Development of Central Office Service to Building Administrators (Building Effective

Organizational Cultures)
J. Parker-Special Interest Group #1 Final Project
Introduction
Over the last two years of work under the direction of Dr. Tim Yeomans, we have engaged in
refocusing our efforts to establish a new culture focused on the improvement of instruction and
increased student achievement. Our strategic direction reflects this stance and graphically
illustrates how such driving forces like equity, resources, and effective communication impact
this work. We have centered our service to build capacity of building principals as the
instructional leader so they, in turn, can provide a level of service to their teachers. Each of our
principals has grown substantially in a short period of time and I believe it is safe to say that our
efforts are not only having the intended effect but our learning culture continues to improve.
Professional Learning Communities, Response-to-Intervention, and our new focus on Core Skills
are in place and becoming dynamic efforts moving teaching and learning efforts forward as
building teams grapple with new standards and evaluation systems, accountability measures and
fiscal challenges.
With this re-alignment and focus comes a unique challenge for us as a team, and that is to
develop a road map of service for our central office administrative team in order to provide
principals support for the work they do with each of their teachers in the service of improving
outcomes for all students. In addition to bending in service to our buildings, we want to
consider not only how we align our individual areas of support as a central office staff, but blur
the boundaries of our individual job assignments to reflect a deeper alignment toward the goal of
improved achievement for each of our students.
Problem of Leadership Practice
Presently, we have demonstrated a basic to proficiency level of support to our principals.
Feedback from building administrator exit tickets and many conversations reflect a welcomed
shift in how central office supports learning. However, issues of effective two-way
communication, clear expectations and outcomes, and initiatives which add to the full plate of
principals are cited as the primary issues that building principals face when they receive
information or tasks to do from the central office. Five of the six principals interviewed included
in their statements a desire for timely and targeted professional development to help them lead
the same initiatives in the building. Many principals require a differentiated level of support with
their professional learning so they are able to lead this work in their buildings. Moreover, only
half of the principals interviewed find the districts new approach to providing them professional
development useful.
The same principals indicated the change in visibility and support from their immediate
supervisor has had a profound impact on their ability to feel supported and take more
instructional leadership risks with the common district efforts of identifying essential standards,
implementing RTI in their building and having learning focused conversations with teachers
associated to the Danielson instructional framework. All six principals indicated they believed
the principal should be leading the professional development in their buildings; however, most
signaled they were not fully equipped with knowledge or skill to do so. During one professional

development day shared by two buildings, both principals said they were concerned that
someone might find out how little they really know about the topics they were leading in that
days professional development. Other principals felt they had the knowledge and leadership to
deliver the information but needed clear and concise bulleted talking points and that they
could then run with it thereafter. One principal interviewed said it was good stuff
(professional development) but that he was still frustrated in trying to put CCSS, SBA and other
efforts together to feed teachers. He felt more efforts from central office to plan together and
implement together, and that we should separate into job-alike groups. Other principals
advocated for the same leveled approach because they did not relate to or see the pertinence in
receiving professional development with principals in different levels (elementary, junior high,
high school). Others quite simply do not want to be away from their buildings since they are the
only administrator, and prefer professional learning delivered to them onsite in a more
personalized approach.
Our central office team is comprised of two assistant superintendents, three principal supervisors
(Chief Academic Officers or CAOs), executive level directors in Special Education, Finance,
Facilities, Communication, Technology, and Assessment; four instructional leadership directors,
and directors in student services, special education, alternative learning. Some of our central
office administrators travel to buildings to meet and deliver information or service to principals
individually instead of through larger meeting formats held at the district office, and principals
indicate their appreciation for this change from past practice.
Principal supervisors (CAOs) are in buildings a considerable amount of time. In fact, the three
supervisors (CAOs) indicated they spent as much as 65% of their time in building providing
support for management issues as well as instructional issues. The executive director for
assessment and accountability is in buildings frequently and provides direct, one-on-one support
to the principals to understand all the accountability and assessment changes. Few central office
administrators provide onsite training to teachers, though a Monday late start provides the
opportunity for principals to request this from central office administrators.
Leadership Development
Our district leaders are aware of and understand the impact Central Office Transformation
research can have on student
Figure 1
learning. In fact, five of our
central office leaders studied
these findings through the
Leadership for Learning (L4L)
program at the University of
Washington, and many I have
talked to know the impact this
work can have on school
buildings and the central
office. In October,
Superintendent Dr. Tim
Yeomans presented to the
District Leadership team his

desire to align central office service to buildings. In one of his slides (Figure 1), he helped clarify
how we will continue refining our work as a team. Clearly this was another starting point to
operationalizing a service model from central office administrators to our principals.
Professional development needs are greater than ever as we grapple with new learning standards
and we, as a team, continue to try different ways to effectively deliver new learning to principals
and teachers without pulling teachers from buildings since that impacts the learning (and
achievement) of the students they serve. However, we continue to explore how we effectively
engage in professional learning as a larger system. Included in this is our method for which we
communicate and collaborate internally to know what requirements and new learning needs to be
pushed out to building administrators. This goes beyond nuts and bolts information. Each of
our departments has important information to deliver and we attempt to channel communication
through our In The Know blog we set up to streamline communication and limit the number of
emails we send. This has created additional challenges for many principals as they admit to not
staying current with information through those postings.

Initial Project Concept

While Dr. Yeomans shared the general trajectory of this new service approach only recently
(December, 2014), my goal was to complete my Special Interest Group (SIG) project by June of
2015. By June, my intent was to collaborate with other central office staff to develop a draft
central office service model (roadmap) defining what service to our building administrators
would look like, specifics on how central office administrators collaborate with one another to
provide this service, and provide a clear message to our building administrators on how their
central office leaders support the work in their buildings. Building a culture of service of this is
how we support our principals in Puyallup was the idea, and in doing so, we would share
collective ownership in the service model. Ambitiously, I set out to have central office
administrators:
Clearly articulate how we operationalize central office efforts to continue coming
alongside and building the capacity of principals.
Cite 2-3 examples of how they worked together as a central office team to support
principals with their teaching and learning strategies to carry out our district initiatives.
Identify methods to monitor how their new service supports principal efforts.
See value collaborating with one another to examine and refine their practices by
reviewing and discussing how their specific examples might be improved, using feedback
from building administrators in the process.
There was certainly a readiness to benefit in the Puyallup School District. The superintendent
and I continued to meet for the duration of this project to discuss effective central office
management and leadership ideas, and we briefly discussed the data I planned to collect from my
interviews and work with central office administrators for this project. Upon reflection, I was
presented with a great opportunity to collaborate with our Superintendent to develop such a
roadmap and conduct our own action research in the process.

Project Outcomes-What Really Happened!

In order to work in unison with our superintendent and to examine these current service
practices, discuss the impact they have moving forward, and to organize ourselves around our
mission to align our departmental services in support of principals, I knew I needed to collect
additional information from my central office colleagues. To do so, I met with 95% of the central
office administrators in small group meetings. Further, I wanted to have a clearer understanding
of what my colleagues considered service to buildings to be or include; and I wanted to start
identifying our own problems of leadership practice as a central office including how we
communicate with each other as we conduct our work. Initially my goal was to establish an
organizational central office service roadmap for our buildings with the intent to work together in
a cohesive, progressive manner. At the conclusion of the project, I found that diving more deeply
into the problem of leadership practice presented greater opportunity to reflect on how, as a
systems-level leader, I direct purposeful conversations; and more importantly, the manner in
which I facilitate discussions on a clear understanding of the problem of practice with my central
office colleagues before any action is taken. Essentially, I would need to build greater capacity of
others to see the problem of leadership practice so, in turn, a greater percentage of those
colleagues collectively would understand the problem and collectively subscribe to a course of
action created and implemented by the team. By collaborating as a central office towards a
common goal of a common service roadmap to principals, I believed we would be setting a
course of action which would truly be transformational for our organization.

Phase 1- Understanding or Defining Service

Since the initial conception of this project and submission of the proposal, some key learnings
presented themselves during subsequent discussions about this proposal with other central office
(CO) colleagues and practitioners outside our district. While there was general agreement for the
need to get specific about what this service model might entail, details or specifics were elusive
for our directors. This was not entirely unexpected. In fact, after conversations with Meredith
Honig, Leadership for Learning Program Director and co-author of the seminal work on Central
Office Transformation, I realized just how elusive this work might be since relatively few
districts provide specifics on how their central office staff operationalize their service this work
on a daily, monthly and annual basis. Dr. Honig went on to explain that outside initiatives like
Common Core, teacher-principal evaluation and legislative mandates for schools divert districts
from their work to transform building leaders. When I asked her about districts which were
considered central office transformational exemplars who implemented effective theories of
action around problems of practice, Dr Honig explained that few good examples existed and our
districts problem of practice would represent an authentic opportunity to engage in this work.
From her response, I felt Puyallup School Districts problem of leadership practice represented
an opportunity to conduct our own action research internally. Moreover, the service roadmap
would be anchored to research underpinnings of Central Office Transformation, Assistance
Relationships and instructional leadership practices.
I also realized was that this project might be more process than product. To be an authentic,
purposeful tool, the service roadmap must allow for new awareness of existing central office

practices and the incorporation of new thinking realized by the CO Directors in order to define
and close the gap between existing service to buildings and the intended service model. Also,
iterations of our service to schools might change with new insights from CO administrators as
the work progressed throughout the year.
However, since Dr. Yeomans presentation, some directors still require clarity on how the
service model impacts how they spend their time on programs for which they have oversight and
their work directly in service to building administrators. Ongoing discussions at our weekly
Directors of Instructional Leadership meeting point to a need to understand more succinctly how
the previous service model was not serving principals and how their actions and focus might
change to better align with the new service direction.
This claim was further supported by interviews with principals. Interview data summarized CO
support as ranging from a simple, not very helpful to elaborate descriptions of why other CO
Directors were very helpful.
With this principal data, it became clear that CO administrators needed to hear these perceptions,
reflect on their personal levels of service to buildings, and have a clearer understanding of the
barriers or problems of leadership practice that exist.

Phase 2 - Interviewing Key Central Office Administrators

I developed a list of data I wanted to get from central office interviews. From there, I refined
three questions that, when asked, would succinctly provide me with the data I needed. These
questions were: (1) how did your professional goals align with your service to buildings and
principals under the previous superintendent and under current superintendent? (2) what
professional development did you provide to principals to support their leadership under the
previous superintendent and current superintendent? and (3) what percent of your time did you
spend in buildings in direct support of principals and what percent of time did you spend on
program areas for which you had oversight under the previous and current superintendent?
The three interview questions I posed to the 7 groups of central office administrators yielded
intriguing results. Most administrators grappled with recalling the practice from four years and
beyond lending to the idea that district focus on service had, in fact, changed with the start of the
new administration. However, administrator responses about current practices were quite varied
and I realized a distillation of the qualitative data was needed to find commonalities between
groups in order to present themes to the group for later analysis.
Service goals to principals. Within the category of identifying professional goals to provide
service to buildings, many central office administrators focused solely on their areas of oversight
related to tasks they needed to accomplish by the end of the year. At least 5 of the groups wrote
their goals around such things as completing curricular adoptions, complying with iGrant
submissions, compliance around special education rules, or carrying out limited roles related to
district initiatives like implementing RTI, CCSS, and TPEP. Two of the groups wrote goals
related to their role in service to principals to support their work, specifically these were our

Chief Academic Officers (CAOs) and our Executive Director of Assessment and Accountability.
However, our CAOs have direct supervision and evaluation responsibilities with principals so
this result was not surprising given the purpose of their role with principals.
Many of the groups mentioned that goals originated from the superintendents annual initiatives,
and the previous superintendent focused less on service to support principals and more on
accomplishing such tasks as passing bonds and levies, strategic planning, community forums,
and board policy review. When asked to identify how their goals had changed to reflect a request
from our superintendent to serve principals more, many agreed but their responses indicated
considerable differences on what that service might look like. Often, I found their outward
responses to be consistent across groups; however, there was considerable differences on how
this might be accomplished or how we needed to communicate better among central office to
ensure our central office administrators were on the same page with supporting principals or
whether we were writing goals in such way that set criteria by which we could measure our
progress toward these goals.
At least four of the groups cited organizational hierarchy as a barrier to unify our support to
principals. CO administrators, below the CAO positions on the organization chart either felt like
they were not in the loop about important information which would support principals or that
the CAOs were gatekeepers of key information which they needed to successfully do their job.
Four of the groups expressed frustration at not knowing what updates had been provided to
principals or finding out about key central office decisions through other indirect means. With
the exception of the CAOs and assistant superintendents, the other five groups shared frustration
about being the last to know and defaulted to the practice of just focusing on their own work.
Interestingly, interview data showed that communication between members within each group
provided greater opportunities to norm service or align targets and outcomes of their work; and
most of these groups met weekly to identify tasks for the week or discuss how they might
accomplish (tasks) effectively or how they might engage in the work together. So within these
groups, communication and service was much more aligned, albeit, to their own standards and
norms.
Professional Development for Buildings (Administrators). Supporting the learning of
building administrators improved over the last three years. Interview data showed that our
principals are receiving considerable more training and support related to leading the
improvement of instruction in their buildings. All six of the building principals indicated they
noticed a substantial shift in practice around how professional development support had
improved. Some principals did add however, that not all the professional learning they had
received had been helpful but did express optimism on how central office administrators were on
being on the right track with how professional development is being conducted.
According to interviews, one CO administrator directly supports building administrators through
professional development in a one-on-one approach. This director builds capacity of
administrators to understand the Smarter Balance Assessments and new accountability
measures. This administrator either leads or co-leads professional development with building
administrators on other new concepts such as the Digital Library, the state accountability index,
interim assessments, and how Common Core State Standards align with the assessment

blueprints. Principals interviewed shared their appreciation for this direct support and
acknowledge this as a valuable support model to which other central office administrators might
subscribe. Interestingly from principal data collected, few other CO administrators provide this
type of support in buildings.
In December of this year, our Superintendent stated that we would be the ones providing the
professional development to our principals/buildings and that collectively, we have the most
expertise to do this work within our organization. Given this statement, our members of our CO
team began leading content-based professional development during our monthly three-hour
training sessions with principals. While principals said they appreciate and receive valuable new
learning at these events, questions of following-up with this new learning in buildings is an
issue for principals, CAOs and the assistant superintendent. Specifically, we do not know the
impact this learning is having directly on student learning or how we, as a central office team,
are measuring the impact our professional development work is having on the principals.
A bigger issue is further compounding our professional development work with principals. First,
there is little joint planning around the training to build collective capacity to lead this work
beyond the initial 3-hour training. Many of the directors of instructional leadership planned the
training with teacher leaders, and the first time the CO administrative team received training on
topics such as math, science, literacy, Smarter Balance initiatives and RTI were at these principal
trainings. My thought was, how are the central office administrators going to be able to support
principals and the content-specific work in buildings when they did not have opportunities to
learn the content prior? After analyzing the data, many central office administrators said they
were just a little bit in front of the content initiatives or that they lacked the expertise to facilitate
this work in buildings.
In addition, little has been done to follow-up with principals in buildings to continue the work of
these initial trainings. Secondly, directors overseeing these content areas meet weekly; however,
directors plan these trainings in isolation from other directors. This further lends to a silo-ed
approach to service to buildings rather than engaging jointly with other directors to conduct this
type of work.
Time in buildings versus time on oversight tasks. In their article on Principals as
Instructional Leaders, Fink and Silverman (2014) cited districts which had instructional
leadership directors spending 70% of their time in schools in direct support of principals as
means to improve principals instructional leadership performance. From interviews with CO
administrators in Puyallup schools, time spent in schools scaffolding support to principals ranged
from a low of 10% to a high of 60%. CAOs spent the greatest amount of time in buildings
supporting the leadership of principals; and this percentage reflects the primary nature of support
CAOs provide. Other directors indicated they spent far greater percentage (60-80%) of their time
engaged in tasks associated with areas of oversight related to their central office position. Many
expressed a desire to be out in buildings more but said they lacked clarity on what they would
explicitly do with principals once there. The special education directors indicated they spent 80%
of their time in buildings supporting learning; however, it was not clear how much of this time
was spent engaging in leadership support of principals versus teacher and student support related
to Individual Education Plans.

Most of the CO administrators perception of service support to principals varied widely. Some
directors stated that support to the teachers in buildings was supportive to the principals and
should be included as a broad definition of support.
In summary, interview data from CO administrators supported the need to create a definition of
service support to principals. It also brought up numerous questions. How could I build a
widespread understanding of this problem of practice with the entire CO team? What activities
using this interview data might help build this understanding? Most importantly, how might I
engage our superintendent and assistant superintendents to sponsor actions toward standardizing
our service model? Albert Einstein once said that if he had an hour, he would spend 55 minutes
examining and understanding the problem, and spend 5 minutes on the solution. Similarly, cycle
of inquiry work taught me how understanding the problem thoroughly can create greater impetus
to develop effective theory of actions to address problems of practice.
With these interviews behind me and a variety of possible next steps ahead, I decided to move
into the next phase of this cycle-building team consensus of the problem of practice. I realized
that my initial goal of creating a service roadmap would require a broader understanding of
barriers we faced as a central office administrative staff to engage in joint work of supporting
principals in the same manner. In addition, if I wanted to create greater momentum toward an
effective theory of action, I would need to be sure CO administrators were able to pinpoint the
problem of practice as well as identify the role they played as leaders to help create a new service
model. Now I realize that the creation of a service roadmap by June was ambitious. Rather, I
needed to extend the cycle and move forward only as quickly as the problem of leadership
practice was understood by all.

Phase 3 Leading Toward a Consensus of a Leadership Problem of Practice

If I was to lead others toward consensus of the problem of practice, I would need an audience of
Puyallup CO administrators. Ironically, the capstone presentation on May 8th presented itself as
an authentic venue to demonstrate my leadership as well as the audience I sought from Puyallup
School Districts CO leadership team. My plan included a meeting with the superintendent for
the purpose of sharing the interview data and getting his approval to facilitate a data-driven
dialogue to collectively identify the problem of leadership practice. Presenting my capstone from
a strong teaching and learning stance is necessary with this authentic audience if I plan on
moving them toward consensus while showcasing my leadership to cohort members and
University of Washington faculty.

Meeting with the superintendent. In March, I decided to bring the interview data I
collected to Dr. Tim Yeomans. I planned to use this data within my capstone so I felt it would be
wise to allow him to have a full review prior to making this more public in the presentation. In
addition, I wanted to provide specific details about how the data was collected and who the CO

groups were that I interviewed. I had hoped that transparency would also provide time for him to
ask questions, provide additional thoughts on interpretation of the data, and also give me an
opportunity to outline my capstone presentation and the outcomes I had hoped to attain. During
the meeting, Dr. Yeomans asked me directly what the interview responses showed and to
summarize the data. I indicated that I was still in the process of distilling the data into common
themes but shared what I had found (see Phase 2 for those themes).
Next, I shared my plans for a capstone presentation to invite members of our Puyallup leadership
team who were L4L alumni. I described my intent of sharing the distilled data with these
members who had already had knowledge of the Cycles of Inquiry (COI) process. Our
superintendent, one of our assistant superintendent, one chief academic officer, the executive
director of college and career planning, and our director of human resources are all L4L
graduates and would represent a good cross section of our CO team. Further, I explained how I
wanted to model this work with my other L4L cohort members as a demonstration of my
leadership actions associated with this entire project. Dr. Yeomans acknowledged the value of
the work I had done and shared more about some of the issues he was seeing with our central
office support model to principals.
Interestingly, the conversation began to lean towards solutions and I expressed a desire to be sure
our CO administrative staff thoroughly understood the problem before we moved toward a
solution. Dr. Yeomans would later share in a District Leadership Team meeting (1 week later)
that he was planning on making some changes with how we (collectively as an administrative
team) view central office service to buildings; and that these changes would be coming in May
and June. I was surprised when he mentioned my SIG work during that meeting and how results
of that work would influence the changes coming in May and June. At that point, I wondered
how disclosing my relationship to this work might impact the outcome of the cycle; however, I
felt honored that he valued and sponsored my project.
The meeting ended with Dr. Yeomans fully supporting the project and the inclusion of the
interview data within the capstone presentation.
My Capstone Presentation. Next I developed a general outline for my Capstone presentation
which was simply an extension of the work I had started with my SIG project. From the
guidelines of leading from a teaching and learning stance, I developed the following outline
(Figure 2) which would showcase my leadership while simultaneously leading some of my
district colleagues through my cycle of inquiry work.
Figure 2

Capstone Presentation Outline

1] Powerful Opening Activity:
If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the
problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions. Albert Einstein
-Participants reflect on how this statement resonates with them in leading others to
change

2] Learning Targets:
Participants will learn how to:
Use teaching and learning strategies modeled today in their own leadership
setting.
Use data to identify problems of practice with other learning leaders
Use a consultancy protocol to dive deeper into a problem of practice

3] Theory base behind shared understanding and ownership of the problem

-share underpinnings of Professional Learning Communities, Communities of
Practice, and Re-culturing the Central Office
4] Outline of work today
a. Show video of posters without raw data
b. Exposition of all the posters
c. Envelopes of data pieces
d. Pair up L4L alum with L4L5, district with non-district
e. Pairs: Look at data, come to consensus on 1-2 Leadership POP (use common table
in Word in cloud, share link with participants)
f. Quads: Review the POPs and agree upon them based upon data (use table and
copy Rd 1 into Rd 2 and add to statement)
g. Three groups of 2: Share distilled POP in identified areas, look for overlap (use
table to capture noticing and wonderings)
h. What additional data do we need to collect to solidify POP (use table to capture
questions, comments, additional needs)
i. Group share out (use electronic table) to identify 3-4 problems of leadership
practice
5] Closure
a. Review learning targets as success criteria from todays meeting.

As of this writing, I am hopeful that participants will be able to begin the process of articulating
problems of leadership practice, even if in draft form. Regardless of the extent to which this
activity is completed and the statements are written down, work will continue back in Puyallup
to further refine these problems of practice so that our CO administrative team has better
understanding of how we might move forward with a theory of action.
Phase 4 Next Steps...Theory of Action
One of the biggest shifts in my thinking and leadership is learning how to stay in the problem of
practice longer to clearly pinpoint and clarify the evidence supporting what the problem is. Prior
to L4L, I jumped quickly into actions which I thought would help address a perceived problem;
and often, my actions fell short of their intended outcomes. Both of my previous cycles of
inquiry projects in year 1 and year 2 exposed this thinking and those experiences provided me
with an opportunity to change my practice in this setting. Interestingly, this project not only
represented an opportunity to practice a cycle of inquiry in a large system setting, but the work I

did authentically informed our Superintendent about central office leadership changes he wanted
to make at the end of his third year, both with personnel and with how we redefine our work as
central office leaders.
Therefore, jumping into theories of action here would be premature. However, there were
instances early in this work where I realized some central office structure was missing and,
therefore, might lead to a further clarification of the problem. For example, two months into this
work in the fall I realized that no central office position had a formal job description. Upon
realizing this, I thought it might be helpful to take the time to articulate what my current role was
and the support I provided buildings, and then try to articulate what my future work might be
under a service model more aligned to support instructional leadership of our principals.
I utilized a T-Chart activity which was very helpful for me (see Appendix for this work) and
presents itself as an activity which would help other CO administrators only if it led to a norming
of service that each CO administrator could provide to our buildings.
When I shared my project with Meredith Honig, she pointed out that it would be necessary to
define service and have clear standards to which the service was aligned. She identified the
Principal Supervisor Performance Standards from the University of Washingtons District
Leadership Design Lab (Wallace Foundation, 2014) as a good place to start. I found these
standards were a valuable resource for our team when we decided to write a theory of action.
In addition to defining service jointly with our CO team using performance standards, I realized
that the success criteria and indicators I proposed at the onset of this project needed to be
reconsidered. Instead of identifying the criteria and indicators myself, our team would have to do
this collaboratively as we engaged in this joint work of defining service to our buildings.
Ownership and accountability of this work is critical to our success and by defining these for
them myself, I realized I was circumventing an important processing piece with my colleagues.
Informed by interview data and performance standards, my plan would be to lead a discussion of
what the indicators might be and how we, as a team, might measure them throughout the year.
The rubric that the Learning Lab provided would be a good place to start with these indicators.

Reflecting on Culture and My Leadership Practice through the Lens of Assistance

Relationships
Witherspoon writes that many of the definitions of organizational culture continually emphasize
that culture is a phenomenon created out of shared meanings constituted through communication
(Witherspoon, 1997, p. 76). Over the last three years, our superintendent has re-cultured many
aspects of our district through relentless common messaging and communication. In my one-onone monthly meetings over a two-year period with Dr. Yeomans, He shared his re-culturing
strategy and how this strategy was critical to change our principals perspectives of support of
their work as instructional leaders. As we near the end of year three, Dr. Yeomans shared his
plans to turn his attention toward the culture of the central office; and more specifically, how our

central office administrators support the development of our principals to be strong instructional
leaders.
For my role in the development of this change within the central office culture, I can sum up my
beliefs and participation with this effort with the following statement:
The implementation of shared vision, values and strategies leads to improved organizational
performance and success; and this success coupled with ongoing leadership exhibited throughout
the organization, creates a new culture that continues to improve performance (Witherspoon,
1997, p. 82)
The Importance of Assistance Relationships
Communities of practice develop around things that matter to the people in an organization
(Wenger, 1998). Getting to a place in our organization where central office administrators see the
value of and impact behind collaborating on the development of a common service roadmap of
service to building principals will take time. However, the process will lead to a greater shared
meaning of support to our building administrators, and I am excited to continue facilitating and
leading this work using the research base of assistance relationships: (1) focus on joint work, (2)
focus on differentiation and (3) modeling, (4) developing and using tools, and (5) brokering
resources (Gallimore & Tharp, 1988; Honig, Copeland, Rainey, & Newton, 2010).
Focus on joint work. Interview data from principals and CO administrators demonstrated a
unique desire to establish ways in which both parties participate in the development of their
instructional leadership skills. I can see how both the central office administrator and principal
become learners in the process and reinforce each other as they each develop their instructional
leadership practice. More importantly, as a member of the central office administrative team, I
must invite genuine dialog and meaning-making together during the process of norming levels
and types of support. Identifying this type of service support may take time if it is to be genuine
with principals and CO leaders actively engaging in the process. Also important in this process, I
plan to co-lead discussions to create success criteria which both parties identify as indicators. I
want to be part of the collective responsibility in this project to generate accountability towards
clearly refining what this service is and how it is monitored.
Focus on differentiation and modeling. The agreement about success criteria and reliance
on indicators of success will also help strategic personalization of learning. This is the
benchmark of differentiating the support I will provide CO administrators and principals as we
develop a theory of action around the service roadmap. For example, the interview data indicates
that some CO administrators simply need more adequate communication around service support
to our principals while others need training to understand the importance surrounding the
conceptual underpinnings of assistance relationships. To maintain a results-focused direction
towards a service model, there must be training and development experiences for our CO and
principals to observe so each can be effective practitioners of assisted performance, practice
these skills, and then receive necessary coaching (Gallimore & Tharp, 1988). Though being
careful not to embed a solution, one past model that has served Puyallup administrators and
teachers well is the Studio Classroom professional development model. This fish bowl activity
would allow CO administrators and principals to watch a coaching process in which the
leadership talk moves and follow-up activities by one CO administrator and principal are

modeled, observed and discussed by the other CO administrators and principals. This model has
worked well in our district with improving math instructional practice between both parties.
Also, we have found this professional development model address differentiation needs for a
continuum of learners with math instruction. So, this might be a potential next step with our CO
and principal teams.
Another way we could differentiate support could be the observations that a CO administrator
and principal team conduct with a district using those practices already. Specifically, Highline
School District currently uses the Instructional Leadership Director (ILD) model and some
Puyallup administrator teams could benefit seeing that process modeled. Regardless of type and
method of professional development used initially, we find subsequent follow up to the training
is of equal or greater value to our participants.
Developing and using tools. The purpose for using a tool must be identified and understood
by all stakeholders prior to using the tool. An effective tool can act as a third point by which
engaged stakeholders can focus their work rather than on individuals (Garmston, 2013).
Reflecting on the interview data, the need for establishing clear guidelines for group work
moving forward is important and would offer itself as an important third point to which
administrators can focus. The Leadership for Learning Data Spotlight focusing on
Observations (University of Washington, 2012) provide an effective means by which to collect
observation data. During the interview process, I used many of the guidelines within this tool to
capture information from administrators. Furthermore, I would suggest this protocol as an
effective way for CO administrators and principals to collect low inference data about each other
when they explore next steps.
If the target is to identify and monitor service to building administrators by CO administrators,
then I would like to facilitate larger discussions about what that service would be and how we
might measure it. Therefore, agreement about common leadership strategies might lead to CO
administrators and principals co-creating an observation tool that identifies those service moves.
Certainly, I would create the tool using the District Leadership Design Labs Principal
Supervisor Performance Standards as a valuable resource because the standards, levels of
practice, and suggested indicators they use are vetted through practitioners and grounded in a
strong instructional leadership research base (Wallace Foundation, 2014).
As tools are co-created and indicators developed to monitor progress of CO administrators
towards common service to principals, challenging conversations are likely to occur. Having
identified the problem of leadership practice, we would be able to talk more concretely with
other CO administrators about their practice, and use the tools to cite evidence supporting claims
about the service they see from one another as they engage in the joint work. My goal would be
to help other administrators close the gap between what they think their service looks like and
what the actual evidence shows. I believe not having guidelines, tools or protocols leaves
evidence gathering to chance; and my experience leads me to believe that CO administrators are
just as susceptible to make over-generalizations and judgements about practice when these tools
are not used.

Brokering our resources. If I am to lead CO administrators toward the development of a

common service roadmap, I must strategically manage the boundaries of the assistance
relationships with principals. Oddly enough, interview data pointed to some CO administrators
claiming that CAOs buffered principals too much and prevented them from engaging in
important service work with the principals. CAOs claim some of the central office initiatives
directed at principals were not as relevant as other initiatives. This led to perceptions that
positional authority was being utilized and contradicted operating norms set forth by our
superintendent.
Perhaps there are some additional questions which Puyallup CO administrators could ask. Are
our principals already doing enough to deepen their learning toward instructional leadership and
did the CAOs recognize this? Or, were there instances where CAOs actually bridged principals
to additional work to support or deepen their learning? I would argue that the role of the CAO is
manage the boundary of those assistance relationships with principals; and to do so, each CAO
needs to be an effective instructional leader. If the CO administrative teams seeks a common
service model to support our building administrators, then the CAOs play an important role as
broker with an equally important role to communicate buffering and bridging rationale to other
CO colleagues.

Summary
Over the course of this SIG project, I have grown considerably as a systems level leader. Central
office leadership, I found, requires a unique set of skills and practices coupled with the right
amount of political savviness. Throughout my four years of work at our central office, I found
communication and relationships to be foundation of acquiring the wisdom needed to work with
other leaders who are visionary yet opinionated, problem solving yet defensive, and decisionmaking yet sensitive to the opinions of others. During my SIG work, I seized an opportunity to
connect with each leader on a deeper, more personal level and learn more about the affective side
of their leadership. To me, I felt I had acquired a degree of political savviness.
What began as a project to develop a central office service roadmap to support the instructional
leadership development of principals, has led to my acknowledgement of the challenges
associated with changing the service culture of the central office administrative team. In
addition, the experience taught me the value of pinpointing the problem of leadership practice
long enough for all stakeholders to understand what the problem of practice is and why it
persists. At the end of the project, I experienced the satisfaction of knowing that our
superintendent acknowledged and agreed with the problems of leadership practice publicly with
other members of the District Leadership Team. As of this writing, I plan to bring CO
administrator interview data to L4L alumni of our leadership team who plan to attend my
capstone presentation. The intent is to develop broad understanding and agreement of this
problem of practice so a thoughtful and purposeful theory of action can be jointly developed by
CO administrators with the aid of our building principals.
Though I was feeling discouraged about falling short of my initial goal of developing a product
for my SIG, my conversations with Meredith Honig validated the challenges I faced with this
type of central office transformational work. The interviews conducted with central office

administrators were very helpful to help pinpoint the problem; but they also started deeper
discussions about how we could improve as a team. Over the last month, my interview data was
referenced several times by our superintendent and our assistant superintendents; and so I believe
my leadership is making a difference for change. I intend to carry this work forward and lead
additional work that engages a theory of action in a way that promotes growth of our central
office administrative team and leads to a transformation of practice that serves our principals in
the best possible manner.

References
Fink, S., & Silverman, M. (2014). Principals as instructional leaders. Education Digest, 80(4),
22.
Foundation, T. W. (2014, 2014). Principal Supervisor Performance Standards Version 1.0.
Retrieved January 22, 2015, 2015
Gallimore, R., & Tharp, R. G. (1988). Rousing minds to life: teaching, learning, and schooling in
social context. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire] ; New York: Cambridge Cambridgeshire ;
New York : Cambridge University Press.
Garmston, R. J. (2013). The adaptive school: A sourcebook for developing collaborative groups
(Second edition, revised printing. ed.): Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Honig, M. I., Copeland, M. A., Rainey, L., J.A., & Newton, M. (2010). Central Office
Transformation for District-wide Teaching and Learning Improvement. Seattle, WA:
Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy-University of Washington.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice : learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge, U.K.
; New York, N.Y.: Cambridge, U.K. ; New York, N.Y. : Cambridge University Press.
Witherspoon, P. D. (1997). Communicating leadership: an organizational perspective. Boston:
Allyn and Bacon.

Appendix
1] Sample-Principal Interview Data (Image) from one principal.

Sample-Principal Interview Data (Image) from one principal (continued)

2] Development of Interview Questions

Data Sought from Interviews with Central Office Administrators
Omit term 'Job Description Analysis'
Include question: "What were your primary job priorities and duties last year?"
Qtn: "Have those priorities and duties changed over the last 20 months?"
Qtn: "How does your work reflect your core values?"
Qtn: "Describe how your service to buildings and principals aligns with your core values?"
(What evidence would you consider to support your service to buildings?"
Qtn: "To what extent do your professional or student growth goals align with your service to
buildings and principals?"
Qtn: "What is the average amount of time you spend in schools per week?"

Qtn: "How much time do you spend working with other central office colleagues on projects,
initiatives, or teaching/learning support?"
"How does your work directly impact student achievement?"

Final Interview Questions

1] Central Office Professional Goals. How did your professional goals align with your service to
buildings and principals? (Under previous superintendent and under current superintendent)
2] Professional Development. What professional development did you provide to principals to
support their leadership? (Previous and Current)
3] Time in Buildings. What percent of your time did you spend in buildings in direct support of
principals? What percent of time did you spend on program areas for which you had oversight (not
in buildings)? (Previous and Current)

3] Sample Interview Responses (Images of data from posters for one of seven groups)

4] T-Chart Activity (January 18)