The standards we need: a comparative analysis of performance standards shows us what is essential for principals to know and be able to do to improve achievement.

The importance of school leadership is at the forefront of our nation's educational agenda. The effect of principal leadership on student achievement is now well established (Hallinger & Heck, 1996; Cotton, 2003; Leithwood & Riehl, 2003; Waters, Marzano, & McNulty, 2003; Leithwood, Seashore Louis, Anderson, & Wahlstrom, 2004).

Despite the strides that have been made in the educational leadership research, widespread concern exists about the current and future states of educational leadership; in particular, the principalship. Who will lead schools of the future? How can we retain current school leaders? How can we attract new leaders? How and by whom should school leaders be prepared? What should they know and be able to do?

These questions are not easily answered. However, a logical place to begin is the performance standards for school leaders. This paper describes the findings from Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning's comparative analysis of the Balanced Leadership Framework[TM] (Waters, Marzano, & McNulty, 2003) and the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium standards and provides insights about what future standards for school-level leaders should encompass.

The standards we have

In the 1990s, many efforts were made to identify important leadership responsibilities, functions and practices for school leaders. One of these efforts mounted on an international scale was the establishment of standards for principals (Gronn, 2002). Through this effort, important principal responsibilities were identified. However, because the scope of the standards included everything that developers deemed to be important, attempts to formalize a manageable scope of principal responsibilities were not as fruitful as developers and practitioners had hoped.

What these efforts produced was an extraordinarily wide range of responsibilities without distinction between important and essential responsibilities. For example, there are 184 indicators for the six Standards for School Leaders developed in the United States by the ISLLC and the National Policy Board for Educational Administration in 1996. In addition to being overwhelming in scope, the ISLLC standards provide no guidance on which standards or indicators should take primacy--or what is essential for principals to know and be able to do to improve student achievement (Waters & Grubb, 2004).

The implications of this are far-reaching. Prospective and aspiring principals are continually dissuaded by the increasingly intensified and complex demands (Gronn, 2002; Cranston, Ehrich, & Billot, 2003; The Wallace Foundation, 2003; Miller, 2004), and it is plausible that principal standards may exacerbate the difficulty in recruiting and retaining principals (Gronn, 2002).

The standards we need

The profound and rapidly increasing changes affecting schools call for standards that define a scope of essential research-based leadership responsibilities that reflect what school leaders need to know and be able to do to achieve high levels of student achievement while, at the same time, leading the redesign of the system. In his book, "Educating School Leaders," Levine (2005) describes the leadership challenge resulting from "extraordinary economic, demographic, technological, and global change:"

"These changes represent a fundamental reversal of existing school policy, shifting the focus from ensuring that all schools educate students in the same way--five major subjects, 12 years of schools, and 180-day school years--to requiring that all children achieve the same outcomes from their education. This turns the world of schooling upside down: universal standards replace universal processes; learning becomes more important than instruction and the student takes center stage from the teacher."

Owings, Kaplan, and Nunnery (2005) assert that the most critical step in reforming the current system is the development of "clear, functional performance standards for what principals should know and be able to do."

Briefly, the standards we need (1) are based on rigorous quantitative research findings on school leadership that clearly and explicitly distinguish essential from important leadership responsibilities, (2) provide research-based guidance regarding effective change leadership, and (3) increase the likelihood that we develop and sustain current and future school leaders through shared leadership.

The findings from McREL's recent meta- and factor analyses identifying leadership responsibilities positively associated with student achievement provide the foundation for developing the standards we need.

McREL's comparative analysis

McREL conducted a comparative analysis using the six key findings in McREL's Balanced Leadership Framework (for details of the framework's underlying findings, see Waters, Marzano, & McNulty, 2003; Waters & Grubb, 2004; and Marzano, Waters, & McNulty, in press):

1. Principal leadership is positively correlated with student achievement and has an average effect size of .25.

2. Twenty-one leadership responsibilities are positively correlated with student achievement (see chart on pages 34-35).

3. Principals can have a differential impact on student achievement, meaning that just as principals perceived as strong leaders can have a positive impact, others can have a marginal, or worse, negative impact.

4. Change, expressed as first-order and second-order, is associated with and influences all 21 leadership responsibilities.

5. All 21 leadership responsibilities are positively associated with first-order change.

6. Eleven leadership responsibilities are associated with second-order change, of which seven have positive and four have negative associations.

McREL's analysis compared the 184 ISLLC indicators to the 66 leadership practices associated with the 21 leadership responsibilities identified in the meta-analysis. Although elements of many of McREL's leadership practices were found in the ISLLC indicators, there were very few cases of a one-to-one correspondence of a leadership practice and an indicator. There was also evidence of many non-explicit associations between the practices and indicators that were beyond the scope of the analysis.

This article describes the findings and other insights gleaned from the analysis. McREL's comparative analysis (Waters & Grubb, 2004) identified:

* Seventeen leadership practices not included in the ISLLC standards;

* Six ISLLC standards and 184 related indicators with no distinction between essential and important leadership responsibilities; and

* Two ISLLC indicators related to change leadership.

Standards that explicitly identify essential leadership responsibilities

The primary responsibility of school leaders is student learning. In an era of high-stakes accountability, standards for school leaders must reflect what is essential to improving student achievement. Principals assume a myriad of responsibilities that are important in running a school, but perhaps not essential. For example, maintenance, finance, law, human resources and public relations (to name a few) are important, but not necessarily essential to improving student achievement. The standards we need must reflect essential leadership responsibilities that are positively associated with student achievement.

The findings from McREL's comparative analysis highlight the lack of clarity about which of the six standards or the 184 indicators are essential. For example, the 36 references to community in the ISLLC standards may mislead one to assume that leadership responsibilities related to community take primacy over others, regardless of their effect on student achievement. The research on school leadership, which has developed significantly since the publication of the ISLLC standards (Cotton, 2003; Leithwood & Riehl, 2003; Waters, Marzano, & McNulty, 2003; Leithwood, Seashore Louis, Anderson, & Wahlstrom, 2004), should be used as the foundation for the development of the standards we need.

The increasingly complex demands and challenges confronting principals (Cranston, Ehrich, & Billot, 2003; Scott, 2003; The Wallace Foundation; 2003; Blackmore, 2004) have combined to create what a recent Education Week article labeled an "impossible job" (Archer, 2004). One way to make a seemingly impossible job more manageable is to achieve clarity on what is essential to student learning, which can help principals prioritize the demands of the job. Just as the content standards are being narrowed m scope to determine what is essential for students to learn (Marzano, Kendall & Gaddy, 1999), principals may benefit from having the standards reflect what is essential.

Another critical responsibility is change leadership. Levine (2005) describes how the role of school leadership is changing from being supervisory to being a change leader. Therefore, standards for school leaders must reflect current research-based findings on change.

McREL's comparative analysis identified a significant gap between the findings in McREL's Balanced Leadership Framework and the ISLLC standards related to change leadership. Of the 184 ISLLC indicators, only two are related to change:

* The administrator has the knowledge and understanding of the change process for systems organizations and individuals (CCSSO, 1996).

* The administrator has the knowledge and understanding of models and strategies of change and conflict resolution as applied to the larger political, social, cultural and economic contexts of schooling (CCSSO, 1996).

Obviously, the standards we need must incorporate change leadership beyond what is offered in the ISLLC standards. McREL identified two major conclusions from the research related to change that provide research-based guidance to principals.

Effective change leadership rests on the ability of leaders to accurately estimate the magnitude of a change and adjust their approach to leadership accordingly. McREL's magnitude of change assumes that the order of a change (first- or second-) is based on the implications and individual's perceptions of the change. In some of the studies in McREL's meta-analysis, the principals were perceived by teachers as strong leaders, yet student achievement was below average.

McREL describes its interpretations of this finding as the "differential impact" of leadership. This means that when principals fail to understand the magnitude of the change they are leading, they may actually use the wrong leadership practices and thus have a negative influence on student achievement. This is congruent with McREL's factor analysis findings, which identified first-order and second-order change as factors that influence the leadership responsibilities.

There are specific leadership responsibilities associated with student achievement that principals should emphasize when leading change. McREL's meta-analysis on principal leadership identifies one leadership responsibility, "change agent," as the extent to which the principal is willing to and actively challenges the status quo, which has a .25 correlation with student achievement.

McREL's factor analysis findings provide further research-based guidance that should be reflected in the standards we need. Principals should emphasize all 21 leadership responsibilities (see page 34) when leading changes that are perceived as first-order--those that are incremental or an extension of the past.

When leading changes perceived as second-order, principals should emphasize seven leadership responsibilities (change agent; flexibility; ideals/beliefs; intellectual stimulation; knowledge of curriculum, instruction and assessment; monitor/evaluate and optimize) and share four leadership responsibilities (communication, culture, input and order). Because changes perceived as second-order commonly leave people feeling less competent and confident about their work and relationships, such changes imply a loss regardless of the gain that they may represent for a school or an organization. An emphasis on change leadership is a must for the standards we need.

Standards that reflect shared leadership

Shared leadership is a common theme in the literature on educational leadership. Shared leadership is critical for school leaders because it provides a way for principals to focus on essential responsibilities, and it is a way to develop leadership in others. The dilemma facing school leaders is to assure that all important responsibilities are fulfilled, while focusing on what is essential to student achievement, which is compounded by the fact that urgency frequently trumps what is important in schools.

Cambron-McCabe and McCarthy (2003) call for "reconstruct[ing] roles and relationships at the school level around a vibrant core purpose of improving student learning and ensuring that all students achieve academic success." One approach to getting to the vibrant core is distributing leadership to others (Elmore, 2000; Copland, 2001; Spillane, Halverson, & Diamond, 2001; Whitaker, 2002). Similarly, sharing leadership responsibilities is one approach for principals to focus on what is essential. Shared leadership also addresses the need to develop and sustain leadership at the school level and is a fundamental problem on the horizon that must be addressed (Hargreaves, 2004; Fullan, 2005).

One observation about the existing principal standards is that they are inherently biased toward individualism (Fullan, 2005), which reinforces the notion that school leadership is the sole responsibility of the principal. The ISSLC standards reflect this bias and provide no guidance related to shared leadership.

In contrast, McREL's Balanced Leadership Framework identifies specific leadership responsibilities principals should share when leading changes perceived as second-order. The leadership responsibilities viewed as declining during changes perceived as second-order (communication, culture, input and order) may be fulfilled effectively by teacher leaders or a school leadership team.

Sharing leadership is critical for sustaining current school leaders and attracting, developing and sustaining the future leaders we need to achieve high levels of student achievement for all students and to redesign the system.

It is also critical to design future standards for school leaders based on the premise that leadership is a function--as opposed to a position--accessible to all. This will facilitate the sharing or distribution of responsibilities. The next iteration of principal standards should be developed as standards for school-level leaders with a focus on responsibilities rather than a position. This is vital for sustaining current principals and to develop future generations of school leaders.

Vision, courage, skill and energy

The current and upcoming leadership challenges are daunting. Now more than ever, education systems and the communities they serve need leaders with the vision, courage, will and energy to lead them into the future.

There is a growing recognition among communities around the world that second-order changes are needed to improve education systems. These changes must be led by school leaders who are able to distinguish and maintain a relentless focus on what is essential; who can skillfully apply effective change leadership practices to address the increasing demands on schools and to redesign the system; and who practice shared leadership to continuously develop others as well as themselves. To accomplish this, the profession needs a coherent set of performance standards for school leaders that reflects the most current research on school-level leadership.

References

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Tim Waters is president and CEO of Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McCREL), where Sally Kingston is principal consultant.