Factors Determining the Educational Placement for a Student with a Disability

      Many factors must be considered before determining the educational placement of a student with a disability.  However, Heumann and Hehir (2004) identifies the relationship between Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) requirements to the IEP process as a key factor (IDEA, 2004).  Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the student’s IEP forms the basis for the student’s placement decision.  Through the filter of federal law, policies, and procedures, the IEP must document, evaluate, and consider the student’s present level of academic achievement and functional performance (IDEA, 2004).  Therefore, the student’s present level of academic achievement and functional performance is arguably the greatest factor in determining a student’s educational placement.

            The least restrictive environment (LRE) mandate is key requirement for educating children with disabilities under IDEA (2004).  This mandate states:

To the maximum extent appropriate, children with disabilities…are educated with children who are not disabled, and special classes, separate schooling, or other removal of children with disabilities from the regular educational environment occurs only when the nature or severity of the disability of a child is such that education in regular classes with the use of supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily [Sec 612(a)(5)(A)].

            Interpretations of the meaning of least restrictive environment vary in special education.  These beliefs range from those that view the regular education classroom in a student’s neighborhood school as always the least restrictive environment (LRE) for all students, to those that advocate for a full continuum of program placements (Crockett & Kauffman, 1999).  Prior to 2000, the overriding emphasis for determining the LRE for students with special needs focused placement decisions on the “where” rather than the “how” of the “instruction that should be taught” (Crockett & Kauffman, 1999, p. 1).  It is now ethical and reasonable to accept “the environment in which all the needs of a student are best met, where the student acquires the greatest benefits from the educational program” (Curry & Hatlen, 1988, p. 420) is the least restrictive and thereby most appropriate environment.   

 The most enabling placement is one in which the student has the opportunity to fully participate in all aspects of the school experience including acquisition of special skills, thereby providing an academic, social, and emotional environment that encourages a holistic development in preparation for life.  The issue is the quality of education provided within a particular placement as measured by the degree to which specific, unique needs…can be met

(Hazekamp & Huebner, 1989, p. 1).

Explicating the general approach for determining student placement, Riley (2000) identifies how the IEP team of a student who is found eligible for special education services, must first consider if the student can be provided with an appropriate education in a regular education classroom with the services already there.  If not, then the IEP team moves through increasingly more “restrictive” settings, whereby subsequent consideration are on settings that become increasingly more segregated from non-eligible peers.  These settings may range from the regular education classroom with supplementary aids and service, to a slightly more segregated setting with the services embedded, to a more segregated setting modified with supplementary aids and services.

        Therefore, the most appropriate educational environment for an individual student with a disability must be based on the student’s needs as grounded in his or her present level of academic achievement and functional  performance, as determined through the educational team’s instructional and assessment processes and then specified in the IEP.  Depending on the student’s diverse strengths and areas for development, his or her need for instructional access to the general education curriculum may require different educational placements, for varying durations, and at different times during his or her academic career.  A continuum or cascade of services (Deno, 1962; Reynolds, 1970) will be necessary to explore and utilize services from a combination of programmatic options.  The model is not the problem.  Rather, too often the lack of collaborative and deliberate consideration and respect for the student’s present level of academic achievement and functional performance result in problematic decisions that adversely affect the integrity of the placement process.

To cite:

Anderson, C.J. (March 3, 2013) Factors determining the educational placement for a student

            with a disability. [Web log post] Retrieved from http://www.ucan-cja.blogspot.com/

References

Council for Exceptional Children (2003). What Every Special Educator Must Know (5^th ed.).                    

            Reston, VA: Council for Exceptional Children

Crockett, J.B., & Kauffmann, J.M. (1999) The least restrictive environment: Its origins and

            Interpretations   in special education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Curry, S.A., & Hatlen, P.H. (1988). Meeting the unique educational needs of visually impaired pupils

            through appropriate placement. Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness, 82, 417-424

Federal Register (2006). IDEA 2004 Regulations.  Retrieved from:

http://www.cec.sped.org/Content/NavigationMenu/PolicyAdvocacy/IDEAResources/Official_Fed_Reg_IDEA_Regs_2004.pdf

Hazekamp, J., & Huebner, K.M. (Eds.). (1989). Program planning and evaluation for blind and 

            visually impaired students: National guidelines for educational excellence. New York, NY: 

            American Foundation for the Blind.

Heumann, J.E. & Hehir (2004). Letter to the council of chief State School Officers.

            Retrieved on December 10, 2008 from http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/lre.osers.memo.idea.htm

Holbrook, M.C., & Koenig, A.J. (2000). Basic techniques for modifying instruction.

            A.J. Koenig & M.C. Holbrook (Eds.) Foundations of education: Vol. 2 (2^nd Ed., pp. 173-195).

            New York: AFB Press.

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 2004, Pub. L. No. 108-446.

Riley, R. (2000). Educating blind and visually impaired students: Policy guidance from

            OSERS. Retrieved from http://www.ed/gov/legislation/FedRegister/other/2000-2/060800a.html

Statement of Pedagogical Beliefs

To be effective, public education needs to implement the correlates of Effective Schools Research and tenets of social justice to promote equity in quality.  The result of such implementation would be optimal opportunities to learn for all students.  Effective Schools Research identifies the following correlates as being present in all cases of an effective school:

1.      Clear and focused mission

2.      Climate of high expectations

3.      Instructional leadership

4.      Opportunity to learn/student time on task

5.      Frequently monitoring student progress

6.      Safe and orderly environment

7.      Home-school relations (Lezotte, 1991)

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), reauthorized as No Child Left Behind (NCLB, 2001), requires instructional leaders utilize strategies, approaches, and program initiatives that are scientific or research based and frequent monitoring to close identified achievement gaps.  Prospective teachers and in-service teachers benefit from understanding the seven correlates of Effective Schools Research include these two variables within an inter-connected system.  Given any system is a "network of interdependent components that work together to accomplish the aim of the system" (Deming (1993), institutes of higher education (IHE) and other teacher preparation programs should increase expectations for knowledge of systems and the ability to think systemically. 

Given the interdependency of the seven correlates of Effective Schools, school leaders must approach them with the view of implementing them all at once.  Thus, a clear and focused mission as well as strong instructional leadership is required to move the other interdependent correlates from being an ideal to effective practice.  Since Effective Schools Research demonstrates that a result of schools ignoring the interdependence among the seven correlates is slow progress, then without strong, respected instructional leadership that can help bring consensus for a clear and focused mission, confusion about how to incorporate all the correlates simultaneously would prevail.

An Effective School’s mission, grounded in the seven correlates for reform, would expect success regardless of socioeconomic status (SES) of its students.  Stakeholders would therefore need to make the interconnected seven correlates more powerful within its mission than the power of the low SES to deny opportunity.  “Effective indicates that a school, teacher, or district is doing the right job.  Based on our definition of an effective school, this term specifies that the school must attend to the twin policy pillars of quality and equity.  Effective schools research has shown that the practices among effective schools have consistently been found to be more alike than different” (Lezotte & Snyder, 2011, p 17).

Frequent monitoring for success is more than testing (Lezotte & Snyder, 2011).  States utilizing large-scale testing to make high-stakes educational decisions must ensure alignment between such tests and the state’s curricula or learning standards.  Alignment provides a fairer measure of student learning.  As states became increasingly reliant on large-scale educational assessments, experts began to explicate scientific–based guidelines for developing and implementing assessment and accountability programs (Baker, 2001).  “Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing" (1999) was jointly published by APA, the American Educational Research Association and the National Council on Measurement in Education.  Guidelines.  A revision is pending.  State test developers have since found the following standards useful:

·         Utilize tests only for their validated purpose.

·         Avoid making high-stakes decisions based on the results of only one test.

·         Align tests to the states' curriculum standards, so that teachers can prepare students to succeed.

·         Ensure tests only measure the academic domain of interest, without unwittingly emphasizing extraneous factors.

·         Adjust test sensitivity based on school quality differences.

Educational psychology links the science of psychology with educational practice and provides teachers with evidence-based knowledge to support their day-to-day decision-making in the classroom.  (Bohlin, Durwin, & Reese-Weber, 2009).  The science element of educational psychology involves formulating theories and conducting research on those theories.  All teachers should practice action research.  As both consumers of research and practitioners of research, it becomes important for pre-service and in-service teachers to understand guidelines for what constitutes reputable research.

·         Avoid using newspaper and magazine articles, as they are not research articles.

·         Avoid Internet searches using search engines, because they may not yield credible sources.

·         Find and utilize peer-reviewed articles in scholarly journals at a local university library.

·         Find and utilize peer-reviewed articles in databases such as ERIC and PSYINFO.

·         Bookmark websites of professional associations and monitor them for links to new education research.

·         American Educational Research Association (AERA)

·         American Psychological Association (APA)

·         Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) (Bohlin, Durwin, & Reese-Weber, 2009)

Since 2006, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) has been actively advocating for educators, policymakers, business leaders, families, and community members to work together on a whole child approach to education.  The whole child approach to learning, teaching, and community engagement has been grounded in the belief that “each child, in each school, in each of our communities deserves to be healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged” (ASCD, 2010).  Advocates of these fundamental tenets have long considered them essential for ensuring students become college-, career-, and citizenship-ready, which is a desired outcome of the Effective Schools Movement.

In order to effectively lead a school using a whole child approach to education, a principal needs to be “visionary; effective instructional leaders; active learners; and influencers within their staff and the community” (ASCD, 2010).  As can be expected, the Whole Child Approach to education promotes policies and practices aligned to support the whole child.  This requires a change in how adults currently work together to educate children. 

Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) have emerged as perhaps the best, most agreed upon means of continual improvement in instruction and student performance.  PLCs are evidenced in a single school or online.  Models include study groups, action research teams, communities of practice, or conversation circles.  The essential focus of any PLC is for educators to work together, with a shared focus on learning and accountability to help all students learn at high levels.

Just as public schools needed to establish metrics for accountability of their teaching and learning mission, so too would institutes of higher education (IHE) and teacher preparation programs need to establish better metrics for measuring the competencies of their graduates, including knowledge of systems and ability to think systemically.  To address this, IHE and other teacher preparation programs must recognize the aim for graduating “instruments of systems change” rather than merely preparing individuals to administer curriculum. 

Basile and Nathenson-Mejía (2003) suggests the process for problem-based learning creates a healthy environment for reflection, discussion, and problem solving.  Their study illustrates how teacher candidates move from micro-reflection to self-reflection to macro-reflection resulting from a year-long engagement in a teacher education program within a professional development school.  Implications from their study suggest that problem-based learning is a valid process for the enculturation of teacher candidates to schools and to the profession of teaching.

To cite:

Anderson, C.J. (February 3, 2013) Statement of pedagogical beliefs [Web log post]

Retrieved from http://www.ucan-cja.blogspot.com/

References:

Basile, C., Olson, F., & Nathenson-Mejía, S. (2003). Problem-based learning: reflective coaching

for teacher educators. Reflective Practice, 4(3), 291.

Bohlin, L., Durwin, C., & Reese-Weber, M. (2009). Ed Psych: Modules. NY: McGraw-Hill.

Lezotte, L. W. (1991) Correlates of effective schools: The first and second generation.

            http://www.effectiveschools.com/images/stories/escorrelates.pdf

Lezotte, L. W., & Snyder, K. M. (2011). What effective schools do: Re-envisioning the correlates.

            Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

Schmoker, J, (1999) The Key to Continuous School Improvement (2nd edition) ASCD

The Disparity Between Rich and Poor Districts Create an Opportunity Gap

Regardless if part of a teacher preparation program or society as a whole, the adverse impact of the opportunity gap existing between richer and poorer school districts cannot be over-emphasized.  A district such as Scarsdale NY compared to East Harlem NY highlights and contrasts the real opportunities and threats to the learning for all mission resulting from an opportunity gap exacerbated by socioeconomic status (SES).  The reality that problems exist for families regardless of SES is indisputable.  However, the following may be helpful for understanding the real-life differences and opportunities provided for middle and upper SES students compared to lower SES students:

A study by UNICEF (2007) of the twenty-one richest nations in the world found the United States ranked last in almost every indicator of children’s well-being.  The United States had more children living in poverty (22%), had the worst record in child health and safety services, had the most children living in single-parent families, and had the lowest ranking in the positive health behaviors of its children.  Another analysis of poverty in America concluded that “disproportionately large numbers of American children remain poor” with 38% of children under 18 living in low-income families (Education Commission of the States, 2007).  Furthermore, the gap between the rich and the poor in the United States is widening.  Between 1979 and 2004, the after-tax income of the top 1% of the population nearly tripled, rising from $314,000 to nearly $868,000, for a total increase of $554,000 or 176% (with figures adjusted for inflation by using 2004 dollars throughout the analysis).  During that same timeframe, the average after-tax income of the middle fifth of the population rose a relatively modest 21%, or $8,500, reaching $48,400 in 2004.  Meanwhile, the average after-tax income of the poorest fifth of the population rose just 6%, or $800, during the past 25 years, reaching $14,700 in 2004 (Sherman & Aron-Dine, 2007).  Tax cuts enacted by the Bush administration in 2001 made the gap even more pronounced.  As a result of that legislation, in 2006, households in the bottom fifth of the income spectrum received tax cuts that averaged $20 and raised their after-tax incomes by an average of 0.3%, while households in the middle fifth of the income spectrum received tax cuts that averaged $740 and raised their after-tax incomes an average of 2.5%.  The top 1% of households, however, received tax cuts in 2006 that averaged $44,200 and increased their after-tax income by an average of 5.4% (Leiserson & Rohaly, 2006).  As one analysis concluded, “Income is now more concentrated at the top of the income spectrum than in all but two years since the mid-1930s” (Sherman & Aron-Dine, 2007).  From the liberal perspective, closing the student achievement gap required closing this cavernous and still growing gap between the poor and the middle class.  The disparity in achievement and academic potential between poor and middle-class students begins prior to children entering school and is only exacerbated during the school years (Lee & Burkham, 2002; Schemo, 2006; Steinberg, 1996; Rothstein, 2004).  Children of the poor are far more likely to attend lower-quality schools with substandard facilities, fewer resources, and less qualified teachers than their middle-class peers.  They return to homes and neighborhoods that are less likely to support student learning or communicate that learning is important (DuFour, DuFour, & Eaker, 2008, pp.49-50).  

The progressive perspective of this data is the problem does not originate in the schools but are societal conditions.  Such a perspective recognizes social conditions creating an opportunity gap are leading indicators in education and must therefore, be addressed if we ever want to truly mitigate the trailing indicator known as the achievement gap.  Mehlinger (1995) posits, “If America’s poor children could be provided the same conditions for growing up, including the same quality of schools, as those afforded to middle-class suburban youth, we would have no crisis (in education) at all” (p. 27).  Otherwise, the following describes what has been the result of the opportunity gap leading to a discrepancy in achievement:

A chilling editorial in U.S. News & World Report (Zuckerman, 2006) warned that education and family background are replacing race and gender as barriers to upward mobility.  Throughout most of the 20^th century, young boys and girls could choose to drop out of school and would still have access to the middle class.  That possibility is increasingly remote in contemporary America.  Today a school dropout earns only 65 cents for every dollar earned by the high school graduate and only 33 cents for each dollar earned by those with a bachelor’s degree (United States Census Bureau, 2006a).  Those with an undergraduate degree are most likely to move up from the income bracket in which they started, but a student from the top income quartile has a 1 in 2 chance of earning a degree, while the chances of a student from the bottom quartile earning a bachelor’s degree are less than 1 in 10.  A child in a family earning under $35,000 has a 1 in 17 chance (Brooks, 2006).  The American dream is receding from reach for many of our children.  Education opens not only economic doors, but other doors as well (DuFour, DuFour, & Eaker, 2008, pp.60-61).

Readers are encouraged to reflect upon the life opportunities provided to them.  How did your family rank on the statistical continuum related to SES as noted above?  Regardless of your high school successes, if you were a child in a family earning under $35,000 would you have been able to attend a college requesting $30K-$40K per year for annual tuition? 

This is why the seven correlates of Effective Schools Research (Lezotte & Snyder, 2011) address leading indicators of learning.  Schools interdependently implementing Effective Schools Research optimize the mission of learning for all regardless of SES factors.  We all desire to make a difference for our future students.  Collaborative leadership remind us of a sound mission, provide a clear vision for growth, require our professional integrity and competency, and detail an action plan for sustained success, thereby optimizing opportunities to change students’ destinies! 

As part of the solution, last April New York State Governor Cuomo established the New NY Education Reform Commission to make recommendations for future educational reforms.  On January 2, 2013; the bipartisan Commission provided eight key recommendations:

1.      Provide high quality full-day pre-kindergarten for our most at-risk students;

2.      Create statewide models for “Community Schools” that use schools as a community hub to improve access to public, non-profit, and private services/resources, like health and social services, for students and their families;

3.      Transform and extend the school day and year to expand quality learning time for students, especially in underserved communities;

4.      Improve the teacher and principal pipeline to recruit and retain the most effective educators;

5.      Build better bridges from high school to college and careers with early college high schools and career technical education;

6.      Utilize all available classroom technologies to empower educators to meet the needs of a diverse student population and engage students as active participants in their own learning;

7.      Pursue efficiencies such as district consolidation, high school regionalization and shared services to increase student access to educational opportunities; and

8.      Increase transparency and accountability of district leadership by creating a performance management system.

A Final Action Plan is expected in Fall 2013.  In the interim, educators and stakeholders are encouraged to review the Commission’s recommendations.  Submitting your ideas is essential for addressing the complex and diverse issues potentially impacting sustained reform for optimal student success.

To cite:

Anderson, C.J. (January 4, 2013) The disparity between rich and poor districts create an

            opportunity gap [Web log post] Retrieved from http://www.ucan-cja.blogspot.com/

References:

DuFour, R., DuFour, R., & Eaker, R. (2008). Revisiting professional learning communities at

            work: New insights for improving schools. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

Lezotte, L. W., & Snyder, K. M. (2011). What effective schools do: Re-envisioning the

            correlates. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

Marzano, R. & Waters, T.(2009).  District leadership that works. Bloomington, IN: Solution

            Tree Press

Reason, C. (2010). Leading a learning organization: The science of working with others.

            Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

Aligning a Response to Intervention System with Required Teacher Competencies

In collaboration with a multidimensional team of stakeholders that includes parents or guardians, a crosswalk between the correlates of Effective Schools Research and tenets of an effective Response to Intervention (RTI) program allows RTI to become an efficient and effective system.  This promotes equity in quality within schools committed to the pursuit of learning for all.  While there is a danger to prescribing interventions in a limiting fashion, RTI anthologies have the potential for providing a clearinghouse of research-based and success-proven strategies and interventions.  

Subsequent alignment of the district's non-negotiable goals with individual school needs and experiences (Marzano & Waters, 2009) should expand rather than limit the district's clearinghouse of research-based and success-proven strategies and interventions.  Promoting such a clearinghouse of identified successes ensures professional development is available.  This optimizes access, review, and implementation of a range of interventions, thereby enriching teachers through defined autonomy.

The core competency required for effective implementation of RTI interventions is the ability to correctly collect, analyze, and utilize data.  For many prospective and in-service teachers, data equates to math.  Unfortunately, too many teachers are uncomfortable with mathematics.  To address this, we will eventually need to recognize this country's math scores are related to too many teachers being over reliant on the text book rather than proficiency in "thinking mathematically” (Edelmuth, 2006). 

Therefore, Schools of Education and Alternate Route Teacher Preparation Programs need to ensure graduates are able to collect data, evaluate results, and be an honest consumer of the resulting data.  This becomes possible through better statistics and data analysis courses for prospective teachers.  Effective districts will need to complement this evolution through in-service professional development on collecting data, evaluating results, and being an honest consumer of the resulting data.

Frequent monitoring of student progress, and adjusting as indicated by results, is a correlate of continuous school improvement within Effective Schools.  This correlate requires teacher competency in collecting data, evaluating results, and being an honest consumer of the resulting data.  When teachers identify and prescribe an intervention, they often have difficulty accepting the need to change (adjust) if the prescribed intervention proves ineffective.  Too often the failure of the intervention is perceived a personal failure of the initial prescription, which can then delay the necessary adjustment.  For this reason, a district and school is well-advised to consider the following six ideas for successful development of an effective RTI system:

1. Encourage participation by key stakeholders during planning and implementation.
2. Elicit strong administrative support in staff development, instructional integrity, and data collection.
3. Provide in-depth staff development with mentoring, modeling, and coaching.
4. Begin follow-up trainings at the beginning of each school year.
5. Distribute a manual outlining procedures and materials.
6. Build Problem Solving Models including RTI into school schedules and the student improvement process (Lau, Sieler, Muyskens, et al, 2006).

Implementation of the effective RTI system can then begin.  However, potential problems will be omnipresent without administrative support and ongoing professional development.  The following core principles identify potential challenges for implementing RTI.   

• effectively teaches each and every student,
•  provides early intervention,
• uses a multi-tier model of service delivery,
• uses a problem-solving method to make decisions within the multi-tier model,
• uses research-based validated interventions/instruction,
• monitors student progress to inform instruction,
• uses data to make decisions, and
• uses assessment for three purposes: screening, diagnostics, and progress monitoring.

      Both pre-service and in-service teachers openly admit to the difficulty of monitoring student progress to inform instructional decisions.  The inter-relationship between the identified core principles makes the pursuit of a hierarchy subjective at best and futile at worst.  The correlate of frequent monitoring and subsequent adjustment drives the core principles for implementing RTI.  The ability to collect data, evaluate results, and be an honest consumer of the resulting data promotes the correlate of frequent monitoring and subsequent adjustment.  Teacher proficiency with data must therefore become a professional competency. 

To cite:

Anderson, C.J. (December 4, 2012) Aligning a response to intervention system with teacher

            competencies [Web log post] Retrieved from http://www.ucan-cja.blogspot.com/

References:

Edmonds, R. (1979). Effective Schools for the urban poor. Educational Leadership, 37,

15-24.

Lau, Sieler, Muyskens, Canter, VanKeuren, & Marston (2006).  Perspectives on the use of 
            the Problem-Solving Model from the viewpoint of school psychologist, administrator, and

            teacher. Psychology in the Schools, 43 (1), 117-127.

Marzano, R. & Waters, T.(2009).  District leadership that works. Bloomington, In: Solution

            Tree Press

The Correlation Between Positive School Culture and the Learning for All Mission

While school culture is evident in all schools, it is nevertheless, elusive and difficult to define (Hinde, 2002)  The difficulty of the quest is the reality that school culture is not static but rather shaped and reshaped through interactions with stakeholders, worldview perspectives, and reflective opportunities (Finnan, 2000).  Changing the prevailing school culture is both the most important and most difficult aspect of educational leadership (Barth, 2002).

Effective school leaders help shape the school's culture of learning for all by communicating the norms and values for high expectations as well as providing the tools for assessing elements supporting the school's purpose and mission.  The school’s culture needs to reinforce positive elements while transforming current negative areas hindering the learning for all mission.  The Character Education Partnership (CEP) believes character is an important attribute for a positive school culture.  The CEP posits two categories for defining character:

1) Moral character, as exhibited through high levels of kindness, honesty, and respect toward others. 

2) Performance character, as demonstrated by “perseverance, critical thinking, and commitment to quality” (CEP, 2012, p. 3). 

       Effective school leaders seek to adjust their school’s culture to create sustained school improvement by promoting the following three conditions: 

     1)      Measures of success and metrics for areas of improvement beyond mere test scores,

      2)      Comprehensive understanding of what entails “school culture" (p. 5),

      3)      Tools for developing and assessing the school’s culture and delineation of accountability for diverse aspects of the school’s culture (CEP, 2012).

      The principal, teachers, and parents are all school leaders needing to be available to shape a school’s non-negotiable culture (Peterson & Deal, 1998).  Collaboration is essential for developing systemic buy-in for promoting a school culture that drives sustained school improvement (Marzano & Waters, 2009).  Since “The public school establishment is one of the most stubbornly intransigent forces on the planet” (Marzano & Waters, 2009, p. 2), positive culture change needs new thinking, willingness, humility, collaboration, and a collective vision grounded in a clear mission.  The effective school leader and district leader must uniformly explicate a positive change plan to rally other stakeholders to collaboratively develop consensus and thereby effectively implement required change initiatives. 

Stakeholders will need to put the past in perspective and willingly embrace a new view of collaborative district and school leadership, which is a critical component of effective schools (Marzano & Waters, 2009).  The change begins with recognizing that although schools are loosely coupled by design, they can be tightly coupled in relation to non-negotiable goals and a culture for promoting student learning.  Therefore, the district office and its leaders need to guide the vision and consensus toward a district-wide culture based on “defined autonomy” (p. 8).  It is then essential to communicate this mission and the clear vision to both internal and external stakeholders, otherwise, change is slow or nonexistent.

The mutual responsibility of a district leader and school principal within a highly reliable district is to develop “a shared vision of what the school could be like (Marzano & Waters, 2009, p. 100).  This is directly related to the responsibility of superintendent’s leadership to “ensure collaborative goal setting” (Marzano & Waters, 2009, p. 94).  By working with the staff to develop a culture perceived by stakeholders’ to advance the new mission of learning for all within its school, the educational leaders develop a collaborative vision of what could be possible for the school. 

Therefore, “during collaborative goal setting, the principal’s role is twofold relative to this responsibility—to ensure that a meaningful, shared vision is constructed at the school and to ensure that the school-level vision incorporates the district-level vision as manifested by the nonnegotiable goals for achievement and instruction” (Marzano & Waters, 2009, p. 95).  Quoting results from Jenkins, Louis, Walberg, and Keefe (1994, p. 72), Lezotte and Snyder (2011) reinforce the most significant feature common to world-class schools “was their continual effort toward becoming “learning organizations with a commitment to continuous problem-solving and a sense of shared responsibility for improvement” (p. 67).  A consistent exhibition of a clear vision leading toward the desired mission, commitment by all to learning for all, and sharing the responsibility for success of the mission, certainly appears to be the minimal culture of an effective school.

To cite:

Anderson, C.J. (November 3, 2012) The correlation between positive school culture and the

            Learning for All mission [Web log post] Retrieved from http://www.ucan-cja.blogspot.com/

References:

Barth, R. S. (2002) The culture builder. Educational Leadership 59 (8) 6-11

CEP (2012) Developing and assessing school culture: A new level of accountability for schools

            Retrieved from: 

http://www.rucharacter.org/file/DevelopingandAssessingSchoolCulture_Final%5B1%5D.pdf

Finnan, C. (April 2000) Implementing school reform models: Why is it so hard for some schools

and easy for others? Paper presented at the meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED446356).

Hinde, E.R. (2012) School culture and change: An examination of the effects of school culture

            on the process of change.  Retrieved from: http://usca.edu/essays/vol122004/hinde.pdf

Lezotte, L. W., & Snyder, K. M. (2011). What effective schools do: Re-envisioning the

            correlates. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

Marzano, R. & Waters, T. (2009).  District leadership that works. Bloomington, IN: Solution

            Tree Press

Narvaez, D. (2010) Building a sustaining classroom climate for purposeful ethical citizenship, in

Lovat, T & Toomey, R. (Eds.), International Research Handbook of Values Education and Student Well being. New York: Springer.  

Peterson, K. and Deal T. (1998). How leaders influence the culture of schools. Educational

            Leadership 56 (1), 28-30.