Leadership magazine Jan/Feb 2016 V45 No 3 | Page 35

Richard Carranza credits the leadership
and learning in the Superintendent’s Zone
as a key shift needed to build the capacity
of schools for improvement. “Strong instructional support, strong instructional
coaching, and a network of learning among
principals, teachers and coaches: These are
things that cost money, but are needed for
school improvement,” he said, enumerating
key practices infused by the district through
the Superintendent’s Zone.
The reform strategy created a system for
implementing a set of intense supports for
San Francisco’s most underserved schools.
The Superintendent’s Zone includes localized teams of administrators and coaches
supporting small cohorts of schools in the
Mission and Bayview neighborhoods.
When the schools within the Superintendent’s Zone saw strong gains in student
achievement, it prompted administrators
to ask questions about what elements were
working and how these elements could support school improvement efforts across the
district. This article examines findings from a
case study of the Superintendent’s Zone based
on a set of interviews, observations, surveys,
data analysis, and document analysis.
The study’s findings unearthed the strategies and implications for wider scale reform. The findings are intended to inform
San Francisco’s efforts to scale the successes
from the Superintendent’s Zone, as well as
inform other districts’ future efforts at systemic improvement. Ultimately, success in
instructional practices and structures make
the Superintendent’s Zone an incubator of
best practice.

Background on ‘Zone’ reform
San Francisco Unified School District
leaders created the Superintendent’s Zone
with one mission – to disrupt persistently
low achievement in SFUSD’s most underserved schools. In 2008, then-Superintendent Carlos Garcia established a strategic
plan that outlined the goals of access and equity, achievement and accountability. After
o ne year of implementing the plan, SFUSD
leaders made the bold move of introducing
the concept of the Superintendent’s Zone as
a key strategy supporting the goal of access
and equity. The district’s 2010 Strategic Plan

Within the large system of the Zone, there were
tiny decisions and leadership moves made
along the way to make it possible.
progress report said, “Sixteen schools that
need the most intensive support have been
designated as the ‘Superintendent’s Zone’
and will receive additional assistance.”
The “theory of action” associated with the
Superintendent’s Zone was further defined
through the district’s process of applying for
federal School Improvement Grant funding. Emerging from within the application
for SIG, was SFUSD’s systems framework
for school improvement stemming from
research by Anthony S. Bryk, et al.’s study
(2010) of effective schools in Chicago.
Referred to as the Bryk Framework in
SFUSD, this framework helped operationalize the district’s theory of action. Bryk et
al.’s study found effective schools shared five
essential elements, including Leadership as
a Driver for Change; Instructional Guidance; Professional Capacity; School Learning Climate; and Parent, School, Community Ties. In its SIG application, SFUSD
used each of these elements to assess schools’
needs and articulate the plan of action.
In August of 2010, the California State
Board of Education awarded SFUSD $45
million to address the needs of 10 schools
identified by the state as “persistently low
performing.” In addition to the use of the
Bryk Framework, SFUSD leaders put into

effect a set of requirements attached to SIG
for reforming schools, requiring either the
turnaround approach, which involves replacing half the staff; transformation approach, which involves replacing the principal; or school closure.
The $45 million in effect doubled the resources that these schools had to support
reform efforts. It is important to note that
some of SFUSD’s most underserved schools
identified for the Superintendent’s Zone
were not awarded these extra resources.

Strategies used in reform
During the first three years of the Superintendent’s Zone, the central teams, schools
and teachers utilized some key strategies to
make improvements. As the central team
used the Bryk Framework to guide its theory of action and develop these strategies,
it becomes clear that underlying all of these
strategies is a focus on leadership development at levels. For example, at the principal
level, the central teams supported principals
using Bryk’s framework outlining the facets
of leadership: managerial, instructional and
inclusive/facilitative skills and knowledge.
We found that the purposeful development of leadership distributed across the
classroom, school and central levels was a
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