Designing teacher leadership for school improvement

A district’s teacher leadership program enabled teachers to grow professionally while solving problems specific to their schools.

Education in the United States has been long plagued by norms, structures, and practices that discourage innovation and collaboration (Murphy, 2015). Yet educators in today’s schools contend with increasingly complex challenges — from meeting the needs of an increasingly diverse student population to responding to high-stakes accountability policy mandates (Shaked & Schechter, 2020). The growing demands, with little change in teacher preparation and development, has left many of today’s teachers underprepared, overwhelmed, or demoralized. As a result, many are choosing to leave the profession (Pendola et al., 2023), leaving schools with large numbers of positions to fill. A 2022 study of the U.S. teacher workforce, for instance, showed 36,000 unfilled teaching positions and another 163,000 positions filled by underqualified teachers (Nguyen, Lam, & Bruno, 2022).

There is no shortage of proposed ideas for addressing this crisis, from alternative certification programs to first-year induction efforts. Another avenue that may be especially helpful for teachers who are feeling powerless is creating opportunities for teacher leadership. While these kinds of opportunities are not new, they continue to be rarer than we would expect and like, especially given their potential for addressing some of the concerns within the profession.

Why is teacher leadership so powerful? First, teacher leadership opportunities can be developed locally and tailored to respond to a school community’s needs. Second, school districts that create and invest in teacher leadership opportunities demonstrate overt commitments to the professionalization of teachers and to the enhancement of teachers’ careers over time. Finally, teacher leaders can make meaningful contributions to school improvement efforts, particularly efforts aimed at engaging historically marginalized populations of students, families, and community members.

For teacher leadership efforts to realize their potential, teachers need to be carefully prepared to take on these new roles. One large urban school district in the U.S. provides a model for how to prepare and develop teacher leaders so they can improve their leadership skills and dispositions generally and take part in leading school improvement efforts specifically.

Committing to teacher leadership

Like many other urban U.S. school districts, this district serves a large and diverse constituency. Its schools are at varying performance levels on state accountability report cards, and turnover in the superintendent and school board roles has led to relatively frequent strategic changes.

The appointment of a new superintendent in 2017 led to the development of a new strategic plan that called for driving school improvement through more equitable family-school-community connections and expanded teacher voice and engagement in school- and district-level decision making. The superintendent and district cabinet saw a teacher leader program as a key pathway for implementing some aspects of this new strategic plan.

A districtwide, collaborative approach

The teacher leader program served dual purposes: expanding the number of teacher leadership opportunities in the school district and enriching the skills and dispositions of current and potential teacher leaders.

Through our research in the district from 2019 to 2021, we observed important structural aspects that helped the teacher leader program take root. First, the district’s strategic plan explicitly noted the superintendent’s commitment to expanding the role of teacher leaders in each of the district’s 65 schools. Second, the superintendent and district cabinet publicly championed the program and supported the people charged with developing and implementing the program. Third, the district’s teachers union enthusiastically supported the deeper investment in teachers through the teacher leader program. This union support raised the program’s profile throughout the district and enabled more authentic teacher participation in the program. Finally, the district leveraged an existing research-practice partnership with a local university to develop the teacher leader program’s curriculum, which centered on bolstering teachers’ skills and dispositions to lead school improvement efforts and engage with families and the community.

Job-embedded, authentic learning

District administrators, teachers union officials, and the partner university faculty members collaboratively developed the teacher leader program to ensure its curriculum and associated projects built the skills and dispositions teacher leaders in the district needed. Its curriculum and projects also brought to life the district and the partner university’s view of an excellent urban education, which focused on commitments to equity; community engagement; and data-informed, evidence-based improvement.

The program’s delivery model was similar to that of a graduate program in educational administration. Program participants took four courses over two years: leadership theory, data-informed decision making, family-school-community engagement, and supervision of instruction. Courses were taught by full-time faculty from the university and held at the district’s central office building. Any teacher in the district could apply for the program, and a district administrator and a union official selected the participants using a variety of selection criteria, including prioritizing teachers who had a history of positive teaching evaluations, those who might create clusters of two or more participants in a school, those working in Title I schools, and those with an expressed desire to explore leadership.

Nearly 80 applications were submitted for the first cohort. The cohort size was limited to 20 teachers, so this positive response prompted a second cohort. The district defrayed some costs for participants, who received an approximately 70% discount on the university’s typical tuition rate and, in the end, paid around $1,500 to participate in the program. Additionally, participants were able to apply the program’s four courses toward a master’s degree and school-level administrator credential from the university.

If a principal does not understand what effective teacher leadership looks like in practice, it is unlikely that teacher leadership efforts will flourish at their school.

One key project was a consistent thread throughout all four courses: revising existing school improvement plans. At the beginning of the program, participants reviewed their existing school improvement plans and, as they progressed through the program’s four courses, they further critiqued and overhauled these plans based on what they’d learned and discussed. The superintendent was impressed with the participants’ proposals and asked them to present their overhauled school improvement plans, along with their ideas for initiatives needed to support these plans, to district- and school-level administrators and faculty members at the partner university.

What makes teacher leadership work

Throughout our time with this teacher leader program, we collected the thoughts and impressions of teachers in the district — both those who participated in the program and those who did not — about what teacher leaders need to be effective and the value of teacher leaders to schools and districts. These thoughts and impressions of educators from a diverse range of schools in this district coalesced around three considerations that are applicable to districts of all sizes and contexts.

1. Teacher leaders need defined roles.

Teacher leaders must have legitimate, defined leadership roles that formally empower them to foster change in their schools. Some school districts may be able to create formal positions for teacher leaders (e.g., academic coach) while other districts — for myriad reasons — cannot create such positions. The work of teacher leaders exists on a continuum, from full-time positions to those that enable teachers to continue in their classrooms but with dedicated release time, additional compensation, or assistance from other staff members (e.g., paraprofessionals) so they can take on additional leadership responsibilities.

Regardless of its place on the continuum, the role of teacher leader should be distinct and shaped to help meet a school’s specific needs, such as improving instruction or strengthening family-school-
community relationships. Existing grade-level leader or department chair roles should not simply be renamed “teacher leader” with no formal shifts in the role’s purpose and actual sphere of influence. District- and school-level administrators may need to shift some stakeholders’ long-standing perceptions that teachers “just teach” while administrators lead.

In the program we studied, participants analyzed their school’s academic and student well-being data and then worked with their school-level administrators to develop a series of professional learning sessions for their colleagues. At these sessions, teacher leaders discussed their projects’ findings with their colleagues and introduced specific practices for improving student learning and student well-being. Unlike many one-size-fits-all professional learning workshops, these sessions were developed by teacher leaders working in individual schools, which enhanced not only the legitimacy of the school improvement efforts but also of the teacher leaders themselves.

2. Teacher leaders need good school administrators.

The success of teacher leaders in individual schools is often tied to the skills and dispositions of a school’s principal. School-level administrators can significantly influence teacher leaders’ skills and dispositions to build the capacity of their colleagues. Simply put, if a principal does not understand what effective teacher leadership looks like in practice, it is unlikely that teacher leadership efforts will flourish at their school.

Teachers within the district we studied were quick to share just how much influence a principal had over the culture of teacher leadership in individual schools. Experienced teachers in schools whose leaders subscribed to the district’s new strategic plan proactively sought opportunities to help with school improvement and family-school-community engagement efforts. However, principals in some other schools rebuffed teachers’ efforts, especially if those teachers were not already serving in formal teacher leader roles.

On the other hand, teachers of all kinds — from early career to highly experienced — offered numerous examples of other principals who strongly supported teacher leaders and their work. In many cases, these administrators needed to marshal resources and redesign master schedules, but they found ways to make it work. Some principals, for instance, created formal teacher leadership positions that released teachers from all classroom responsibilities. Others were able to release teachers from some of their classroom responsibilities and provide a small stipend. A few also added teacher seats on their school’s leadership team to invite more voices around the decision-making table.

Teacher leaders who had more release time or a seat at the table told us that their principals’ efforts helped build their capacity so they, in turn, could work to build their colleagues’ capacity. Some teacher leaders, for example, used their release time to identify their colleagues’ professional learning needs and then sought resources to address those needs. Others conducted regular learning walks or facilitated communities of practice to get more teachers into their colleagues’ classrooms to observe, learn, and provide feedback.

While the nature of teacher leaders’ roles and work differed from school to school, there was one common theme: Principals legitimized, recognized, resourced, and monitored teacher leaders’ work, but teacher leaders were empowered to shape and drive their work.

3. Teacher leaders sustain school improvement efforts.

Historically, teacher leaders helped their schools by completing tasks administrators assigned to them. The role of teacher leader was much more reactive than proactive. Yet there is no shortage of complex challenges facing today’s schools, and teacher leaders can help schools identify, better understand, and address these challenges. Most importantly, though, teacher leaders can sustain these kinds of efforts over time in their schools.

Recent studies note increases in principal turnover (DeMatthews et al., 2021). With such change happening at the top, teacher leaders occupy powerful positions to sustain positive momentum in addressing challenges, even as principals come and go. Indeed, recent conceptualizations of teacher leadership emphasize how teachers can operate as drivers of work instead of recipients of directives. For example, Barnett Berry and colleagues (2013) introduced the notion of “teacherpreneurs” — teachers who transform their schools by addressing the challenges they and their colleagues face through teacher-driven innovation within and outside classrooms.

In the program we studied, teacher leaders had the flexibility to engage in teacherpreneur work that was both professionally fulfilling for them and timely in addressing a pressing challenge in their schools. The teacher leader program curriculum and associated projects called on participants to identify a challenge in their school, investigate ways to address that challenge, and develop and pitch a proposal for improvement to their administrators and colleagues. These proposals, participants said, provided a chance to engage in schoolwide leadership work while remaining in their teaching positions, which was very important to many teachers.

In fact, one thing we heard more than anything else was how much teachers lamented that the profession only has two major roles: teacher and administrator. Many teachers said they had little desire to become administrators, but “the way things are” presented few options for something different. The district’s overt commitment to legitimizing teacher leadership roles, though, allowed more teachers to engage in leadership work on their own terms, without needing to become an administrator. The proposals participants developed responded to a pressing challenge in their schools, and participants were only charged with leading the work in their proposal — nothing more. Such an approach promoted balance whereby participants engaged in leadership work with defined timelines and outcomes rather than needing to step into a more formal (and perhaps amorphous) administrator role.

These positive experiences from participants provided even more evidence that districts must create or bolster efforts to provide formal and informal opportunities for teachers to engage in leadership work.

Not just an add-on

Teacher leadership is not a new concept. Yet, studies on teacher leadership are replete with examples of teacher leadership opportunities that simply layer new work on top of teachers’ existing work, of teacher leaders not being prepared to thoughtfully and expertly engage in their roles, and of the tendency for school-level administrators and others to continue to operate as if a person could either be a teacher or an administrator — and nothing else. There are ways to avoid these potholes, though, as we have observed. Based on our time in this research-practice partnership, we learned some important things about what makes a teacher leadership program valuable to both teachers and the district.

First, the work of teacher leaders should be specific to the needs of individual schools or the district. Using local resources to develop teacher leaders by, for example, partnering with a college or university, can better ensure teacher leaders’ work is appropriate to the local context and not just another program that fails to take root.

In addition, embedding learning opportunities into teacher leaders’ current work can enable them to respond more effectively to their schools’ needs. Teachers are the closest educators to students and often have the most comprehensive knowledge about students’ needs. Teacher leadership opportunities that leverage this unique knowledge can better serve the needs of all students, which permits schools to be more equitable and socially just.

Growth opportunities that are tied to teachers’ current work are valuable to teachers who desire to do more in their jobs but do not want to become administrators. Such opportunities hold promise to retain more teachers by giving them increased ownership over school success and combating their sense of powerlessness in the face of complex and often competing challenges. It is essential, though, that those in traditional administrative positions advocate for and legitimize the work of teacher leaders and ensure that such positions don’t amount to simply piling on more tasks. Partnering with a teachers union from the beginning can better legitimize teacher leadership opportunities and increase the number of teachers who participate.

While the teacher leader program we describe is not without shortcomings, it represents one school district’s effort to redesign how it develops its workforce. Such efforts, to us, are transferable to other contexts — and it all starts with district administrator commitment, intentionally dedicated financial resources, teachers union involvement, and a partnership with a local college or university.

References

Berry, B., Byrd, A., & Wieder, A. (2013). Teacherpreneurs: Innovative teachers who lead but don’t leave. Jossey-Bass.

DeMatthews, D., Carrola, P., Reyes, P., & Knight, D. (2021). School leadership burnout and job-related stress: Recommendations for district administrators and principals. Clearing House, 94 (4), 159-167.

Murphy, J. (2015). Forces shaping schooling and school leadership. Journal of School Leadership, 25 (6), 1064-1087.

Nguyen, T.D., Lam, C.B., & Bruno, P. (2022). Is there a national teacher shortage? A systematic examination of reports of teacher shortages in the United States. (EdWorkingPaper: 22-631). Annenberg Institute at Brown University.

Pendola, A., Marshall, D.T., Pressley, T., & Trammell, D.L. (2023). Why teachers leave: It isn’t what you think. Phi Delta Kappan, 105 (1), 51-55.

Shaked, H. & Schechter, C. (2020). Systems thinking leadership: New explorations for school improvement. Management in Education, 34 (3), 107-114.

This article appears in the December 2023/January 2024 issue of Kappan, Vol. 105, No. 4, p. 26-30.