Preliminary Findings

While the model was expected to strengthen leadership capacity and provide a viable succession pipeline for participating schools, the partners did not anticipate the profound effect the program appears to be having on school reform efforts themselves.

Participating school teams are routinely putting into practice strategies and approaches from the program curriculum and bringing to the program curriculum systemic and intractable issues they are struggling with for cross-school investigation and coaching.

Quotes from participants:

 “In comparison to other preparation programs I have been involved with, … this program has a couple of powerful pairings: One is the pairing of leadership training with the expectation of school transformation. This is not a study of what is ‘out there.’ This program values what our schools are trying to do and helps us focus on what is most important in alignment with our own goals.” — Principal

“We saw through our systems analysis that we were inadvertently undermining our instruction. The leverage point we chose was teacher/student interaction, in our school, ‘conferencing.’ We collected data, all along charting, analyzing, sharing and always questioning, always asking, ‘Does our rhetoric match our reality?’ and ‘What is really happening despite our best intentions?’ This has spilled over. All teachers in my school, not only the SAM participants, are now used to being asked the deeper questions. So this work in the program has been transformative for the whole school.” — Principal

“The … visitations have been pivotal in creating a learning community in our school. The school poses a problem, and then the SAM team comes and gathers data. They are there to identify places to push the school to where it needs to go next. The visits are a great leverage point for engaging the entire faculty in discussing what question we want examined and where we want to move.” — Teacher