Resources
Central office leaders centering student voice
WEBINAR: Central office leaders play an essential role in creating the conditions for student-centered school leaders to learn and grow. Hear from our central office leader partners from Springfield Public Schools in Oregon and Columbus City Schools in Ohio about how they’ve been shifting leadership practices across district teams by listening to and learning from students.
Visioning Pyramid Explainer
The Visioning Pyramid Explainer helps leaders clarify their vision for student experience and learning, evaluate alignment between strategies and vision, and enhance impact.
Grow Your Equity Stance: Revised Principal Support Framework
In 2022, CEL revised the Principal Support Framework based on changes to the 4 Dimensions of School Leadership™, learning from our partnerships with districts across the country and knowledge from emerging literature on educational leadership. What can central office...
Principal Support Framework
The Principal Support Framework is a tool to support central office leaders working to center the student experience and to address education inequity. Updated in 2022, this framework provides system leaders with a student-centered vision for growing equity leadership...
When People are the Content: a Systems Approach to Supporting Principals as Instructional Leaders
CASE STUDY: Learn how system leaders created the conditions for principals to be what they most wanted them to be — instructional leaders — by taking their perspective. The report includes the tool kit that the system leaders used to facilitate this transformation.
4 Dimensions of School Leadership™
The 4D™ framework describes key actions and dispositions for equity-driven school leaders. It illustrates what school leaders need to know and do to ensure that each student, particularly those furthest from justice, has a school experience that prepares them for a limitless future.
5 Dimensions of Teaching and Learning™
The 5D™ framework is a comprehensive reflection of the core elements of effective teaching. It provides a shared language for instruction that grounds teaching and learning in classroom environment and culture, student engagement, curriculum and pedagogy, assessment for student learning and purpose.
Teacher Learning Guiding Principles
To create schools and classrooms where all students belong, take ownership of their ideas and have agency in their learning, educators must work and learn differently. This framework identifies what teachers and leaders should do to grow collective efficacy for more equitable experiences and outcomes.
Leading for Instructional Improvement
BOOK: Educational experts agree that quality teaching is the single most important factor in improving educational outcomes for all students. Leading for Instructional Improvement shows how teacher, school and district leaders can cultivate the expertise of teachers to deliver high-quality instruction.
Leading for Professional Learning
BOOK: Leading for Professional Learning offers field-tested guidance to help school leaders more effectively support teachers’ professional development. With an illustrative case study, this book provides invaluable guidance and is packed with practical tools, processes and expert advice.
Making the Case: Transforming Teacher Professional Learning
CASE STUDY: Rethink your approach to teacher professional learning with this short document that offers a vision for transformative teacher learning and suggests recommendations for first steps you can take. You can use this with the Teacher Learning Guiding Principles as you work to increase collective efficacy on behalf of your students.
Teacher Professional Learning Case Study (Math That’s Open to Everyone)
CASE STUDY: This case study, reprinted with permission from the National Association of Elementary School Principals, illustrates what is possible when school leaders work on beliefs alongside practices, emphasize all students’ ability to engage in rigorous math and create opportunities for teachers to engage in intensive, collaborative practice.
5D+™ Rubric for Instructional Growth and Teacher Evaluation
TOOL: Build understanding of what good teaching looks like with a growth-oriented tool for improving instruction based on the 5 Dimensions of Teaching and Learning™ instructional framework.
Characteristics of Instructional Leadership Team Members
TOOL: Explore seven characteristics to guide the growth and development of instructional leadership team members. Instructional leadership teams are a great opportunity to strengthen teacher leadership in support of a school’s vision and mission.
Creating a Theory of Action
TOOL: Develop a rationale behind your strategies and articulate your thinking by generating an evidence-based story that explains the specific changes you intend to make to improve teaching and learning.
Inquiry Cycle Tool
TOOL: Engage in a four-phase process of continuous improvement for principal supervisors and school leaders to collaboratively improve and analyze instruction.
Student Experience Story Guide
TOOL: Strengthen how you actively listen to students with this guide that empowers students to tell their stories about their school experiences. Designed by students for students, this guide can be downloaded here.
Types of Classroom Observation
TOOL: Advance your knowledge and understanding of classroom observation with practical, actionable guidance. This tool outlines the supporting theory, logistical considerations and possible leadership actions behind the three types of classroom observations, illuminating the purposes and techniques behind them.
Got Support? Principals and Their Central Offices
WEBINAR: Today’s principals are much more than building managers and disciplinarians. They must also be public relations professionals, curricula experts, data specialists — and instructional leaders. Learn how school systems across the country are adapting to this changed reality.
Introducing the 5D+™ Rubric for Instructional Growth and Teacher Evaluation, Version 3
WEBINAR: Patty Maxfield, CEL’s former director of teacher evaluation, introduces version three of the 5D+ Rubric. She explains what educators using the tool in their practice need to keep in mind when switching to the updated rubric.
Keeping the Student at the Center of Instructional Leadership
WEBINAR: Learn instructional-leadership strategies to help principals, coaches and central office leaders to keep students at the center of their work — and improve their ability to give feedback and plan professional development. This is a series of three webinars.
Tried-and-Tested Strategies to Teach Central Office Leaders the Role of the Principal
WEBINAR: The expectations and goals for principals have changed, but not everybody in the central office knows what that means and how to deal with it. Hillsborough County Public Schools in Tampa, Fl., took this issue on and yielded impressive results.
White paper: From Procedures to Partnership
WHITE PAPER: Principal supervisors help improve schools when they emphasize principal growth and learning. But transforming the role of principal supervisors to help grow principals’ instructional leadership skills is challenging. Learn how a group of school systems used research to redesign principal supervisor positions and tackle early implementation challenges.
