assessment. Written by Daisy Christodoulou, Head of Assessment at Ark Academy, Making Good Progress? offers clear, up-to-date advice to help develop and extend best practice for any teacher assessing pupils in the wake of life beyond levels.

The cornerstone of transformational leadership is vision. For our school leaders to act as more than middle managers, they have to foster a school community's vision - cultivate the school community's direction and purpose. This qualitative study uses semi-structured interviews with school leaders and following focus groups with their teachers to understand better how principals develop and instantiate their vision and how this vision is perceived to have manifested by the school community. This study was designed to answer the questions of (1) do principals have a clearly defined personal vision for the schools they serve, and in what ways do they enact their vision?, (2) what professional and training experiences contribute to how a principal develops a vision for a school?, (3) what the relationship between the articulated vision and the culture of the school? The four themes that emerged from this study were that ( 1 ) principals have guiding statements that serve the same purpose as a formal vision that gives them and their school communities direction for the work, (2) principals primarily invest their teams in a shared vision through a visioning process, (3) principals most cited avenue for vision development was through working with others, and (4) principals whose articulated vision most aligned with the culture of the school were successfully able to operationalize the vision. The recommendations and implications for all stakeholders from this research are that (1) principals are trained taught how to develop guiding statements, (2) principals are taught how to invest others in a shared vision, (3) the importance of mentor matching and principal reflection in the principal training and development process, and (4) principals are taught how to operationalize their vision through ongoing coaching and support.