2012 SCORE Prize Winners: Cultivating Strong Leadership (excerpts) | Page 3

Coaches provide individualized support as needed and help principals identify and support struggling teachers at the schools. Dr. Lynch strongly believes in providing coaching through familiarity with the research on effective schools. Over the past few years, district and school leaders have read From Good to Great Schools: What Their Principals Do Well by Susan Gray and William Streshly; Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning by Michael Schmoker; The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born, It’s Grown by Daniel Coyle; Qualities of Effective Teachers by James H. Stronge; and Pathways to the Common Core: Accelerating Achievement by Lucy Calkins, Mary Ehrenworth, and Christopher Lehman. Dr. Lynch also shares articles about leadership and current educational issues with principals and central office staff several times a week. Collaboration. Principals collaborate with other during monthly principal meetings. meetings, they discuss pertinent leadership issues, such as recruiting and hiring teachers, school safety, teacher evaluation, and retention of effective teachers. In addition, each fall, the district hosts Camp ABC, which is an administration and board collaborative meeting where participants discuss data and district plans for the upcoming year. Last year, leaders also attended a P-20 Apple Education Mobilization Summit where they learned about the role of new technologies in mobilizing learning as well as apps related to helping students master Common Core standards. n e e d e d , r u g g l i n g three Southern Regional Education Board modules: Building Instructional Leadership Teams that Make a Difference; Using Root Cause Analysis to Reduce Student Failure; and Assessing Academic Rigor to Ensure Grade-Level Proficiency. “You can’t implement things well unless the principal is part of that learning,” Dr. Lynch said. “You can’t lead what you don’t know.” “Curriculum Modules: Engaging Leaders in Solving Real World Problems” http://tnscore.org/scoreprize/downloads/2012/SREB_ Leadership_Curriculum_Modules.pdf Targeted professional development. Leaders are also provided targeted training and professional development, with an emphasis on the Common Core, media and technology, student acquisition of academic vocabulary, and instructional skills, with a special focus on rigor. The dis