Interconnectedness of Organizational Elements and Leadership Styles

Interconnectedness of Organizational Elements and Leadership Styles

Explore your own home school district’s website and identify how various links in the systems work together to focus on the improvement of students’ academic achievement.

Due to a history of racial segregation in the District of Columbia, schools are also segregated and portray huge academic achievement gaps despite an overall improvement in academic success. The District of Columbia has implemented both academic and non-academic activities and programs that together work to promote academic and social behavior improvement among students from different social groups. Teacher-evaluation programs promote a positive working culture for the teachers to benefit their students by encouraging positive behavior in the classroom and outside the classroom. The Behavior and School Culture through the Trauma Responsive Schools (TRS) model promotes positive behavior among all students by encouraging teachers to address the overall needs of the students through spending more time with students to establish relational trust, draft positive and affirmative greeting language, and promote school-wide positive behavior expectations and helping all students deal with behavioral barriers (DCPS, 2021). Additionally, the Student Fair Access to School Amendment Act of 2018 establishes parameters for suspension and expulsions of students to promote access to education even for students at home. The school is also required to make official reports on safety and health matters to enable the office of the State Superintendent of Education to utilize and promote the use of the Trauma Responsive Model.

The federal, state, and local government together recognizes the socio-economic challenges faced by the students and contributes to high dropout rates and poor performance. The nested leadership system in the District of Columbia works together to provide resources opportunities and improve the entire system towards improving the school performance and fighting to reduce the academic success gap in the district. Students from low-income families are to receive the Free and Reduced Price Meals (FARM) in 86 schools of DC, and this will give them good health and concentration towards their academic achievements (DCPS, 2021). Further, the teachers and other experts are devoted to empowering the students and supporting them in their career paths by directing them in and outside the classroom based on their academic performance and abilities. The overhauled teacher evaluation and better pay systems also work towards improving the academic achievements in the District of Columbia public schools by utilizing market-based education reforms implemented in the 1990s (Truong, 2020). The teacher-evaluation system that utilizes IMPACT to measure the student’s growth in the classroom and outside classroom performance and professionalism has helped improve the general performance of DC public schools by involving teachers in all important facets of their students.

Identify the strengths and the challenges that you found and how you would match an appropriate leadership style for each challenge.

A major strength that has improved the general performance of District of Columbia public schools is the change of the education board system and handling over to a Mayor Chancellor. The system has then improved, and as the chancellor as the overseer of the administrative position, DCPSs are able to manage the available funds appropriately and account for their expenditure (Alvarez & Marsal, 2018). Besides, once the district recognized that the public schools were failing, they started integrating research-based systems that would mentor their students and enhance their performance in the classroom and outside classrooms. For instance, the new Human Capital Development initiative is a vision-setting initiative where evidence-based experts in various fields, including science and technology, are consulted on sectors to improve the learning course (Alvarez & Marsal, 2018). A research-based leadership would yield more positive results in DC by utilizing the expert-level teachers in each field and together come up with a more efficient system that the schools can use to close the academic achievement gap in the district.

Further, the external pressure from the leaders keeps school management on their toes to work towards the established objectives, and with poor external leadership, the school system will rumble, and students will underperform. The Mayor-chancellor in the District of Columbia has a high responsibility of uniting all schools and ensuring they are all working on improving their students’ scores and reducing the academic achievement gap. The previous education board that existed in the 1990s to early 2000s is associated with the low performance of the students, yet the same schools have been improving after the education board was abolished (Truong, 2020). The external leadership exerts pressure which causes internal control responsible for consistency and accountability on all school managements in ensuring that the schools are performing.

A major challenge experienced in the District of Columbia Public Schools is the academic achievement gap that is directly associated with racial differences and social-economic disproportion. Students from low-income families have a lower academic achievement compared to students from wealthy families (District of Columbia Public Schools, 2020). Subsequently, schools in poor neighborhoods experience low academic success, yet they are all under the same school leadership and education system. A research-based leadership would also help improve these statistics by conducting comprehensive research on the relationship between poverty and low performance, people of color, and low performance.

On average, 87% of Black students enroll in 1 start DCPS, and 100% economically disadvantaged students enroll in 1 and 2 starts schools, promoting learning inequality in both experiences and academic achievement (District of Columbia Public Schools, 2020). A research-based leadership would identify the relationship between social gaps and academic gaps by finding solutions to eliminate the impacts of underlying social-economic differences in school enrollment and performance. The research-based leadership would help establish what resources and opportunity gaps between the schools contribute to the performance gap and try to work to reduce their impacts on the school’s performance. Since solving the social gap is not an educative role, the research-based leadership will devise means to prevent segregation in schools and unequal distribution of resources and opportunities. DCPS, together with the administration, can devise policies that help racial minority and economically challenged students access high-quality education.

The five core values would also be helpful and would apply as follows.

Leadership theories and their significance in the core values

Discuss why you would select each leadership style and the theory that accompanies your selection.

An instructional leadership style is capable of improving school performance in DC because it involves engagement of the students, planning, coordination, and evaluation of the learning process. School organization as a nested and loosely coupled system explains that the school leadership is comprised of various sub-systems that influence the school performance (Alvarez & Marsal, 2018). In DC, this system is led by the mayor-chancellor and the administration that puts a lot of external pressure on school principals, who then direct their teachers on performance to enhance the school’s general outcomes. An instrumental leadership would ensure that apart from the teachers-evaluation system, the leaders also establish a well-coordinated system that works to enhance the student’s performance and improve the school experience for everyone.

Further, a strategic leadership with functional and strategic long-range goals after analysis, evaluation, and monitoring the current education performance in DC and inaugurating ways to improve the current performance will complement the anticipated educational improvements. Even when school systems are affected by loose coupling between different administrative power ranks or sub-systems, strategic leadership can overcome all the challenges by establishing working policies that together aim at advancing academic achievements in DC over the next years (Alvarez & Marsal, 2018). Accessing high-quality education is linked to an effective education system and leadership that enhances teachers’ performance by availing resources such as good salaries and a comfortable learning environment. Consistency and accountability are essential in leadership and teaching practices, which is necessary for the school’s general performance. Without a good leadership style or a good leader, it is impossible to achieve consistency and accountability in school systems.

References

Adolfsson, C., & Alvunger, D. (2017). The nested systems of local school development: Understanding improved interaction and capacities in the different sub-systems of schools. Improving Schools, 20(3), 195-208. https://doi.org/10.1177/1365480217710874

Alvarez & Marsal. (2018). Final Report District of Columbia Public Schools Audit and Investigation (# CW57247). A& M.

District of Columbia Public Schools. (2020). District of Columbia Public Schools: R.LS.E.: Rigorous Instruction Supports Equity PROJECT NARRATIVE. Office of Elementary and Secondary Education. https://oese.ed.gov/files/2020/12/S374A20031NAR.pdf

DCPS. (2021). Dcps. Retrieved from https://dcps.dc.gov/page/behavior-and-school-culture

Truong, D. (2020). DC Schools show improvement — But also persistent challenges, new report says. NPR.org. https://www.npr.org/local/305/2020/01/16/797000268/d-c-schools-show-improvement-but-also-persistent-challenges-new-report-says