They would do so in a fashion ideally, so as to not merely prepare students to take the test in rote fashion, but to make the new information a vital part of the extant educational process. (SEDL, 2004)
Such instructional leadership is subject to quality controls in-house. As part of the paradigm, public school teachers are consistently and regularly evaluated by administers, while administers receive feedback in a concrete and constructive fashion through evaluations by instructors, students, and parents that come into contact with them. Learning becomes a holistic experience of the school, and there is a strong trust, responsibility and faith placed in teachers by administers as teachers are assumed to have a vested interest in, and a sense of history of, the school community.
It is said that "while administrators' visions tend to focus on district- or school- wide instructional issues, teachers' visions tend to address teacher roles and student outcomes." (SEDL, 2004) This does not mean that the two 'camps' must have split functions or identities, rather the two of them out...
No greater vision can be realized without specific classroom attention, however to function to their maximum degree in the classroom, all teachers must have an idea and ideal of a larger goal for the district.
Thus, an administer might set, to use the above school testing scenario, a goal of passage for the entire school of 99% of a new statewide or citywide proficiency exam. He or she might examine special areas of attention that preliminary in-school testing or past results identified as lacking, and then confer with individual teachers as to the best way to structure a program to remedy those deficiencies in at risk students in a way that was integrative to the curriculum, rather than merely stapled on test specific material at the expense of other information.
Works Cited
Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL) (2004) "Leadership Characteristics that Promote School Change." Official SEDL Website. Retrieved 4 Dec 2004 at http://www.sedl.org/change/leadership/character.html
