ISLLC Standards and School Leadership: Who S Leading This Band

ISLLC Standards and School Leadership: Who’s Leading This Band?
PaulPitre
Auburn University
WadeSmith
Louisiana State University
The Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium’s (ISLLC) standards serve to define expected outcomes and activities for effective school leaders. As such, the standards provide a comprehensive overview of leadership in our nation’s schools and serve as important referents for measuring school improvement and effectiveness. This article examines the centrist perspective of the standards, where the principal is viewed as the leader, posits reasons why the centrist view of the principalship is offered, and argues that this centrist notion of the leader is likely to encourage the under utilization of the collective human capitol available to a school and ultimately stifle school improvement efforts.
Executive Summary
The Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium’s (ISLLC) standards were intended to serve as an impetus for dialogue on K-12 leadership and a set of behavioral outcomes that school leaders can use to bring about substantive and sustained school improvement. But not only have the standards sparked dialogue, they have also fueled some debate. Claims that the standards lack an epistemological base have been answered with the argument that the students were only meant to represent a framework for leadership in schools based on research and practice.
The ISLLC standards were meant to do more than spark dialogue and debate. They were also meant to enhance standards for the practice of school leadership. Each standard is defined by subsets of indicators for expected performance. Collectively, the standards are intended to represent a comprehensive approach to defining outcomes for effective school leaders.
ASSUMPTIONS GROUNDED IN ISLLC STANDARDS
The ISLLC standards have a strong emphasis upon the school administrator as an educational leader.Though the need for collaborative processes to create desired educational outcomes is given some mention in the document, there is quite a bit of ambiguity in the language related to the outcomes indicators themselves. Consider Standard 1, where the school administrator facilitates the development, articulation, implementation, and stewardship of a vision of learning that is shared and supported by the school community. The language in this standard suggests that the administrator facilitates collaborative efforts in developing a vision for the school and the school community. However, the first performance indicator under Standard 1 contradicts the focus of the standard when it states that the principal engages in activities to ensure that the vision and mission of the school are effectively communicated to staff, parents, students, and community members. Why would the principal, who is viewed as a facilitator of the vision in Standard 1, need to communicate the school vision to a staff that was directly involved in its creation? In most instances, the principal would not have to be concerned with communicating the vision for a school unless the decision-making process for creating the school's vision was primarily vested in the principal or perhaps a small group of individuals that worked in a somewhat disconnected fashion from the faculty and the community. A truly collaborative effort should involve stakeholders in the process of communicating the school vision as well. While a collaborative effort in communicating the school vision to the broader public is a clear sign of stakeholder buy-in, the individual effort of the principal in communicating the school vision to key stakeholders is the first sign of the top-down, bureaucratic, centrist perception of the school leader.
Other language within the document corroborates the principal as leader mindset embedded in the ISLLC standards. For example, under Standard 2 curriculum decisions are based upon research, the expertise of teachers, and the recommendations of learned societies. The implication is that curriculum matters are in the purview of the principal. This may be problematic, given the uncertainty with regards to the expertise of principals and whether or not they are suited to have the final word in matters of curriculum. This matter is of extreme importance in the current high-stakes testing environment that strikes a delicate balance between teaching and learning on one hand, and preparing students for standardized tests on the other. It is also of particular importance in complex learning environments like high schools, which offer an array of courses. However, the rationale is logical if each principal is envisioned, a priori, as the final decision maker for all aspects of their school.
ORGANIZATIONAL CONSIDERATIONS
Although the practice of producing top-down leadership decisions is questionable, it is by no means out of favor in today's schools. For example, the use of prescribed curricula is becoming quite commonplace in the current standards based environment and often reduces the role of the teacher. Highly prescribed curricula tend to reduce the role of teachers to the equivalent of assembly line worker in industry. They are expected to teach what and how they are told.
The examples of the principal having decision authority over the curriculum and the teacher’s role in the prescribed curriculum provide pause for rethinking the centrist perspective of ISLLC Standards. Further, envisioning a principal as the leader for the myriad of ISLLC performance sub-standards provides even more reason to question the centrist view of ISLLC. Under ISLLC, the principal is charged with maintaining high visibility, active community involvement, and communication with the larger community. Another important job of the principal is the constant maintenance and facilitation of a safe, non-threatening learning environment at the school campus. Each of these functions is critical to a school's effective and efficient operation and every one of them is labor intensive.
CONCLUSION
In summary, the positioning of the principal as leader appears to be based more upon pre-established beliefs and norms than the individual organizational needs of schools. Furthermore, framing principals as the leader is not likely to provide the means for bringing to bear the talents and skills of organizational members upon school problems. This in itself is enough to give pause to the idea of nesting leadership in principals by virtue of position and authority. However, other concerns also come into play when principals are charged with the myriad of responsibilities laid out in the ISLLC framework. The authors of this essay are not arguing that the ISLLC standards are unimportant. To the contrary, the point is that the standards are so important that vesting their successful implementation and execution in one person (or at best a few people) is dubious.
Main Article
The Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium’s (ISLLC) set of standards for school leaders has received considerable attention as a framework for reconceptualizing leadership in schools. The ISLLC organization was created in August of 1994 through the collaborative efforts of 24 member states, several foundations, and numerous professional education organizations. The purpose of ISLLC is to redefine the roles of school administrators through the introduction of a set of common standards, which delineate the expected behavioral outcomes produced by K-12 educational leaders. Nearly thirty-five states have either adopted or adapted the ISLLC standards and over 25,000 copies of the ISLLC standards have been disseminated (Council of Chief State School Officers, 2002).
The ISLLC standards were intended to serve as an impetus for dialogue about K-12 leadership and a set of behavioral outcomes that school leaders can use to bring about substantive and sustained school improvement. But not only have the standards sparked dialogue, they have also fueled some debate. English (2000) argued that the ISLLC standards have no epistemological base and thus were not steeped in truth. In response to English’s claim, Murphy (2000) retorted that the standards were not meant to represent truth, they were only meant to represent a framework for leadership in schools based on research and practice.
The ISLLC standards were meant to do more than spark dialogue and debate. They were also meant to “raise the bar for the practice of school leadership” (Council of Chief State School Officers, 2002). Each standard is defined by subsets of indicators for expected performance. Collectively, the standards are intended to represent a comprehensive approach to defining outcomes for effective school leaders. There are six core standards within the ISLLC standards (Council of Chief State School Officers, 2002). The standards articulate that school principals are responsible for:
1. Facilitating the development, articulation, implementation, and stewardship of a vision of learning that is shared and supported by the school community;
2. Advocating, nurturing, and sustaining school culture and instructional programs conducive to student learning and staff professional growth;
3. Ensuring management of the organization, operations, and resources for a safe, efficient, and effective learning environment;
4. Collaborating with families and community members, responding to diverse community interests and needs, and mobilizing community resources;
5. Acting with integrity, fairness, and in an ethical manner; and
6. Understanding, responding to, and influencing the larger political, social, economic, legal, and cultural context.
According to ISLLC's web-site, these standards are reflective of school administrators who:
...often espouse different patterns of beliefs and act differently from the norm in the profession. Effective school leaders are strong educators, anchoring their work on central issues of learning and teaching and school improvement. They are moral agents and social advocates for the children and the communities they serve. Finally, they make strong connections with other people, valuing and caring for others as individuals and as members of the educational community (Council of Chief State School Officers, 2002).
The type of leader described by ISLLC is a visionary. A visionary is defined as an individual capable of conceptualizing a clear course of action for an organization (Senge, 1994). This leader is then able to gain buy-in from members of the organization and begin to move those members in a positive direction that will eventually be of direct benefit to the organization and its surrounding community. It is clear that a primary goal of the ISLLC is to identify standards and dispensations that, when implemented by a visionary leader, initiate a transformational process in schools whereby the core beliefs, norms, and values of the organization are analyzed and restructured in an effort to produce more effective schools. This is certainly an appropriate goal and an expected outcome of the ISLLC standards. What might be questionable are some of the theoretical underpinnings of ISLLC standards. More specifically, the ISLLC standards are focused on traits and behaviors of the leader and are not generally sensitive to the need for developing leadership throughout the school. If the outcomes delineated by ISLLC are important (and they assuredly are), then it is also important to analyze the assumptions related to how these outcomes might be realized to determine if the assumptions are correct.
ASSUMPTIONS GROUNDED IN THE ISLLC STANDARDS
The ISLLC standards place a strong emphasis upon the school administrator as an educational leader.Though the need for collaborative processes to create desired educational outcomes is given some mention in the document, there is quite a bit of ambiguity in the language related to the outcomes indicators themselves. Consider Standard 1, where the school administrator facilitates the development, articulation, implementation, and stewardship of a vision of learning that is shared and supported by the school community. The language in this standard suggests that the administrator facilitates collaborative efforts in developing a vision for the school and the school community. However, the first performance indicator under Standard 1 contradicts the focus of the standard when it states that the principal engages in activities to ensure that the vision and mission of the school are effectively communicated to staff, parents, students, and community members (Council of Chief State School Officers, 2002. Standard 1, Performance Indicator 1). Why would the principal, who is viewed as a facilitator of the vision in Standard 1, need to communicate the school vision to a staff directly involved in its creation? In most instances, the principal would not have to be concerned with communicating the vision for a school unless the decision-making process for creating the school's vision was primarily vested in the principal or perhaps a small group of individuals that worked in a somewhat disconnected fashion from the faculty and the community. A truly collaborative effort should involve stakeholders in the process of communicating the school vision. While a collaborative effort in communicating the school vision to the broader public is a clear sign of stakeholder buy-in, the individual effort of the principal in communicating the school vision to key stakeholders is the first sign of the top-down, bureaucratic, centrist perception of the school leader.
Other language within the document corroborates the principal as leader mindset embedded in the ISLLC standards. For example, under Standard 2 (Council of Chief State School Officers, 2002), curriculum decisions are based upon research, the expertise of teachers, and the recommendations of learned societies. The implication is that curriculum matters are the purview of the principal. This may be problematic, given the uncertainty with regards to the expertise of principals and whether or not they are suited to have the final word in matters of curriculum. This matter is of extreme importance in the current high-stakes testing environment that strikes a delicate balance between teaching and learning on one hand, and preparing students for standardized tests on the other. It is also of particular importance in complex learning environments like high schools, which offer an array of courses. However, the rationale is logical if each principal is envisioned, a priori, as the final decision maker for all aspects of their school.
A careful reading of the ISLLC standards, performances, and outcomes reveals a strong dependency upon the principal’s leadership in a variety of areas within and outside the school setting. The standards do not clearly vest leadership at any other level of the school. This traditional, bureaucratic orientation suggests that leadership within schools should be viewed primarily as centrist, top-down, and essentially hierarchical in its function (Chubb and Moe, 1990; Mintzberg, 1979). From this perspective, final decision power is vested in an individual or a small group of individuals by virtue of their position in an organization's hierarchical structure. Nearly twenty years ago Immegart (1988) questioned the viability of this model for leadership and called for development of leadership that moved beyond focusing upon the activities or attributes of the leader. Even so, it seems as though the leader centrist view of the principal’s role is still the norm for schools.
RATIONALE FOR VESTING POWER IN THE PRINCIPAL
At least three possibilities come to mind to justify the centrist leadership assumptions nested in the ISLLC standards. First, separation of schools into leaders and followers may be based upon the belief that work and work standards are best determined by those individuals considered to have higher rank and more theoretical knowledge (Chubb and Moe, 1990; Mintzberg, 1979). Second, removing teachers from the ultimate responsibility of curriculum decisions may be a means for freeing them from burdensome administrative tasks while still allowing for their input. Finally, a third possibility might be that sometimes individuals are placed in leadership roles within an organization based on their status within the hierarchical structure even though other organizational members may possess similar levels of skill. Each of these perspectives is discussed below from the context of the principal having final purview over matters of instruction as delineated by the ISSLC standards.
Possibility 1: Leaders and Followers
Using an example from industry and the bureaucratic model suggested by the ISLLC standards, line managers (e.g., structural engineers), by virtue of their status in a hierarchy, would make most important decisions, which would then be implemented by craftsmen (e.g., ironworkers). In this example it is true that the engineer possesses knowledge that an ordinary field worker would not be expected to possess. Therefore, it is reasonable for the engineer to assume the role of leader in a manner consistent with the underpinnings of the ISLLC document. However, unlike the engineer in the previous example, it is suspect to assume that school administrators possess a unique body of knowledge in matters of curriculum. In fact, the opposite may be true with teachers having a fuller understanding of key issues and decisions involving curriculum that impact the quality of teaching and learning in a school.
Possibility 2: Free Teachers from Unnecessary Tasks
There is certainly merit in trying to insulate teachers from activities unrelated to instruction. However, the belief that principals should have the final decision on matters of curriculum at a school does not seem to be congruent with this aim. Teachers are the only school-based personnel most likely to see—or experience—consequences of leadership decisions regarding curriculum, whether on a day-to-day or a general programmatic basis. Excluding teachers from a framework for leadership might be seen as an expedient way to free teachers up from organizational encumbrances and allow them to focus on teaching and learning. Yet, as noted earlier, the very practice of teaching and learning is the area where teachers would be expected to have considerable expertise. The notion of vesting final authority in one person over what has to that point been a collaborative process is now losing favor in other work environments such as business and industry (House, 1998).