Effective Leadership is the result of a healthy balance between management and instruction. While current research seems to minimize the need for management, the reality is administrators cannot be truly effective if they do not have an equal pairing between instruction and efficient systems, or management. Educational Leadership programs are making earnest attempts to infuse leadership techniques that would be preparatory for all environments; however, experience shows us that the skill set needed for suburban and many urban settings may require an additional layer when providing such leadership in inner city settings.
We understand instructional leadership to be the depth at which a leader understands with academic integrity. An effective leader should have a solid understanding of reading, specifically, and a working knowledge of quality math instruction. In this era of classroom instructional coaches, the effective leader knows how to improve their personal skills by working in tandem with a content area expert, or classroom coach. In most suburban, and many urban environments, children who are below educational standards are in the minority. Therefore the numbers needing intensive remediation are much more manageable in nature. The effective leader skillfully matches the students' needs with those of an accomplished teacher, while ensuring they have the additional resources necessary to achieve proficiency through this partnership. Many children in an inner city environment enter school with a major deficit between the intended levels and actual levels of proficiency. To provide support to the mission of academic achievement, and due to the sheer numbers of students in need, an assistant administrator must be equipped to leverage quality instruction with essential interventions. To this end, they must also understand at a deep level, how remediation is to be paralleled with enrichment to act as the catalyst to learning success. In making the determination for necessary strategies and skills, the assistant administrator must effectively analyze deficits, determine a plan of action and execute the plan in a succinct format.
In the age of technology there are programs that are both diagnostic and prescriptive in nature. Through a battery of online assessments these programs can determine student deficits and create a learning path to remediate those deficiencies. While it is agreed that technology is a major contributor to preparation, remediation and enrichment, it is not to negate the positive impact of a student's time on task with a qualified instructor. To this end, it is important for assistant administrators to be clearly versed in indicators of teacher effectiveness. While teachers that provide authentic instruction could do so in any environment, many teachers in inner city environments reference the need to make more connections with students on a personal level to gain social-emotional access to them prior to educating them. The effective have realized the importance of this skill in every classroom setting, yet the teacher in an inner city setting may accomplish very little without it. Educators that have a proven track record of success in other environments admit that inner city work, in this era of high stakes accountability, is unlike any other experience. In probing for the cause, a portion of it proves to be the need to address students of such varying functioning levels, all at one time and often in the same classroom environment. Recognizing attempts are made to organize students who need overall enrichment in a different environment from those who need constant remediation, again a realization, students don't learn everything at the same level, therefore making this systematic organizational style often impossible, and at the other end of the spectrum, undesirable. To meet the steep demands of inner city environments including the focus on accountability, teachers must exhibit a willingness to analyze student data and engage in problem solving around the results. While effective data analysis may allow teachers to isolate problems, true analysis entails observing contributing factors and determining a plan of action for each, in their inter-related capacities. While teachers must be equipped with the skills necessary for this degree of analysis, assistant administrators must have foundational skills that allow them to both teach and coach teachers on these most critical techniques. Recognizing that teachers may be more versed in their particular content area, assistant administrators must have a working understanding of the problem solving process as to facilitate true analysis for all content areas.
One of the greatest challenges of inner-city school leadership is the number of factors that detract from the learning process. Many students struggle to have their basic needs met and therefore are often mentally diverted from rigorous classroom activities. These distractions become less vexing when recognized at the onset and dealt with aptly. The assistant administrator needs to possess the ability to assess these societal impacts and leverage the proper community resources, within or without the school, to address the identified concern. Knowing what avenues are available, and the mode for access, is equally as important as recognizing what academic deficits a child possesses and interventions necessary to remediate those therein. While this may seem to be one of the less demanding areas, it must be realized that any area incongruous to academic achievement is one that causes dismay. The true test is to simultaneously address the social needs while accelerating scholastic abilities.
While suggestions outlined in this writing may serve as recommendations for assistant administrators, it can be implicit that building level leaders are engaged in the same leadership processes. The time an assistant administrator spends in that capacity needs to be one of true professional growth. They need pairings with principals strong in instructional leadership and management skills. This pairing will allow their tenure as an assistant administrator to be fulfilled through quality on-the-job training experiences. The assistant administrator must also accept that superior leadership, especially in an inner-city school, might require additional work hours and possibly days. This is not to imply that only those who work in inner-city environments spend exceptional amounts of time doing so, it is however, to confirm while quite likely in other environments, absolutely necessary in inner city environments. Assistant administrators must become students of the learning process and the work of leadership. They must set themselves apart as scholars. Those willing to research problems, identify solutions and documents results. Moreover in inner-city settings, assistant administrators must be willing to analyze data and take calculated risks to ensure success. Understanding that education is not "one-size-fits-all" to truly transcend expectations educators must not be recalcitrant, but willing to do whatever it takes to beat the odds.
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