Marzano's 21 Responsibilities of a School Leader and Student Achievement

Last year, my school district implemented Response to Instruction and Intervention (RtII) in kindergarten through second grade.  This year, RtII will be implemented in grades three and four.  I chose this as my improvement initiative in order to evaluate the steps that have been taken to prepare staff for this change.  McREL rates this change as a “second-order change” because it involves new knowledge and a major shift from current practices.

McREL identifies seven leadership responsibilities that should be emphasized during a second-order change.  The three responsibilities of the inventory in which I scored highly are also three of the highest on my self-assessment: ideals/beliefs, change agent and optimizer.  While these responsibilities are all important to academic achievement, they do not rank as high as some other categories.  I suppose these categories are a bit more abstract, as they are not as visual as concrete data (monitoring/evaluating) and events that would involve all stakeholders (outreach).  Knowledge of curriculum, instruction and assessment is not only crucial to second-order change, but it has a .25 correlation with student achievement (Marzano, 2005, p. 63).  I ranked myself with a 3 on the self-assessment and scored a 3.5 on the inventory.  I do not underestimate the value of curriculum, instruction and assessment, I am just aware that it is a weakness of mine.  I plan to work closely with the new Coordinator of Curriculum and Instruction this year so I can gain skills in this area.  Part of the problem at the elementary level is that we refer to our programs as the curriculum.  The district is currently in the process of writing curriculum since we do not formally have one. 

I find the negative associations of the McREL inventory interesting, for I have never thought about the leadership responsibilities that may be pushed aside during a time of significant change.  I rated 3.17 for “culture” in the inventory and rated myself a 5 on the self-assessment.  It is possible that the state of my school district influenced my rating on the inventory, for I was thinking about our current conditions.  I am a firm believer in cooperation and teamwork.  I setup a teacher resource wiki last year to try to encourage teachers to share their work since we do not have shared drives on our network.  I continue to advocate for a shared space (either in the cloud or on the network) for people to share resources.  This year, I will attempt to use Edmodo (an educational social network) in one building to enhance communication and collaboration.  During a time of change and uncertainty, I feel that it’s important to remind everyone that we are all in the same boat working toward the same goal.  As a principal, I would try to give staff time to plan together and possibly observe in other classrooms if it was requested.  With a .25 correlation to student achievement, culture has a profound impact on the way teachers interact with their colleagues and their students (Marzano, 2005, p. 63).   I imagine that if a positive culture is modeled in the school, a teacher might strive to implement some similar strategies in her classroom.

        

With the highest correlation to student achievement, situational awareness ranked 4.20 on my McREL inventory and a 3 on my self-assessment.  I view it as a high need and am aware that I need work in that area.  As a principal, it is important that I develop an informal system of gathering information (Murphy, 2007, p. 55).  By touching base with my staff members on a daily basis and developing open, honest relationships with them, I would hope to be informed about events that may impact the school.  My former principal worked closely with his secretary, the school counselor and the school nurse.  All of them worked closely with the staff and served as great resources whenever a problem arose.  I would often seek help from one of them before seeking help from the principal.  I believe this is an effective system that models the sharing of and optimization of leadership responsibilities in a school.

21 Responsibilities of the School Leader Self-Assessment

McREL Report - 21 Leadership Responsibilities

McREL Report - 7-4-3 Analysis 

Resources:

Marzano, R. J., Waters, T., & McNulty, B. A. (2005).School Leadership That Works: From Research to Results.Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Murphy, J.T. (2007).  The Unheroic Side of Leadership. In The Jossey-Bass Reader on Educational Leadership (pp. 51-62).  San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.