​Principal Supervisors as Agents for Both ​District-Wide Instructional Improvement and Central Office Cultural Change: ​A Bifurcated Strategy

Abstract

Despite earnest efforts, most urban school districts have struggled to sustain district-wide racial equity in achievement outcomes. In response to such a plight in the Pittsburgh Public Schools, this capstone details the piloting of an initiative that uses a unique set of approaches at multiple levels and sees learning-focused partnerships between principals and their central office supervisors as a focal lever for district-wide improvement. At the principal level, the initiative involved installing a program of personal mastery and instructional leadership development, as well as assisting in the establishment of a community of practice among school leaders. Simultaneously, this project used informal authority strategically at the district level to challenge a compliance-based culture in the central office, with the goal of turning mindsets there toward becoming more of an adaptive learning organization focused on reflective continuous improvement. Assuming the roles of a principal supervisor, a member of the superintendent’s executive cabinet, and a practice-based researcher, I explored the day-to-day opportunities and challenges of being a boundary-spanner, working across hierarchical levels of district and school leadership. Findings detail ways in which urban central offices can shift their approaches in supporting principals—from top-down, compliance-based models to more of a focus on the adaptive leadership skills needed for principals to learn and lead with greater discretion and empowerment. Simultaneously, principal supervisors can play a critical role in elevating key lessons and ideas from leaders in the field in ways that reciprocally influence policy and organizational structure at the district level. Findings also suggest, however, that to do so sustainably requires shifting the central office culture so that principal supervisors can also operate more freely and instinctively. In this regard, a more formally authoritative positioning is needed to address the stubborn and prohibitive elements of central office culture.