I'm Dr. Katie Novak and we're unpacking the leadership drivers and the MTSS
Blueprint. If we want to build a really robust system that meets the
needs of all learners, we have to focus on implementation science or having
drivers that allow us to create a system that eliminates the barriers that
prevent all students from learning in classrooms with their peers that support
them academically, behaviorally, and social emotionally. To do this, we
want to think about the importance of leadership and the leadership drivers
can be really broken down into two aspects of leadership which is adaptive
leadership and technical leadership. Technical leadership is much more about
nuts and bolts: creating schedules, and dismissal procedures. it's
There are very easy to fix and can actually be solved usually with just a short
requirement. Adaptive leadership, on the other hand, is all about engaging
stakeholders and family and community engagement and shared responsibility.
We want to think about the importance of balancing adaptive and technical
leadership in order to drive really important change. What is so cool about
the leadership drivers is how closely they align to the newly adopted Ed Eval
rubric for school administrators which was adopted in August of 2018. First,
when we're thinking about leadership, the first thing we want to talk about is
shared responsibility: this concept of working in a model of distributed
leadership and providing educators and students and families with a voice in
improvement planning. It's also very important to involve other stakeholders
in decisions about resource allocation as you think about the barriers that
prevent your district from really optimizing the needs of all students. You
have to realize that the resources that we have are fairly finite and where we
choose to invest those resources is really critical for the outcomes of
students. We need to do this, of course, in partnership with families and
communities because family and community engagement is equally a part of this
distributed leadership model when we think about adaptive leadership and
getting everybody on board. Lastly it's really about this long term
strategic planning improvement planning and trying to work with all stakeholders
through adaptive leadership to understand what some technical
challenges are that need to be addressed through either long term planning or
resource allocation. When working together, it's really important to see
how this fits into the Ed Eval rubric. When looking at the new Ed Eval rubric,
you'll notice four standards and those four standards actually align pretty
closely with the types of tools that are in the MTSS toolkit when unpacking the
leadership drivers. When you're thinking about in an MTSS system building shared
responsibility and collaboration, you'll notice under standard four and
professional culture the importance of consensus building, shared vision
development, and response to disagreement and conflict resolution. This is also
about creating a mission and core values and making sure that there's a
commitment for all people to have high standards. In doing this, we really
have to share responsibilities and collaborate with all educators in order
to build this system. Also, when talking about resource allocation, we can look
back at the school level administrator rubric and see under management and
operations it's really all about this concept of creating an environment where
there's fiscal systems that support the needs of all students. It also asks us to
look at technical things like schedules and time for teacher collaboration, and
whether or not we have recruitment and hiring strategies that truly work in the
best interest of our students. We also talk about the importance of student,
family, and community engagement in leadership drivers, which is standard 3
which really talks about the importance of sharing responsibility with students
and families, communicating in culturally proficient ways, and then always ensuring
that we're addressing family concerns and barriers in our improvement planning.
Lastly, it asks us to create a scientifically based planning model in
MTSS. The scientifically based planning model addresses all aspects of
this educator rubric. We need to ensure that we have a standards-based
curriculum, a variety of assessment methods, and that our educator evaluation
system is robust in increasing teacher competency. We also have to ensure that
we have a process of data-based decision making, that our management and
operations is addressed through long term strategic planning, as well as the
professional culture of our school and family and community engagement.
In unpacking these leadership drivers, you'll be able
to see a very very smooth parallel and crosswalk between the new Ed Eval rubric,
our responsibilities as instructors, both in technical and adaptive leadership in
schools, and the outcomes on our own professional evaluation as we build a
multi-tiered system of support.