Leadership Roles of Administration Under the Common Core Reform

Abstract

This qualitative study focuses on school administrators’ understandings and actions as leaders of the Common Core reform. In interviews with eight school and district leaders from five diverse districts in Pennsylvania, several aspects of Common Core, or PA Core, implementation were consistent across regardless of student population demographics and urbanicity. The findings show that (a) administrators view themselves as leaders of buildings or districts but not of reform implementations; (b) while it may not require them to make drastic changes, the PA Core is considered an opportunity to address aspects of the district or school that are in need of improvement; and (c) administrators are aware of their school context and their diverse students’ needs, but the PA Core is not yet adapted to address these diversity issues. These findings suggest that the Common Core pushes administrators to focus on certain areas of school improvement, such as curricula, assessments, and professional development that attends to the Common Core requirements; yet, the Common Core is similar to previous practice, even if its standards are deemed more rigorous.

Keywords

Common Core reform administrative leadership school reform accountability

Introduction

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have been adopted by more than 40 states (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2014). Although the standards were officially enacted in Pennsylvania in 2013, the state has subsequently rebranded the approach as “PA Core” (S. Neufeld, 2013). The CCSS and PA Core are the most recent in a series of standards-based reforms. Each new set of these reforms carries similar calls for higher standards, aligned curriculum and tests, and the use of test scores for public accountability and often for teacher evaluation (O’Day & Smith, 1993; Rothman, 2012). Each requires changes on the state, district, and school levels for implementation to proceed.

The Common Core reform attempts to improve the quality and distribution of educational resources so that all students, including the disadvantaged, meet high academic standards and are college and career-ready (Kornhaber, Griffith, & Tyler, 2014). While the Common Core is said to be a state-led education reform (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2014), Richard Elmore (2007) underscores that in actual school reform, change begins from the inside out—with teachers, administrators, and school staff—not with external mandates or standards. Thus, if the CCSS are substantially more rigorous than most states’ previous standards (Thomas, 2009) and require more complex assessments (Chingos, 2013; Tupakula, Varadharajan, & Vuppala, 2009), it is reasonable to anticipate that the role of school administrators will become increasingly demanding when enacting the Common Core program. In schools and districts where the student population includes relatively high proportions of high-poverty students, minority students, or students for whom English is not their first language, we propose that administrators and teachers face still steeper learning curves and instructional challenges.

New academic standards like the CCSS require engaging faculty in new professional development, tailoring the new curriculum and instruction to accommodate students’ needs, and understanding the assessments and data required to meet state and federal accountability demands. Finally, district administrators may need to take action to promote understanding by teachers and building-level administration of the requirements of the standards and the needs of the student body.

The study investigates how administrators who serve diverse student populations in Pennsylvania view, interpret, and plan for the new standards. While examining eight administrators serving schools with diverse populations, we focus on how school administrators understand and enact their roles as leaders of the new reform. We observe how administrators attempt to address implementation of the Common Core. By focusing on leaders serving diverse populations, the study projects insights into how school administrators are adapting the CCSS (PA Core) to traditionally challenging contexts and, more broadly speaking, how they view their role in implementing the reform especially that it is important to have district-level administrators voice their perspectives and be heard by district, state, and national education policy makers, as they play a key causal role in the overall school dynamics.

Our study is grounded in the assumption that the agency of educators, including administrators, is part of a complex dynamic shaped by school culture and context (Datnow & Castellano, 2001). We also assume that districts with diverse student populations (those with higher percentages of students of color, English-language learners [ELLs], and/or free- and reduced-price lunch recipients) require more change to meet the Common Core expectations than districts with homogeneous, relatively privileged student populations. Thus, we have developed the following research questions:

Research Question 1: How do school administrators perceive their role as leaders and act upon that role to implement the new PA Core reform?

Research Question 2: What plans do leaders in districts with diverse student populations have for implementing the PA Core?

It is the hope that when applying the above research questions to this study, certain factors affecting districts’ success of reaching Common Core standards will be uncovered.

Literature Review

There is a rich history of implementation research and school reform analysis that shows with every reform, schools are restructured and redesigned (Fullan, 2007; McLaughlin, 1997; Sarason, 1996). School administrators’ approaches and priorities are necessarily reshaped during these reforms as well (Carlin, 1992; Hallinger & Heck, 2010; Murphy & Louis, 1999). New reform can involve loss, anxiety, and struggle because change is often implemented too quickly for schools to cope with (Hargreaves, 1998); therefore, as agents of change, administrators need to balance their leadership between state accountability and local autonomy (Fullan, 1993, 2010).

Traditionally, reform begins with the school principal, who ensures successful implementation by playing an active role in organizational change within the school culture (Deal & Peterson, 2016). An administrator taking an active role entails ongoing displays of support for the reform as one critical feature needed for the success of a school-wide change effort (Hallinger, 2011; Muncey & McQuillan, 1996). At the school level, the administrator is in control of whether or not things change (Fullan, 2002; Gunter, 2012). His or her views and attitudes may shape the stance the teaching staff takes on change needed for implementation of the new reform (Fullan, 2001; Ishimaru, 2013; Leithwood & Riehl, 2003).

As Sarason (1971) explains, school cultures are complex, “complicated, and at times fractious; principals and teachers are relatively isolated in their positions; and teachers responsible for student learning often have little time to learn new educational ideas” (as cited in Copland, 2003, p. 379). As such, new reforms can create several challenges. Administrators play a critical role in identifying and supporting learning, structuring the social settings, and mediating the external demands in schools (Antrop-Gonzalez, 2006; Ishimaru, 2013; Legters, 2002; Rowan & Miskel, 1999), but they may feel overwhelmed by the ambiguity of reforms’ initial phases when content and processes might be new (Prestine, 1991). Despite such uncertainty, administrators must show support for the reform to promote fidelity of implementation at the classroom level (Fraatz, 1989) and increase the quality of instruction (Legters, 2002). In addition, school administrators need to play an “instructional leadership role” (Fraatz, 1989, p. 19) by supporting the teachers to ensure success of the implementation of the reform. Other responsibilities include creating an environment of trust with professional communities for collaboration and communication (Murphy & Louis, 1999; Tschannen-Moran & Gareis, 2015) and a platform for continuous school growth during the reform’s implementation (Goldring & Rallis, 1993). For principals, leadership of these many varied roles may be hindered by their own lack of understanding of the reform itself (B. Neufeld, 1995). Without administrators’ performance in their key roles, it is much less likely that the reform will be successful.

Under each new reform, administrators are expected to shift their roles from being managers of the school to leaders of the reform (Frederick, 1992). School administrators often have to share their power and step back so that teachers can lead some aspects of the reform (Fullen, 2006; Hargreaves & Fink, 2006; Muncey & McQuillan, 1996). Administrators therefore must take risks, expect to relinquish control at times, and temporarily carry some of the responsibilities for which the principal is typically responsible to move the school forward with teachers in leadership roles (Prestine, 1991).

Varied school context also influences the implementation of new reforms such as the CCSS. Often, school administrators need to find solutions that allow for adaptation to the demands of the new reform within their specific contexts, though the degree of change necessary and the level at which it occurs are debated. Firestone (1989) suggests that district differences in local policy contexts were key in the implementation, adaptation, or avoidance of state policy. In contrast, Spillane (1998) focuses on the differences that exist between schools in a single district. Hallinger and Murphy (1986) point out that leadership between schools with different socioeconomic status (SES) characteristics differs significantly. Their study concluded that schools have different needs depending on their social context and that leaders would do well to derive their tactics from those contexts.

Empirical studies of the American context over the last 30 years have supported the argument for unique leadership strategies in economically disadvantaged contexts, including racially diverse and urban schools, to achieve excellence and equity. Murphy (1988) asserts that because leadership in schools involves the principals’ influence over others in school, the quality of their leadership is critical to the school’s success and achievement of goals. An early study on effective leadership showed that urban school leaders made specific use of community ties (e.g., clubs, churches, and parents) to build a culture that reflects society; the community positively received these strategies (Andrews & Morefield, 1991). Furthermore, the study identifies behavioral approaches of effective urban administrators, including providing resources, communicating, having a visible presence, and being an instructional resource, which allow the leader to make the best of the specific school context. A more recent study of economically disadvantaged schools across Canada finds similar strategies in place (Bouchamma, 2012).

Diverse populations require a leadership capable of both enacting a new reform aimed at changing the organization’s normative structure (Leithwood, 1994) and accommodating the students’ communities, social realities, and needs within the new reform (Green, 2016; Horsford & Heilig, 2014; Patterson & Silverman, 2013). In an effort to create this change, school administrators confront the challenge of negotiating with individuals and groups in an attempt to bring people and organizational structures together to create focus on educational change (Ball, 1987; Green, 2016). In that sense, change associated with the reform becomes a political dynamic that mirrors the school’s values and interests rather the policy mandate (Tyack & Cuban, 1995). However, new reforms heighten the visibility and potential criticisms of leadership actions within a diverse student population context. During periods of change, interactions intensify as school leaders try to implement the new reform while maintaining ties to school values.

Many studies agree that diverse school populations require leadership that differs significantly from that prescribed by the “dominant leader” effectiveness literature to make sense of the constructive chaos that may happen with the implementation of a new reform (Ford, Ford, & Polin, 2014; Hallinger & Heck, 1999). We hope to contribute to this literature by examining leadership in diverse schools faced with the demand to meet a new set of standards. This study looks at how leaders find solutions despite differences in local context during a reform movement (CCSS) designed to support the building of a new level playing field.

Method

This is a phenomenological qualitative study that relies on qualitative interviews with eight administrators from five districts in Pennsylvania. To explore reform implementation across different contexts, the districts were chosen based on student diversity, geography, and urbanicity as reported by the Office of Civil Rights in the Civil Rights Data Collection 2011 Survey. Table 1 shows descriptive statistics for the districts and the administrative roles of the study participants.

Table 1.

Summary Descriptions for School Districts Included in the Sample.

District and description	Total students	% of ELL	% Black	% Latino	% White	% Other	% FRL	Participants^a
District 1: Central PA; small city	6,929	2.55	2.7	2.8	84.1	10	13.3	Martin: Elementary principal
								Andrea: Secondary curriculum director
								Neil: High school assistant principal
District 2: North-central PA; small suburb	1,940	0.5	1.1	1.3	95.7	1.9	25.8	John: Curriculum coordinator
District 3: Southeastern PA; small city	5,639	25.11	8.1	5.9	75.8	9.1	23.1	Tyson: Assistant principal
								Gertrude: Assistant principal (K-8)
District 4: Southeastern PA; small city	6,992	10.73	67.1	23.9	4.2	4.3	77.5	Carlos: Elementary principal
District 5: Central PA; rural fringe	4,424	0.43	1.3	1.2	95	2.5	47.3	Tim: School principal (K-12)

Source. U.S. Department of Education: Office of Civil Rights (2014).

Note. ELL = English-language learner; FRL = free and reduced-price lunch; PA = Pennsylvania.

All names are pseudonyms.

Interviews took place in spring 2014, when districts in Pennsylvania (and those in this study) were in varying stages of PA Core implementation. Data were collected via in-depth, individual, 30- to 60-min tape-recorded interviews with each administrator; three interviews took place in face-to-face contexts and five were conducted by telephone. Interview protocols were semistructured to allow us to pursue unanticipated topics or remarks. Our questions focused on knowledge of the PA Core reform, district diversity, leadership approaches to the PA Core, and implications of the PA Core for their schools’ context. All interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim, and then coded and analyzed by three researchers using NVivo 10.

The data analysis process was completed in several steps. Researchers first read through each transcript once utilizing Colaizzi’s (1978) data analysis methodology to provide insights and a brief overview of the contextual influences as well as a profile of each administrator. Next, researchers read each transcript a second time, marking notes of recurring themes and contextual repetitions as well as any other thoughts or comments, marking portions of the administrators’ interviews into an outline, generating a start list of preliminary codes that was agreed upon through several discussions among the three coders. Preliminary codes included community, context, optimism, and fidelity.

Additional codes were gleaned inductively from data review and analysis related to the implementation process (including necessary resources and practices), the participant’s perception of the PA Core, references to accountability measures, and sublevels of the collaboration code that included clashes at the building level and systemic level. These additional codes were developed through researcher conversations considering all of the interviews included in the data set. A complete list of 13 final parent codes can be found in the appendix.

Creswell (2013) explains the “rhetorical structure” of the transcript where “short paragraphs” from some interviews are used to express the “essence of the experience for the participants” (p. 223). This structure is used to demonstrate the firsthand experiences of administrators with the new reform and its implementation. From this part of the analysis, the researchers were able to collate and decide on the themes using portions of the administrators’ narratives as a “rhetorical structure” for supporting evidence of how the administrators view, interpret, and plan for the new PA Core standards addressing the needs of their student body (Creswell, 2013).

Findings

In conversations with school and district leaders from the five diverse districts in Pennsylvania, we uncovered aspects of Common Core, or PA Core, implementation that were consistent across many or all of our participants, regardless of student population demographics and urbanicity. We summarize the findings as follows: (a) Administrators view themselves as leaders of buildings or districts but not of reform implementations; (b) while it may not require them to make drastic changes, the PA Core is considered an opportunity to address aspects of the district or school that are in need of improvement; and (c) administrators are aware of their school context and their diverse students’ needs, but the PA Core is not yet adapted to address these diversity issues.

Contrary to our initial conceptualization, the administrators are carrying out a delicate professional balancing act rather than focusing their leadership specifically on the PA Core reform. With each layer of policy, they must understand, identify, and make a series of changes from above while maintaining their priority of educating students by connecting educators to curriculum.

Leaders of Institutions and People

A clear finding of this study is that the administrators interviewed resisted identifying their leadership approaches in terms of a specific reform. In most cases, when asked about their leadership style, the school leaders referred to their jobs holistically. One important focus was the role of communication between leaders and the staff implementing the reform. For example, when responding to a question probing her ability to create change in the school, Gertrude emphasized communication:

I mean, we’re out and about whenever [teachers] need. You know, if they need to have those conversations or they need to have those venting sessions, you know, we have that open-door policy. It’s not like we stay behind closed doors, you know, and it’s us against them. We’re out there; we’re trying our best to let them know that we support them in the best way possible. (Gertrude, personal communication, June 24, 2014)

Like other respondents, Gertrude’s general approach to the reform and leadership emphasized was teamwork. Teamwork, as one might expect, also led into the ideas of cooperation, trust, and professionalism. In Carlos’s case, this environment was paramount:

I don’t micro manage. I empower people, whom I believe are team players, to be captains of the team and then, you know, by checking in with them and stay[ing] involved. I am a person who would roll up my sleeves. This past year, I rolled up my sleeves and said, “Okay, let’s paint the building, we need to brighten it up.” My teachers volunteered their time. I volunteer my time and we all paint a building. Or if something needs moved, rather than wait for someone to do it, I am going to do it. I am a very hands-on person. (Carlos, personal communication, May 18, 2014)

This is one clear, however rare, link between the literature related to broad reforms and implementation for leaders. We see reflected the power-sharing and whole-school engagement needed for school reform to take place successfully (Fraatz, 1989; Muncey & McQuillan, 1996). Moreover, Carlos clearly views the school as a community or, in his words, a “team”:

I consider myself more of a coach. I come from a coaching background. I coach my boys in different sports, basketball, baseball, soccer . . . so as a coach for the whole team, with the students for the parents and the staff so it is like a combination. (Carlos, personal communication, May 18, 2014)

There were, however, examples of school-based administrators who were more interested in fostering fidelity and consistency in their building. While this is also building a “team,” there was less interest in finding common ground and making the reform work from the teachers outward (Elmore, 2007) than there was on adjusting the staff perspective and performance to meet the leaders’ expectations. Tyson, an assistant principal, held such a view even as he shared the goal of creating a community dedicated to educating students:

And get them teachers right, like they’re my kids. You know? So that’s why I am here Friday when no one else is here. I have four dedicated people who are sitting here planning, talking about everything you and I are talking about: about how to get these kids who you know might not make it . . . That’s the role, that’s what we have to do, that’s the passion and if you don’t come in with that passion, get the hell out. That’s how you help that kid. If you don’t come with that passion, I can’t do anything for you; you keep moving. (Tyson, personal communication, June 27, 2014)

Tyson, however, also viewed the PA Core as part of building teachers’ practice. He referred to his role as a guide or facilitator of practice, related to meeting the standards, but specific to other needs of the building. For example, when asked about the process of getting teachers on board, Tyson referred to evaluation:

Small core, small group core groups. Professional learning communities. We pull them to the side and, “Hey, I was looking at this idea.” When I go in there and do my observations, “Hey, I’m looking. I saw what you did.” Comments were linked up to this standard; or, let’s have a conversation with where in the Common Core are you getting after seeing this, or PA standards where have you seen this? (Tyson, personal communication, June 27, 2014)

While exploring the PA Core standards, administrators make decisions about how to go about them and which standards to prioritize, though they do this at different points in the process. As Tyson emphasized, teachers worked together around pedagogy after the curriculum was in place. John focused on identifying standards with teachers before practice; he worked with staff to identify standards that need to be taught as they are “the ones that are gonna be tested” (John, personal communication, February 7, 2014). Similarly, Martin had open conversations with his teachers to identify similarities and differences between prior standards and the PA Core and the curricular modifications accordingly. Throughout the interview, Martin uses “we” to discuss who implements the changes projecting a collective teamwork and collaboration among all stakeholders:

Yes, we have to make some adjustments. We are not looking at non-fiction text quite as much as we should; math-wise I think looking at the things that are in the Common Core and look at the things that we are trying to teach, they are not that far off. We don’t have major changes. (Martin, personal communication, February 12, 2014)

Tim, who is a K-12 principal in a rural district, explained how he worked with his staff through curriculum mapping to fill in the gaps and adopt the new standards:

The administration worked with the teachers. Like, I worked with my staff here and so we went through and looked at each grade level. See if it is similar to what is being said in the Common Core, and we tried to look at the comparison of what we are really doing. Basically, what you find that it is a kind of shift from, you know, the next grade level up there are a lot of stuff pushed back. (Tim, personal communication, March 7, 2014)

Administrators work with teachers to empower them to make important decisions on what material is included. While this, too, is molded by the standards (or perhaps expectations of what will be tested), we see that administrators emphasize the power that they have rather than a sense of limited autonomy that may be implied through the state-level adoption of a standards-based reform.

When asked about their leadership and whether the reform would alter their approach to meeting the needs of challenging student populations, administrators often indicated that their priorities were not completely upended. The administrators highlighted their roles as administrative intermediaries, building facilitators, coaches, school leaders, and teacher supporters. The goals and plans for meeting the expectations of serving the needs of their students did not change with the advent of the PA Core reform.

More of the Same and a Chance to Change

There were two distinct attitudes that pervaded the district and building levels. There were administrators who saw the PA Core as an opportunity to change some aspect of their schools, and there were those who saw the reform as a storm to be weathered. Building administrators tended to feel that the reform was an opportunity for growth, change, or improvement in their schools.

On multiple occasions, administrators expressed the idea that PA Core could easily be included into the good work already being done by the schools’ teachers and staff. It was merely another coat of paint and not an entirely new structure altogether. Tyson put it this way:

It’ll go away just how like everything else has . . . so then that’s what’s been happening: try something then it goes away, try something then it goes away, and so that’s what’s happening in this district. A lot of teachers feel like, “this too shall pass.” (Tyson, personal communication, June 27, 2014)

John, who is a curriculum coordinator, explained that the district’s job is to make the curriculum support the standards. Here, he indicated that things are still in flux, that PA Core is not the end:

And, we foresee . . . the PA Core, you’ll find, will slide away as the political pressure diminishes, and the national Common Core will be the thing. And who wants to re-do your work? So, as we re-do our curriculum, which we have to because, remember, we originally built our curriculum based on the old PA academic standards. Now we have PA Core, so you gotta redo the curriculum anyway, do you want to redo it again 5 years from now when PA Core slides away? . . . All curriculum should be built upon standards. If you don’t build it upon standards, what do you build it upon? (John, personal communication, February 7, 2014)

While John clearly supports standards-based reform, he does not view the PA Core as a drastic change from what is already in place. In fact, he intimates that undergoing drastic changes at this point would be inefficient, as the curriculum standards are likely to change in the near future. On the contrary, Andrea, a district-level administrator, described her approach to the new set of standards:

But I think what the curriculum critics fail to realize is that PA Core standards, or PA Core standards or the Common Core standards are really only a guide for districts to use . . . But that doesn’t mean you have to stop there. That doesn’t mean you can’t teach broader, more breadth, more depth than what the standards say. Because that’s the power of having a local curriculum . . . I don’t feel as a curriculum director that just because the PA Core was adopted by the state of Pennsylvania, that that is the only resource that I have to use and that I am restricted to that alone. (Andrea, personal communication, March 31, 2014)

School leaders might recognize their legal obligation to work within the new reform, but they can avoid some change when they deem it unnecessary. In this break between the seemingly concrete demand for change based on the state-level policy, and the practice within districts and schools, we see that the administrators in our sample find ways to assert themselves.

One purpose of this assertion is to protect the institutions and the individuals that they lead. For example, John explains one reason why there is a gap between administrator outlook and possible actions in the district, namely, inadequate time:

Now, if you ask teachers they’re gonna feel different. They are really feeling the heat. They are seeing sample items of what is to come, on the new tests built on the Core standards. They’re scared as hell . . . they said it ten years ago, and probably said it 50 years ago, “We can’t do this.” The one valid point they have is time. They don’t have enough time. (John, personal communication, February 7, 2014)

Another reason for a difference of opinion among administrators is that the district feels they have already achieved what the PA Core has set as a goal:

And so the Common Core, PA Core, there is no difference in that philosophy than what we have been doing here in the district and our literacy initiative, training tutors, and academic literacy and what we are training kids to do in academic literacy. (Andrea, personal communication, March 31, 2014)

In her work at the district level, Andrea sees the statewide initiative as out of sync with her schools’ needs. Based on the level of education of the school and in comparison with the new reform requirements, the need for change is minimal overall. Martin, in the same district, emphasizes this finding and Andrea’s opinion:

We are working just the same as before. We haven’t done . . . any more so than we’ve had before. We can always utilize what we already have and apply it on the Common Core new reform. (Martin, personal communication, February 12, 2014)

Throughout all of the interviews included in this data set, we see administrators emphasizing the good work already happening in their districts—regardless of the reform. Schools did not have radically different approaches in regard to the PA Core from each other. This is not to say, however, that the reform did not affect the districts. In some cases, the PA Core reform opened a window for change.

Neil projected his skepticism; however, he explained that such reform depends on perspective:

This could be the curmudgeon or gold, you know? So you can either say, you know, this is stupid stuff you know, or . . . what we’re going to take this and we’re going to make this our own. (Neil, personal communication, April 1, 2014)

Creating change with the same approach: Collaborative leaderships

Despite a shared sense of the reform’s potential, school leaders differed on their methods of maximizing that potential. There were some who took a collaborative approach to leadership in general, which seemed to carry through to their activities related to the PA Core. Others took a very rational approach, comparing the standards point by point with their existing curriculum to see where they could build an improvement based on the new expectations. There were those school administrators who took a decidedly less technical approach but viewed the school organically and tried to engender optimism and a sense that teachers and administrators work together toward a common good. On the contrary, those administrators tried to keep communication open:

If they do have concerns, they know that our doors are always open, whereas some of the administrators in the district . . . they are not always so open to hear what teachers have to say where our teachers know that they can come in all around the year. (Gertrude, personal communication, June 24, 2014)

However, they also kept clear boundaries of professional responsibility with regard to the reform:

As a building, . . . our administrative team works. We don’t micro manage, you know what I mean? They’re professionals. Teachers are professionals. They know what is expected you know we tell them what is expected and we expect them to follow through. (Gertrude, personal communication, June 24, 2014)

Most of the leaders who saw the PA Core as an opportunity for change had some idea that the process would involve co-creation of the conditions for change. There were those who saw co-creation mainly arising from within the school administration:

I think it is more due to our culture here. There are harsh stories that come out of some other building in terms of some of the things that are done or some of the things that are said. I think we’re a team here and we work really well together and our communication among the three of us is very good, so why wouldn’t that trickle down to our teachers? (Gertrude, personal communication, June 24, 2014)

Gertrude highlights that within the district, there were other contexts where change creation would be contested but emphasized that the leadership team in her school would work to avoid that. Throughout the evidence she presented, this leader emphasized that the changes required by this reform would be undertaken by a leadership team that knows their context—including the professional teaching staff and their needs. As part of this, open communication and respect for professionalism would form a foundation. This open-door policy, combined with an avoidance of micromanagement, begins to hint at a more complex idea of power sharing as reform leaders than previous literature has expressed.

In other districts, leaders took a more active approach to engagement and co-creation of environments for change. Carlos, for example, saw the teachers as a part of the process:

We have teachers from each building going down and working and rewriting, aligning our curriculum, and they are working with those companies and they’re taking ownership of it ’cause in that way, they could come back and share with their colleagues as well. Now principals have attended some trainings that [principals] are keeping us caught up with the pace of what’s going on too so we’re kept in the loop and we’re going to do a follow-up next month with them. This is where we’re at; this is what the teachers have done; here’s where we’re going; here’s some resources; here’s some support, you know what I mean, it is a kind of work in progress. You can’t just say next month we’re going to apply the Common Core and we’re just gonna learn it. (Carlos, personal communication, May 18, 2014)

In one instance, not necessarily representative of the district, a school leader saw convincing teachers to get on board as one of his main jobs. This was part of the reform implementation, as there was a perceived discrepancy between the administration’s outlook and the teachers’ outlook. Tyson emphasized that in such a case, leadership’s position should therefore be impressed upon the teachers so that they too can see the opportunity for change; passively weathering the storm is not an option:

Try something then it goes away, try something then it goes away. And so that’s what’s happening in this district. A lot of teachers feel like this too shall pass . . . [we have to figure out] how to get these kids who might not make it . . . we tell them that they’re all going to make it and we’re going to sell ice to Eskimos, are you understanding? That’s the role, that’s what we have to do, that’s the passion. And if you don’t come in with that passion, get the hell out. That’s how you help that kid. If you don’t come with that passion, I can’t do anything for you; you keep moving. (Tyson, personal communication, June 27, 2014)

School climate influences the “motivation and behavior of teachers” (Hoy & Hoy, 2006, p. 312). The administrators seem to embrace their willingness to step in and support the teachers’ understanding. In most cases, this role centers on the frustration that teachers may experience as a result of change with the new reform. Tyson’s example above, however, shows a slightly heavier hand and stronger support of the reform as he emphasizes the need to bring teachers to a level of understanding that approaches “passion” for the reform and its goals. In contrast, Tim explains his process of building support within the ranks of his teaching staff to head off negative reactions before they start:

There are groups of teachers whom you could tell them, “Here are the new things. This is what we are being told, and you have to do this,” and they do it. So you get these initial people on board. At the elementary there are 3 to 5 teachers who are like, “Hey, I have been in testing, and I’ve been in this spot, and I understand.” And they are ones that ran with this and trying to put negativity aside and say we have to look to this. In second grade you have to focus on this and that because I get your kids in third grade . . . I worked in this district for nine years. We have this year even kindergarten teachers saying, “Hey, let’s get together sometime in the evening,” and they met at a local restaurant and bring something they are using in the classroom and they are sharing these resources. They all understand where it is heading. (Tim, personal communication, March 7, 2014)

For Tim, the process of explaining the new PA standards and expectations is an effort that he makes in conjunction with teachers. That teachers share resources among their colleagues—within and between grades—shows that they are taking ownership of the expectations of the reform as well. Martin sees himself as a provider of resources for a complex school undergoing change, rather than a taskmaster leading one reform above the others:

I think . . . just trying to help and making sure that the teachers have what they need. I looked at the curriculum but not in tremendous amount yet. I certainly plan on being more involved when it is fully implemented . . . [teachers] are struggling to make sure like they are ready to go. (Martin, personal communication, February 12, 2014)

In short, while approaches to implementation differ, the leaders we interviewed across diverse districts in Pennsylvania see the PA Core as a chance to make a change in schools—with differing views about whether this is a chance, opportunity, or requirement, even as they make adjustments for implementation.

These leaders sometimes worked toward specific changes but were often unsure about what exactly they were doing to enact the PA Core reform, which was markedly different from their school goals and approaches to leadership. Their practice was informed by their individual school contexts and what they have been already working on to improve their schools.

School Culture and Diversity of Students as Part of a Complex Process and Structure

The sample for this study was also focused on highlighting and isolating the complex and necessary changes being made to meet the needs of diverse student populations in different school and district contexts. Regardless of the diverse school population, administrators had similar views of the reform and its implementation. The participants acknowledged that their students have different needs and that the PA Core would have to be navigated for them. In less diverse districts, like the one where Andrea works, adapting the curriculum to the local context meant picking and choosing what the community thought was important for their students to know:

Your actual living local curriculum is going to be much more refined and detailed and can include a lot more. A local curriculum should be determined by that local school district because what’s important in one community may not be important in another community, so this community in [school district] may decide, they have the right to decide in social studies, that we believe the local history in [county] and specifically the [town] is important to every graduate now and we have the right to put that in our curriculum for students whenever it’s written into our curriculum, but that’s part of our course of study. (Andrea, personal communication, March 31, 2014)

There was little variation in this response across these districts and, overall, adapting the reform to their varied school contexts did not register as a major issue for any single administrator. For example, Carlos, an elementary school principal with an ELL population of 10.73%, talks in a similar way to Andrea about his school’s support for students in a holistic way:

So what we’d do for a half an hour block of time per grade level, we’ll break them into smaller groups to kind of give them that direct instruction or direct support to kind of help reinforce those things to move them forward. And the district has done that for couple of years, and we just continue to do it. And that includes all students, it doesn’t matter what their classification is ELL ES or learning support, like it is based on individual needs. (Carlos, personal communication, May 18, 2014)

It is possible that lack of variation across their districts and schools reflected that administrators were not at the point of having put PA Core into practice for all students. In other words, they may not have had the experience of seeing how students and teachers were grappling with the standards and what adaptations might be needed. It is also possible that the respondents felt the curricular reform could be easily adapted to address all students’ needs.

Discussion

The findings of this study suggest that this reform makes the broader political context and their local realities more salient for school leaders. They easily see the tension between state mandates and the work they have been doing in their schools for years. Some may even feel empowered knowing that as school leaders, they are the link between a national movement and local practice. At times, it was clear that administrators were in a tense, risky position: How much power do they give teachers? Which teachers will be the most likely to see the reform the way the administration does? How much of their identity as a leader is related to a feeling of power over teachers versus their willingness to collaborate? Whom do the leaders feel responsible to: school board, test scores, students, parents, or teachers? While the PA Core is surely not the first reform to elicit these questions, its unique blend of national scope, federal support, state adoption, and local implementation makes such questions come to mind more readily for the average school administrator.

Second, there are interesting short-, medium-, and long-term implications of how leaders see the reform. For instance, in the short term, the reform will likely be implemented and given a good faith effort by most school leaders and teachers. The medium- and long-term implications may differ depending on how leaders tackle reforms in general. If reforms are storms that schools must weather, how soon after the political pressure to implement passes away will administrators steer their schools in another direction; will the resources spent on implementation then have been wasted? Those who seek and achieve change using the PA Core might press on with the reform and be more apt to adopt promising reforms in the future. The difference between weathering a storm and taking advantage of it could very well deepen. If such a schism occurs, what fate awaits the next reform leaders are asked to implement?

Finally, there is no question that schools need to adapt the PA Core reform or any other reform in a way that tailors it to the various needs of their students. Services for these students, whether ELL or those with special education services, seem to remain the same with the arrival of the PA Core new reform. We find that this plays out in interesting ways in the data collected for this study and that these findings have interesting implications for our understanding of school leadership of diverse populations.

As the PA Core State Standards were in the first stages of implementation at the time of our interviews, administrators had yet to dig deep into the new reform. They would likely need to make sense of the new assessments before they start adapting it to reach out to all students. In a world where decisions about changes in a school are often determined by test scores, performance of schools with a diverse student body of various needs may signal that more work is needed to implement the PA Core than some administrators in this study anticipated.

Conclusion

We began this study expecting to talk to school leaders about how they plan on adapting the PA Core to different student populations. What we found, instead, was that administrators and school leaders saw other issues as more pressing; specifically, that standards always dictate curriculum, and assuming that schools can alter any curriculum to their student populations, that the PA Core might serve just as well as any other set of standards. In other words, the PA Core is yet another reform that does not address diversity issues, needs, or services, and schools at this stage do not have the time, effort, or resources to address them. The reform designed to ensure that all students graduate college and career-ready did not immediately push administrators to focus on those who might be most far away from that goal; instead, overall implementation groundwork would need to be laid first. The PA Core program pushes administrators to focus on certain areas of school improvement, such as curricula, assessments, and professional development that attends to the PA Core requirements; yet, the PA Core is similar to previous practice, even if its standards are deemed more rigorous.

This study helped to show (a) how a set of leaders in diverse PA districts are thinking about the implementation of the PA Core, (b) how they prioritize their activities under the reform, and (c) what they think the PA Core has offered them in terms of addressing the needs of their students. The PA Core curriculum is not the most important thing going on in any of the school buildings of the administrators in this study. Instead, the reform is on their radar but their leadership approaches do not seem to change with the reform.

The implementation of the new reform throughout the whole school hinders leadership from focusing on their diverse population and molding the PA Core to attend to their various student populations, at least at the beginning of implementation. As curricular plans are refocused to reflect the standards and teachers consider their approach to pedagogy, we saw no indication from administrators at the district or school level that the needs of these traditionally underserved students would need to be assessed and planned for with the most recent wave of standards-based reforms.

Footnotes

Appendix

Final Coding Tree.

Accountability
Collaboration
Administrator
Building level
Clash
New
Old
Systemic
Teacher
Community
Connected
Disconnected
Negative outlook
Positive outlook
Context
Collaborative
Dejected
Fertile
Hopeful
Indifferent
Sallow
Fidelity
Implementation process
Professional development
Population specific
Resources
Optimism
Administrator
New
Preexisting
Search for
Teacher
Practitioner experience
Perception of Common Core—Indifferent
Perception of Common Core—Positive
Perception of Common Core—Wavering
Quotable
School context
Perception of students

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

Julia Mahfouz holds a PhD in educational leadership from the Pennsylvania State University. Her research interests are within school improvement, professional development, and principal leadership. She has been involved in projects on social emotional learning, mindfulness interventions, and school reform. At present, she is exploring the influence of a mindfulness-based professional development on principals’ well-being and leadership.

Nikolaus J. Barkauskas holds a PhD in educational theory and policy from the Pennsylvania State University. His research interests include the philosophy of education, ethics in school reform, and moral literacy in young children. He is currently studying the strategic giving practices of private philanthropic foundations in support of the Common Core State Standards.

Erica B. Sausner is a PhD candidate in educational theory and policy, and comparative and international education at the Pennsylvania State University. Her research interests include education policy, community resilience, civics and citizenship, and underrepresented groups in education. She has presented her work at American and international conferences, including papers related to educational leadership, school boards and local control, and international assessments in the Global South.

Mindy L. Kornhaber is an associate professor of educational theory and policy at the Pennsylvania State University. For the past several years, her work has been focused on standards-based reform, testing policies and their influence on educational equity, and students’ intellectual development. She is also concerned with assessment, educational equity, how theories of intelligence influence school practice, and school reform.

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