Principals preparing for Common Core implementation have a new set of action briefs at their disposal.
Achieve, in partnership with College Summit, the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP), and the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP), has released a series of action briefs on the role of school counselors, secondary school leaders, and elementary school leaders in the implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).
“The action briefs provide school leaders a deeper understanding of the CCSS and spell out the leaders’ critical role in implementation. Based on feedback from school leaders who expressed a need for more guidance, the action briefs outline strategies and techniques that can be used within schools by school leaders to prepare their schools, teachers, and students for the standards and upcoming new assessments,” said Achieve Director of Content and Instructional Supports, Doug Sovde.
NAESP Associate Executive Director of Research and Professional Development, Christine Mason, said that the briefs address “instructional shifts, the changes in school culture, literacy instruction, assessment, and professional learning that will support CCSS, providing a primer for strategic actions.”
Taking one of the three action briefs as an example, the brief begins with an explanation of the importance of Common Core standards, followed by a succinct analysis of the curriculum changes that Common Core will bring, before moving on to recommendations about how to accomplish the needed changes well. There are recommendations, including analysis, reasoning, and action steps for the following 12 areas: culture, literacy instruction, text complexity and informational text, close reading and text-based response, writing across content areas, mathematics instruction, student engagement and collaboration, instructional time, create-and-learn versus sit-and-get, professional learning, assessment, and technology integration.
To provide one example, these are the action steps for culture:
Principals set the tone for a climate of trust and a culture that is open to innovation, focused on improvement, and ready to work hard for common goals.
Schools with strong cultures have leaders who focus on four general areas:
- Through frequent conversations, school leaders keep the focus on learning by acting as a catalyst to build partnerships with teacher leaders, instructional and literacy coaches, and technology specialists.
- Build collaborative cultures characterized by conversations centered around student learning and reflective inquiry, shared ownership, and short- and long-term thinking.
- Build trust through shared decision making, frequent communications, frequent visits to classrooms and consistency over time.
- Grow leaders by creating opportunities for teacher leadership to emerge and by sharing and distributing leadership throughout the school. This prepares schools for the reality that “many tasks… require many leaders.”
In conclusion, Achieve, adds:
- Underlying this Action Brief is a belief in the power of collaboration and collective action. No one person alone can possibly affect the kind of transformation in school culture necessary to successfully implement the CCSS. Instead of control, school leaders must work to build collaborative communities of learners. In today’s schools “the lead learner is the learning leader.”
- Used separately, each of the action steps and talking points suggested in this Action Brief will positively affect student achievement. Employing the high-leverage suggestions in concert will produce a synergistic effect that will transform the school culture to support each student, regardless of zip code or circumstances, in their effort to become college and career ready.
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