Leading With Intention by Jeanne Spiller

Author:Jeanne Spiller [Spiller, Jeanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781945349836
Publisher: Solution Tree Press
Published: 2018-04-15T04:00:00+00:00

Using Data

Brian Wulf became principal of McLane High School in Fresno, California, in the middle of the 2017–2018 school year. Beginning one’s tenure in the middle of the school year is difficult enough; Principal Wulf spent the first few weeks at McLane trying to understand the school culture, evaluating how decisions were made, and deciding where he needed to focus his efforts. After reflection, conversations with Karen, his district support team, and his administrators (B. Wulf, personal communication, February 2017) and observations, Principal Wulf recognized that he needed to establish several priorities, set some short- and long-term goals, and create a shared leadership model. Principal Wulf knew he could not do this work alone—nor did he want to—so he focused on developing a guiding coalition that could address a few priorities at a time. Despite beginning in the middle of the school year, Principal Wulf felt things were going smoothly at McLane—until he faced a significant issue.

With twelve weeks left in the school year, Principal Wulf took the time to review course pass and failure rates and met with teachers who had concerns about students. Still being new to the school, Wulf was at a disadvantage as he really didn’t know the teachers or the students. He decided to focus his attention on class-by-class, student-by-student data to really understand how many students had at least one D or F, the number of graduating students, and how many courses that they were failing. He took this information to the guiding coalition. The team determined that they needed to present this to the staff and work with the teachers to create action plans for the students. Because of the time of the year, it resembled a triage plan and was very late for many students; however, the important factor is that the school was using evidence to make decisions and bringing awareness to student needs. This was a very good first step for Principal Wulf and his guiding coalition. Table 4.1 shows the data Principal Wulf collected on student failure rates.

TABLE 4.1: Data on Students Receiving Ds or Fs for the Third and Fourth Semesters of the 2017–2018 School Year

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