Then imagining the opposite scenario, a school leader with good intentions is struggling to keep test scores from falling below standard. Drop-out rates are higher than desired. Admissions steadily plummet. In this case an evaluation seems urgently necessary. The leader’s superiors would want to know what is being done incorrectly so that it can be fixed as soon as possible, signifying that evaluations are mostly defined by the need to locate deficiencies.
With these principles in mind, we can have an honest and more accurate discussion about the role that evaluation plays in helping companies develop strong leaders and successful schools. Few leaders arrive on the job “ready-made” for success and even the most capable will experience difficulty trying to manage and navigate a dynamic school environment. Through the use of data and reflection on experience, evaluations can improve the skills, and tighten the focuses of an already good leader. Patterns and correlations emerging from the data can also be useful in devising new training methods, making revisions to designs, and improving recruitment methods. The aim of designing a useful evaluation then should be on how accurate it is at targeting problem areas that can be corrected through concentrated training and education. This section will study the SUIS evaluation procedure and how far it goes in developing the type of leader suggested in this practicum.
The Principal Evaluation
At SUIS, the initial training period is complete once the director of the international stream approves of the new leader’s progress and capabilities in managing the school unsupervised. Then after six months of working on one’s own volition, SUIS commences the first sequence of “principal evaluations” designed to assess how well the new leader is following protocol and raising student achievement. After the first evaluation, subsequent ones follow every year.
In an environment as mission and results-driven as SUIS, evaluations hold a significant position. As shown on the company’s staff organization structure, there is a separate department under the head office which strictly handles administering and processing every type of evaluation from staff members to entire schools. For evaluating school leaders, SUIS employs what human resources call a “360-degree appraisal” whereby a self-assessment is accompanied by feedback from subordinates, peers, and supervisors.
The principal evaluation is an important event planned well in advance. Since the evaluation will consist of feedback from all areas of the school, notices for the upcoming evaluation are forwarded to all participating staff members. On the day of the evaluation, a schedule is released indicating who will be meeting with the evaluation department at which times. The school leader is given a letter detailing the evaluation procedure including assurance that the interview will be strictly confidential.
The majority of the evaluation is composed of assessments from a questionnaire. Along with a self-assessment, additional assessments are conducted by the director of the international stream, the director of the local stream, and the teachers and administrators under the school leader’s direction. The questionnaire is divided into six sections each with its own value out of 100. For each question, participants are required to mark a score on a scalar rating system. The following is a brief summary of what the questionnaire covers.
Individual Performance – 4 percent of total evaluation
The first section evaluates important character qualities: determination, adaptability, problem solving, and interpersonal skills.
Managerial Performance – 12 percent of total evaluation
The second section focuses on general leadership capability. Does the leader consistently set high standards and inspire and motivate staff to reach them? Does he or she deliver clear guidelines? Is he or she knowledgeable in both academic and non-academic departments?
Education Philosophy – 15 percent of total evaluation
The third section evaluates the school leader’s levels of belief in certain theories of education relevant to the school design: “East meets West,” international education, and holistic education.
School Management – 35 percent of total evaluation
The fourth and largest section evaluates specific procedures in running a school.
- Implementation of instructional programs
- Admissions
- Standards and policies
- Staffing
- Staff management
- Parent relations
- Financial management
Teaching and Learning – 25 percent of total evaluation
The fifth section focuses on components of instructional leadership.
- Knowledge of curriculum
- Teaching guidance
- Disciplinary procedures
- Curriculum development
- Cross Stream Teaching
Others – 9 percent of total evaluation
The sixth and final section is dedicated to the leader’s ability to evaluate staff, train staff, and manage non-academic areas of the school.
The evaluation department compiles the individual assessments into a finalized form. Then using the data interpreted from test scores, enrollment numbers, financial reports, and interview answers the department publishes a fully-detailed evaluation report which includes a highlight of strong and weak areas to be reviewed and discussed by the school leader and the director of the international stream.
A “Healthy Leader”
How can an evaluation work towards developing a strong leader? A good starting point would be to consider what Elliot W. Eisner identifies as the “diagnosis” (168). Like a doctor examining a patient, an evaluation seeks to find out where the leader is “sick” so that a proper treatment can be administered. As such, an evaluation would first have to establish what it means to be a “healthy leader” in order to have a set of criterion in which accurate judgments are made against.
A strong leader is almost directly responsible for the success of a school so the standards for what constitute "good health" would have to be considerably high. Judging by the percentage points assigned to each topic in the SUIS appraisal, the company’s main criteria for healthy or strong leadership are in the ability to perform specific managerial tasks, followed by the ability to lead teachers. Although a strong school leader is characterized foremost by exceptional instructional ability rather than business skills, SUIS acknowledges that school management is inherently more difficult than instructional leadership, and so puts more emphasis on the area during the evaluation process.
For the moment we will trust that SUIS’s standards for a school leader are accurate to the company’s needs. The diagnosis is now dependent on the individual objectives that make up the ideal leader. Due to the dynamic nature of school leadership, evaluations are structured as a checklist of what the company has witnessed over the years to be proper attitudes and correct forms of action. Good communication with parents for instance likely affects enrolment; delivering clear objectives likely earns the trust and support of teachers; and initiating cross-stream teaching likely enhances “East meets West” collaboration. While these observable “good” qualities of leadership are decided by experienced professionals, there is not much guarantee that they are specifically relevant to the relationship between leadership and success.
The uncertainty in knowing which actions and interactions actually constitute success may hinder the evaluation’s purpose in diagnosing a leader. On one hand, the company’s use of a 360-degree appraisal which considers feedback from all areas of the school seems to follow a solution offered by Eisner which is to ‘cast a wider net’ on evaluative objectives (174). This means more criteria, including ones that do not appear strongly linked to school success, should be included in the evaluation in case unforeseen yet valuable relations are generated. On the other hand, a 360-degree appraisal is mainly used for business strategies which may cloud some intended educational targets. A diagnosis of deficiencies is only part of the aim of a 360-degree appraisal; its main function is to provide indication of performance in terms of cost and quantity, and a basis for decisions such as salary increases and contract renewal. Since quality of leader and school success are inextricably linked, SUIS would have to put extra effort into its evaluations to ensure that both business and educational objectives converge towards some common goals.
Relationship with Teachers
One evaluative objective which encompasses both business and educational strategies is the school leader’s relationship with teachers. The majority of a leader’s daily activity comprises of getting teachers together to accomplish desired goals particularly when it comes to achieving academic success. This is reflected by the fact that a large portion of the 360-degree appraisal addresses the leader’s ability to manage teachers through both instructional and administrative leadership. The various feedbacks that the evaluators use to conjure up a final score are also mostly derived from the teachers under the leader’s guidance. Nevertheless, after considering what several education theorists have had to say about this topic, there is reason to suggest that SUIS could improve its evaluation by expanding on the leader’s relationship with the teachers in the school.
As mentioned earlier, the school leader’s first evaluation takes place six months after the initial training has wrapped up. According to Peter Earley and Dick Weindling, the first 3-12 months of a new leader’s control is the “honeymoon” period which is the most critical stage for earning the trust of teachers (75). A strong leader is someone who has the command and commitment of the school’s teachers so evaluators will want to pay particularly close attention to how the leader has interacted with staff so far, and especially how the teachers score the leader’s performance.
Teachers are particularly sensitive to a leader’s interpersonal skills; yet the SUIS principal evaluation only mildly covers this issue with a handful of questions addressing the delivery of clear guidelines and basic teaching support. In many cases, the school leader may believe that his or her guidance is clear, but to teachers, the messages come across as mixed and competing (Spillane 150). School leaders are also required to keep to the company’s objectives, but those who come across as too domineering and intolerant to alternate views will stifle the development of a cooperative atmosphere (Hannay and Seller 256). Furthermore, some leaders who have been leading schools for years have never consciously thought about the qualities that make up good teachers (Kimball and Milanowski 58). These points as well as others should be included in the evaluation if the school leader is to learn early on the pivotal effect good teacher relationships have on success.
Accountability
A school leader evaluation must include some sort of objective for accountability as conflict is sure to arise when leaders, believing they were only following company policy, are asked to explain failures or shortfalls. Accountability in schools is often seen as burdensome and interfering by those it is assigned to (Guskey 29) because it focuses starkly on meeting outcomes without any respect for the processes. SUIS will want to change this perspective by showing its leaders early on that accountability is more to do with planning ahead than explaining end results. There is reason to believe that a leader willing to take responsibility for his or her actions can be cultivated with an evaluation that diagnoses the frequency of particular actions. Thomas R. Guskey identifies several of these actions: the ability to replace personal defensiveness with professional inquisitiveness, the ability to openly share results, and the ability to defer assigning blame (31). These points are well suited to an evaluation, in particular one that takes into account feedback from all corners of the school.
It should be noted that accountability goes both ways. If a school leader is expected to take responsibility for certain actions, the company and evaluators must also ensure that the problems identified can be solved and that a pathway to successful leadership can be outlined. If problems are benign or too basic for training to have any effect, the company will have failed in effectively cultivating a strong leader for its school.
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