Join the e-Lead Community

Receive periodic e-Lead updates and join a burgeoning national network of people like you.

Leadership for Student Learning

The role of the principal has changed. The new demands of state student performance standards and testing, emerging knowledge of student learning and cognition, and research evidence linking principal leadership with student achievement mean that principals can no longer be content to be effective building managers. Instead, they must also serve as leaders for student learning.

Effective building managers kept schools operating. They ensured that the proper resources were in place and that the transportation, scheduling, food, athletic, and reporting systems were functioning. Their responsibilities for instruction were largely to ensure that teachers were on the job and to arrange for a variety of programs to be delivered. The teachers might or might not have the professional development needed for their roles or be effectively supervised and evaluated. Often, they operated in isolation. When some evident shortcoming made a change necessary, a new program of instruction was often installed with little analysis or reflection.

Principals and schools were judged on what they put in to the school, not on what they got out of the school. They were accountable for delivering programs, not results.

But all this is changing. To succeed in the current climate, a principal must now be a leader of student learning.

Three conditions are responsible for the change:

  1. Accountability has shifted to outcomes. State curriculum and student performance standards are raising the bar for student achievement. That means a good principal is judged not by what she or he puts into the program, but by what the program produces.
  2. New knowledge about student cognition and learning indicates that most students are capable of a greater range and depth of cognitive performance, and that demanding, appropriately paced coursework and competent, knowledgeable teaching can elevate student performance.
  3. Years of research on effective schools indicate incontrovertibly that good principals make good schools. Indeed, the principal may be the single most important element in determining a school's success.

What does the leader for student learning do? This administrator, simply put, places paramount value on student achievement. With that at the center, the principal aligns teaching, curriculum, building environment, parents and community around the goals for students' performance.

This means that she or he first sets realistically high expectations for achievement-and then monitors, measures, and bases improvements in curriculum and instruction on diagnosis of student performance.

This principal observes teachers, provides guidance to help them improve their practice, ensures that they get needed professional development, and counsels or moves them when they are unsuccessful.

Because students generally do not learn what they are not taught, the principal makes the curriculum consistent with expectations for student performance. Challenging material is taught in an appropriate sequence, adequate spaces for demanding coursework for all qualified students are made available, and teachers actually teach this material.

The best teachers and most highly motivated students cannot learn in an environment that works against them. So principals create the conditions that support good teaching and learning. Teachers and principals commit to a common set of academic and social goals, work collectively to be responsible for the outcomes of every child, and collaborate to improve the quality of every teachers' instruction. Students work on a school schedule that promotes good thinking and working, they feel recognized and acknowledged as individuals, and they are supported by high, fair expectations, consistent grading, and firm, fair discipline policies.

Finally, principals for teaching and learning are the link between the school, the community and the larger external environment. Of course, they cannot do this job alone, and significant teacher-community interaction is essential, but it is the principal who provides the comprehensive linkages. Leaders for student learning communicate a school's goals and rally community resources to meet those goals. They treat parents and community as essential allies and help them to understand their common stake in good schools. Finally, principals identify and bring into the school the financial, personnel, and intellectual resources necessary for change and continued excellence.

Resources: