Leadership for Restructuring or Systemic Change

Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.
-- N. Postman, 1982, p. xi

The increasing problems of poverty and social disruption in the lives of our children are more threatening than ever before. To rescue children "from hopelessness and violence," we must consider dramatic changes in educational programs and social services (Hayes, 1992, p. 724). Reactions to this appeal and to the call for major educational changes have been mixed. At the federal executive and legislative level, much interest and concern have been expressed, but few substantive measures have materialized. Many professional educators, on the one hand, call for massive systemic change or restructuring of schools. Others point to the lack of clear empirical evidence that promises results from restructuring (Fullan, 1991) or to the lack of real need for doing so (Gabbett, 1991). The Sandia National Laboratories report Perspective on Education in America (Carson, Huelskamp, & Woodall, 1991) "concludes the nation's education system doesn't need a complete overhaul" (Gabbett, 1991, p. A1). In light of these conflicting messages, how might leaders consider whether restructuring is a possibility for their schools, districts, communities, and regional and state educational agencies?

Corbett (1990) defines restructuring as major changes in roles, relationships, and rules to obtain new results in schools and districts. The need for restructuring and integrating the resources of the broader environment with those of schools has been proposed (Hayes, 1992). Fullan (1991) acknowledges the potential of restructuring schools and altering the relationships of schools to the external forces that surround them. As Fullan admits, there is a "strong conceptual rationale" for restructuring schools but not much positive outcome data to support it (p. 88); "there is more of a sense of promise" (Murphy, 1992, p. 91). Hallinger and Edwards (1992) note that research describing the "successful implementation of large scale, system-wide change is sparse" (p. 132). There is a "virtual absence of reported empirical data on how district leaders engage their organizations in fundamental reforms" (p. 133).

Further, there are those who proclaim that restructuring activity is for the purpose of satisfying the public that action is being taken to address their concerns about education. Malen, Ogawa, and Kranz (1990) make this observation about site-based management, one form of restructuring. Baldridge and Deal (1983) maintain that "large-scale intervention projects in schools [such projects are seen as changing roles and relationships] produce only limited measurable change, but they do increase satisfaction, establish shared beliefs, and restore confidence and support among key constituencies" (p. 368).

Baldridge and Deal note further that a key feature of any change is to "reestablish illusions." Change is a set of "rituals, ceremonies, and signals that communicate or express myths and values to the world inside and outside an organization" (p. 367). In short, they observe, large-scale change efforts appear to produce only the illusion of change, rather than real change, but they observe that the illusion seems to be a kind of useful substitute.

In a somewhat similar vein, Osborne and Cochran (1992) recognize that educational organizations are complex and multifaceted, citing Leon Lessinger's metaphor of "messes." Lessinger explains that because organizations' programs are complex and interdependent, they cannot be addressed independently. Leaders, then, are no longer problem solvers; instead, they can only "manage messes," a term given to the current state of school change and reform efforts (Lessinger, cited by Osborne & Cochran, p. 15). Osborne and Cochran, however, in acknowledging the difficulties, suggest that what is needed is to look at the big picture and address the "whole of the organization" in a systems approach (p. 15).

A challenging and reassuring note was provided also by William Boast, who maintained, in a keynote address, "Achieving Quality in Times of Change," (delivered February 12, 1992, at the conference The Evolving Process of Government in a World of Technological Change) that the reason for the existence of the hundreds of persons at the conference was their role as leaders. That role was to make sense of managing and maintaining (or even increasing) the productivity of the organization, even in difficult and chaotic times. This hopeful view directs us to the positive side of the literature on restructuring.

On a Positive Note

Many writers believe that schools need to, and indeed can, change in major ways. David and Shields (1991) argue that increasing school effectiveness is "more complicated than researchers and policymakers imagine...[A]t the same time it is demonstrably possible, and knowledge of what it takes continues to expand" (p. 28). Cuban (1988) recommends "second-order change" (p. 342) that transforms (restructures) the school's old way of doing things into new ways that will solve problems. First-order change, which tries to improve on what exists without significant or substantial change, Cuban says, has permitted the school to remain ineffective in producing success for all students.

Corbett (1990) argues that in order to achieve different, and better, results, the school will need to make changes in its rules, roles, and relationships. Schlechty, in an interview with Sparks (1991), agrees with the need and the definition, adding that restructuring "is not the same as school improvement, in which schools are expected to do better at what they are already doing" (p. 1). Schlechty states that schools are already doing as well as they can at what they do; thus we must try something different to achieve improvement. Further, leaders for schools must learn to think about schools differently, develop new visions of what schools could be. "A compelling vision is so important … [visions] are intended realities that suggest desired futures" (Schlechty & Cole, 1991, p. 79). What are the new visions that leaders will use to guide schools?

Outcomes for Students

To prepare students for the 21st century and beyond, a future that is expected to be quite different from the present, educators and their communities are rethinking their responsibilities. Yesterday's expectation of students was that they would learn to recall information; today and tomorrow students and all citizens will be required to perform complex tasks. For example, a school district in Colorado identified 19 outcomes for students, clustered in five categories that describe what each student will be expected to become: a self-directed learner, a collaborative worker, a complex thinker, a quality producer, and a community contributor (Redding, 1992). Similarly, as a result of extensive reviews of the literature, the North Central Regional Laboratory identified four characteristics of successful learners in our nation's schools (Jones & Fennimore, 1990):

• Knowledgeable - Successful learners use their acquired knowledge to think fluently and with authority, having a strong sense of what they believe and why; they are problem solvers and evaluators of information, reflecting on and puzzling about information.
• Self-determined - Successful learners are motivated and feel efficacious in determining their own development; they believe in hard work and persevere with confidence when difficulties arise, assuming the world will provide opportunities and choices for their examination and action.
• Strategic - Successful students think about and control their own learning through their use of strategies for learning various subjects; they plan, organize, monitor, and summarize their learning, orchestrating these learning activities.
• Empathetic - Successful students see themselves and the world through the eyes of others, examining their own beliefs and those of others and sharing experiences to increase understanding and appreciation; they recognize the value of communicating with others, as well as developing a range of interpersonal skills to interact with and develop appreciation of multiple cultures.

These two sets of student outcomes are similar in many ways. It is clear in both that the emphasis is on learning rather than teaching and that the valuing of self in addition to others is basic to working together, as students help one another (Kohn, 1991). It is also clear that school leaders must give primary attention to outcomes as a way of thinking about how the school should do its work. Rethinking "fundamental changes in expectations for student learning, in the practice of teaching, and in the organization and management of public schools" is the current focus of educational reform (Elmore, 1990, p. 1).

Outcome-Driven Restructuring

Corbett (1990) and Schlechty (interviewed by Sparks, 1991) maintain that new results in schools are necessary and can occur only through restructuring. Corbett and Blum (1992), describing a model developed and refined by several of the federally funded regional educational laboratories in their collaborative restructuring project (see Figure 5), suggest that the why (outcomes) of improving schools precedes the what and the how and that the why should be embedded firmly in student outcomes. They also recommend community-wide involvement in identifying and establishing outcomes.

Adapted from R. Blum & S.M. Hord (1992, March). Restructuring for Results. Presentation at Creating the Quality School Conference, Norman, OK.

If thinking about making schools more effective starts with students and their learnings, outcomes, or behaviors, then the next step is to consider and design teaching/learning situations that will produce the desired outcomes. If the desired outcomes are, or are similar to, those presented above (Redding, 1992; Jones & Fennimore, 1990), then school as usual will not be sufficient. A major redesign will be necessary to realize the new outcomes. As Corbett and Blum make clear, all subsequent changes must be demonstrably relevant to promoting these results. The organization and delivery of curriculum, the way students and teachers are arranged and scheduled, and the day-to-day teaching strategies, for example, are examined and redesigned with the outcomes firmly in mind. The key is understanding clearly what it is that students will be doing differently from what they have been doing before (Corbett & Blum, 1992).

The third part of such thinking takes its cue from the new teaching/learning situations; they dictate how the system must change to accommodate the new ways in which teaching and learning will occur. For instance, the method by which students are grouped for learning activities (classes) may not continue to use the typical strategy of chronological age. Scheduling for organizing "classes" and students' work may be quite different. "Classrooms" may be in the community, and parts of the community may become integrated with the school. Clearly, changes in structure, norms and values, governance -- to name a few areas -- will require consideration.

In all three dimensions of this way of thinking (outcomes, teaching/learning situations, system changes), roles, rules, and relationships will be re-created. Such change includes a reexamination of the roles of students, teachers, school- and district- level administrators, parents, community members, and the interrelationships among these groups. Such changes will be supported by new rules and policies. The key question is, "How do current rules, roles, and relationships have to change given the results a district wants to see?" (Corbett & Blum, 1992, p. 14). These two authors suggest that unrestructuring may be a needed first step so that new practices don't "get dumped on top of the residue of prior ones" (p. 15). In other words, there must be a plan for abandoning useless or dysfunctional practices that do not contribute to new outcomes.

If we are currently "managing messes," if we need a vast overhaul of schools by rethinking outcomes and their impact on teaching and learning, and if new teaching and learning processes in turn influence system factors, a major challenge looms before us. An immediate question is, Who will guide and support such changes? Thus, we are led back to the theme of facilitative leadership and the literature on restructuring and systemic change to gain insights about the roles of leaders.

Again, the Need for Leaders

"Most children assume that knowledge just happens to them, that it is handed to them by some parentlike seer as if it were a peanut butter and jelly sandwich" (Sizer, 1984, p. 3). This image is clearly not similar to that proposed in the foregoing section on restructuring for new student outcomes. If schools are to move from Sizer's image of imparting knowledge to passive students to that depicted by Jones and Fennimore (1990), in which students are engaged in the design and management of their own learning, major shifts must occur in the way schools operate and learning is organized.

The key factor of the movement is the classroom teacher, and as Elmore (1992) suggests, "it is patently foolish to expect individual teachers to be able to learn and apply the ideas … by themselves" (p. 46). In studying and critiquing the New Futures Experience, which attempted systemic change in behalf of disadvantaged youth, Wehlage, Smith, and Lipman (1992) observed that teachers need to be supported in their efforts with extensive staff development activities. One of their conclusions is that leadership is essential to the process of holistic school change, so that such needs are provided for.

It may seem redundant to make the point again about the need for leadership. However, the abundant publications and presentations on shared or participatory decision making, and school- or site-based management, seem to have led many educational practitioners to assume that leadership should become diffused, not highly visible, and not well identified as responsibilities for particular persons (personal communications with workshop participants, 1991 & 1992). As we shall see, the need for persons to fill the role and functions of leaders continues to be a requirement in the restructuring efforts of the nineties.

In his assessment of the essentiality of leadership, Murphy (1991b) maintains that "the one substance area where change efforts converge is … leadership" (p. 54). This is not surprising, Murphy says, because leadership is "the coin of the realm in virtually all reform reports" (p. 54). Changes of practice can best be nurtured by leadership (Wehlage et al., 1992) and some writers believe that realizing systemic change is akin to what leaders already know about implementing multiple, intertwined school improvement efforts, with the caveat that restructuring is "incredibly more massive and complex" (Harvey & Crandall, 1988, p. 15).

Similarly, Anderson (1991) observes that since effective schools projects typically were constituted of multiple innovations, principals' roles in the context of such multiple change efforts provide understandings that can be translated to the development and emergence of broad-based leadership for restructuring projects. There are efforts under way already to ascertain how the effective schools correlates, "leadership and monitoring, will change as the … structures of schools are altered" (Murphy, 1992, p. 93). We enter this new era of reform with considerably more organizational, political, and technical sophistication than we have had heretofore, but Horsley, Terry, Hergert, and Loucks-Horsley (1991) remind us that change is technically simple and socially complex.

One of the actions of such leadership focuses on vision. Schlechty and Cole (1991) explain that leaders must market a compelling vision to keep intended realities and desired futures before people. Leaders need a clear grasp of the nature of the change to be implemented. Wehlage and colleagues (1992) reflect on the weaknesses of the New Futures Experience and conclude that there was not a clear enough vision of how schools might be different. A more precise vision, unlike leaders' actions in the eighties, proceeds from a top-down/bottom-up process of interaction and mutual influence between official leaders and practitioners. This process supports shared meanings and "sharpens the collective educational vision" (Wehlage et al., 1992, p. 84).

In addition to the leaders' actions for developing vision and its communication, cited above by Schlechty and Cole (1991) and Wehlage (1992), there are other actions taken by leaders in restructuring efforts. Case studies comparing a principal in New Mexico with one in England report about the principals in restructuring their schools' decision-making and governance procedures (Hord & Poster, in press). They were active in establishing a new atmosphere and approach for improvement through encouraging staff in new norms: reading research, reflecting, and studying together. They made clear to their faculties that change would require time, and they arranged for this important resource. They were engaged in providing a supportive environment that included both human and material resources, establishing a climate that was conducive to change efforts.

These restructuring leaders used time also in reteaching staff and allowing them to re-experience learning processes for decision making and problem solving. They did not assume that one shot at learning new procedures would be adequate. Thus, monitoring progress toward the vision was another activity exemplified by these principals. They also monitored themselves and their changing roles and behaviors. Last, they were quite busy making midcourse adjustments based on their findings from monitoring the school's efforts. These restructuring projects originated from the identification of new outcomes for students: developing critical thinking and problem-solving skills. New roles and relationships in both schools developed between teachers and students and between teachers and administrators. And in one school parents took on new roles.

The six types of principals' leadership for restructuring in these cases conform to the categories reviewed in section two of this paper. However, various writers suggest that an additional perspective on leadership is needed for restructuring.

Tranformational Leadership: From Push to Pull

Most efforts at restructuring, Leithwood (1992b) suggests, include some alterations of the existing power relationships in districts and schools. These may center on site-based decision making and management, increased parent and community involvement in curricular and instructional decisions, and others. These new power and control alignments in schools are following similar shifts in business and industry, based on power that is "consensual … a form of power manifested through other people, not over other people" (Leithwood, 1992b, p. 9). To achieve change and improvement in schools there must be a balance of top-down and facilitative forms of power; "finding the right balance is the problem" (Leithwood, 1992b, p. 9). School leaders must use facilitative power to transform their schools; such leaders do this, Leithwood (1992b) says, by

• helping staff members develop and maintain a collaborative professional school culture
• fostering teacher development
• helping staff solve problems together more effectively.

Thus, one new view of leadership envisions leaders more as human resource developers and less as administrators in positions of authority who direct various tasks to be done (Reavis & Griffith, 1992). Rather than telling, pushing, and driving the organization, the leader expects the highest possible from each staff person, gets commitment, and works with individual staff in a personalized, goal-setting way. "They provide an environment that promotes individual contributions to the organization's work" (Méndez-Morse, 1992, in press). Bennis and Nanus (1985), from their study of exemplary corporate leaders, describe this process by saying that leaders "pull," rather than push. They pull through a compelling vision that creates focus for the organization and leads to an intensive plan of action for the leader.

Leaders establish the vision in the system's members and simultaneously nurture the organization to foster additional "pull" leadership. This can happen, Kanter's study of "change masters" reveals, if the organization is one that is integrated as a whole and not segmented into parts (Kanter, 1983). Schools, however, have been described as loosely coupled organizations (Weick, 1982), with various grade levels and academic departments, for example, poorly connected to each other.

One of the strategies of systemic change is involving all parts of the school organization, thus working toward integration. Through such organization, the participants gain power in a series of steps, the purposes of the leader and the staff become fused, the leader exercises pull, and the staff members are motivated to try out their ideas. An additional dimension to the new leadership model is the making of decisions based on high moral values supported by harmony, coherence, and "social justice and caring" (Murphy, 1992, p. 100). It is "a deep commitment to principle, to enduring values, to people -- all the people served by the organization" (Reavis & Griffith, 1992, p. 25).

Permission for Passion

Others also have described leadership that subscribes to and is directed by moral authority, what may be thought of as "higher order leadership" (M.W. McGhee, personal communication, May 23, 1992). In this mode, Sergiovanni (1990a) describes value-added leadership that emphasizes enhancing meaning about tasks rather than manipulating people, enabling staff to do their work rather than giving them directions, leading with passion instead of calculation, and developing collegial relationships rather than congeniality. Barth (1990) distinguishes between congeniality and collegiality; "congeniality suggests people getting along … friendly, cordial … enjoying each other's company" (p. 30). For a definition of collegiality, Barth borrows from Little (1981) and reports her four collegial behaviors: "adults in school talk about practice … observe each other engaged in [their] practice … work on curriculum … teach each other (Barth, 1990, p. 31). It could be said that congeniality is person-focused and collegiality is task-focused. Sergiovanni (1990b) describes leaders who push and pull, who are both ahead of and behind the staff.

Based on his work with many leaders in many schools, Sergiovanni (1990b) describes leaders who push and pull, who are both ahead of and behind the staff. Brandt (1992) quotes Sergiovanni, who describes this leader as being a "better follower: better at articulating the purposes of the community; more passionate about them, more willing to take time to pursue them" (p. 47). Such leaders are constantly leading and prodding, and practice leadership by outrage, if necessary.

Sergiovanni explains outrage. He cites three sources of leadership authority and reports that in bureaucratic organizations with leadership based in bureaucratic "command" authority, leaders are expected to be cold and calculating. When the source of leadership is psychological authority, the leader must be sensitive to others' interpersonal needs, which can make the leader's behavior condescending -- treating people like children. But, if leadership is directed by moral authority, the leader can "behave normally … get angry, and be disappointed … treating [people] much more authentically … if you're not pleased with something … say so" (Brandt, 1992, p. 46).

These leaders bring a sense of passion and risk, symbolizing to others that anything worth believing in is worth being passionate about. These leaders care deeply enough to show passion and when quality is not achieved, that passion often takes the form of outrage.

The emphasis on high quality is an organizational value, and leaders achieve quality within the culture of the organization by rewarding it, exhibiting it, and supporting those who hold out for it. Quality must be a core value if staff are to have pride in the system. Pride, then, is the guardian of quality. Quality is produced by people, and it is the centrality of concern for people that Peters and Austin (1985) found in their study of excellent companies. Such leaders exhibit a "bone-deep" commitment to everyone in the organization. To foster risk taking, leaders communicate and demonstrate that it is okay for anyone to make a mistake.

Leaders with passion and a quest for quality stress continuous learning (Reavis & Griffith, 1992). They are learners themselves, and they expect their staff to be learners as well. There is a growing interest in having schools become learning organizations where learning is extended to all levels of the school -- not just to students, but to teachers, administrators, and all staff (Senge & Lannon-Kim, 1991). This idea was earlier proposed by Barth (1986) when he described school learning communities, administered by the head learner, the principal.

Senge (1990), basing his views on his work in the corporate sector and on the "seminal works of David Bohm and Chris Argyris" (p. 412), has specified the capacities that individuals and the organization collectively will need to become a learning organization. Five disciplines, or ways of thinking and interacting in the organization, represent these capacities. The first is systems thinking, a means of seeing wholes, recognizing patterns and interrelationships, and being able to structure the interrelationships more effectively. This discipline integrates the other four, fusing them into a coherent body.

Building shared vision is the practice of articulating compelling images of what an organization wants to create, sharing pictures of the future that foster genuine commitment. Personal mastery is the skill of continually clarifying and deepening personal vision, identifying what each individual wants in his/her personal life. Senge asserts that without personal visions there can be no shared vision.

Using mental models involves distinguishing what has actually been observed from assumptions and generalizations based on the observations. It involves holding assumptions up to the world for scrutiny and making them open to the influence of others. Last, team learning is the capacity to think together through dialogue and discussion. Developing team learning skills involves each individual's balancing inquiry and advocacy to achieve decision making that is collaborative.

To create and sustain a learning organization, leaders will need to construct environments in which people are continually increasing their capacity to shape their future. For leaders, the challenge is to turn the basic human drive to learn into a shared vision that is compelling for all members of the organization. They build a culture in which ideas are expected to be tried out. It is not yet clear how school leaders must act to develop learning organizations, but schools are working with this concept (Senge & Lannon-Kim, 1991). Their experiences may provide illumination -- hopefully soon.

To Foster Restructuring

Which styles of leadership are best suited for school restructuring? This question is difficult to address because so few school districts have studied their own restructuring efforts, and those that have, have not been engaged in the exercise for a sufficient amount of time to have achieved enlightening results (Reavis & Griffith, 1992). "Researchers are only beginning … to explore the meaning and utility of [transformational] leadership in schools, and very little empirical evidence is available about its nature and consequences in such contexts" (Leithwood, 1992b, p. 9). However, in a survey of districts that were engaged in restructuring, Reavis used a 44-item questionnaire of educational leader skills from professional organizations. In this study to understand factors of leadership for restructuring, the 44 questionnaire items were rated by those leaders of 17 districts that were implementing restructuring (Reavis & Griffith, 1992, p. 27). The nine highest-rated items were:

• knowledge of change management -- the highest-rated requirement for school restructuring
• collaborative leadership style
• team building
• educational values
• high moral purpose/sense of purpose
• knowledge of curriculum and instruction
• a sound, well-reasoned philosophy
• knowledge of climate/culture and how to change/shape them
• sensitivity.

A key to understanding these needs of leaders is the assumption ascribed to leaders' actions for restructuring: Restructuring requires a holistic approach to change; a total plan for change must be developed with the involvement of all aspects of the organization. Thus, change management (i.e., leadership) must be considered in the context of large-scale, systemic change. To be operational, these factors must be translated into skills and behaviors.

The LEAD Restructuring Study Group in a Select Seminar (1989) identified skills or competencies that restructuring leaders need. Those skills related to:

• visionary leadership -- understanding change and the change process, developing a picture of an improved state of the organization, encouraging creativity, and managing operations in relationship to student learning
• cultural leadership -- using situational leadership, recognizing organizational culture and norms, shaping norms to support collegial practice, diminishing norms that destroy the organization's vision
• symbolic leadership -- promoting public relations and communicating in every way the importance of the organization's programs
• instructional leadership -- understanding curriculum, instruction, and student learning and using research and evaluation data to improve the system
• reflective practice -- providing and receiving performance assessment, and considering past and current practice with the goal of improving the organization's work
• creating work force norms that support collegiality -- developing and using group process, team building, trust building, and other facilitating and collaborative processes
• creating leadership density -- recognizing potential leaders and developing their growth
• identifying leverage points -- recognizing "windows of opportunity" and taking advantage of them to improve student outcomes.

Students of restructuring emphasize that radically different schools require radically different leaders. Mojkowski (1991) reports on a prescription for restructuring leadership that is a "rare blend of the heroic and mundane, of lofty ideal and pragmatic realism, it is a courageous and imaginative foray into the future" (p. iii). Mojkowski and the LEAD Restructuring Study Group reconceptualized the leadership role, calling for "persuasive and systematic concentration of the leaders' and others' efforts, engaging the organization in developing and implementing educational outcomes that are sophisticated and worthy" (p. 26). Because restructuring calls for powerful personal and technical skills, as well as the character and will to support others on a day-to-day basis, leaders will "lead with [their] hearts as often as [they] follow [their] plans" (p. 28).

How does such leadership look? The following outlines Mojkowski's and the Study Group's (1991) perspective:

• Create dissonance.
  Leaders press for change and improvement by regularly reminding staff and others of the vision they hold for children and of the shortfalls in current attainment. They report on current actions and accomplishments of all involved constituents to indicate that the vision has not been reached.
• Prepare for and create opportunities.
  They seize opportunities in creative ways that will move the school closer to accomplishing their mission. They quickly access material and human resources that might support the school's goal attainment. They ignore possibilities that do not promise the desired result.
• Forge connections and create interdependencies.
  They "unstructure" nonproductive arrangements and barriers that keep people disconnected. They remodel classroom space to open up "the boxes" that keep staff isolated. They create new roles and responsibilities, pulling people together both inside and outside the school, orchestrating inter-dependencies. They create vertical teams and cross- discipline or cross-grade committees to work on school projects. Such relationships contribute to the understanding and action necessary for restructuring.
• Encourage risk taking.
  Leaders support people in taking risks and try to minimize their discomfort with making mistakes. They understand that mistakes will occur and support people in learning from their mistakes. They protect the staff as they learn to become risk takers.
• Follow as well as lead.
  Leaders nurture leadership activities in all the staff, leading through service and providing support.
• Use information.
  Leaders use a broad array of student and organizational data. They communicate clearly and share information in multiple ways. They think about new assessment processes to measure learner productivity and growth. They use research and practice information in considering innovation and change, and they check progress and maintain records about the implementation process.
• Foster the long view.
  Leaders go for the long-term yields, knowing when to exercise patience and withhold judgment. They employ strategic direction, use their sense of mission, and are guided by their vision of learners and learning. This highly skilled facilitative leader moves "incrementally within a comprehensive design" (p. 29).
• Acquire resources.
  Acquisition and distribution of resources are managed with finesse. Leaders solicit funding through competitive grants and from the business community. They reallocate resources in relationship to staff's readiness and resistance. They "find time for staff to plan and develop" (p. 30).
• Negotiate for win-win outcomes.
  They use collective bargaining processes constructively with teacher representatives, creating agreements that target the teaching and learning process. They accomplish this through organizing study groups, providing persuasive literature focused on instruction and student gains, and engaging teacher representatives to lead discussions. They exhibit patience but also perseverance.
• Provide stability in change.
  They practice organized abandonment of elements that are dysfunctional or unnecessary. With the staff, they review curriculum and instruction guides to identify activities and materials for discard. They protect the school and staff as they experiment and take risks; they hold central office and others "at bay" so as not to overload the staff with unnecessary or low-priority items. They provide order and direction in the uncertain and changing environment.
• Grow people while getting the work accomplished.
  They nurture promising candidates for leadership in order to ensure that restructuring will continue beyond their tenure. They invest heavily in staff development and help staff move beyond their own experience. They organize self-managing and self-learning groups.

This depiction of leadership includes the leadership categories cited in the previous section: creating an atmosphere and culture for change, developing the vision, allocating resources, providing training and staff development, monitoring progress, providing for continuing assistance. As can be seen, however, the actions of leaders for restructuring go beyond the six categories, with their day-to-day leadership tasks grounded in and expressed from a deep commitment to collaborative action and shared decision making.

This leadership cares deeply about and for individuals in the system, providing the human interface in personalized ways that stem not only from the mind but from the heart as well. Reavis and Griffith (1992) depict the new leader as one who is comfortable in working with others in a nonhierarchical fashion, with no need to stand on positional authority. This leader is a risk taker while tolerating ambiguity, not knowing exactly how everything will develop. Such leaders "trust the strength of others and value their efforts and contributions in the realization of the organization's vision" (Méndez-Morse, 1992, in press). The new leadership is grounded in a vision of "leaders" rather than the vision of "a leader."

While such leaders are providing the leadership for changing the system and the relationships of its people, parts, and functions, they are also restructuring their own roles in the system. For as Murphy (1991a) states, changing the conditions of teaching and learning means also changing the conditions of leadership. This was clearly revealed in the changes examined in the case study of one principal's restructuring story (Hord & Poster, in press). In this study, new outcomes for students to increase their critical thinking and problem- solving abilities were driving the classroom teachers' change of instructional practice.

To design the new teaching/learning conditions, new structures for teacher and administrator planning and decision making were created. This necessitated the formation of new relationships of the principal with the teachers -- a challenging and sometimes difficult personal change for the principal. It seems reasonable to expect that new relationships required in restructuring efforts will test the mettle and emotional resources of many leaders as they develop new roles. A brief look at anticipated role and relationship changes for leaders follows.

New Roles for Old

An important aspect of what leaders do in restructuring is the transformations or changes that they make in their own roles. Role changes will occur at all levels: state, local board of education, superintendent, central office, principal, teacher, and parent.

According to Michael Cohen (an observer of education reform for many years at the National Institute of Education, the National Association of State Boards of Education, and currently the National Governors' Association), governors and other state officials can wield influence through use of the "bully pulpit to focus public attention and mobilize support … to influence the political climate and culture of local school districts" (Cohen, 1990, p. 275). In the process they give up much of their power and signal its transfer to the local level. The state role will become threefold, according to Cohen.

The state, first, will set long-range educational goals and standards for student outcomes and link these to assessments for higher-order skills, not minimum-competency tests. The state must ensure that the assessments do not greatly impact or restrain local-level decisions in curriculum and instructional choices. They must act so that the school's increased autonomy is not unduly affected.

Second, the state must be encouraging by stimulating local innovation. A greater variety of curricular and instructional arrangements, and ways to organize teachers for greater collegial interaction, for example, will need sanction and support by state policies. The state will also need to reduce administrative and regulatory barriers so that experimentation and improvement can occur.

Third, at the state level, consideration will be required in accountability systems. Rather than establishing necessary inputs for local education systems, state policymakers will set outcome standards designed to hold both the school and the district accountable for results. Focusing on these issues will fundamentally change roles and relationships of the state with the local level.

The local school board spends much of its time on crisis management or operational details and little on systematic planning, policy development, or oversight (Cohen, 1990). Local boards must develop long-range goals, attract and retain high-quality personnel, assure that resources are adequately targeted to students with the greatest need, and make it possible for success at the school level to happen. Fullan (1991) points out the obvious, and critical, need for boards to give careful attention to the search for and selection of superintendents who are capable of leading change.

Oversight by the board will be necessary to ascertain if goals are being accomplished and policies are producing their intended effects; boards will also need to be strong advocates for education and youth (Cohen, 1990). Murphy (1991a) notes that board member's roles may not be greatly altered, but their understandings and views of the ways administrators and teachers function may need major revision. Boards, philosophically, must be in agreement with the purposes of restructuring if school staffs and parents can succeed in their efforts to redesign schools.

Currently, the Institute for Educational Leadership is completing a study of the school board's role in restructuring. The researchers are attempting to learn how the role of boards may have changed and to identify relevant issues that boards have faced in reform efforts (Pipho, 1992).

The superintendent's role may change dramatically. The chief executive becomes a coordinator and enabler, to serve and assist schools, paying more attention to "unheroic dimensions of leadership" (Murphy, 1991a, p. 25). These executives will promote local autonomy and professionalism, tapping the leadership of teachers (Hallinger & Edwards, 1992). They start with a personal vision and work with all constituencies to find a shared vision. They provide leadership, but also nurture the development of leadership, relying on others (Murphy, 1991b; Hallinger & Edwards, 1992).

"Understanding of how superintendents lead the decentralization of entire school systems remains primitive at best" (Hallinger & Edwards, 1992, p. 137). The chief executive must symbolize commitment and the importance of restructuring, overcome barriers, and give attention to opposition (Hill & Bonan, 1991). Only the chief executive can assure those at the local level that they will be supported in new roles and that when things go wrong, they will not have to return to the old centralized system. The superintendent abandons the exercise of command and control and makes it clear that the desired procedure is to take risks, correct mistakes, and find ways to make change work at the local school (Hill & Bonan, 1991).

Such leadership appears to be transformational and suggests "directions for future research on the leadership practices of superintendents for school improvement" (Leithwood, 1992a, p. 177). Of all the things that superintendents must do, however, the most pervasive feature that directs their actions is their effort to influence school performance (Mitchell & Tucker, 1992). This factor also permeates the work of central office in their school-change work.

At the central office level leaders will decentralize and establish school-level governance structures, such as a school council composed of teachers, administrators, parents, and community members, to take on functions that were formerly enacted at the district level. Importantly, districts must determine the latitude of authority for the school councils and the degree of influence given to the teachers and parents (Cohen, 1990; Fullan, 1991).

District staff may need to consider with school councils new means of assigning staff and students to schools. And districts' teacher appraisal systems should focus on how well they "make appropriate instructional decisions and judgments in order to accomplish results with their [particular] students" (Cohen, 1990, p. 269). In all cases, less authority and autonomy will be vested at the district level, as it is shifting to the school level. "Central office administrators … [will] reorient their roles toward service and support and away from hierarchical supervision and compliance monitoring" (Hallinger & Edwards, 1992, p. 135), getting ready to become "facilitators" (p. 143).

As Reavis and Griffith (1992) suggest, the central office role will change from monitoring for compliance with district-level policies to acting as support to assist schools in their improvement efforts. Rather than being the source of all ideas for change, central office staff will serve as a resource to schools in their change initiatives.

The relationship that is likely to be most changed in restructuring activities is that of principal and teachers. The principal must accept additional autonomy and accountability on behalf of the school and subsequently transfer it to the staff and parents or larger community. The principal's role is likely to change from middle manager in the district organization to that of facilitator-leader for his or her school (Murphy, 1991a; Hallinger & Edwards, 1992). This shift will make the principal's role more complex, requiring more effort in working between the school and the district office, and between the school and the community. Murphy's review of the literature (1991a) led him to conclude that principals will place more emphasis on three areas:

• technical core operations (becoming the curriculum leader and managing the school's teaching/learning strategies, conditions, operations)
• people management (working to develop participatory leadership and mediate shared governance)
• school-environmental relations (interacting with the wider community and developing connections between the school and the environment).

Murphy (1991a) declares that in restructuring, the real heroes are not the positional leaders who traditionally have been at the top of the organization chart but the professionals and parents who interact directly with students. There is broad understanding about the underutilization of teachers' knowledge, skills, and ideas in the past, and restructuring typically changes this situation. Efforts to change schools in systemic ways will include a reconceptualization of the roles and responsibilities of teachers.

Assuming that leadership is better connected to expertise than to line authority, the redesign of teachers' work rests on the premise that teachers are intellectuals and should take leadership in discussing the nature and purposes of schools. Further, teaching should be guided by professionals rather than by bureaucratic regulations. These propositions argue for expanded responsibilities and a stronger role for teachers in decision making.

Parents too will have new opportunities to provide ideas and contribute to the schooling discussion. Responsibilities will be less role-dependent as schools begin to appreciate and acknowledge the interest and expertise of parents. Parents will participate in the school's efforts to connect with the community and the larger environment as they take on activities that go beyond the bake sale (Henderson, Marburger, & Ooms, 1986). Watkins, Cox, Owen, and Burkhardt (1992), supported by their review of research on change, maintain that a multiconstituency team, a team representing all major constituencies, is most able to address the problems of systemic change in a strategic way. Certainly, parents are a very invested constituent and have major interest in schools.

Concluding This Section

In this section, using student outcomes as the basis for designing and planning systemic change or restructuring efforts has been urged. Assuming that identifying new outcomes for learners is a first step, it follows that new teaching and learning situations will be needed to realize those outcomes. Further, system changes will be required to support the new learning conditions.

Images of the leadership needed to bring such plans into reality have been briefly described, and the behaviors of such leaders with "mind and heart" were specified. How leaders' roles will also be restructured was suggested. The research to date on restructuring efforts, including purposes and intentions, effects hoped for, leaders' actions in guiding and supporting these endeavors, and outcomes realized are thin at best. What is needed are longitudinal, in-depth studies to illuminate understanding of the factors enumerated. Such results could inform leaders in planning for restructuring and in implementation of their plans.