Collaborative Leadership

Leading for Success

Leading for Success is a collaborative leadership process that brings school staff together to focus everyone’s efforts on success for every child. Together, staff members:
  • assess current status,
  • set annual and quarterly goals for growth,
  • identify measurable targets for short-term improvement,  
  • make a detailed action plan to ensure achievement of those targets,
  • review progress quarterly, celebrate targets met, and then
  • plan next steps.  
The Leading for Success process is built around teams of staff members who take responsibility for different aspects of building school and student success.LfS_graphic_4c-(2).png

Instructional teams examine student progress and address implementation quality for each of the academic components present, for example Reading Wings and/or the Reading Edge, Reading Roots, KinderCorner, and tutoring. Team members support one another to improve instruction and increase student learning and achievement.
 
Schoolwide Solutions teams, including Attendance, Intervention Team (which focuses on referrals of individual students from teachers), Parent and Family Involvement, Cooperative Culture, and Community Connections, focus on creating systems to support students, parents, and teachers and problem-solving to meet the needs of individual students. 

Every team makes a quarterly plan, meets regularly to put it in place, and reports progress each quarter to the entire school. Together they build a dynamic school culture that provides powerful instruction in every classroom and ensures that no child falls between the cracks.
 
Click here to learn more about the schoolwide solutions teams. 

Getting Started

School leaders come to Baltimore in July or September to participate in a five-day series of workshops for principals, facilitators, and Solutions coordinators. These workshops introduce the Leading for Success collaborative-leadership process incorporated into Success for All and the essential elements of the instructional programs and schoolwide support teams.
 
The principal and SFAF coach introduce the whole school to the process at the Success for All overview held before the start of school. 
 
Leading for Success is then implemented as an integral part of SFA implementation. The Foundation provides program support and coaching during onsite visits by SFAF coaches (usually fifteen days for a first-year school), through telephone support, and through online resources, including webinars and tutorials. 
 
For groups of schools starting together, a series of leadership workshops are provided over the course of the year. Click here for a sample scope and sequence of the first year of Leading for Success workshops. Individual coaching covers these topics in schools that start the program individually. 

Tracking Progress

At the beginning of the year and again at the end of each grading period, the SFA Snapshot provides a summary of student progress and a picture of implementation quality for the entire school. The Snapshot includes: 
  • a summary of the number of students performing at grade level. The Grade Summary Form provides an easy-to-grasp visual of student progress in one page. Everyone can see at a glance whether progress is being made.
  • a summary of the research-proven schoolwide processes that are in place. This includes cross-grade grouping for reading instruction, tutoring resources, and Leading for Success team structures.
  • a summary of the research-proven Success for All instructional elements that are used effectively schoolwide.
During the first three years of implementation, school leaders build capacity to guide the process on their own. As staff members gain expertise, the responsibility for guiding the teams falls more and more to the leadership team and less to the SFAF coach. A gradual reduction in coaching services is incorporated into the three-year Success for All implementation plan, but the plan can be modified, as needed, for individual schools. 
 
The Snapshot is supported by an achievement plan that describes the targets and actions planned by the Leading for Success teams. The plan allows team members to focus their work on the agreed-upon critical actions together. 
 
To learn more about the powerful Leading for Success process, give us a call at (410) 616-2300 or use the contact us to request more information.