School Leaders Need a Plan to Lead for Literacy

What will it take to ensure that all students learn to read and read well? 

This is the question at the heart of efforts to improve reading instruction and drive gains to student literacy outcomes. Yet, so often, the conversation about what needs to change to transform student trajectories into successful readers, writers, and thinkers happens at the policy level and the classroom level—and leapfrogs the role of the school leader altogether. 

This is a profound mistake. School leaders play a critical role in driving gains to student learning—their impact being second only to that of the classroom teacher. When school leaders personally champion efforts to improve teaching and learning by making literacy a schoolwide priority, their leadership can have a transformative impact on teachers and students.  

Rather than being an afterthought in the conversation about how to improve reading outcomes, school leaders are the linchpin to both teacher and student success.

Rather than being an afterthought in the conversation about how to improve reading outcomes, school leaders are the linchpin to both teacher and student success. By applying New Leaders 4-part action planning process to literacy instruction, you can set the course for transformative gains. Here’s how.

Part 1: Diagnose the current state

In this moment, when educational inequities have been exacerbated by the multiple pandemics our students and communities face, leaders must confront the adaptive challenges that contribute to reading failure being the norm for far too many students. Heifetz et al. distinguish adaptive challenges from technical ones as follows:

“While technical problems may be very complex and critically important (like replacing a faulty heart valve during cardiac surgery), they have known solutions that can be implemented by current know-how . . . Adaptive challenges can only be addressed through changes in people’s beliefs, habits, and loyalties.”

Too often, when leaders diagnose their current state, they remain in the realm of the technical and presume that a problem can be solved simply by increasing know-how on a particular instructional practice or adopting one curricular program in lieu of another. While these moves can be helpful, they are not a substitute for addressing the adaptive challenges at the root of why low and unequal reading outcomes persist. 

By diagnosing the root cause of literacy failure, and enlisting everyone in shifting not only know-how but also mindsets, habits, and practices, leaders take a powerful first step in their plans to improve literacy outcomes. 

By diagnosing the root cause of literacy failure, and enlisting everyone in shifting not only know-how but also mindsets, habits, and practices, leaders take a powerful first step in their plans to improve literacy outcomes. 

When diagnosing through the lens of adaptive challenges, explore the following questions: 

• Are there particular student groups who have been left out of reading success in our school? 
• Have we persisted in using particular practices or approaches even when students haven’t been successful? 
• To what extent does my school community act in pursuit of the belief that all students in this school can thrive as readers, writers, and thinkers? 
• To what extent does my school community have the capacity and the will to engage in different practices to drive different outcomes?
• What would it take for me to personally show up as a literacy leader in my school community?

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Part 2: Prioritize the highest-leverage areas of opportunity to address

‍With a powerful and incisive diagnosis of the current state in hand, leaders can now move to prioritization. This step is key. Rather than coming up with a laundry list of everything to tackle, strategic leaders know that less is more. Fewer, high-leverage priorities allow leaders to focus their time and energy on what’s most important, and as a result, achieve even greater results. 

To identify impactful priorities, consider the following: 

• Invest the adults within a school community in the belief that they have the power to drive toward different literacy outcomes. Make it a priority to build a culture of collective efficacy across your staff. 
• Get everyone rowing in the same direction by using high-quality, evidence-based, culturally relevant literacy curricular materials. Be sure to regularly communicate clear expectations for implementation as that can make or break your success. 
• Demonstrate that literacy is a key priority by being strategic about what is taken off teachers’ plates so that they can focus on fostering students’ literacy growth. Just as important as what you will do to drive transformative gains in reading is what you won’t do—subtraction is key. 

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Part 3: Set goals, identify strategies, and name action steps

‍Once leaders have established schoolwide priorities, it’s time to take action. Keep in mind that this part of the action plan is not just about what pedagogical practices or instructional strategies teachers will enact in their classrooms, but rather the actions that you as a school leader are best positioned to take in order to impact literacy outcomes schoolwide. 

As you set goals, consider key strategies, and identify action steps, the following questions can ensure that you are accountable to the changes you expect to see schoolwide:

• What are the levers I can pull that individual teachers cannot? Consider: development of the schedule and/or intervention block, alignment of teacher planning time to facilitate collaborative planning, budgeting decisions to align with priorities. 
• How can I personally guard teachers’ time and energy so they can keep the main thing—literacy success!—the main thing? 
• Looking across my team, what resources are available both within and beyond my school community to support teacher learning and capacity building around implementation of high-quality, evidence-based, culturally responsive literacy instruction?

Remember, your ability to invest your staff in key changes is critical. As you set goals with your instructional leadership team and teacher teams, it’s important to communicate the rationale behind key goals and their associated strategies and action steps. And so is ensuring that team members have mechanisms for asking questions and raising concerns—so that quality implementation, not just compliance toward mandates, occurs throughout the school.

It’s important to communicate the rationale behind key goals and their associated strategies and action steps ... and ensure team members have mechanisms for asking questions and raising concerns—so that quality implementation, not just compliance toward mandates, occurs throughout the school.

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Part 4: Monitor and adjust in real time

‍Once a plan is in motion, leaders need mechanisms for assessing efficacy. From the jump, leaders should identify the data they’ll collect about student literacy outcomes and adult instructional practice. Frequent opportunities to reflect upon what’s working and what’s not are critical, so that changes can be made in real time. 

Keeping in mind that this work is not just technical but also adaptive, leaders need to assess not only increases in know-how on the part of the staff, but also the extent to which the staff is embracing new practices and habits of mind in service to the literacy success of all students. 

Here are questions you can ask in step-back conversations to fuel reflection: 

• To what extent have we embraced evidence-based, culturally responsive practices to support students’ literacy growth? 
• To what extent have we let go of inequitable practices that were inhibiting our students’ literacy success?
• What schoolwide systems and structures are supportive of our ability to meet students’ needs?
• What schoolwide systems and structures are inhibiting our ability to meet students’ needs?

As you reflect on these questions with your teams, and also reflect on your own leadership to improve literacy, it is important to communicate the actions you’ll take as a result. And most critically, how you will continue to foster the collective efficacy necessary to drive literacy results in the long-run. 

The long game

This work is a marathon, not a sprint— and often involves reversing historical patterns of inequity that have kept far too many students, particularly those from marginalized groups, from receiving the high-quality education and literacy success that is rightfully theirs.

Leadership is a critical lever in the work to change literacy trajectories. Rather than it being an afterthought, it needs to be a centerpiece of school plans in the year ahead.