What’s the principal’s role in literacy improvement efforts?

System leaders and policymakers shouldn't underestimate the important role the principal plays in enacting and advancing instructional improvement

District leaders and policy makers have something to learn from Jamie Tartt’s epiphany given the key role principals play in improvement efforts.

In Dr. Shanahan’s recent blog, the researcher and former district literacy leader reflected upon his biggest regret when implementing the Chicago Reading Initiative: “not pulling the principals in early enough or thoroughly enough.” As Shanahan recalled, his primary focus had been on the recruitment and preparation of literacy coaches who would support school-based literacy improvement efforts. But upon reflection, starting with the principals – first enrolling them in the reform effort and then leveraging coaches to build capacity around the changes they had initiated – would have been a more impactful strategy. 

This advice echoes that of Woulfin, Stevenson, and Lord (2023) in Making Coaching Matter: Leading Continuous Improvement in Schools, who note that too often coaching gets positioned as the strategy as opposed to an element of the broader strategy for enacting instructional improvement. As the authors write, “coaching exists not as an end in itself but in service of a larger vision.” Unless coaches themselves (as well as both principals supervising coaches and teachers receiving coaching) know what coaches are coaching towards, coaching is unlikely to lead to the payoff that district leaders might hope for. 

Here’s where the principal comes in. Rather than using coaches to leapfrog the principal and work directly with teachers, district leaders can first invest principals in a shared vision of high-quality instruction. Principals can then leverage coaches to support teachers in enhancing their performance in service of that vision. This approach results in a far tighter and more impactful theory of action around what it will ultimately take to change not only teacher practice but also student outcomes for the better (see below for examples). 

Callie Lowenstein, in a recent piece on the Shankar Institute blog, writes about the perils of leaving school leaders out of the equation of district-wide improvement. As she describes, when teacher development gets way out in front of leader development:

In schools, this means teachers might engage in weekly PD on orthographic mapping, but the folks making decisions about curriculum and school-wide goals, the folks conducting teacher observations, may be developing very little of this knowledge. This means teachers are asked to engage in contradictory practices or receive feedback that doesn’t match what they’re learning. In my last school, even as both school and district stated that they were “shifting to the SoR,” the kindergarten and first grade teams were required to sit through a full day three-cueing PD and to conduct beginning of year leveled-reading assessments (in addition to DIBELS); if our leadership had even cursory knowledge of the science, they probably wouldn’t have made this choice (along with the massive investment in new testing kits and leveled libraries that accompanied it!). 

Shanahan is skeptical about the research base on providing “general training in reading” to school leaders. But Shanahan and Lowenstein both point to the need to build leader capacity around specific actions they might take to successfully advance instructional improvement – and to avoid working in ways that actively confuse and contradict such efforts. Shanahan shares the following as foci for professional learning that would enhance principals’ ability to lead literacy improvement: 

• How to strategically assign teachers to particular grade levels based upon their competencies or expertise in delivering reading instruction

• How to observe instruction or review lesson plans with specific look-fors around evidence-based instructional practices 

• How to interpret literacy assessment results and use them for instructional decision-making 

• How to galvanize their school communities around improving reading achievement 

In addition to these concrete practices and actions, district leaders would do well to pay attention to the way principals deliver key messages about instructional improvement efforts, and work to build their capacity to do so. After all – implementation of reform doesn’t merely happen to principals and school-based staff, but rather through them.

As Coburn (2001) notes, leaders support and influence the processes by which teachers make sense of reading reform. Principals’ messaging shapes teachers’ perceptions of the reform to such an extent that these messages can impact whether and how teachers ultimately adopt, adapt, or reject district-level policies or approaches within the walls of their classrooms. When leaders leverage frames that resonate with teachers, teachers are more likely to respond by adopting the frame as their own and championing instructional change efforts. Use of resonant frames can also enable leaders to diffuse resistance to instructional change (Coburn, 2006; Woulfin, 2015).

On the flip side, when principals are poorly equipped to frame the purpose of instructional improvement efforts to their teachers, the negative impact is palpable. When leaders fail to communicate the “why,” such efforts become rooted in confusion and compliance rather than commitment to a shared vision of high-quality teaching and learning. When frames lack resonance, teachers may question the value of such efforts or merely engage in particular practices as the result of a mandate but with neither investment nor understanding (Vaughn et al., 2021; Schildkamp & Datnow, 2020). 

All this said, as states and districts increasingly move forward with reading reform efforts, now is a good time for system leaders to stop and ask the following three questions:

1. Have we sufficiently invested our principals in the goals of this improvement effort and clarified their role in enacting it?

2. Have we provided principals opportunities to build their capacity as leaders of literacy improvement efforts? 

3. Do we have mechanisms for celebrating and amplifying the practices of high-performing principals so that others in our district can learn from and with them? 

Principals are in many ways the linchpin of successful instructional improvement efforts. To ignore or overlook them is perilous; to invest in them is promising! 

References

Coburn, C. E. (2001). Collective sensemaking about reading: How teachers mediate reading policy in their professional communities. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 23(2), 145-170.

Coburn, C. E. (2006). Framing the problem of reading instruction: Using frame analysis to uncover microprocesses of policy implementation. American Educational Research Journal, 43(3), 343-379. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312043003343

Lowenstein, C. (2023, September 8). Reading reform on the ground: How SOR policy is showing up in schools. Shankar Institute.https://www.shankerinstitute.org/blog/reading-reform-ground-how-sor-policy-showing-schools

Schildkamp, K. & Datnow, A. (2020). When data teams struggle: Learning from less successful data use efforts. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 21(2), 147-166. doi:10.1080.15700763.2020.1734630

Shanahan, T. (2023, September 9). A big mistake reading improvement initiatives — don’t make this one. Shanahan on Literacy. https://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/a-big-mistake-in-reading-improvement-initiatives-dont-make-this-one

Vaughn, M., Scales, R. Q. Stevens, E. Y., Kline, S., Barrett-Tatum, J., Van Wig, A., Yoder, K. K. & Wellman, D. (2021) Understanding literacy adoption policies across contexts: A multi-state examination of literacy curriculum decision-making. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 53(3), 333-352. DOI: 10.1080/00220272.2019.1683233

Woulfin, S. (2015). Catalysts of change: An examination of coaches’ leadership practices in framing a reading reform. Journal of School Leadership, 25, 526-557. https://doi.org/10.1177/105268461502500309

Woulfin, S. L., Stevenson, I., & Lord, K. (2023). Making coaching matter: Leading continuous improvement in schools. Teachers College Press.