Leadership

Past Work

SEDL has long worked with groups of school leaders to strengthen their skills and knowledge. Our site work under the Regional Educational Laboratory contracts focused on building professional learning communities (PLCs) to support systemic improvement—that is, to improve the entire school system. We worked with individual schools and districts to establish PLCs so that staff could work, plan, and take action collectively to help increase students’ learning.

We have also worked with them on an individual basis. For 5 years, SEDL’s Education Leaders Fellowship Program offered administrators and teacher leaders an opportunity to use their summer vacations to deepen their knowledge of research findings related to student achievement. Each summer the fellows came to SEDL’s Austin office to conduct research and work on skills needed to lead their schools and districts to success. An assistant principal from Shiprock, New Mexico, for example, studied research-based strategies for effective teaching of reading and constructed a data management plan for her school. A teacher from Oklahoma examined her school district’s vocabulary development data and then created a professional development plan to increase teacher effectiveness in vocabulary instruction. Another fellow, an Arkansas superintendent, created an organization system for himself as well as a tool to plan and maintain the focus on reading in his district.