You’re the New Principal? Considering First Steps Toward Improvement at Sparrow Middle School

Facility and Setting

The 1931 Sparrow Middle School facility has an inspiring Art Deco façade, but its interior is in need of repair. Hallways just off the main entrance are subject to leakage. When rains are heavy, custodians place large plastic garbage cans throughout the hallways to catch water dripping from the ceilings. There are no computer labs, and the Media Center has fewer than 1,000 books and only five computers. Thanks to a grant obtained by a social studies teacher, since last year the building provides wireless Internet access and there are two laptop carts that teachers can sign out. Each cart can serve a classroom of students. Three teachers use the laptop carts fairly regularly.

The attendance zone for Sparrow is a 3-mile square radius community that includes stand-alone houses with small yards, apartment complexes, and four mid-sized federally subsidized housing projects. Sparrow Middle School is on the main street (Front Street—which is called simply “F Street” by locals) that runs through the community. There is a corner market across the street from the school. The owner has repeatedly complained about rowdy students to district office staff, but he keeps the store open before, during, and after school hours to sell candy, soft drinks, and other popular items to students. A group of retired men play checkers outside the front of the store each morning. There are 21 churches in the area, and the majority of the school’s parents and students attend Sunday services. One of the largest churches has added three additional Sunday Spanish-language services in the past year, and it is planning on adding a Saturday evening Spanish-language service as well.

Demographics and Performance Data

In the school year that just concluded, Sparrow Middle School served 817 students in Grades 6 to 8 in a facility originally built for 900 students. The school draws from a racially diverse but economically homogeneous community. Most families are in the lower stratus of the income range, and most rely on some form of public assistance to supplement wages or as a main means of subsistence. The school qualifies to receive Title I funding with 84% of its students receiving free lunch. In terms of racial background, 22% of students are White, 38% are African American, 36% are Hispanic, and 4% are categorized as “other.” In the past 5 years, there has been a 140% increase in the number of students who identify as Hispanic at the school. Students identified in need of English language development are scheduled to be provided pullout limited English proficiency (LEP) services once a week by a central office-based LEP teacher who comes to Sparrow 3 afternoons a week. On days she is not at Sparrow, the LEP teacher rotates through two other schools in the district. Fourteen percent of students receive special education services. The school has four full-time Specialized Education Services (SES) teachers.

Most students arrive at Sparrow after having attended one of three elementary schools in the district; two of the schools are Title I and in need of academic improvement, whereas the third is not Title I, has achieved an exemplary academic rating in the state accountability system, and has been honored by a national organization as a glowing example of a “best practices” arts-focused elementary school. Most of Sparrow’s students who develop most successfully into artists attended the latter, arts-focused elementary school. From Sparrow Middle, most students progress to a large, diverse, comprehensive high school in the district that lacks much attention to the arts.

You have access to some of the Sparrow’s key aggregate student performance data regarding yearly end-of-grade testing. First, you can consider the school’s grade level performance over the past 3 years, including the most recent school year that just finished (See Table 1). Also available to you is the percentage of students who passed both math and reading tests in the past year, disaggregated by particular student groups (See Table 2).

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Table 1.

Percentage of Students at or Above Grade Level Proficiency.

Data category	3 years ago (%)	2 years ago (%)	Past year (%)
Sixth-grade reading	61	54	47
Seventh-grade reading	62	57	52
Eighth-grade reading	62	54	49
Sixth-grade math	61	62	55
Seventh-grade math	69	61	56
Eighth-grade math	66	59	51

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Table 2.

Percentage of Students Who Passed Both Tests, by Student Group, Past Year.

	White	Black	Hispanic	LEP
Sparrow	68%	58%	26%	12%

Note. LEP = limited English proficiency.

During your school level interview, several stakeholders expressed concern about attendance problems at the school. They noted specifically that they routinely saw students out on F Street during school hours, hanging out in front of the corner market across the street. You have attendance data for the school from the past 3 years including the most recent (See Table 3).

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Table 3.

Average Daily Attendance.

3 years ago	2 years ago	Past year
90.4%	87.5%	83.6%

In addition, district officials now view Sparrow Middle School as real cause for concern due to student safety. The number of reported Serious Incidents (violence, robberies, and other police-involved issues) has increased from seven 5 years ago to 26 in the school year that just ended. At the same time, the suspension rate decreased from 341, 5 years ago, to 56 in the year that just ended.

Schedule, Curriculum, and Alumni

As implemented and operational for the past 15 years, the Sparrow Middle School Master Schedule allows the school to offer five classes for 50 minutes every day, along with a 20-minute homeroom, 50-minute period for lunch and recess, and 5 minutes for passing between classes. In terms of classes, students take language arts, math, science, and either art, music, or dance every day. Social studies is offered 2 to 3 times a week, alternating with physical education.

Unique to the school and as a long-standing tradition, a thriving arts program allows students to take classes in art, dance, or music 5 times a week, for 50 minutes a period. The walls of the facility are adorned with student artwork. Student-composed music is played instead of electronic bells to mark the end of periods. Each month, a committee of teachers chooses the school’s monthly poet laureate, who is a student who has shown promise in rhyme, verse, spoken word, rap, or other poetic forms. The student presents his or her work at an assembly held each month, and each year the school publishes a collection of its poet laureates’ works. Importantly, “Sparrow Spring” is a student art and music festival held every May, usually at the same time as state-mandated end-of-grade testing. It is the most heralded event in the community. Sparrow Spring has occurred for 33 years now, and it garners significant media attention for the school, the district, and the community. The most influential figure in the community, a world famous musician, always mentions Sparrow Spring fondly in interviews and calls it “the very best thing about living in this community.”

Several other Sparrow alumni have gone on in their adult lives to garner national and international attention for their music and artwork, though none are connected to the school in any way. Also, several community leaders are parents of students who attend the school. The local City Council member, Mr. Edwards, for instance, is an African American businessman whose son attends seventh grade. He is very concerned about the school and its present situation. This past year, he made weekly visits to the school and dropped in on classes throughout the building, sometimes asking teachers if he could teach the lesson for them to show them a different approach that he claimed would be more effective in reaching the students. You have learned that some parents have complained about Mr. Edwards and his drop-in teaching while a few other parents have requested that they too be allowed to model classes for the teachers.

Budget and Personnel

At tonight’s school board meeting, the district office informed all schools that funding will be cut due to state financial shortfalls. Sparrow specifically will lose US$42,674.45 in a special local discretionary allocation for the coming school year. In the past, this money had been used to hire tutors to help with the after-school tutoring program. Most of the teachers at the school worked in the after-school program and depended on these funds each year to supplement their teaching salary. There is no documentation available as to whether the tutoring program has helped improve student performance on the state tests. One way to address the funding loss and retain the tutoring program, as you understand it, is to forgo replacing one of the teachers who is leaving and increase class sizes.

In terms of school staff, during the most recent school year, 14 teachers had 7 or more years of experience and 26 teachers had 3 or fewer years of experience. Six teachers fall somewhere in between these poles of experience. Roughly, 75% of the teachers are White, and roughly 25% are African American. There are no full-time teachers with a Hispanic/Latino background. Two of the 46 teachers speak some Spanish, and none of the other staff members in the school speak Spanish. In crisis situations, eighth-grade students who speak Spanish as a home language or one of the custodians who is Latino are brought in to help translate for non-English speaking parents.

Table 4 represents teacher turnover from year-to-year.

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Table 4.

Teacher Turnover, by Year.

Four years ago	21% of teachers left at the end of the year
Three years ago	24% of teachers left at the end of the year
Two years ago	29% of teachers left at the end of the year
This year	Thus far, seven teachers have notified the district that they are leaving the school and will not return for the start of the school year

Sparrow has had five principals in the past 3 years. The most recent was Mr. Reynolds, a White, first-time, first-year principal who started his tenure a year ago in July. The rumor you heard about Mr. Reynolds was that he left work after school several weeks ago, stressed out by numerous issues, and that he never returned. You asked around before you accepted the position and discovered that, in reality, Mr. Reynolds had accepted a principal’s job in a neighboring district that offered significantly higher pay. Dr. Johnson confirmed this version of events. A picture of the school’s founding principal is the only formal portrait to decorate the main hallway. He stayed for 30 years after the founding, and retired 30 years ago.

Six School Personnel Whom You Already Know Professionally and/or Personally

Final Thoughts

As you reviewed the data, you also began jotting down notes in answer to the set of five questions that you will discuss with Assistant Superintendent Johnson tomorrow. Preparing for bed, you feel like you have a fairly firm sense of how to address each query. You will solidify your ideas in the morning in the time before the meeting starts. As you try to drift off to sleep, though, a nagging, thorny question pushes back against the inviting softness of incipient slumber: But where do I start?

Activity 1—Where Do I Start?

Students write a three-page memorandum that addresses each of the questions that Assistant Superintendent Johnson wishes the principal to answer:

Students should bring their memorandum to class, or they can share it with classmates electronically. Once in class or in an online collaborative space, students can work in small groups discussing their memoranda together. These small group discussions will help students recognize how their particular diagnoses and strategies may be similar or different from their classmates’, may provide them additional ideas to consider, and can surface vexing issues that none of them feel they can master easily. The small groups’ ideas can be captured on chart paper or via electronic notes, and shared with the full group. A full group discussion can follow the small group activity. Instructors have the option of grading the memoranda as a course assignment, but preferably after the group discussion, so that students can make informed revisions to their manuscripts before submission to the instructor.

A final pedagogical option for instructors to consider is to use the case study twice in a structured principal preparation program, once at the program’s outset and once near its conclusion. This is the approach we used successfully in our yearlong, federal-grant-funded initiative to train aspiring leaders of high-need, low-performing schools. When a new cohort started its monthlong summer regimen of daily classes, we provided the case within the second week as means to expose students to the vast array of issues that would confront them as principals of high-need schools. Later in the following spring, as students concluded their coursework and completed their full-time administrative internship, we distributed the case again to students and asked them to offer responses to Dr. Johnson’s questions. We then provided them with the responses they wrote during the previous summer so they could consider how and why their responses may have changed or stayed the same. Based on the authors’ experiences serving as principals of Title I schools, such early exposure to and, subsequently, more informed consideration of a global representation of a school’s various realities and needs is the closest text-based approximation we could devise to represent the type of “ultimate responsibility shock” principals of low-performing schools feel as they enter the position (Spillane & Lee, 2014).

Whichever pedagogical approaches instructors utilize, they should assert early and often that there are few easy solutions in such a complex situation; students should feel frustrated by the difficult choices they must make. Instructors should also encourage students to understand the activity as a chance to consider how other pre-service school leaders, when presented with similar information, may take dramatically different forms of action. In essence, encourage students to have open minds to considering alternative approaches to common problems. Finally, instructors should ensure that students consider deeply the possible consequences of any actions they plan to take. In the full group discussion especially, the instructor can take a Socratic approach and ask probing questions intended to unsettle and problematize any easy solutions that students might propose. John Kenneth Galbraith suggested, “Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and merely unpalatable.” Similarly here, students must ensure that any of their proposed solutions produce manageable attendant problems, rather than exacerbating matters by making things worse.

Instructors can enhance the activity described above by asking students specifically to consider how their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and other personal characteristics may have influenced their approaches to the assignment. For instance, Gooden and O’Doherty (2015) provide a useful way for pre-service school leaders to develop a deeper understanding of their own racial identities. If assigned in the same class as the Sparrow study, Gooden and O’Doherty (2015) can help students critically consider how race and racial identity may inform their approaches to the dilemmas central to Sparrow. Other research regarding culturally relevant pedagogy and leadership (e.g., Milner, 2015; Mullen & Robertson, 2014; Terrell & Lindsey, 2009) can be assigned as means to expand student understanding.

Activity 2—How Will I Address Specific Issues? ¹

This is a targeted follow-up activity that can help enrich lessons students gleaned from Activity 1. In essence, students shift here from asking themselves, “Where do I start?” to, “How will I address specific issues?” Students must choose from options presented by the assistant superintendent in a scenario that occurs subsequent to the main case described previously. Dr. Johnson compels the principal to make difficult choices between distinct alternatives in a manner that simulates the crucible of administrative decision-making. The scenario proceeds like this:

At your meeting with Assistant Superintendent Johnson, she thanks you for answering her questions in preparation for the meeting. Doing so helped her better understand your beliefs and intended approach. She then provides more insight regarding the school’s needs based on input she has received from faculty, students, and the community. In her opinion, some of the main issues at Sparrow are improving the performance of the increasing English language learner (ELL) population, addressing the rise in student disciplinary incidents, determining the proper role of arts and enrichment in relation to the academic program, and curtailing the high teacher turnover that occurs even as several long serving personnel persist and engage in negative employee behaviors. She explains that she will present you some definitive options regarding these issues. Each choice involves significant dilemmas that you, as principal, will need to consider as you make your decisions.

As your meeting concludes, Dr. Johnson explains that it is her expectation that you will return in a week to discuss your initial thoughts on each of the options she has provided for you. She emphasizes that she will work with you and support you in making decisions that will help provide the best possible paths toward improvement at Sparrow.

After students share, analyze, and discuss their responses to the Activity 1 prompts, the instructor can use additional time during the class or the next one to have students engage in Activity 2. One approach would be to distribute the Activity 2 scenario to students in class and have them read it and formulate responses to it individually. Students can then assemble in small groups to share their responses before engaging in a full class discussion moderated by the instructor. As an alternative approach, the instructor can assign Activity 2 as a written assignment after students have completed the Activity 1 discussion in class.

Activity 3—From the Practitioner’s View

To extend learning opportunities beyond the immediate classroom, university instructors can encourage students to share the Sparrow case study with a school administrator, preferably a principal who serves as a mentor to the student at his or her school placement site. The principal can read the case and have a follow-up conversation with the student to describe how he or she would approach the various dilemmas. During the conversation, the student can listen, take notes, and ask questions. Ideally, the student will feel comfortable enough with the principal mentor to pose tough, honest questions about why the principal chose to take particular actions. Subsequently, the university instructor can ensure that, in class, students have a chance to share what their individual mentor principals discussed. These discussions will offer an additional opportunity to expand student exposure to alternative approaches to addressing issues at Sparrow.

Activity 4—Engage With Existing Research

Turnaround has expanded as a school reform movement in recent years, represented most prominently through the Obama administration’s US$3.5 billion School Improvement Grant (SIG) “Turnaround” grant program initiated in 2009 (Peck & Reitzug, 2014; U.S. Department of Education [U.S. DOE], 2009). As the focus on improving low-performing schools has increased, various authors have described key characteristics of successful leaders in such challenging contexts (Chenoweth & Theokas, 2011; Duke, 2015; Fullan, 2006; Leithwood, Harris, & Strauss, 2010; Papa & English, 2011). Moreover, research has demonstrated how specific principal behaviors and actions fostered increased aggregate student test score performance (Seashore Louis et al., 2010; U.S. DOE, 2008). Other studies have profiled how individual principals have successfully generated student academic success by involving parents and the local community (Khalifa, 2012); leading instruction (Terosky, 2014); developing school culture (Eilers & Camacho, 2007); and using an internal sense of accountability as a primary motivator (Mintrop, 2012). Principals, of course, cannot immediately solve every problem within a school. Therefore, diagnosing issues of concern and considering remediation approaches is an important first step in a principal’s efforts toward school improvement (Duke, 2008). Principals seeking rapid yet sustainable school improvement must implement potent short-term changes as well as develop and execute effective long-term strategies (Duke, 2015).

The leadership behaviors and approaches identified above coalesce in individuals who have come to personify the term “turnaround principals,” which represents those school leaders who combine effective instructional leadership skills and outreach to community with a fearless, deep-seated sense of urgency to improve schools in dire academic need (Duke, 2015). Importantly, turnaround principals are best considered a rare breed (Duke, 2004). Indeed, leading schools most in need presents principals with significant role-based challenges that can lead to significant stress and potential burnout (Spillane & Lee, 2014). In addition, scholars have cautioned against the idea that principals can serve as “superheroes” who single-handedly lead school improvement (Peck, Reitzug, & West, 2013; Copland, 2001). Principals of low-performing schools in particular must also confront a paradox latent in policies and prescriptive literature attendant to turnaround: They must simultaneously distribute leadership to others in the school yet accept ultimate responsibility for a school’s academic performance (Peck & Reitzug, 2014). Nonetheless, there have been, are, and will be principals who, no matter the challenges, ensure their school is “getting it done” in terms of increasing student achievement (Chenoweth & Theokas, 2013). The phrase “never-give-up principal,” from Duke (2015, p. 3), perhaps best sums up what it takes to lead school turnaround successfully.

Reflective of the established research literature, this case offers students an opportunity to consider possible first steps forward as a newly appointed principal of a low-performing school with various complex issues and problems. Instructors can assign the scholarship discussed here as well as other related texts to students in order that they may consider what leadership practices lead to successful turnaround. Students can discuss the substance of the texts, as well as how particular authors might suggest that the new principal approach issues at Sparrow.