By Dennis Sparks

Journal of Staff Development, Spring 2001 (Vol. 22, No. 2)

Copyright, National Staff Development Council, 2001. All rights reserved.

(Editor’s note: Because Jim Lanich and Ross Santy both contributed to this interview, their names are listed together for all responses.)

JSD: To help improve reading in 100 low-performing elementary schools in Los Angeles County, you invited five principals from around the country to talk with you about how this might be done. How did you select the principals and what did they tell you?

Lanich/Santy: We used scattergrams based on the socioeconomic level of schools and test scores for reading in 2nd and 3rd grade. The regression line showed that poverty was directly related with test scores. But we also found some outliers — high-poverty schools that had high test scores. We honed in on five of these schools — two in Los Angeles, one in Texas, one in Chicago, and one in Brooklyn.

The five principals came to a two-day meeting in August 1999. They helped us design tools we could offer principals and teachers in implementing K-3 reading programs.

We learned some interesting things from the principals. For instance, none of them spoke about specific reading programs. That wasn’t what they wanted to discuss. They talked about reading and fluency, professional development, and school cultures that are focused on literacy and reading. In addition, they all thought that kids should be grouped according to instructional strengths and weaknesses in a way that didn’t lead to tracking and permanent groups.

All five principals had very innovative ways of tackling the literacy problem and establishing a climate in the school that promoted reading. One of them had an interesting approach to getting books into the hands of kids. He operated a principal’s bookstore that was set up on tables outside the school one day per week at lunch and recess. Kids were able to redeem at the bookstore classroom coupons earned from their teachers. Another principal had a reading hour every day in his office. The students were selected by their teachers to join others for a read-aloud, with each child being selected once a semester. This principal knew which students were struggling and which were succeeding because he had every child in the school read to him twice.

These principals were very data-driven and could tell you the reading level of every child in their schools. They also had systems set up that enabled them to get extra help to the classrooms and students who needed it.

All of them had coaches who worked with teachers. That meant principals had more of a monitoring role. They visited classrooms and within a few minutes were able to determine what was happening or not happening. If it wasn’t happening, they would ask the coach to assist the teacher.

These principals accepted no excuses regarding student achievement. They believed that it was the responsibility of the teacher, the principal, and the school to do whatever was necessary to help all students succeed. They would not tolerate any conversation about parents being at fault for the child’s situation. They felt it was the job of the school to succeed with the support of parents, but that it was not acceptable to say that the school couldn’t do its job until parents did certain things. It was their view that the school gets the resources, the school has the teachers, so it’s the school’s responsibility to succeed with the child.

JSD: What were the implications of all these things for your work with the 100 Los Angeles County schools?

Lanich/Santy: Before we began this project, we knew that successful schools had principals who served as instructional leaders, but we weren’t sure exactly what that looked like in practice. And we also weren’t sure how we would help principals move from a management orientation to instructional leadership.

As a result of our time with these principals we knew that we didn’t want to conduct training for school leaders on generic leadership principles absent a clear focus on instruction and curriculum. So we decided to provide mentors to principals as a very specialized form of assistance.

All of this led us to focus on three areas: making certain the school had materials to teach reading, having coaches and mentors to assist teachers and principals, and providing a tool kit for principals to use in gathering data to drive instructional decision making. We wanted all these things in place in all 100 schools.

JSD: What do principal mentors do, and how are they trained and supported?

Lanich/Santy: We’ve set up a nonprofit foundation to provide funding for the mentors. Our goal is that all principals will have mentors by the end of this school year.

The mentors are retired principals with a track record of improving achievement who have internalized what data-driven improvement means. They’ve all broken through denial and have a sense of urgency that comes from knowing that we have been failing urban kids.

This is not a pullout program for principals. During the first couple of meetings at the school, the mentor helps the principal realize what he or she knows and doesn’t know about instructional leadership. Mentors ask principals to work on something and say they’ll be back. At first, principals think that that won’t really happen, but, when the mentor returns, a relationship begins to develop.

Mentors help principals know what to do and how to move into action. For example, mentors help principals learn alternative ways to handle some of the things that have taken up a lot of their time, which enables them to focus on the classroom. Mentors provide worksheets that principals use to monitor classrooms and formulate questions to ask teachers. This process systematically takes principals through a number of steps to become instructional leaders who know performance data in their schools down to the level of individual students. It also helps them identify which teachers need additional assistance and how to get it for them. None of this looks like standard principal training.

Another way that we support this work is to have reading experts do demonstration lessons that mentors and principals observe together. These lessons help principals learn what good reading instruction looks like.

Mentors also provide an informal link between schools that promotes the sharing of successful strategies. In addition, three or four times a year, the mentors conduct meetings for all the principals within a given district so that they can learn what others are doing that is working well.

We’ve found that it’s important that mentors stay focused as a group about what is negotiable with principals and what is not. For instance, some schools have not wanted the instructional coaches. That’s non-negotiable.

JSD: I know that your assistance to these schools includes more things than we’ve discussed here. So you’ve obviously invested a lot of resources in these schools. What has been the impact of your efforts on student reading?

Lanich/Santy: Last year, we did 30 data collections from the schools on a range of indicators. The schools we’ve worked with in the Los Angeles Unified School District have reading scores that are rising at a faster rate than the district as a whole. In fact, 90% of the schools we worked with last year are moving up. Schools with mentors for principals, coaches for teachers, and a unified reading program for the school have scores that are going up a lot faster than the averages for the districts they’re in. When compared to schools with similar demographics, our schools are also improving more rapidly. Our data tell us that there’s overwhelming support for this work and that it’s making a difference.

One of our goals has been to open up the system to new ways of thinking about instruction and to new forms of assistance to schools focused on the improved learning of all students. As a result of this focus, we’re succeeding in removing the variables of poverty and minority status from academic achievement.

Position: Director of Core Curriculum Services for the Los Angeles County Office of Education and California director for the National Center to Improve the Tools of Educators. Also, chairman of the California Technology Assistance Program.

Education: A bachelor of science degree in biology from University of California-Irvine. A master’s in secondary education from California State University-Los Angeles, and a doctorate in curriculum and instruction from the University of Southern California’s School of Education, with an emphasis from the USC School of Cinema-Television and the Annenberg School for Communication.

Professional history: Helped develop the California campus of the National Center to Improve the Tools of Educators, bringing research-based technology, media, and materials to teachers in Los Angeles County. Before joining the Los Angeles County Office of Education, he spent a decade as a teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Position: Director of Resources and Development for the Los Angeles County Office of Education and assistant director of the California campus for the national Center to Improve the Tools of Educators.

Education: A bachelor’s degree in educational psychology from Princeton University, and a master of arts degree in technology in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Professional history: History teacher in New Jersey public schools and technology coordinator for a New York City private school, designing curriculum implementation projects and administering the computer network.

Accomplishments: Won an $18 million Technology Literacy Challenge grant. Organized a two-year, $6.2 million public/private sector partnership with Vons/Pavilions Supermarkets and other partners to provide summer technology training for thousands of southern California teachers. Developed the Applied Research and Academic Achievement Alliance programs for the Los Angeles County Office of Education, working with 100 low-achieving elementary schools.

Dennis Sparks is executive director of the National Staff Development Council.