Leadership magazine Jan/Feb 2016 V45 No 3 | Page 37

Conclusions and discussion
The data in this case study suggest a set
of implications that could be used to guide
future systemic improvements in San Francisco and beyond.
•  Leadership distribution. Structures
and practices should distribute leadership
across all levels, from the classroom to the
school and to the central office. Interviewees
referred to a feeling of distributed leadership
across schools more so than their experience
prior to the establishment of the Superintendent’s Zone.
According to one principal, “Give a person
a fish, they eat, but instead we taught them
how to fish. This approach was instrumental
in teaching our teachers to be coaches. We
identified teachers as peer coaches. We empowered our teachers to be leaders.”
The different structures of Grade Level
Collaborations or even the practices of Instructional Rounds allow various members
of a school and district community to take
leadership roles. This sense of leadership
among all people involved in school improvement processes empowered them to
take risks in new roles and have confidence
in building their capacity to reach and meet
high expectations professionally.
•  Networks of learning. School systems need to be organized around effective frameworks supported by a network
of learning. The interview data and survey
data from this case study suggested that
frameworks helped these schools with their
improvement efforts. In this case, the frameworks existed at the systems level and at the
school or instructional level.
For example, within each of the five essential elements in the Bryk Framework
there was an analogous identified role in the
central teams assigned to support schools in
the Superintendent’s Zone. For the essential
elements of leadership, the district gave each
central team not only an assistant superintendent, but also an executive director to
support the facets of leadership, allowing for
differentiated support across schools.
For building professional capacity, schools
had a series of coaches for different content
areas to support teacher learning. For building school parent community ties, they hired

a community schools coordinator for each
area team.
•  Cycles of improvement. There is a
need for structures and practices that allow
for cycles of continuous improvement. As
the Superintendent’s Zone looks to sustain
and improve, its leadership must also look
for ways to cycle through a process aimed
at continuous improvement. Fortunately, a
number of structures established at the beginning of the Superintendent’s Zone, and
more frequently seen in the Mission neighborhood schools, supported this process.
For example, the most frequently cited
structure by all interviewees and stakeholder
surveys was the continuous improvement
cycle within Grade Level Collaborations.
The district found this strategy so important
that it adopted an early release policy one day
a week to help the collaborations happen.
In all of our findings coming from teachers,
Grade Level Collaborations continue to be
the most requested strategy.
•  Flexible supports. Schools requiring
strategic interventions and intensive support need to work with central teams that
have the capacity to provide differentiated
supports. One way that SFUSD central
teams gave schools intensive support is by
hiring additional support staff. Yet, often
schools receiving these standard allocations
of resources had difficulty finding the right
person for the position. For example, some
schools received funding for an English language development coach, but were not able
to find the right candidate.
When school sites had trouble filling
these additional coaching roles, the role was
perceived as a burden, rather than a support
for instruction. When schools were given a
sense of defined autonomy from their central
team, the right mixture of autonomy for personnel in their day-to-day work combined
with clearly defined expectations and differentiated supports, schools reported feeling most supported by central teams. When
central teams were able to give schools some
f lexibility related to the use of additional
personnel, schools seemed to be able to
match the right person with the right role.
As San Francisco and other districts
think about how to integrate these implications into their efforts, we hope they think

about the time and resources it took to get
the Superintendent’s Zone off the ground.
Similar to Michael Fullan’s (2011) foc us on
the “right drivers” in education, the Superintendent’s Zone focused on building capacity,
emphasizing a collaborative culture, centering efforts on instruction, and creating synergy across efforts at every level of the system
– central office, school and classroom.
Within the large system of the Superintendent’s Zone, there were tiny decisions
and leadership moves made along the way to
make it possible. While these implications
attempt to describe these leadership moves,
there are many small steps districts can take
to infuse these implications at a pace that
promotes sustained organizational improvement. It is our hope that documenting the
efforts in San Francisco supports districts in
their endeavor to provide the highest levels
of learning for all students.

Resources
• Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward
a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191-215.
• Bryk, A.S., Sebring, P.B., Allensworth,
E., Luppescu, S., Easton, J.Q. (2010). Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from
Chicago. Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press.
• Fountas, I.C., Pinnell, G.S. (1996).
Guided Reading: Good First Teaching For All
Children. Heinemann.
• City, E.A., Elmore, R.F., Fiarman, S.E,
and Teitel, L. (2009) Instructional Rounds in
Education. Harvard Education Press.
• Fullan, M. (May 2011). Choosing the
wrong drivers for whole system reform. Seminar Series Paper No. 204. Centre for Strategic Education.
• San Francisco Unified School District,
www.sfusd.edu.

Laura Wentworth is director, StanfordSFUSD Partnership; Ritu Khanna
is assistant superintendent, San
Francisco Unified School District; and
Regina Piper is a director in SFUSD.
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