Finding Your Leadership Focus by Douglas B. Reeves

Author:Douglas B. Reeves
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Teachers College Press
Published: 2011-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 7.2 Causes of Student Achievement Reconsidered

The second essential question regards the impact of leadership actions on student achievement and other key goals. Here is where leaders have the opportunity to identify the key leverage points for focus. Schools around the world claim to be “doing Marzano” by virtue of embracing the thoughtful and excellent teaching strategies resulting from the meta-analysis accomplished by Marzano and his colleagues (Marzano, 2007; Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001; Marzano et al., 2005). But even excellent research can yield terrible practice, particularly when leaders fail to focus on the actions with the highest degree of leverage. For example, Marzano’s research strongly suggests that feedback to students is a critically important instructional variable, provided that the feedback is accurate, timely, and specific. In fact, successful feedback is synergistic, providing support and reinforcement for other teaching strategies. Conversely, even the best curriculum and assessment systems will be of little value if students do not receive feedback that is accurate, timely, and specific. Schools are littered with very sophisticated assessments that approach psychometric perfection and, viewed in isolation, appear to be excellent tools. But if the feedback from those assessments is not provided to students in a timely manner, then it is impossible for students and teachers to use that excellent information. If the feedback is generic—principals report average scores for the building but are afraid to report the results of individual students and teachers—then the impact is no greater than if we attempted to reduce teenage obesity by reporting only the average weight, average diet, and average exercise behaviors for students for the entire school. Strangely, however, it is rare for a school leader to focus on this singularly important variable—feedback that focuses on individuals as well as whole school numbers.

Another example of ineffectual translation of research into practice is the use of checklists for the application of instructional practices without a consideration of the context of those practices. In “Setting the Record Straight on ‘High-Yield’ Strategies,” Marzano (2009b) tersely noted:

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.