Vision


 * Vision for Effective School Leadership**

My vision of an effective school leader is someone who can balance the normal day-to-day challenges with grace. School leaders should be strong, successful educators in their own right. Their main focus should be a triangle: student learning, improving instruction, and improving their school. In order to maintain that focus, effective school leaders must engage in collaborative problem solving with school personnel, students, parents, and community members. They have to be able to communicate well in all forms of communication available to them, from snail-mail to e-bulletins and everything in between.

Effective school leaders know how to collect and analyze data in order to identify school, student, and teacher needs for believable and achievable data-driven decision-making protocols. The most difficult task that they have to achieve is the implementation and monitoring of school improvement plans. This simply goes with the territory, and time must be carved out to ensure that plans are being made. If they are not, corrective action is called for. School leaders have to engage in self-reflection and systems thinking in order to plan and implement school improvement plans.

School leaders for the 21st Century also understand the politics and financing of education, the demands of local, state, and national governments regarding educational goals, and the importance of fiscal prudence. All of these areas are key to ensuring the success or failure of our students in the 21st Century.