Moore, MarkJohnson, Sarah2026-09-1420142014-05Johnson, Sarah. 2014. Developing Leadership Capacities of Central Office Managers in Service of Learning at Every Level. Doctoral Dissertation, Harvard University Graduate School of Education.https://p2p8-sa-zuvru-a9vusux.re-cotta.com/handle/1/42756319Public school districts serve most of our nation's public school students. Though many have doubted the capacity of large school districts to adapt to changing contexts and improve student-learning outcomes at scale, between 2002 and 2012, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Chancellor Joel Klein undertook many cutting-edge district-wide reforms in an attempt to do exactly that. Their central innovation was to restructure the relationship between the central offices and schools (Honig, Copland, Rainey, Lorton, & Newton, 2010; Nadelstern, 2013). As a teacher who doubted the effectiveness of central office structures to enact improvement at the instructional core (teachers, students, and content), I chose, as a way of questioning my assumptions, to work in the central office of the largest school district in the nation. In November of 2013, halfway through my residency, the NYC DOE entered a new era of reform under Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carmen Fariña. This change in leadership provided me with an ideal opportunity to reflect on past reforms in order to illuminate the future. That is the purpose of this report. In an effort to close achievement gaps and increase graduation rates, Bloomberg/Klein boldly pursued an "inverting the pyramid strategy”: instead of holding principals accountable for instituting central mandates, principals were empowered to make their own decisions about their instructional program and aligned support. In exchange for increased discretion in organizing operations, principals were held accountable for meeting student performance targets. The impact of the Bloomberg reforms spanning both the Chancellor Klein and Chancellor Walcott administrations was mixed. Graduation rates rose dramatically (by over 10%) for the first time in half a century (Nadelstern, 2013), but achievement gaps persisted (Fruchter, Hester, Mokhtar, & Shahn, 2012). My analysis suggests that the Bloomberg/Klein administration may have underestimated the strength of bureaucratic inertia to prevent their vision from being fully implemented, as well as the importance of attracting the right talent and of building the capacity of all system members (principals, support structure staff, and central office managers) to operate successfully in the new structure. My review of the literature suggests that, in addition to structural shifts, the process of transforming bureaucracies into systems organized for learning and improvement involves mindset shifts and changing the practices and cultures of people and teams. My Strategic Project sought to determine if leadership development of this kind for central managers in service of improving student learning at scale can improve central office manager policy decision-making and resource allocation. As this was my first personal experience as a central office manager, I documented and reflected on my experiences extensively, attempting to gauge and describe my effectiveness. I used these experiences and reflections on my own practice to accomplish three goals as part of my strategic project: 1) Create a conception of what it takes to be an effective leader of central staff efforts to support the improvement of principals and schools, 2) Establish the credibility and relationships necessary to innovate a group of seven central office leaders, which became known as the Systems Leader Learning Community (SLLC), and 3) Teach them "deliberately developmental" practices, again in service of improving their abilities to make decisions that could create conditions for learning and improvement in schools. I tested the ability of group members to make their way through a public value-creating chain in steps: 1) engaging in deliberately developmental practices as a community, 2) improving their own leadership capacities as individuals and as a group, 3) making better decisions that impact schools, 4) enabling practitioners to make improvements at the instructional core, and 5) actually improving student learning outcomes. The limitations of the 10-month residency, combined with the possible delayed response of the system, prevented me from observing the ultimate outcomes of this group’s development. However, I provide some evidence to suggest that I created a group with an emerging "deliberately developmental" culture, which has impacted central manager decision-making and may create enabling conditions for school improvement. I also detail how my work with the group has prompted the distillation of several emerging lessons that might inform the work of central office managers interested in building similar groups. I also found that the closer groups members’ workstreams were to policy-making at the school-level, the greater was their commitment to orienting their leadership goals toward improving student learning outcomes, as opposed to other goals. This lead me to propose a new theory of change that suggests central office leaders should engage in close collaboration with school-level practitioners or their representatives to solve difficult problems. Going forward, the NYC DOE will continue to explore how central office manager leadership development of this kind can be integrated into the new chancellor’s vision and priorities. The Systems Leader Learning Community is well situated to continue to inform this work. In terms of personal development, during the residency I became more confident in my abilities as a leader who strives to transform large school districts, and I recount the lessons I've learned in this capstone. For the DOE, the next steps are to incorporate deliberately developmental practices into the everyday work of central office teams, and to determine how to align central office manager accountability systems with leadership development programs. Ultimately, the only way to know if such leadership development practices are effective is if central office managers actually make different decisions that lead to school improvement. Regarding the sector as a whole, I believe that research should be directed at how to adapt and build deliberately developmental practices into public sector educational organizations, considering that prior research has emerged only from private sector organizations. Subsequent research should build upon these lessons to explore how school districts can improve their central office managers' effectiveness through a combined strategy of leadership development and accountability for improving student learning outcomes at the scale of a large school system. In addition, school districts should consider the extent to which school-level practitioner teams can engage in similar practices of development, learning, and accountability, and how central office decision-making enables school-level learning practices.enEducational leadershipThesis or Dissertation