The program has had a distinct impact on administrative training and
practice in the districts and its developers expect that it ultimately
will affect academic achievement levels in many area schools.
"We've created a richer pool of qualified administrator candidates
in Western New York and district interest in the program is growing,"
says Stephen Jacobson, a founder and co-director of the program.
"If we're successful in helping our LIFTS graduates engage the energies
and talents of their future employees and students, then there will
be a considerable ripple effect and improvements in school performance
are likely."
Marion Canedo, superintendent of the Buffalo Public Schools, echoes
Jacobson's enthusiasm.
"LIFTS has already produced some outstanding administrators in our
district," she says, "and the program's comprehensive, hands-on approach
has us thinking outside of the traditional educational box when it comes
to administrative training,"
Jacobson, a professor in the GSE's Department of Educational Leadership
and Policy, co-directs the program with departmental colleagues Laurie
Johnson, assistant professor, and Robert Stevenson, associate professor
and department chair.
LIFTS was developed in response to a projection that within a few years
as a result of retirements, highly qualified administrators would be
at a premium in school districts throughout Western New York. After
assessing predictions of changes in the educational environment, faculty
members in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy worked
with several local school districts to design the innovative, non-traditional
educational leadership program based on the latest theory and practice
in the field.
The program, Jacobson explains, is unlike traditional school-administrator
preparation programs, which emphasize the mastery of such managerial
skills as curriculum planning, instructional evaluation and scheduling.
It includes instruction in those areas, but its emphasis is on the
development of interpersonal skills that promote group facilitation
and team building. The purpose is to engage and use the talents of teachers,
parents and students as part of the educational process. The program
also has a lengthy and intensive field-based component, with administrative
internships offering participants 600 hours of contact with practicing
school administrators in the area.
"It is our intention to assess changes in student achievement in schools
administered by LIFTS graduates," Jacobson says, "but we are not ready
to do so yet because the program is still quite new.
"New kinds of educational leadership take several years to show such
results. The role of administrators alone accounts for only about 7
percent of student academic achievement. What matters most is what goes
on in the classroom and at home, and that's what the program ultimately
affects."
Jacobson says LIFTS represents a fundamentally different approach to
school administration. It holds that schools operate most effectively
in the current educational climate not by insisting that all of the
available talent, leadership and decision-making skills reside in administrators,
but by recognizing that leaders are found throughout the organization
and should be promoted throughout as well.
He says that in more traditional systems, these people often are not
only not given a voice, but their experience and knowledge are suppressed.
If administrative leaders engage teachers, as well as parents, in the
process of learning and leadership, however, they, in turn, will engage
the students, he says. When this cumulative process begins to take hold,
Jacobson says improvements in academic performance and other areas are
expected to follow.
Jacobson says LIFTS does not appeal to controlling personality types,
but rather to collaborative types who tend to value cooperative ventures
and the sharing of authority and responsibility.
"By empowering such people through transformative leadership," he says,
"many talents can be harnessed to improve the day-to-day efficacy of
our schools."
Eleven LIFTS graduates now are school principals in the Buffalo, Sweet
Home, Niagara Falls, Warsaw, Lyndonville, Pioneer and Erie 2 BOCES school
districts. Twenty-one went on to become assistant principals in the
Buffalo, Williamsville, Lockport, Niagara Falls, Kenmore, Sweet Home,
Pioneer and West Seneca districts, and four are central office administrators—one
the director of personnel in the West Seneca School District.
Although individuals may self-nominate for inclusion in the program,
Jacobson explains that LIFTS participants often are sponsored by individual
school districts as possible candidates for specific administrative
posts.
"The prior practice—and in many cases, current practice—in
school administrator training was that a teacher who wanted to become
a principal remained in her in own school building, grabbed time out
of her workday to do administrative tasks and then took academic courses
on her own.
"She would play with pieces of the role," he says, "with the assumption
that somehow she'd figure out how it all goes together."
Jacobson says the earliest program cohorts were made up predominantly
of female risk-takers who felt that the traditional system of promotion
and administration preparation didn't work for them and they decided
to take a risk and try something new.
"Now we have a lot of people who are 'career-pathing,'" he says. "Because
the program is very popular in so many districts, they understand that
certification will jump them to the head of the pack as they seek administrative
positions."
