We are a small Brazilian private foundation aimed at improving the quality of education in the country.

The country has 27 states and about 5500 municipalities sharing resources and responsibilities in providing public education to approx. 32 million students. Quality is lousy and there is very little political pressure to improve performance (the majority of students are the first generation in school and labor market relies on low quality workers).

Since 2003, we have invested in the field and our most successful initiative so far has been training school directors to use the results from their profesional teams. We achieved significant increases in student performances, but we are almost sure they will be swallowed by incompetent management at Superintendent/System level.

How can an institution like ours have relevant and permanent impact on education systems? How can we bring more people from the business sector to do the same?

Leadership, or the lack thereof, is, in my opinion, one of the most serious issues facing Public Education. Throughout our society, one can see the impact of effective leadership on organizations whether they be private or public.

In Public Education, a great school can only be achieved with a great principal. The same is true for districts.

Public education needs to change the way they select and train leaders. Today, we get leadership by accident, not by design. That must change if we are to have any hope of improving our schools.

Teachers also must be leaders of their classroom and they need to have some leadership training as well. Classroom management courses are the closest thing to leadership training that most teachers receive. We need to do better.

The potential for a school district to drive improvement in instruction is both an opportunity and a temptation. The opportunity is to create more effective teaching and learning in every classroom and in every school. The temptation is to assume that the district?s primary role is to identify and create the curriculum and professional development needed for instructional renewal. As if not more important a role for the district is ensuring that the chosen curriculum and professional development get fully implemented in the schools and classrooms.

The imperative for implementation requires that the district engage and support school administrators so that they can serve as critical links in the program for managing instruction. Too often administrators are left in a ?no man?s land? between, on the one hand, district offices presenting them with very high expectations for performance and ambitious roll out plans that have not been carefully vetted and communicated and, on the other hand, teaching staffs that, in the absence of clear and compelling plans, are apt to push back and complain about additions to their work load and / or micro-management of classroom practices by the central office, etc.

The engagement of school administrators needs to start at the outset, as elements of the program are being designed, by including a select group of administrators in the design teams. Their inclusion will help ensure that the designs and plans reflect an operational, school-level perspective on what is feasible.

As the plans are being rolled out to schools, district leaders need to be very focused, practical, and timely in their communications with administrators. What are the essential things that administrators are expected to do? When? How? With what resources? Who do they turn to if they have questions? Rather than a 15-point plan that is communicated at a high level, if administrators are going to be able to communicate the district?s proposed approach to their staffs and help them execute it effectively, they need the essential elements and practical implementation steps spelled out in actionable detail. Administrators also need to get this information in time to understand, digest, and act upon it -- on top of all the other things that are already occurring in their school during the course of the year.

All of this is not very complex, but it is difficult for districts to do. Those districts that do it well and consistently pay as much attention to implementation as they do to strategy, on the ?how? as well as the ?what?. And they engage and enable school administrators to be leaders of the changes they are pursuing.

Attempts to improve Public Education in California has been slow and disjointed. Building teacher leaders in our district has been, at best, a hit and miss system of drive by professional development. One thing that I do know is when a program is implemented, it usually has no follow-up. The reform that takes place is really as good as the staff that is implementing it and also, if the district decides to sustain it. The CDE demands reform with little or no support ( systematic or otherwise). There are training and planning with NO feedback or follow-up.As a teacher I feel like there is no method to this madness. I am at the will of the district office and my administrator. This year we paid BIG bucks for private company to TEACH(?) us how to provide standards-based lessons to a resentful staff. We spent hours of training and planning and I still don't know what I was suppose to be learning. I did not get the opportunity to get my questions answered or to even practice the new strategies, nor do I or any other staff members want to. What a giant waste of time.

I feel like there is no plan,but a series of quick fixes and band aid attempts of reform. What can be done to keep the classroom teacher from throwing in the towel? I LOVE my students, but I feel like I am alone in trying to meet their needs each year.

Since 2000, The Wallace Foundation has supported a range of efforts aimed at significantly improving student learning by strengthening the standards, the training and the performance of education leaders along with the conditions and incentives that affect their success. Wallace's leadership initiative provides support for 34 states and districts and for commissioned research. Our hypothesis is that meeting the challenge of developing a more cohesive system is essential if the potential benefits of better school leadership are to be realized and sustained. Absent such cohesion in policies and practices, both within and between the different levels of public education, victories won by leaders in improving teaching and learning are likely to be smaller, more isolated and short-lived than they could be. This theory of action is outlined in a Wallace Perspective - Leadership for Learning: Making the Connections Among State, District and School Policies and Practices. This report, along with other Wallace knowledge products can be downloaded from our website: www.wallacefoundation.org.