Leadership Resources from the 10 Regional Educational Laboratories
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Background
The Regional Educational Laboratory Program, administered by the Institute of Education Sciences (formerly the Office of Educational Research and Improvement), is the U.S. Department of Education’s largest research and development investment designed to help educators, policymakers, and communities improve schools. Its statutory mission is "to promote knowledge––based school improvement to help all students meet high standards and to help the nation meet the National Education Goals" (Public Law 103-227, enacted 1994). Since their establishment in 1965, the Regional Educational Laboratories have been conducting research, or preparing summaries and syntheses of research to inform educational policy and practice. Laboratories, in partnership with schools, districts and states, also have been developing, field testing and refining processes, strategies and tools designed to address pressing educational problems.
Benefits
The Laboratories’ knowledge of their regions and ties to national networks, their understanding of the information needs of policymakers and educators, and their involvement in the field enable them to link the worlds of research, policy, and practice. The products and services developed by Laboratories have helped schools, districts and state education agencies take advantage of the latest and best research and proven practices to improve schools. Guided by a governing board representing stakeholders in its region––educators, business leaders, state officials, and community members––each Laboratory’s work is shaped by the concerns, issues, opportunities and special attributes of its region. While each Laboratory has distinctive features tailored to meet the special needs of the geographic region it serves, the Laboratories also have common characteristics, such as a commitment to research, technical assistance and information dissemination.
Examples
In addition to serving a geographic region of the nation, each of the 10 Regional Educational Laboratories has a designated specialty area where it takes national leadership:
- Assessment of Educational Achievement – WestEd
- Curriculum and Instruction Related to Reading and Language Mastery – Pacific Resources for Education and Learning
- Educational Leadership – Laboratory for Student Success
- Expanded Learning Opportunities – SERVE
- Family and Community Connections with Schools – Southwest Educational Development Laboratory
- Re-Engineering Schools for Improvement – Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory
- Standards-Based Instructional Practice – Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning
- Teaching Diverse Learners – Northeast and Islands Regional Educational Laboratory at Brown University
- Technology – North Central Regional Educational Laboratory
- Unlocking Today’s Technologies for Tomorrow’s Students – Appalachia Educational Laboratory
Related Links
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- Appalachia Educational Laboratory (AEL)
- Issues…about Change
- Issues...about Change is a series of monographs that provide educators with information on strategies and factors that contribute to or impede school improvement. Many of these monographs are about leadership in education.
- Principles of Professional Development
- On this web page is a list of key elements found in high-quality professional development.
- Professional Development Links
- Shared Leadership
- This article is about the notion of shared leadership and how principals can incorporate this type of leadership in their schools.
- Shared Visioning
- Peter Block, author of The Empowered Manager and Stewardship, suggests that individuals at all levels in an organization need to articulate their own "visions of greatness." In schools adopting Block's approach to visioning, school principals lead the total school community in formulating an overarching vision that serves as an umbrella under which all other units within the school create their own distinct visions.
- Technology in Education: Principal Connection
- Principal Connections is a CD-ROM and companion web site designed to help school leaders recognize, promote, and evaluate effective technology use in their schools.
- The Changing Role of Administrators
- Access to this article is only available to those with AEL membership.
- Topic: Rural Leadership/Policy
- Rural education staff at AEL selected the following publications, produced by AEL and other organizations, that address leadership/policy in the context of rural education.
- What Works with Low-Performing Schools: A Review of Research
- This report on what works in developing high-performing schools and what it takes to sustain them had its impetus in an international colloquium sponsored by the Regional Educational Laboratory at AEL and its partner, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto. The colloquium set out to illuminate the issues states face in implementing and sustaining effective school reform by bringing the work of key researchers to bear on the issues. The report is organized around several major questions, including how schools grow leadership for improving student achievement. The print publication is available to order online from Scarecrow Education. (From Christopher Corallo and Deborah H. McDonald. Regional Educational Laboratory at AEL. January 2002.)
- Northeast and Islands Regional Educational Laboratory at Brown University (LAB at Brown University)
- Dynamics of Change
- This is a study of innovation in five Vermont professional development schools.
- How to Create a Superintendents’ Leadership Council
- This article from "Perspectives on Policy and Practice" describes what a Superintendent Leadership Council is, how to create one, why superintendents should be involved, and the benefits of this type of council.
- Knowledge Loom
- The Knowledge Loom is a Web-based professional learning resource managed by the Education Alliance at Brown University. It features collections of recommended practices for K-12 educators and draws on the work of nationally-recognized technical assistance organizations, researchers, schools, and districts.
- Principals’ Leadership Network Second Northeast Summit November 5-6, 2001
- The Summit will provide an opportunity for principals to define and promote their collaborative leadership roles.
- Professional Development for Educational Leadership Initiative
- This website describes the Professional Development for Educational Leadership Initiative. It also provides links to projects within this initiative.
- Publications Catalog
- This website provides links to six catalogs that address the issue of professional development. Some of the materials are available on-line, while other catalogs must be ordered.
- What it Takes
- This report describes 10 capacities school leaders need to initiate and sustain school improvement.
- Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL)
- Balanced Leadership: What 30 years of research tells us about the effect of leadership on student achievement
- This research report details the outcomes of a meta-analysis of research on the effect of principal leadership practices on student achievement. Some of the key ideas described in the report are: Leadership matters; effective leadership can be empirically defined; and effective leaders not only know what to do, but when, how, and why to do it. (From Waters, J.T., Marzano, R.J., McNulty, B.A. (2003))
- Educational Resources
- This web page has 33 links to educational resources which focus on professional development.
- Leadership
- This portion of a toolkit is about developing good leaders and good leadership skills. Some of the topics addressed include broad-based leadership, leadership vs. management, and individual initiative.
- Leadership Folio Series
- This folio series is designed for school leaders--particularly superintendents and principals--as they begin the process of comprehensive school reform. The folios have tips for creating worthwhile professional development activities, aligning resources to better support program design and implementation, and evaluating progress toward goals and benchmarks.
- Leadership for School Improvement
- This paper synthesizes some of the most-current literature pertaining to leadership and offers ideas and suggestions that may serve as the basis for further study about the leadership strategies that help bring about meaningful and long-lasting reform.
- Learning from the Best
- This toolkit for schools and districts is based on model professional development award winners. The publication is organized around four basic steps: designing, implementing, evaluating, and sharing professional development strategies.
- Principals in Action
- This book contains stories about award-winning professional development. A useful resource for administrators, this book can be ordered on-line.
- Professional Development
- There are many characteristics that are essential to successful professional development. This article looks at these characteristics and specifies the skills effective district leaders and school leaders need.
- Professional Development
- This is 2 paragraph description of professional development. At the end of this web page are links to other articles about professional development.
- Professional Development Criteria
- This study guide is a thirty page detailed document about professional development. Very practical and user-friendly, this guide is a useful resource for educators.
- Resources for Professional Development
- School, Teacher, and Leadership Impacts on Student Achievement
- This brief is based on McREL’s meta-analyses of quantitative research on teacher, school, and leadership practices. Meta-analysis, or a statistical analysis of a collection of individual studies, can be a compelling research method for determining what really works in education. Through its meta-analyses, McREL has identified a number of variables that influence student achievement. This brief offers suggestions for implementing policies and practices that can positively impact these variables. (From Kirsten Miller. MCREL Policy Brief. November 2003.)
- Superintendent Shortages: The Need for Good Leaders
- This article discusses the challenges facing superintendents, the skills they need to overcome these problems, and how McREL is trying to combat the superintendent shortage crisis.
- The Leadership We Need: Using research to strengthen the use of standards for administrator preparation and licensure programs
- In response to chief state school officers and other policy leaders requesting research-based guidance to develop or refine principal licensure policies, this report examines the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) standards in light of findings from McREL’s recent study of principal leadership, as captured in the Balanced Leadership Framework™. Specifically, this brief seeks to answer the following overarching question: In what ways does the Balanced Leadership Framework compare to and add value to the use of the ISLLC standards for the preparation, licensure, and professional development of school leaders? (From Waters, T, & Grubb, S. (2004). Aurora, CO: Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning.)
- North Central Regional Educational Laboratory (NCREL)
- Professional Learning: Staff Development for Student Learning
- This is NCREL's comprehensive Web source on school professional development. This site is designed for school and district-level teachers, administrators, and others interested in improving professional development. There are links to the following aspects of professional development: involving others, planning, needs assessment, setting goals, activities, research, funding, finding time, using technology, evaluating, model professional development awards, and other resources.
- Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (NWREL)
- High Quality Professional Development
- NWREL publishes several booklets that briefly address current educational concerns and issues as indicated by requests for information that come to the Laboratory from the Northwest region and beyond. Each booklet contains an explanation of the topic’s importance, a sampling of how Northwest schools are addressing the issue, suggestions for adapting these ideas to schools, selected references, and contact information. This particular booklet focuses on professional development.
- Leadership
- This chapter looks at what skills leaders need to ensure quality implementation and use of technology in their schools.
- Leadership and Organizational Vitality
- What kind of school leader do we need today? In the face of intractable problems and sizable expectations, school leaders need clear vision, a strong knowledge base, highly developed communications skills, enlightened cultural sensitivity, and a deep commitment to educational outcomes.
- Lessons from the City, part four: Recruiting Strong Leaders
- This story is about principal Patrick Durkin and the challenges he faced as he took over an elementary school in a high-poverty neighborhood of Chicago.
- Principal Leadership Academy Serves as Model
- This article focuses on 10 essential elements administrators should know to boost success in their schools.
- Principal Leadership: Leading Schools to Excellence
- This document contains individual presentation summaries of various education experts. Among these presentations are summaries entitled, "Leadership in the 21st Century" and "Vocation of Leadership."
- Professional Development Resources
- Educators can access over 20 links to articles and programs about professional development.
- Staff Development
- This article focuses on three areas of effective staff development:
- the needs and characteristics of participant learners;
- the program characteristics of purposes, structure, content, process and follow-up; and
- the organizational characteristics that contribute to or support effective staff development.
- The New Principal—Northwest Education Magazine
- This issue of Northwest Education Magazine focuses entirely on principals, their role, the challenges they face, and the skills they should possess.
- Pacific Resources for Education and Learning (PREL)
- A Resource for Pacific Educators—Professional Development
- Located in PREL’s online library, this web page allows educators to access articles about professional development. Specifically, these articles focus on standards, models, and research on professional development. There is also an added link that takes educators to additional resources where they can find more information on this topic.
- Professional Development
- This aspect of PREL’s website compiles information about professional development into an easy-to-navigate, easy-to-access system. From this web page, educators can follow links to an introduction, articles, research, and resources that focus on professional development.
- Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL)
- Characteristics of Leaders of Change
- This paper looks at the characteristics of a good leader in today’s schools. It discusses the assumptions about leadership and gives more concrete advice as to how leaders can improve their current skills and catch the vision for improving their schools for the benefit of students.
- Dilemmas in Professional Development
- This casebook addresses the quandaries that arise as the professional developer in science and math education interacts with teachers, administrators, scientists, volunteers, and staff.
- Facilitative Leadership: The Imperative for Change
- This report takes a in-depth look at leadership. The report is broken down into three sections: Approaches to Change, Leadership for Restructuring or Systemic Change, and Leaders’ Change—Facilitating Actions.
- Investing in Professional Development
- Various aspects of professional development are discussed in this article. Also included are questions and a large table educators may use to create a professional development program at their schools.
- Leadership and Context
- Because principals are seen as the primary leaders in the individual school, this section of this paper examines how the principal is both a part of the context while feeling the impact of the context.
- Leadership: An Imperative for Successful Change
- This issue looks at who leaders are, what they do, and what research has uncovered about leadership.
- Making Shared Leadership Work
- Imagine a school where teachers, staff, administrators, parents, students, and community members all work together to make the school a better place. This article discusses how to achieve this reality through a principle called "shared leadership."
- Principal Leadership
- The theme of this conference was leadership. On this web page, educators may access 8 audio links to the seminars and listen to the sessions about principal leadership.
- Principals and Teachers: Continuous Learners
- This issue focuses on three principals who are continuous learners and strategies principals use to develop professional learning communities.
- Professional Learning Communities
- Educators learn more about what professional learning communities are and why they are so important.
- Staff Development and Change Process
- In this paper, a well-researched model of staff development is described. Findings of a research study that explored the effectiveness of the model's components are included. Second, a change model derived from longitudinal school improvement studies is examined. Data on this model's categories of interventions are included as well. Finally, implications of a "match of the models" suggests thinking about staff development as the process of change and about strategies that enhance the success of the staff development/change effort.
- Superintendents of Small Districts and School Improvement: Planning, Providing Resources and Professional Development
- The superintendent's role is critical as an agent of change. In order to provide examples of this direct role, Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL) staff interviewed four school administrators experienced in change implementation, asking them to describe their experiences with school improvement.
- Taking the Lead: The Role of Principals in School Reform
- This edition of Connections focuses on the different roles of a principal and the skills they need to play each role effectively. These roles include the principal as a psychologist, teacher, facilities manager, philosopher, police officer, diplomat, social worker, mentor, PR director, coach, and cheerleader.
- The New Alliance of Superintendents and Principals
- This article is about how superintendents and principals can apply research to site-based decision making.
- The Principals Role in the Instructional Process
- This article focuses on the skills principals need to be effective instructional leaders for at-risk students.
- Vision, Leadership, and Change
- This article focuses on helping leaders develop a vision of improvement in times of change. It discusses the five characteristics of a good vision, developing a shared vision, and the types of visions for which administrators and teachers should strive.
- SERVE
- Achieving Your Vision of Professional Development
- This publication assembles the most current research on professional development and change for educators looking to accelerate their professional growth and the improvement of student learning. From this web page, educators can order a copy of this report.
- Authentic Task Approach to Professional Development
- Participants in Sunray Academy learn the eight steps of the Authentic Task Approach and how to apply them to professional development.
- Component Three: Professional Development
- This section provides guidelines for planning, delivering, and evaluating professional development activities, and it describes how to structure professional development to create and sustain a culture in which teachers and school staff are involved collectively in continuous learning.
- Courses and Professional Development
- On this web page, educators will find links to 9 other websites where they can find more information about and courses in professional development.
- Developing Leadership Programs for "Break-the-Mold" Public Schools
- This publication distills lessons learned by the SERVE Leaders Institute in a way that will be useful to individuals and organizations interested in designing similar programs for school leaders elsewhere. The chapters in this resource guide touch on all the major aspects of developing and implementing a leaders institute for the development of innovative, "break the mold" schools, including Design and Management, Participant Development, Content, Delivery, Logistics, and Evaluation. Ordering a copy can be done online. (From Bryan Hassel and Steve Bingham. SERVE. 2000.)
- Guiding Questions for Developing an Action Plan for Professional Development
- Online Professional Development Resources
- The Region IV Comprehensive Center of SERVE provides a list of links to other websites that focus on professional development.
- Professional Development Through the Academy: How Are We Doing?
- This article discusses at how the Eisenhower Consortium for Mathematics and Science Education at SERVE is fairing in the area of professional development.
- Promising Practices
- This video can be ordered online. The first in a two-part series of Promising Practices in technology, this video overviews the common characteristics of a good technology professional development program.
- The Vision
- The theme of this newsletter is professional development. Several articles focusing on this topic include an interview with David Collins, author of SERVE’s Achieving Your Vision of Professional Development, and information about how to transform educational professional development.
- Laboratory for Student Success (LSS)
- Educational Leadership
- In response to the U.S. Department of Education's charge to serve as the lead Regional Educational Laboratory for educational leadership, LSS has identified three focus areas that will advance the knowledge base needed to achieve the overall goal of transforming low-performing schools into high-performing learning communities.
- Educational Leadership: Reports and Recommendations from a National Invitational Conference
- This publication highlights the discussions at an invitational conference designed to stimulate thinking about the challenges faced by educational leaders. The conferenced focused on determining what educational leaders need to know in order to achieve the goals of effective school and district leadership. Fifteen in all, topics range from Redefining Educational Leadership to Leadership for Social Justice to Reshaping the Role of the School Principal to Rethinking the Professional Development of School Leaders. (From The LSS Review. Volume 1, Number 2. 2002.)
- Emerging Models of Governing School Districts
- This newsletter discusses the forms of governance in Chicago and New Jersey, and the challenges superintendents faced. (From March 2001,Vol. 10, No. 2)
- Field Notes
- The School Leadership Learning Community, like e-Lead a joint project of the Institute for Educational Leadership and Temple University's Laboratory for Student Success, is featured in this Spring 2005 issue of LSS's journal Field Notes. (From Laboratory for Student Success, Temple University, Spring 2005)
- LSS Continues Its Series of Principal Leadership Forums on Such Topics as the Principal's Role and Aligning Standards
- The Principal Leadership Forum is a series of sessions including directed readings, analyses, and practices of knowledge and task-specific skills, guest speakers, panel discussions, and work groups. This is an opportunity for principals to join with and support other principals. The purpose is to provide a forum for discussing leadership roles in implementing strategies for student success.
- LSS Supports District of Columbia Public Schools Principals’ Leadership Academy
- The focus of this Academy is primarily on the development of the principal's understanding of content standards and standards-based instruction in order to become the primary instructional leader of the school. This web-page describes the 2-year program in more detail and provides a day by day summary of a seminar held on this subject.
- Professional Development Programs
- This websites lists the professional development programs available to educators, including seminars, workshops, advanced study institutes, and on-site professional development and technical assistance.
- Professional Development Schools
- Professional development schools are partnerships between schools and universities that are de-signed to create better schools and teachers. This article gives more information about professional development schools, their effectiveness, and cites several examples of such schools.
- Recruiting New School Superintendents—Adamowski’s high salary not rare
- The Cincinnati Post quoted LSS researcher Kenneth Wong in a November 27, 2001 article about the difficulties school districts have in recruiting new school superintendents. Dr. Wong explained that, until recently, capable school managers have found higher paying jobs in the private sector or in higher education; the top school job is increasingly demanding, requiring the skills of a politician, lobbyist, and public-relations guru in addition to managerial leadership; and superintendents deal with conflicting interests from elected school boards, unions, and the business community.
- WestEd
- Building Systems for Professional Growth: An Action Guide
- This how-to guide gives staff development leaders the tools to develop comprehensive and collaborative systems for professional development in their schools, districts, and states. The guide covers all steps in building a staff development system from conception to evaluation. Each chapter includes a topic overview, group activities, notes to the trainer, presentation scripts, case studies, assessment tools, articles, handouts and transparency masters, and other resources.
- Designing Job-Embedded Professional Learning: The Authentic Task Approach
- The Executive Briefing Paper introduces the Authentic Task Approach (ATA), a professional development design that allows participants to deepen their learning as they work to identify and solve real education problems in their context. The ATA has been used as the framework for national forums, as well as in individual schools, as a job-embedded professional development strategy.
- Effective Leadership in the WREL Region
- What many are calling a "crisis in leadership" goes beyond high turnover rates and impending vacancies among principals and superintendents. Under-performing schools require leadership that can guide school communities in setting common high standards, creating shared understanding of quality student work, developing the ability of teachers to use student work diagnostically to plan instruction, and promoting collective action to improve student performance. It requires, in other words, a new set of core competencies. But preparation for such skills is hard to come by. This project focuses on the urgent need to develop and make accessible high quality professional development for new and practicing school and district leaders, especially in the states of Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah.
- Islands of Hope in a Sea of Dreams
- This is a link to a research report on the eight schools that received the National Award for Model Professional Development.
- Leadership and Professional Development Resources
- Many resources may be accessed from this web page which focus on professional development, tools for professional developers, and cases and teacher material.
- Leadership Development
- As educational and social institutions take on increasingly complex goals, WestEd has targeted the development and support of school and district administrators, teacher leaders, and leaders of community-based organizations as a high priority across a number of our initiatives. This web page has almost 65 links to other sites. This links are divided under three headings: Which programs are involved with Leadership Development?; Which projects are involved with Leadership Development?; and Which resources feature Leadership Development?
- Moving Leadership Standards into Everyday Work: Descriptions of Practice
- The Descriptions of Practice (DOPs) introduced in this publication were developed to enhance the usefulness of research-based leadership standards, including the widely used California Professional Standards for Education Leaders (CPSELs) and the nationally developed Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) standards. For each of six broad standards, the DOPs identify the underlying goals and provide a detailed narrative describing specific administrator actions, attitudes, and understanding needed to attain each goal. The DOPs also depict what key aspects of each standard look like in action across a continuum of developing practice, as an administrator moves from being a tactical manager to a strategic instructional leader whose efforts result in improved student learning. Copies are available for $15.00 each, though you can view a sample page using the link above. (From WestEd, 2003)
- Professional Development
- This website lists the programs and projects associated with WestEd to help improve the practices of teaching professionals, school and community-based administrators, and professional developers.
- Rhode Island Individual Professional Development Plan
- Learning Innovations at WestEd has worked closely with the Rhode Island Department of Education over the last four years developing this certification process based on teacher and administrator individual professional development. On this web page, educators can find more information about the program.
- SchoolsMovingUp.net
- In an interactive Web format, SchoolsMovingUp offers practitioners knowledge and expertise they need to make sound decisions and take tangible action in their school reform efforts. It provides high-quality resources, proven services, and powerful tools that education professionals can use in their work with low-performing schools nationwide. Resources include profiles of schools from across the country that have improved student achievement, easily implemented or replicated school and district tips to assist in school improvement efforts, and articles, books, and abstracts offering practical ideas and models for school improvement. Frequent online events bring experts to the Web to share lessons learned, new ideas, and related resources. SchoolsMovingUp also offers practical information about the sweeping reform of the No Child Left Behind Act.