The Strategy Playbook For Educational Leaders

This how-to resource provides leaders with a concrete framework for a strategic improvement plan, helping educators link the "principles" to "processes" of planning. Packed with key takeaways and additional resources, this book provides the concrete tools to design a strong strategy for improvement and enables educational leaders to think constructively about why we plan, what an effective strategic plan should contain, and how to create meaningful dialogue to support plan development, implementation, and monitoring for continuous improvement. The Strategy Playbook for Educational Leaders provides superintendents, central office staff, principals, and teacher leaders with the opportunity to reframe the process of their strategic planning and breathe new life into the activity.

A proven framework for whole-school improvement The School Leadership Playbook is a practical guide for education leaders looking to push their school's and students' achievement to the next level. Developed by renowned leadership preparation program New Leaders, the Transformational Leadership Framework focuses on the five categories that drive a school's success: Learning and Teaching, School Culture, Talent Management, Operations and Systems, and Personal Leadership. This book illustrates how each of these factors contributes to breakthrough gains, and outlines a plan for implementing changes in your own school. You'll learn how to accurately diagnose the current state of your school's academics and culture and create an action plan for the year ahead. The TLF is grounded in the latest research and case studies of the highest-gaining turnaround schools, and shows you the specific actions you can take to attract, retain, and support high-performing teachers; improve school culture; successfully involve parents and the community; and ultimately drive student success. New Leaders developed the UEF to pinpoint what schools achieving significant student academic gains were doing, and how they were doing it. This book provides a practical breakdown of the framework to help you begin leading these changes in your own school. Ensure rigorous goal- and data-driven teaching and learning Build and manage a high-performance faculty aligned to the school's vision Implement effective and efficient operations and systems Model the tone you would like to see from students and teachers school-wide By matching the needs of the school to effective principal actions and school practices, leaders can create a plan for transformational change.

Drawing together current thinking and research by leading writers in the field, this Reader will help you to understand and critically analyse key strategic aspects of educational leadership, including: - leadership perspectives and values - external and internal contexts - autonomy and accountability - partnership and collaboration - leading strategy and change. The book explores major challenges for educational leaders in managing the increasingly permeable boundary between educational organisations and their external contexts and reconciling environmental expectations and internal priorities. The Reader will encourage you to positively problematize the field and reflect on current debates and issues. This book will be an essential resource for providers and students of postgraduate level courses in educational leadership and management, as well as those involved in undertaking professional development programmes. It will also serve the reflective practitioner as personal reference when occupying or aspiring towards leadership roles in schools, colleges and other educational organisations. Dr Maggie Preedy, Professor Nigel Bennett and Dr Christine Wise have taught, researched and published widely in the field of educational leadership and management. Maggie Preedy and Christine Wise are Senior Lecturers in the Faculty of Education and Language Studies at The Open University, UK. Nigel Bennett is Emeritus Professor of Leadership and Management in Education at The Open University.

Effective school leadership is effective leadership, regardless of where it occurs In March 2020, there was no manual for leading schools and school systems during a pandemic. School leaders had to figure things out as the crisis unfolded. But starting now, leaders have the opportunity to prepare for leading schools through distance learning with purpose and intent—using what works best to accelerate students’ learning all the while maintaining an indelible focus on equity. Harnessing the insights and experience of renowned educators Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and John Hattie, The Distance Learning Playbook for School Leaders applies the wisdom and evidence of the VISIBLE LEARNING® research to understand what works best. Spanning topics from school climate at a distance, leader credibility, care for self and colleagues, instructional leadership teams, stakeholder advisory groups, and virtual visibility, this comprehensive playbook details the research- and evidence-based strategies school leaders can mobilize to lead the delivery of high-impact learning in an online, virtual, and distributed environment. This powerful guide includes: Actionable insights and hands-on steps for each module to help school leaders realize the evidence-based leadership practices that result in meaningful learning in a distance environment Discussion of equity challenges associated with distance learning, along with examples of how leaders can work to ensure that equity gains that have been realized are not lost. Analysis of the mindsets that empower leaders to manage change, rather than technology Space to write and reflect on current practices and plan future leadership strategies The mindframes for distance learning that serve leaders well in any instructional setting and will position schools after the pandemic to come back better than they were before The Distance Learning Playbook for School Leaders is the essential hands-on guide to leading school and school systems from a distance and delivering on the promise of equitable, quality learning experiences for students.

It’s estimated that U.S. companies spend over $14 billion annually on leadership development --Match that number to the abundant and growing research that finds most leadership development to be ineffective, and the conclusion is a phenomenal amount of waste. The remedy for this situation is to have business strategy drive leadership development instead of creating programs that match a one-size-fits-all approach to leadership. This book's approach, called Strategy-Driven Leadership Development (SDLD), puts business strategy first. It maintains an emphasis on building leadership programs around what it will take to make the business successful as opposed to implementing a program in the hopes that it will benefit the strategy. The result is a differentiated and targeted approach called Intentional Leadership Development, which provides the structure for transforming how leadership development is undertaken. At the heart of this book, however, is the explanation of how small, incremental changes in action and perspective create meaningful changes in the way leadership is developed. The focus is on the leadership behaviors associated with success for any company. Some companies may need leaders with better financial acumen while others may require better teamwork for success. These skills are learnable and when the energy of an organization is behind it, then leadership development can be transformational. The authors method "retools" prior leadership efforts – the emphasis is not on previous failures and restarting with new programs. There are many effective ideas and actions that are currently embedded in leadership programs, but they miss the critical element of tying their efforts to the business strategy. Strategy-Driven Leadership changes the way organizations think about and drive their leadership talent initiatives among their current and upcoming leaders. The book is filled with research, science-based information, case studies, and practical hands-on tools on why and how this Strategy-Driven Leadership Development model will transform company leadership approaches.

Sharpen your instructional leadership skills and guide your school toward equity and excellence for all. Just think about how great schools could be if every instructional leader exercised their influence to create change—maximizing the efforts of others and mobilizing those efforts to work toward a shared goal. How Leadership Works: A Playbook for Instructional Leaders walks educators through the processes of clarifying, articulating, and actualizing instructional leadership goals with the aim of delivering on the promise of equity and excellence for all. Grounded in Visible Learning® research, the exercises in this easy-to-use playbook illuminate the essential mindframes necessary for effective instructional leadership and prompt veteran, new, and aspiring educators to identify challenges and determine next steps. It includes: Ten essential mindframes for leaders, together with the leadership practices that illustrate each mindframe in action Teaching practices, such as teacher clarity or student engagement in learning, that support teachers in delivering quality instruction, along with tools to document the impact of those practices on learning Strategies for leading learning, including establishing school culture, utilizing feedback, and supporting professional learning communities as a pathway to building collective teacher efficacy. Tools for applying the principles of change, conducting an initiative inventory, and implementing and de-implementing initiatives Exercise-by-exercise, educators and front office staff will deepen their knowledge, frame their priorities and practices, and gain new tools for supporting the instructional focus and initiatives designed to support learning at your school.

Build a Modern L&D Team Organizations are facing an era of rapid acceleration. As new technology and digital strategies are integrated, workers at all levels will be required to build capability much faster than before, navigating more complex systems and processes. Yet, learning and development (L&D) has lagged in this area, as too many L&D functions still focus on transactional interactions across a broad and complex portfolio while starved for resources. In L&D’s Playbook for the Digital Age, Brandon Carson makes the case that it’s time to reorient L&D, take a more proactive role in enabling the workforce, and create a new framework for developing skills and capabilities. L&D leaders must realize theirs is one of the most critical business functions and must be appropriately funded and resourced to realize the performance gains that are crucial to the business. L&D cannot be caught standing still and, in fact, needs a new playbook to navigate the radical and complex transformation the digital age is demanding. Stemming from the sports world, a playbook ensures the players know their roles, connect as a team, and understand the winning strategy and how to execute the game plan. For L&D, a playbook can help build alignment across the team and with stakeholders by being flexible as business needs change. Carson walks you through the steps to formulate how a new playbook could help the alignment of your L&D function—whether it’s restructuring, new skilling, or rescoping. He asks readers to speak the language of business instead of the language of learning. For example, does your workforce repair aircraft or do they enable safe flight? In other words, can you be the visionary your organization requires?

"How you spend your resources really does speak to the ethics, morals, and values about what is important. I use these ideas each day to help schools leverage their resources in strategic and creative ways to meet students′ needs." —Mary Nash, Assistant Superintendent Boston Public Schools, MA "A powerful new lens for looking at school resources by fundamentally changing the question from ′How much money do schools need to succeed?′ to ′How well are resources being used to ensure student success?′" —Richard Murnane, Economist and Professor Harvard Graduate School of Education Strategically reorganize school resources to support instructional and performance priorities! How can schools best use the resources they already have? That question is at the heart of this inspiring book for school and district administrators challenged with increasing student performance without additional funding. Exploring the link between purposeful resource allocation and academic achievement, Karen Hawley Miles and Stephen Frank demonstrate how educational leaders can develop successful and strategic schools by assessing how well they use all available resources—people, time, and money—and by creating effective alternatives to meet goals. The authors use their extensive research with urban schools and districts to present case studies of schools that successfully reorganized resources to implement the "Big 3 Guiding Resource Strategies": improving teaching quality, creating individual attention, and maximizing academic time. The Strategic School offers planning guides, checklists, worksheets, and strategies aligned with ISLLC standards to help leaders: Assess current resource use in new ways that go beyond the typical budget review Organize resources more creatively and flexibly Craft a master schedule that works Connect resource allocation to student and school performance