Resources

In almost any recipe for school improvement, leadership is a key ingredient. And yet districts across the country continue to struggle with chronically low-performing schools in need of more effective leadership.

How can dynamic leaders be developed and their skills harnessed to make a difference for the schools most in need?

For answers, a new institute in Indiana has taken a direct approach: Ask the principals who’ve already succeeded.

Since 2008, WestEd has worked with the Indiana Department of Education to create and implement an initiative in which the state’s lowest-performing schools learn from those who’ve overcome similar obstacles.

Matching school leadership teams with Distinguished Principals who coach them for two years while continuing to run their own buildings, Indiana has shown that its worst schools can indeed meet high standards of learning.

In addition to raising test scores and dramatically changing school cultures, the initiative has repositioned failing schools as models of successful practices for others to adopt.