LM April 2024

Illinois’ New Default Evaluation Plan

Click on cover image at right for pdf of Evaluation Plan.

with leadership and getting them deep into self-improvement through the cycle of inquiry. It’s my opinion if school leaders can’t deal with their own growth, and work themselves through that process, they can’t do it for their school. Q: Dr Griffin, can you share why you wanted to implement the IPA School Leader Evaluation Plan in Bethalto CUSD #8? JG: As a sitting superintendent, I’ve been evaluating principals for quite some time, and I found the existing tool to be more of a checkbox type of tool than something that I could really use. I tried to make it a tool of growth and development, but it just didn’t really lend itself to that type of a conversation. I wanted something more meaningful that I could use with our administrators that felt less personal and less subjective and more objective and based on specific information and data. The School Leader Evaluation Plan allows the principal and I to both reflect on the aspects of the job and identify those weaknesses and the strengths. One thing I found myself struggling with was how to address a principal who wasn’t spending enough time on relationships. I wasn’t sure how to quantify that and make it feel less personal to that administrator. When I looked at this tool, it was a strong piece of the dispositional type of work that we could be doing. I felt this tool gave me an opportunity to really help the principal conceptualize those dispositions that help develop building leaders and break down those areas into those essential behaviors that you can use when you’re trying to provide more explicit feedback. Q: Dr. Dugan, do you have anything to add? KD: Jason and Jill reminded of an interesting concept called Wholonomy, where a person recognizes that, to be continued...

professional development. When we look at the School Leader Evaluation Plan, it really checks all the boxes for what so many of us in the field have been longing for. Q: Can you share the key components of the School Leader Evaluation Plan? JL: First and foremost, the basis for the School Leader Evaluation Plan is the leadership framework that we call the School Leader Paradigm. The School Leader Paradigm is a robust leadership framework that IPA developed in collabora tion with several other principal associations across the coun try. It is a framework that encompasses, not only the work that school leaders do, which actually is the true foundation and basis for the evaluation plan, but it also brings in to bear the dispositions of leadership that are so important. It’s those things that are happening in the hearts and mind of a leader that helps them be effective. I have in my almost 18 years at IPA found it’s usually the dispositional side of leadership that gets you in trouble. I’ve never had somebody call and say I’m losing my job because I didn’t raise test scores this year. It usually has to deal with an ethics lapse or an inability to manage the time and complexity of the job. We know through leadership development and support, we have to take that into account. It’s wrapped in an infinity loop that we call our Sue-Finity loop thanks to Sue Holmes here on the IPA team that conceptualized that. Within the infinity loop, there is a cycle of inquiry, so you have this notion of continuous growth. Around that is what we call context. Key leadership context because leadership doesn’t happen in a vacuum. I’d invite people to go to ilprincipals.org, where they can download a copy of the paradigm that lays out more of a complete overview of the paradigm and you can get a sense for what the plan is based on. It is deeply focused on identifying opportunities for growth, where strengths lie

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LM April 2024