Welcome

This practicum was completed and submitted on Monday, March 15, 2010 for CTL1797 at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education under Wayne Seller.

This practicum will be left online for anyone interested in the subject of school leadership and for-profit education institutes. The comment sections are open and all discussion is both welcome and encouraged.

To begin reading the practicum please start here or navigate using the section headings at the right.

If you would like to hear an audio summary of the practicum (or if you're curious about the way I sound) then please download the podcast here. It is 22 minutes but it sums everything up without going into too much detail.

Thank you and enjoy.

Appendix: Recruitment Ad

Below is a recruitment ad SUIS issued for a new school leader position in 2008. Recruitment ads were only briefly mentioned in this practicum as they do not have a large impact on recruitment aside from notifying potential candidates of the position. However, ads such as this one shed light on the company's idea of what it means to be a good leader and therefore are worth looking at.

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Shanghai United International School

Job Title: International Stream Principal
Starting date: February, 2009
Duration of: 2 years, renewable
Salary: Negotiable, relative to qualifications and experience

Overview
Shanghai United International School was founded in 2003. It differs from most other international schools in that it operates under the auspices of, and in tandem with, the Chinese local stream school, sharing the premises and the resources.

In September 2006 SUIS opened a separate international stream in a second primary school not far from the primary campus. This follows the same pattern, and shares its premises with the local Chinese stream. Presently the school has 124 students in Grades 1 -4 (60 in international program and 64 in the bilingual program). The international program follows the IB PYP, aiming for the IGCSE and the IB DP in the coming years (in our high school campus).

Context
At primary level Shanghai United International School’s major profile lies in its bilingual (English and Chinese languages) approach to the curriculum, based on the principle of ‘East meets West”. In the Primary School, most lessons are taught simultaneously by an English-language and a Chinese language. This ensures that Chinese nationals can access an international curriculum whilst at the same time maintaining their roots within the Chinese culture. It enables foreign nationals to obtain an international curriculum (IB PYP) whilst at the same time learning the Chinese language and culture.

The campus
The school will expand to cover the full range of grades 1 – 5 in 2009

The curricula will include the UKIPC and IBPYP and a bilingual program which is intended to cater for the needs of ‘alternative pathways’.

The students are predominantly Asian (returning Chinese, Taiwanese, Hong Kong, Korean, Japanese) but with a smattering of Europeans and native English-speakers.

The challenge is to provide a primary education which caters for the needs of international students who are interested in international education, but who find it challenging to fulfill their potential because they lack the linguistic competence to access the English-language and Chinese-language curriculums. Some older students simply come late to international education, possessing inadequate language skills.

The International Stream shares the campus with the local stream school (1000 students in Grades 1 - 9).

The current stream has an excellent reputation for its friendly service and quality in teaching and learning. Nevertheless, there is still much to be done in the stream.

The International Stream Principal will play a major role in promoting quality international education, developing the East meets West profile of the school (cross-stream links) and to building close links with the predominantly Asian community.

The management structure comprises: Superintendent, International Stream Head, Administration / Admission supervisor, Administration assistance, English subject Coordinator, Math subject coordinator and Chinese subject coordinator.

Job Description

The International Stream Principal is a member of the school’s Senior Management Team (SMT). The superintendent of the international stream will be monitoring the school on part time basis. As result, this post will enjoy delegated authority and, as such, a substantial amount of autonomy.

The Head will manage the educational provision in Grades 1 – 5 . This will include:

•teaching up to 20% of a normal timetable;

•delivering a curriculum suited to the needs of international stream students and bilingual stream students within the framework provided by the IBPYP, UKIPC and alternative curricula (e.g. Longman English and Science) to include:
- curriculum structure
- staffing – including recruitment and appraisal structures
- rooming
- assessment, reporting & recording
- calendar;

• ensuring the highest possible quality of teaching and learning through:
- the appointment and management of effective teachers
- the provision of ongoing staff professional development
- the establishment of quality control mechanisms (formal evaluation, appraisal, etc.)
- the maintenance of well-equipped classrooms and dynamic displays of work
- the provision of stimulating educational trips, extra-curricular activities and enrichment events
- the development and oversight of policies, procedures and systems designed to provide a safe and efficient educational environment;

• effectively administer the primary school:
- creating and managing the school’s strategic development plan;
- arranging cover for absent colleagues (primary);
- the management of statistical information on student attainment designed to establish benchmarking and calculate value-added;
- managing the primary school’s budget;

• managing the Language Center department;

• developing an ethos of a ‘learning community’;

• comprehensively espousing the principles of the IB;

• delivering an effective primary-secondary interface;

• managing the content and delivery of primary school assemblies;

• maintaining close and productive home-school links, with the relevant channels of communication;

• meeting with and advising prospective parents and students;

• participating in marketing and promotional activities;

• ensuring a warm, friendly, welcoming, structured and disciplined learning environment;

• Organizing and host join stream activities.

Works Cited

Borba, Mary F. “From Teacher to Administrator: What Does It Take?” Principal 88.5 (May-Jun 2009): 53-54. Print

Clandinin, D. Jean; Connelly, F. Michael. “Teacher as Curriculum Maker.” Handbook of Research on Curriculum: A Project of the American Educational Research Association. Ed. P. Jackson. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1992. Print.

Covaleskie, John. “On Education and the Common Good: A Reply to Coulson.” Education Policy Analysis Archives 2.11 (Aug 10 1994). Digital file.

Earley, Peter.; Weindling, Dick.. “Do School Leaders Have a Shelf Life?: Career Stages and Headteacher Performance.” Educational Management Administration & Leadership 35.1 (Jan 2007): 73-88. Print

Eisner, Elliot W. The Educational Imagination: On the Design and Evaluation of School Programs. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1979. Print

Garet, Michael S; Porter, Andrew C; Desimone, Desimone, Laura; Birman, Beatrice F; Yoon, Kwang Suk. “What Makes Professional Development Effective? Results from a National Sample of Teachers.” American Educational Research Journal 38.4 (Winter, 2001): 915-945. Print.

Gold, Barry Allen. “Punctuated legitimacy: A theory of educational change.” Teachers College Record 101.2 (1999): 192-219. Print.

Guskey, Thomas R. “Leadership in the Age of Accountability.” Educational Horizons 86.1 (Fall 2007): 29-34. Print.

Hallinger, Philip; Snidvongs, Kamontip. “Educating Leaders: Is There Anything to Learn from Business Management?” Educational Management Administration & Leadership 36.1 (Jan 2008): 9-31. Print.

Hannay, Lynne; Seller, Wayne. “The Influence of Teachers’ Thinking on Curriculum Development Decision.” Insights into Teachers’ Thinking and Practice. Ed. C. Day, M. Pope & P. Denicolo. Lewes: Falmer Press, 1990. Print.

Hansen, Spencer D. “The Academic Evolution of TEAMING.” Principal Leadership 9.7 (Mar 2009): 33-36. Print.

Kimball, Steven M; Milanowski, Anthony. “Examining Teacher Evaluation Validity and Leadership Decision Making Within a Standards-Based Evaluation System.” Educational Administration Quarterly 45.1 (Feb 2009): 34-70. Print.

Kirkpatrick, Clark. The Academy for International School Heads (AISH) Recruiting Handbook. Ed. Edward Greene. AISH, 2007. Print.

Leithwood, Kenneth; Jantzi, Doris. “Linking Leadership to Student Learning: The Contributions of Leader Efficacy.” Educational Administration Quarterly 44.4 (2008): 496-528. Print.

Lukaszewski, James E. “The Ingredients for Good Leadership.” School Administrator 65.7 (Aug 2008): 16-17. Print.

Marshall, Kim. “The Big Rocks: Priority Management for Principals.” Principal Leadership 8.7 (Mar 2008): 16-22. Print.

McLaughlin, M. W; Mitra, D. “Theory-based change and change-based theory: Going deeper, going broader.” Journal of Educational Change 2.4 (2001): 301-323. Print.

Ripley, Amanda. “What Makes a Great Teacher?” The Atlantic Online (Jan-Feb 2010): 3. Web. 25 Jan 2010.

Sorenson, Richard D. “The Administrative Power Grab.” School Administrator 64.6 (Jun 2007): 34. Print.

Spillane, James P. “External reform initiatives and teachers’ efforts to reconstruct their practice: the mediating role of teachers’ zones of enactment.” Journal of Curriculum Studies 31.2 (1999): 143-175. Print

“The High-Wire Job of Charter School Leadership.” Education Week 28.3 (2008): 6-8. Print

Wilson, Steve F. Learning on the Job: When Business Takes on Public Schools. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006. Print

V. Recommendations

Of the many questions that were covered, I now return to the most essential: What plausible mechanisms are available for SUIS to increase its supply of exceptional school leaders? Each conclusion of this practicum (II, III, IV) offers a basic recapitulation of important developments and it would make sense to produce some informed recommendations from these points. Rather than reiterate the same ideas again, I have instead selected four ideas that encompass the most essential components of this practicum. The procedures involved during the stages of new leadership from recruitment to contract renewal are cyclical, interconnected, and overlapping - qualities which my recommendations will reflect. Without further ado, I humbly submit these recommendations for increasing the quantity of exceptional school leaders.

Understand that only rarely is a strong leader developed from a mediocre one
The first recommendation is not a specific action per se, but a willingness to accept a simple truth. Though it contravenes one of education’s most sacredly held beliefs about learning the simple truth is that a strong leader is not created by the company from scratch (if that were possible, the payoffs would be incalculable), but rather developed due to the inherent capabilities that allow him or her to benefit from the effects of training, support, and experience. In other words, a strong leader must be “found” before he or she can be trained.

According to many articles dealing with school leadership, the school leader position is characterized by such varied and unpredictable factors that no amount of training will ever satisfy everything. Leaders can be scalded for being either too attentive or too lacking in interest, too strict or too loose with rules, too empathetic or too critical with evaluations, and so on. And yet, some leaders can prevail under such dramatically turbulent environments because they possess the adaptability, proaction, and interpersonal intelligence to reconcile these snags.

Several articles in my literature review were authored by such caliber of leaders trying to offer useful advice to others in their position. Aside from one article which discussed implementing specific business strategies (Hallinger and Snidvongs), the others (Borba; Guskey; Lukaszewski; Marshall; and Sorenson) focused more on attitude adjustments and adopting new perspectives. While such advice would be effective on those who only require a small push in the right direction, it would be useless on those who are not capable leaders to begin with. Good leadership is almost always acknowledged as a mindset rather than a set of defined standards of good practice. The latter can be trained, the former cannot.

Another factor pointing to the realization that school leaders are not trained to be successful is the sheer weight of evidence provided by Steven F. Wilson. He documents several cases where large amounts of money and resources are invested into developing strong leaders with little success (239). The best leaders were always the ones who demonstrated promise during the early stages of their career before any major training even began (240).

The main point to take from all this is to spend a majority of time and resources on improving recruitment. More importantly however is that by accepting the fact that leaders are not as malleable as companies want them to be, training can become more focused and evaluations more accurate and effective. Remember again that we are talking about truly strong leaders – the types who can single-handedly make noticeable jumps in school performance. Such leaders do not just hatch from the shell of an ordinary individual and yet companies determined to develop excellent leadership continually waste significant resources because they are convinced by the fallacy that given enough training, things will eventually improve.

Establish a realistic leadership profile and stick to it
If asked to describe the ideal school leader, most people would do well to just read a list of positive character qualities: confident, authoritative, optimistic, passionate, can challenge oneself, self-aware, enterprising, supportive, loyal, outcome focused, can sustain changes, can build teams, can spread out tasks, committed, etc…

The first step to a successful recruitment is to know exactly what kind of leader is desired, which could involve little more than sketching out a list of requirements and traits. The difficulty however, is in setting the bar somewhere between requirements high enough to be met by the truly qualified but not so high that a leader is unattainable. Establishing a set of qualifications and requirements that go beyond the conceivable is difficult to avoid when you consider the large variety of tasks leaders have to accomplish, but doing so not only inhibits a careful and conscious sense of decision making, it also means every candidate chosen is accepted as an amiss. Such profiles are inevitably characterized by paradoxical requirements that can only lead to settling for less.

Alternatively, a profile that is realistic and achievable, i.e. one that thoughtfully measures the advantages against the limitations of potential candidates can result in a clearer discernment for the general qualities that are aligned with the company’s priorities. Establishing such profiles will make screening easier and allow interviewers to focus on questions that can elicit better responses. However, it is absolutely essential that whatever profile the company decides on be compromised as little as possible when making a final decision. Selecting an unsuitable candidate will have immediate unfavorable effects on the school’s performance and reputation.

Sticking to the originally desired profile is also important during evaluations. The profile acts as a set of criteria in which performances are measured against. Wavering will only result in lowered standards.

Do not underestimate the value of instructional leadership
I mentioned above that a profile for an excellent leader is inevitably characterized by paradoxical requirements. One of the paradoxes discussed at length in this practicum is the choice between instructional leadership and business management because very rarely does a leader come with the skills and expertise in both. Because SUIS is founded and run mainly on business principles, it seems appropriate to want leaders who are administratively adept first. And yet over and over, every article on effective leadership lists academic instructional ability as the most critical skill to possess (including the Wilson book on business and schools). Not only is this trait absolutely necessary for monitoring and improving student achievement, but it is the main contributor to making strong and binding relationships with teachers.

If I had to make one criticism about how SUIS manages its school leaders, it would be this. The company seems to underestimate the importance of instructional leadership. The principal’s job description treats academic achievement as a task rather than a strategy; and it is not listed as a major obligation for the leader to interact directly with the school’s teachers. This view is further supported by the interview questions found in the AISH interview handbook which only broadly addresses instructional leadership rather than focus in on the finer details that would reflect the leader’s competence in raising students’ standards. Finally, the SUIS principal evaluation although involving teaching and learning to a large extent, does not devote enough effort to the dynamic relationships with teachers, which is what takes up a significant portion of the school leader’s job and is crucial to the success of academic programs.

SUIS is established by an organizational culture which thrives on instruction, data, and results. It needs leaders who possess not only experience as senior educators, but those willing to be consumed with "instructional quality and the data by which to manage it" (Wilson 350). Leaders must be fluent in instructional programs so that they could coherently cite test results in support of whether said programs were gaining traction and aid those teachers who require assistance. And while SUIS is correct to want to emphasize business and financial capabilities in their leaders, the school simply cannot succeed financially if its leaders’ instructional guidance is unable to keep academic results high.

Have a systematic procedure in place for keeping track of job satisfaction
SUIS’s mission-driven culture and mandatory “East meets West” occupancy agreement means that there are prescribed limits to the amount of flexibility the school leader is permitted in the work environment; and yet SUIS needs leaders who are resourceful and proactive enough to fill in blanks and multitask without supervision. Conflicts of interest are sure to arise when charismatic and outspoken leaders are required to meet challenging objectives while restrained to certain company policies. Special measures must be made to keep leaders strongly committed to their job without coming at the expense of the company’s design and protocols.

We already know that SUIS employs a separate department for administering and analyzing evaluations. School leaders are given their first evaluation after six months and then subsequent ones each year after. These evaluations thoroughly cover almost every aspect of the leader’s job, but rather than focus solely on level of performance, evaluations would do well to also gather data on assessing the leader’s level of job satisfaction. Job satisfaction is very likely related to job commitment, so it would be wise to track these attitudes early. By including it in a performance evaluation, SUIS will know whether a particular freedom or power has been rightfully earned.

The limited flexibility permitted by SUIS also means the head office will have to be readily available to offer support and issue new challenges to the school leader in order to preserve commitment. For instance, work exhaustion and frustration are feelings that seriously affect job satisfaction so evaluations should strive to detect them before they become problematic. In these cases, the company should apply support passively such as help in reprioritizing objectives and distributing tasks to other available staff so that school leaders still feel they are in control when the challenge is overcome. Leaders are more likely to commit if the head office offers support and shows understanding without applying too much direct control.

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It feels highly audacious to make recommendations on an issue as complicated and formidable as school leadership to a company I only had e-mail contact with for the last seven months. Although the subject of this practicum surrounds the policies and actions made by Shanghai United International Schools, none of the research was conducted onsite at the company’s headquarters or any of its branches. Instead, inferences were drawn through what could be gathered from websites, company documents (accessed with permission), and lengthy e-mail correspondences with the director of the international stream.

Perhaps if given more time or another opportunity, this practicum would include interviews and surveys with some of SUIS’s senior educators and entrepreneurs in order to elicit the valuable insights that come from years of first-hand experience in hiring and working with school leaders. Until then I have only the assistance of a thoroughly conducted literature review to extend the depth of my arguments. Part of the advantages in conducting a literature review is that valid insights can be deduced by the reoccurrence of similar ideas made by several different authors. When these ideas do not correspond to the raw data provided by SUIS, it makes them worth looking into. The main intent of this practicum has from the beginning been little more than to extend some possibly overlooked ideas about increasing exceptional leadership to the SUIS head office.

When I began this practicum in September 2009, I was fully aware of the difficult and expensive conundrum that school leadership created for education companies. I knew that successful school leadership is an issue far too complicated for the pages of this practicum and there is more ground to be covered in areas such as psychology, and business theory. This understanding motivated me to avoid ideas that were too hypothetical and explore ones more grounded in reality. Overall, I feel I have delivered a project that honestly explores a complicated and sometimes controversial subject. School leadership will always be an important area of education theory and practice. This practicum has given me the opportunity to develop a firm foundation on it.

IV. Conclusion

Companies such as SUIS need to be extra acute in who they eventually decide to hire for a school leader position. Even a “strong leader” who fits the profile flawlessly will come with some drawbacks. The type of individual able to lead a school to success is often engaging and forceful, willing to take orders during the initial period of induction, but eager for a less restrictive environment. Too little direction from the company may come at the expense of fidelity to the organization’s model. Too much direction will generate bitter conflicts of interest. The company must take consideration in how it will gradually prescribe power and how a mutual exchange of trust and respect will develop.

Training begins as a period of intense mentoring that gradually phases into less direct support. Although SUIS follows training as recommended by several theorists, its effects will not be revealed until after the new leader begins managing the school unsupervised. Few leaders are ready-made for success and it is the responsibility of the company to keep close checks and administer thorough and consciously designed evaluations at regular intervals. Problems must be identified early and accurately so that they can be dealt with to conclusion.

Aside from keeping leaders sharp, they must also be kept committed. Strong leaders mean nothing if they are not dedicated to the job. The school leadership position should have a sense of worth and purpose to it. SUIS must ensure that its design is made to be challenging and that a supportive network is available when tasks begin to overwhelm. The assurance that the company they work for is aware and understanding of their concerns allows school leaders to maintain dignity and a sense of respect for their employer.

IV. Inducing Commitment

The pressures and expectations that come with being a for-profit education institute are immense. As an education provider, the company is held highly accountable for all outcomes emerging from their schools, and when confronted by parents, stake holders, and media, the company must be able to address any issues with confidence and authority. Naturally, SUIS tries to assume as much control over its schools as possible which includes everything from knowing which instructional programs are running to tracking every detail of profit and spending.

When it comes to finding and directing school leaders, it is probably difficult for the company to have to accept that so much of each school’s success is due to the plans and actions of a single individual rather than the mechanisms that drive its comprehensive design. Successful scalability would call for a design that was “leader proof” similar to the “teacher proof” curricula proposed and tinkered with in the 1960s. Until such a school design miraculously becomes available, companies have little choice but to travail somewhere between “leader proof” and “leader dependent.” The SUIS principal evaluations for instance, clearly demonstrate the company’s attempt to maintain control of their model while relying on the foresight, proaction, and direction of a strong capable leader.

As discussed previously in Section II, the company’s need to remain in command is at odds with the type of charismatic school leader needed to run a school. When a company such as SUIS first opens a school, it is almost always successful because the school leader was either part of the founding team or had a much larger stake in the business. However with the drive towards expansion and scaling, school leaders hired from outside the company are required to be just as vigorous and dedicated while also adhering to strict company procedures. Inducing commitment in school leaders is a major challenge especially if companies such as SUIS want good leaders to stay on board for a period longer than their initial contract.

Steven F. Wilson documents several cases of companies attempting to keep their school leaders committed without compromising organizational models and indicates that none of them are completely successful. The now defunct Advantage Schools tried to expand job flexibility by allowing leaders to “take any actions with respect to parental involvement.” (242). Beacon Schools invested heavily trying to train staff at the corporate office to be able to assist leaders at any time of the day by phone. (244). SABIS provided leaders with a program whereby they could gradually earn more control of their school after completing specific objectives (245). And National Heritage Academies “convenes all principals once a week to identify and resolve common issues. […] If a principal could make a clear argument for a proposed change in curricula, the organization would give full support.” (248).

SUIS too finds it challenging to encourage loyalty in their leaders. While the company allows their leaders a respectful amount of flexibility in choosing academic programs and in staffing, mandatory and encompassing procedures such as “East meets West” can be discouraging. In comparison to the examples cited by Wilson, SUIS employs methods similar to SABIS and National Heritage Academies. Leaders can earn more control of their curriculum by meeting certain expectations, and they are also given opportunities to convene with other leaders to discuss curriculum changes with the director of the international stream.

Inducing commitment is a balancing act between keeping to objectives and respecting the school leader’s dignity. Specific objectives may differ at each site and some leaders will demand more for their loyalty than others, so a precise plan of action would be difficult to conjure. On the other hand, understanding why leaders lose interest in their jobs can offer some tactical knowledge in how to make commitment more stable. Peter Earley and Dick Weindling’s study on the “shelf-life” of school leaders found that the biggest factor contributing to a leader’s commitment is the availability of “fresh challenges.” (82). Leaders want a sense of purpose in their work and once their work becomes repetitive, satisfaction will begin to wane. An anonymously published study in Education Week, offers a different reason claiming that a loss of commitment is caused mostly by work exhaustion. The study claims that leaders feel frustrated by the insufficient time provided for strategic planning and that “matching expenses with enrollment-driven income are anxiety-provoking and time-consuming concerns.” (‘The High Wire Job’ 8).

A work environment that encourages loyalty and satisfaction is something that needs to be constantly maintained through some kind of support and involvement by the company. Issues such as work exhaustion should be identified and dealt with before they become debilitating using strategies such as close monitoring, regular evaluations, and the encouragement of open communication with the head office. In cases where leaders are overwhelmed with several demands at once, the company should also be available to help with prioritizing and distributing certain tasks. Overall, if leaders cannot have full reign of their schools, they should at least be given the assurance of a supportive work environment.

Less direct contentions such as a lack of fresh challenges will likely involve a different sort of involvement by the company. “Fresh challenges” is not something that can be readily provided (for instance in the form of new objectives and curriculum changes), but rather something the leader needs to be able to find on his or her own. Truly charismatic leaders will always find a new challenge and truth be told, few leaders working for SUIS will ever feel “bored” as the school design is never allowed to plateau. Therefore, the availability of challenges is a quality embedded in the school’s mission. If a school leader is to ever sincerely complain about the lack of challenges, the leader is either supernaturally competent or the school’s mission is in need of some major revision.

IV. Evaluation

When I think about evaluations, I try to imagine a scenario where somewhere there is a school leader performing exceptionally well. Test scores are high, enrollment is up, teachers are driven, and parents immensely satisfied. Would the leader’s superiors find it necessary to administer an evaluation? Not unless they wanted to learn precisely what this leader was doing correct, but for the most part as long as production and profit continue to increase, an evaluation is hardly the first thing on anyone’s mind.

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.

IV. Training

Recall once again what the purpose of this practicum is. By finding means to increase the quantity of strong leaders, an education organization would have a better chance of bringing a successful school design to scale. In other words, the organization relies more on the innate character qualities of the school leader than it does on its own school design for achieving success. Hence, the idea of a “strong leader” carries somewhat of a paradox when it comes to the issue of training. Aside from learning objectives and procedures specific to the particular school, a strong leader should really only require a small amount of training if any at all. After all, if “strong leaders” were something that could be trained and developed from scratch, somewhere a resourceful organization would have discovered the formula by now and the issues discussed in this practicum would cease to exist. But for now, organizations can only rely on finding individuals who meet predetermined criteria during the recruitment stage and try to “train” these new leaders into ones capable of raising student achievement and increasing enrollment numbers.

Steven M. Kimball and Anthony Milanowski note that new principal training in public schools focused primarily on understanding the procedures of the school system so that one could learn to manage the processes (42). However, for organizations such as SUIS, “managing” a school is not enough. Aside from running a school, leaders are required to actively seek means that would promote continuous academic and financial improvement. Therefore training would have to involve more than an understanding of system procedures. Training must allow for the development of a deep understanding of the school’s priorities so that new leaders will know how to diagnose key issues (Earley and Weindling 75).

SUIS takes its training very seriously using tightly controlled measures that are in stark contrast to the flexible work environment described previously. A training period can encompass several months and typically consists of the following phases. New school leaders begin their training by mentoring the director of the international stream every day on everything from basic tasks to long-term planning. The amount of close monitoring will depend on how quickly the new leader can adjust to the school’s systems, procedures, and culture after which mentoring will decrease to only a few hours a week or simply to contact by phone. During this intense training period new leaders are not permitted to make any major decisions without approval from the director of the international stream. New leaders are also required to contact the head office directly for assistance on any procedures they are unfamiliar with. At some point, the training will change focus to a concentrated and thorough understanding of the school’s international curriculum (IB PYP, ICE, IPC, etc...) which will include learning how to manage teachers under the program. Then after three months, SUIS takes the leaders from each school on a weekend retreat with the purpose of discussing and sharing ideas for better operating the SUIS design. Particular focus is given to new leaders and ways to better induct them into the organization’s protocols. New leaders are to treat this as an opportunity to learn as much as possible from the experience of more seasoned leaders. After the retreat, training is steadily phased out and more control is handed over to the new leader.

It is easy to understand why SUIS chooses to train leaders under such tight measures. A significant portion of the school design involves exploiting the mandatory “East meets West” collaboration process which can be extremely difficult without direct support. As early as possible, SUIS wants its leaders to know how to share resources, including teachers, with the Xiehe local stream without compromising the quality and aim of its international curriculum. This would also include finding ways that would allow international students to flourish under a certain number of local Chinese classes.

A literature review indicates that SUIS is in general agreement with several researchers in how school leaders should be trained especially when considering the challenging nature of the curriculum. With regards to understanding “East meets West” and international curriculum protocol, Kenneth Leithwood and Doris Jantzi found that district leaders’ direct efforts to train school leaders had important impacts on developing “masterly experience” and providing an appropriate model to follow (508). On developing a deep understanding of the international programs for the sake of leading teachers, Steven M. Kimball and Anthony Milanowski write that principals should be trained to “develop a firm understanding of effective teaching and learning in at least one content area [which] can be applied to professional development.” (65). With regards to mentoring the director of the international stream followed by the weekend retreat, Peter Earley and Dick Weindling found that most school leaders agree that “off-the-job training and development complemented the experiences gained as a deputy working with a good practitioner.” (74). Additionally, a study published in Education Week notes that “Expanding peer-mentoring opportunities for leaders is an easy and effective way for new leaders to learn and get support from experienced ones.” (‘The High Wire Job’ 8).

Unfortunately most of the research on leader training comes from survey results and not from methodological long-term studies on “effective” training methods. This lack of published studies could be due to the fact that training a school leader is an elaborate process only as useful as the quality of leader being trained, thereby making it difficult to design a study aimed towards standardizing the most effective procedures. As mentioned earlier, a leader trusted by the company to raise academic achievement is unlikely to need much training at all except for the most specific policies. This idea is alluded to in a study by Kenneth Leithwood and Doris Jantzi who researched school leaders’ self-efficacy – the belief that one is capable of performing in a certain manner to attain certain goals. The researchers found that the positive effects of direct training are limited to a certain timeframe. Afterwards direct training has almost no effect on a school leader’s self-efficacy (522).

Even though companies such as SUIS invest so much into their leader training, there is little evidence to suggest that training is enough to build the type of strong leader described in this practicum if the individual chosen lacks certain desired qualities. While specific procedures and mandatory objectives are a necessary part of the job, much of the skill and competence of a good leader are inherent and selected for during the recruitment stage. The effort put into training should go towards enhancing and promoting the acquirable skills of an already competent person as opposed to trying to build the ideal leader from a blank slate. Effective training can only follow effective selection; therefore companies such as SUIS should invest deeply in recruitment before over-spending resources to improve training.

IV. Post-Recruitment

Over and over, the shared experience of education organizations is that the one factor separating a successful school from a mediocre one is the quality of the school leader. A strong school leader is a charismatic and forward-thinking individual, able to announce ambitious goals for student achievement and inspire the deep commitment of staff to realize them. In an ideal situation, the organization would need to intervene only a few times as the school leader would naturally solve all problems with only a motivating speech and some powerful hand gestures.

Back on earth this is almost never the case. No leader comes “ready-made” for success and even the most experienced and highly skilled leaders run into difficulty managing a school with or without mission-driven objectives. The previous sections of this practicum discussed finding strong leaders. The contents of this section will discuss what companies such as SUIS can do to develop and cultivate strong leaders after recruitment. The topics covered are training, evaluation, and inducing commitment.

III. Conclusion

Understanding the impact that leadership has on the success of a school should compel both organizations and school districts to think clearly about their hiring practices when seeking new leadership. The recruitment procedure, even one that is thorough and systematized, will be unruly because the standards for a strong leader are bound to exclude a large number of candidates.

It is worth summarizing a typical recruitment procedure again. Following the release of a recruitment ad, organizations must sift through an assortment of resumes and applications (which could vary from a hundred or so to just a small handful). Suitable candidates (if any) are chosen based on objective criteria such as past experience and certifications, which afterwards are verified again through interviews are reference checks. Whatever decisions still left to be made are based on internal feelings and leaps of faith.

While recruitment is a far more technical procedure than was made out to be in this practicum, the purpose of this section was to shed light on areas that would help in making final decisions more accurate and predictable. Understanding the motives and aspirations of potential candidates helps narrow down a pool of applicants; and identifying relevant interview questions helps focus the lens on the most qualified individuals.

However, even if a thorough and well-checked hiring procedure had been executed, there is still no guarantee that the individual chosen will prove successful. Whoever the organization decides to hire to lead a school will have considerable short and long term effects on the organization’s reputation. The next section will explore ways strong leaders can be developed by the organization as well as actions the organization must take in keeping a strong leader committed to the school over a long period of time.

III. Making a Decision

Several theories exist regarding the most effective means of using interviews to make final hiring decisions. These theories encompass a large realm of knowledge and expertise that will not be covered in this practicum. However, careful discrimination should be exercised when hiring for a role as significant as school leader so organizations would be wise to implement a plan of action for choosing one favorite among several finalists. Here are a few recommendations for what such a plan should include.

Select for certain qualities
Organizations must decide ahead of time what the most critical qualities are for the desired school leader. This practicum suggests a few broad qualities (instructional ability, business attitudes, loyalty, etc.) but it is important that organizations also decide on some that are specific to the school that is hiring. For instance, should the leader be bilingual? Should he or she possess any particular certification? Whichever qualities the organization culls, there should be questions designed to evoke the desired responses. Candidates who fail to meet the most critical qualities are unlikely to make exceptional leaders.

Assign a value for each quality based on the candidate’s response
Each question should be assigned one or two qualities that can be given a score based on the answer. For instance, if the organization is seeking someone proactive, they will ask candidates to talk about controlling a situation, and then rank their proaction based on their answers. By the end of the last interview, each candidate should be represented by a score sheet assigning a numerical value to each desired quality. This will make it easier to compare each candidate’s suitability.

Do not settle for less
Depending on the timetable, a final decision should not be made in haste. If the outcome is that there are no exceptional candidates, then it is recommended that the organization continue its search even if it means delaying a school’s opening (Wilson 203). Steven F. Wilson writes that settling for a less than exceptional school leader will lock the school in mediocrity (203). Organizations should use as much time and resources necessary to locate a leader they feel fully confident in hiring.

III. Interviews

Analyzing potential candidates for a school leader position can help companies such as SUIS make informed decisions about the types of individuals who may end up running one of their schools. If reviewing applicants that have responded to a recruitment ad, knowing more about public and private school principals could make screening and selection more efficient. Or if a leader vacancy is on the horizon, understanding the ambitions of senior teachers could result in a leader who is already familiar with the school’s day to day routines. Everything considered, knowing as much as possible about potential candidates is useful in the initial stages of recruitment as selecting candidates who appear most qualified to be leaders is based on what can be learned from their previous experience and references.

Interviews
The most important procedure prior to making a decision is the interview, which is used to “elicit specific personal and professional attitudes and behaviors” as well as “allow more objective assessment of candidates’ strengths and weaknesses” (Kirkpatrick 5). When seeking new leadership, education companies such as SUIS use interviews to identify experience that is relevant to the school environment along with experience that can improve current standards. Interviews are also a way to assess whether or not a candidate’s personality fits with the school’s design and protocols such as the mandatory “East meets West” occupancy agreement.

As the purpose of this practicum is to study plausible ways to increase the number of quality leaders, interview questions that assess potential leadership ability should be given some focus. However, considering that interviews are unique for every candidate and outcomes based on the professional and “gut” instincts of the interviewer (the Director of the International Stream), I am not fit to decide how an interview should be conducted nor how a final decision should be made. Instead, I will study the interview questions presented in The Academy for International School Heads (AISH) Recruiting Handbook which is where SUIS references its interview guidelines. The seventeen-page text includes over sixty interview questions designed to assess the quality of potential teachers and administrators. I will examine how well the AISH handbook holds up in evoking the professional experience and character qualities for strong leadership I have developed up to this point in the practicum.

Instructional Experience
The first step to identifying exemplary leaders is to assess their level of instructional ability and whether their knowledge of instruction is analytical enough to earn the trust and commitment of teachers and students. At SUIS, school leaders are also responsible for selecting and maintaining major sections of the curriculum including training and certifying teachers which further necessitates the need for someone who knows instruction in and out.

Of the many questions that deal with instruction in the AISH handbook, about 15 are directed towards classroom teaching (ex. “How do you design a lesson plan?”) while only about five of them address instructional skills at a level relevant to school leadership.

“How have you raised student achievement in your school?”

“What are the three things that should be done in your current school to make it more effective?”

“How have you been involved in helping your school be more efficient and effective?”

“How do you create a purposeful and orderly learning environment?”

“If your administrator gave you a task or instruction you thought was inappropriate for your students, what would you do?”

Aside from being broad, two of these questions are almost identical and a few of them are so vague I almost reconsidered including them here. Without a doubt these questions do not adequately address the seriousness of making quality of instruction a primary focus in a leadership position. Questions that would elicit more relevant responses should reference the finer details and challenges of improving student learning on a large scale. For instance if the interviewer were to ask questions such as “What kind of real-time data would you use to assess whether or not an instructional program was gaining traction?” or “What techniques would you use to convince teachers of differing instructional attitudes to adopt a new method or program?”, the evoked response could tell much about the candidate’s level of expertise and attention to detail in raising academic ability. Such questions are especially important considering many candidates (i.e. public school principals) are likely to lack adequate instructional leadership experience.

Business Attitudes
Working in a for-profit institute such as SUIS requires a leader who can reach both academic and financial goals. From what was learned in the principal’s job description, SUIS expects its leaders to be able to function in a corporate environment which includes tasks such as formulating long-term strategies and effectively managing a line of colleagues. In Section II, I discussed the rarity in finding leaders who were equally skilled in both business and education so taking into account the importance of instructional ability, I proposed the idea that a school leader should be someone well-trained in instructional methods and yet convinced by the efficacy of business.

Interview questions should be designed to assess not business experience, but whether or not the candidate possesses the types of attitudes that would allow him or her to flourish under a business environment. Several articles in the literature review mention certain traits that school leaders working under a business environment should have such as proaction (Hallinger and Snidvongs 11), strategic planning (‘The High Wire Job’ 8), perseverance (Ripley 3), systematic and efficient problem solving skills (Leithwood and Jantzi 502), and being outcome focused (Lukaszewski 17). The interviewer should ask questions that would evoke these traits from the candidate’s responses and allow the company to gauge them based on appropriateness.

The AISH handbook includes several questions that address long term goals and past accomplishments. These questions and ones like them can be used by SUIS to determine how successfully driven each candidate is. For example, “What are your three best accomplishments in your current position?” “What do you hope to be doing five years from now?” and “What is the most interesting thing you have ever done in your life?” Since these questions are far more general than the ones about instructional experience, the answers would have to be analyzed carefully with a predetermined set of expectations.

Enterprising yet Loyal
The SUIS school design, with its mission-driven objectives and mandatory procedures, is also scattered with areas that require school leaders to “fill in the blanks” and problem solve according to his or her best judgment. On one end, a leader who cannot proceed without direction from above will be unable to navigate through the daily myriad of unique and unforeseen challenges. On the other end, a leader far too confident in his or her judgment may make decisions at the expense of the school’s design and protocols (Wilson 241).

Searching for ways to reconcile this complication, I suggested SUIS take up the challenging task of seeking leaders who are cleverly resourceful and yet respect and believe enough in the validity of the school design to want to follow it as outlined. If the interview is going well and the previous two criteria have been met, the interview should then be used to identify candidates who carry an appropriate balance of enterprise and loyalty. Additionally, the interview at this stage should be used to sell a convincing and credible school design that would attract this caliber of leader (without involving the issue of salary, yet). As difficult as this task may be, there would be far-reaching benefits to identifying potential leaders most likely to invest long-term commitment to the company.

To evoke this kind of affinity, the interviewer should illustrate the company’s sincerity in using business methods to produce quality education as well as demonstrate unyielding confidence in the school design. Keeping in mind that great leaders are more often than not extraordinary and dynamic individuals, the aim of the interview is to detect mutual goals and outlooks between the candidate and the company, but more importantly, to convince the candidate that the school is worthy of his or her commitment.

Interview questions should address the idiosyncrasies of the school leader position, and be stimulating enough to motivate the candidate into formulating an adept response. In practice, the interview is conducted by one of the company’s professional experts who have several prewritten questions intended to evoke different attitudes; however the AISH handbook offers several good questions for this function so long as the interviewer knows how to engage a response and build on it.

“What is your philosophy of education?”

“What can you do for us that someone else may not be able to do? How long would it take you to make a positive contribution to our school?”

“Describe a current situation in which your work has been criticized. What did you do about it?”

“What do you look for in hiring staff?”

“What are the most important attributes of a principal with whom you would want to work?”

Such questions illustrate the need for the interviewer to be as clever and resourceful (if not more) as the leader the company is trying to seek. Questions intended to assess certain principles and conceptions require careful scrutiny supported by professional expertise. It would therefore be a good idea to invite a senior school leader to either participate in conducting interviews or help in evaluating responses. A “team approach” to interviewing is also recommended in the AISH handbook (Kirkpatrick 5).

Other Areas
The sixty interview questions in the AISH handbook cover many other important areas of school leadership. Several questions address the candidate’s self-awareness, life-satisfaction, and opinion on international schooling. The latter issue is particularly important to SUIS due to the mandatory occupancy agreement with the local Shanghai institute, but my view is that qualities such as international focus are trivial if the qualities discussed previously are not met first.

The purpose of this section was to study how effective the AISH Recruiting Handbook would be in recruiting the type of leaders befitting the profile developed in this practicum. The verdict is that the handbook should add more focus on hiring administrators with adequate instructional ability, but aside from that, the conditions of the interview are determined significantly by the competence of the interviewer and the expectations of the company. Overall, a majority of the published interview questions can be useful and I have no doubt that The Academy for International School Heads have published an effective handbook.

III. Potential Candidates: Senior Teachers

Part of the disadvantage in selecting former principals from other schools is the fact that these individuals were not professionally developed under the SUIS design and therefore have little experience in mandatory procedures such as creating effective learning programs with the local Shanghai departments. A leader unaccustomed to unusual tasks will usually have difficulty meeting objectives during the first couple of years on the job (Earley and Weindling 75). However, a senior teacher at SUIS, particularly one who has accumulated an outstanding record of achievement, has years of first-hand experience and knowledge of the company’s procedures in detail. Is it worthwhile to peg these star teachers for a possible leadership position in the future?

As previously mentioned, most principals begin their careers in education as teachers ('The High Wire Job' 6), so it is important to acknowledge the ambitious and confident senior teachers who will eventually want more out of their careers (Borba 53). The drive to suddenly want to transition from teacher to leader often comes after years of successful results in the classroom followed by a desire to bring such results to scale within a school (Ripley 3). If companies such as SUIS want to increase their chances of finding strong leaders, then it would be wise of them to not overlook the leader candidates from among their own teaching staff; however, the company must find means of detecting teachers with large aspirations before a leadership position becomes vacant as it would require time and resources to develop the required skills.

One of the criteria established so far in this practicum is that school leaders must be skilled instructional leaders. The first important indicator that a teacher may one day aspire to become a great leader is if he or she excels in teaching and raising student achievement in the classroom (Borba 53). Such teachers can easily be detected through reputation, but it would require regularly and thoroughly conducted evaluations to ensure that the quality is earnest.

Ideally, the purpose of teacher evaluations is to “bring about improvement by focusing on specified goals and objectives” (Sorenson 34). In the case of seeking potential leader candidates among the teaching staff, evaluations would have to be revised so that they could allow the company to identify those teachers who would one day make exceptional leaders as well. This would likely involve a secondary set of measures including involvement from the human resources department. SUIS already utilizes a separate department for evaluations and assessments, which allows for more objective evaluations as school leaders often are not impartial enough to accurately assess the quality of their own teachers (Kimball and Milanowski 39).

Teachers identified as potential leader candidates due to their skills in the classroom, should be given additional duties that would develop and assess their organizational management abilities. Recalling the SUIS staff organization structure and the principal’s job description, school leaders are required to spread out certain tasks among their staff as a means to “phase out support” and “make collaboration [with teachers] more effective” (Hansen 34). Exceptional teachers identified through years of evaluation should be assigned certain responsibilities that would allow them to develop managerial skills such as training new teachers, conducting assessments, and taking part in strategic management projects including areas that involve financial matters. Phillip Hallinger and Kamontip Snidvongs write that "Project management provides a more systematic method of identifying and developing the leadership skills of people who are not in formal leadership roles. It is clear that schools must develop the leadership capacities of more than just the school head and deputies." (23). It would be the responsibility of SUIS to ensure that such outlets are available when required because the level of performance in such areas is likely to determine whether or not a senior teacher is capable of one day leading a school.

However, under the obvious advantages in selecting senior teachers for potential leader positions are some equally obvious disadvantages as well. For every senior teacher promoted to a school leader position, a teaching vacancy is left open, and depending on how much preparation was done in advance, time and resources will be needed to find a new teacher. Schools also must be cautious when two or more senior teachers are eligible for a leader position. One teacher being promoted over others may result in a loss of stability because the new leader is not considered “legitimate” in the eyes of other teachers (Gold 209). Lastly, should a senior teacher who aspires to be a school leader suddenly not get the position or wait too long for the position to become available, he or she is likely to seek the position elsewhere at another school thereby depriving the company of both a charismatic teacher and an eligible leader candidate.

III. Potential Candidates: Former Principals

As discussed in section II, the highest criterion for school leadership is adequate instructional training, which not only helps set the standards for academic goals, but more importantly earns the commitment of teachers for reaching said goals. SUIS certainly recognizes the importance of instructional leadership which is why one of its criteria for a school leader position is ten or more years experience running a public or private school.

Selecting former public or private school principals for a leader position is discussed briefly in Steven F. Wilson’s book about running public schools as businesses. Public school principals, Wilson discloses, rarely meet the requirements for such leadership positions because their main tasks were “given over to attending parent issues, community-related tasks, discipline, and facilities management, and not to instructional leadership.” (250).

Furthermore such principals have trouble with the uncompromising mission-driven objectives of a for-profit education company. Wilson writes that although there are occasionally “dynamic principals who despite overwhelming odds had raised student performance, […] they were successful precisely because they broke the district’s rules and gamed its systems to get what they needed for students.” (250).

Finally it is suggested that public school principals often have trouble adjusting to a new fast-paced competitive environment because it is in stark contrast to the securities and comforts offered by school districts (Wilson 251).

On private school principals, Wilson shows more optimism. He says that private school heads are accustomed to the “twin demands of academic quality and financial discipline,” (251) making their experience more corresponding to the tasks companies such as SUIS require. On the other hand, private school heads tend to lack the entrepreneurial drive to raise and improve student achievement, which is a large part of the company’s mission. According to a SABIS director, private schools rarely experience the need to improve academic achievement because most of their students are high-achievers to begin with (Wilson 252). So while these candidates may possess an acceptable background in instruction and finance, it is not certain whether they possess the motivation to raise standards and competitiveness.

Wilson’s brief experience with identifying potential candidates is revealing but offers little help in deducing ways to improve recruitment strategy. According to him, former public school principals have a poor track record in for-profit education companies, yet it is very likely that these are the types who make up a majority of the candidates SUIS has to choose from. Therefore to achieve some level of effective scalability, SUIS may have to disregard a large number of its applicants and subject more qualified ones to a rigorous set of screening procedures followed by a probationary period which tests for adequacy of academic instruction.

Wilson’s account also reveals that the quality of candidates could potentially improve should SUIS develop methods to attract more former private school principals who have a better background in the financial aspect of leading schools than public school principals. This view is likewise supported by an article about charter school leaders published anonymously in Education Week which emphasizes the importance of being confident in both financial and instructional matters ('The High Wire Job' 8). If we recall what was learned from the SUIS principal job description, this matter is not to be downplayed.

Lastly, a few articles suggest that the required ten years minimum experience is more than necessary. The anonymous article published in Education Week claims that a minimum of three years experience is enough ('The High Wire Job' 7), while a study on school leaders and “shelf life” finds that peak experience is reached after seven (Earley and Weindling 76). These affirmations, although not much, are worth considering should SUIS be seeking methods to widen its search for potential candidates.

III. Recruitment

Recall once again that SUIS is a network of schools sharing one name and central management. The ultimate goal of the company is to make quality education scalable so that each new school can operate as successfully as the previous one.

And yet over and over, ambitious education companies have demonstrated that even with a systemized set of procedures, a rewarding curriculum, and updated facilities, a school cannot succeed without the foresight of a strong and capable leader. That is why education companies everywhere have trouble consistently replicating the desired results of their first schools. Charismatic leaders, crucial to success, are uncommon and difficult to find. This dilemma seems to refute the possibility of bringing scalability to a school design.

However this has not stopped SUIS and others from trying. Knowing how to select the right people for the right job is crucial to the success of any enterprise and since its inception, SUIS has had detailed recruitment procedures and human resource strategies in place. Additionally, the company follows the interview and selection guidelines established by The Academy for International School Heads (AISH). Taken together, the entire process from CV screening to salary negotiation is very thorough and seemingly durable to consistent application.

The purpose of this section is to further explore the idea of bringing scalability to a school design by seeking methods that would help companies such as SUIS locate strong leaders more effectively. In the previous section I defined the type of leader that would best suit a SUIS school environment. Now I will discuss where such leaders can be found and how SUIS can make smart decisions about recruitment.

II. Conclusion

The specific requirements for a school leader will no doubt vary from school to school. Along with the necessary qualifications, SUIS also prefers those who have experience working under an international atmosphere in Asia. However, the point of this section was to shed light on the question of the kind of leader SUIS schools need to ensure success. I feel that without going too deeply into the day-by-day routines, an adequate enough answer has been developed.

As each leader will possess a unique background, experience, and personality, SUIS should aim for qualities that are more general, but aligned with the school’s priorities. First of all, the company should choose enterprising over loyalty, however in order to avoid renegade leaders or too much deviation from the requirements, its design must hold up to harsh scrutiny. SUIS wants smart candidates who are loyal not for the sake of it, but because they see value in their employers’ mission.

Second, SUIS should seek leaders who have ample experience in instructional leadership and school administration and yet are business-minded and enjoy the challenge of working under profit motives. The SUIS professional culture requires a school leader who can work with the competitive outlook and communication skills of a businessman, but is an educator at heart.

Once again, these are qualities that cannot readily be found, but at the very least are realistic. The question now is whether or not such qualities are recognizable during the recruitment stages, and if not, can they be developed after the fact? Whatever the answer is, SUIS must make careful decisions in how it identifies suitable candidates and develops them into successful leadership positions. SUIS selection and recruitment methods will be discussed in the next section.

II. Analysis: Instructional Leadership

Something quite obvious about the SUIS principal job description is that it reads more like the job requirements for the supervisor of a large company rather than that of a traditional school principal. For instance, strategic management is a term rarely used in school terminology, but common in office settings. Additionally the leader’s accountability areas list responsibilities in quantitative, objective terms indicating a drive to produce better outputs and qualities of service like a business. Could this imply that SUIS wants school leaders to view themselves primarily as businessmen rather than as educators? Given that SUIS is ultimately a for-profit company this would make sense, but at what point does business management come at the expense of instructional leadership? This is a question worth exploring because the literature on school leadership shows a remarkable record of principals reaping consequences due to a lack of instructional knowledge.

In their essay on educating leaders, Philip Hallinger and Kamontip Snidvongs note that “the hallmark of successful school leadership lies in the ability to blend managerial and leadership roles in the service of student learning.” (10). The distinction between “management” and “leadership” is important. Management involves running non-academic areas of the school such as scheduling, facilities maintenance, enrollment, and accounting, while “leadership” are the actions that lead to credibility in the eyes of the teachers. For school leaders, the former role is apparent, but the latter can be easily overlooked.

In her essay about the importance of school administration, Mary F. Borba writes that by being able to recognize effective and ineffective instruction, principals are better able to “support, mentor, coach, and instruct teachers to improve their competencies.” (53). In other words, without proper knowledge of instruction, leaders will have difficulty communicating with teachers – something that could eventually lead to “intragroup conflict” (Gold 208). In a study on the sustainability of reform implementations in fifteen public schools, Mclaughlin and Mitra noted that principals who were strong in administrative support but lacking in instructional leadership were unable to earn the commitment of their staff (311).

A lack of proper communication channels also puts school standards at risk. In a study on teacher evaluations, Kimball and Milanowski noted that principals who lack the knowledge to give “constructive criticisms or recommendations on specific instructional strategies,” fail to induce teachers into improving their methods (61). Furthermore in a study on teacher professional development, the researchers found that leaders who could not integrate hands-on, content specific training into the daily life of the school, are less likely to produce “enhanced knowledge and skills.” (Garet et al. 935).

The above quotes come from researchers working in public school settings, so it is possible that the emphasis on instructional leadership is not held to the same standards in for-profit education organizations. However, in the few articles that could be found on school leadership in such institutes, the emphasis is the same if not more. In an article about charter school leaders published in Education Week, the anonymous author quotes the results of a survey that indicates “most charter school leaders are professional educators [whereby] the vast majority (74 percent) earned their highest degrees in traditional educational training from colleges of education [and] almost 60 percent are or have been state-certified school principals.”('The High Wire Job' 7). And Steven F. Wilson in his very thorough study on running schools as businesses concludes,

I found few principals of managed schools who were effective instructional leaders. Few were fluent in the instructional programs on which they relied. Very few could coherently cite test results in support of their claims, let along real-time data that revealed which classrooms and grades had gained traction with an instructional program and which others were as yet languishing. If the next [educational management organizations] are to make good on their claims to academic excellence, they must deploy school leaders who are consumed with instructional quality and the data by which to manage it. (350). (my bolds)

The last sentence of Wilson’s quote is worth emphasizing. The concern should not be whether management comes at the expense of leadership, but how the two can be effectively combined. As a private school’s survival depends almost entirely on enrollment numbers and parental satisfaction (profit), it makes sense that successful schools are constantly driven to improve curriculum and other outputs in a business-like fashion. As Wilson notes, leaders should be “consumed with instructional quality and data” much like the way a large firm is consumed with data on market shares and competitive pricing. “Leaders must be able to use information as a currency [because] many decisions about student learning must be made with supporting data.” (Hallinger and Snidvongs 13).

At the very least, schools want leaders who are competent enough to meet specific requirements and keep things running, but for organizations such as SUIS, this is not enough. These companies are mission driven to provide quality education and high levels of achievement. For a school leader, such a task begins with earning the trust and respect of teachers, who are the main agents of curriculum delivery (Clandinin and Connelly 363). The SUIS school leaders’ main responsibilities do happen to be steeped in instruction and learning but it is not readily apparent how these goals are to be aligned with the company’s overall “corporate” agenda. The fact of the matter is sufficient knowledge of schooling and instruction is absolutely critical and should be among one of the top criteria when selecting new leaders. But getting more to the point, an ideal school leader is not someone who begins his career as a skilled businessman and then changes focus to education, but rather someone well-trained in instructional methods and yet convinced by the efficacy of business.

II. Analysis: Flexibility

Studying the SUIS school design and the principal’s job description verifies precisely why it is precarious yet necessary that schools rely on the leadership of extraordinary individuals. While certain sections of the school are designed for standardization, many others are not, requiring the need for someone to “fill in the blanks” on a daily basis. Just look at how SUIS attempts to balance between a rigid, non-negotiable structure (East Meets West, core subjects), with an environment that provides the school leader with enough flexibility to maneuver strategies and set goals without constraint (hiring and firing staff, choosing programs, creating head positions).

For most principals, particularly in public schools, a flexible environment is often considered a necessity in order to get the job done. In their study on the “shelf life” of school principals, Peter Earley and Dick Weindling found that job flexibility is an inseparable aspect of the principal position due to unforeseeable variables and shifting goals. They write that today’s school leaders must “manage major multiple initiatives which originate externally, while at the same time, attempt to integrate themselves and shape the culture of the school.” (76). Similarly, in a study on linking leadership to student learning, Kenneth Leithwood and Doris Jantzi found that leaders with high levels of belief in how malleable their working environments are, have much effect in mandating higher learning standards within their schools (502).

Although SUIS does provide some degree of malleability in the school design, mandatory directives such as the “East Meets West” occupancy agreement and the goal of scalability means there must be limits to how much flexibility school leaders are permitted. This balancing act is not an unexplored issue but a dilemma faced by practically all for-profit institutions. Steven F. Wilson, former CEO of the now defunct Advantage schools writes about seeking out potential school leaders.

One set of requirements argues for hiring “self-starters” – enterprising leaders who are confident in their judgment and accustomed to exercising it. […] Principals must function like entrepreneurs, rapidly hiring dozens of staff members, […] appeasing impatient parents, and generally lurching from one crisis to the next. The other set of requirements calls for loyal, diligent managers who take pride in the care with which they implement the company’s school design and protocols. The first type of candidate might bristle at being told what to do or how to do it; the second might flounder in an unstructured environment where each day brings new problems for which there are no ready solutions. (241)

Like many privately run schools, the obvious consequences of working under a design that is both rigid and flexible is that it requires school leaders to balance characteristics that often run against one another, making scalability even less plausible. In order to maintain a systematized method of school leadership, SUIS must draw a line in the sand somewhere.

The principal’s job description demonstrates an attempt to convert these inherent contradictions into something more coherent. By listing several tasks and requirements but providing no details about how to accomplish them (something that would be difficult and inefficient for SUIS to do), job flexibility is neutralized by an ample amount of job description. In other words the school relies on the leader to carry out tasks using one's own resourcefulness but it specifies exactly what it wants achieved leaving little room for deviation. How well this strategy works is an entirely different issue, but at the very least it illuminates part of the answer to the question I am asking which (in case you forgot) is what kind of leader do SUIS schools need to ensure success?

SUIS needs leaders who are cleverly resourceful and yet respect and believe enough in the validity of the school design to want to follow it as outlined, a characteristic no more easier to find than anything originally hypothesized. But pessimism aside, such a quality is realistic and SUIS could implement procedures that would better seek out these types of leaders. For instance, the pressure is now on for SUIS to sell a convincing and credible design that would attract this caliber of leader to the school – a topic that will be discussed in a later section.