KyCLS along with seven other states is piloting a coaching model with beginning and some experienced principals. Kentucky’s pilot involves the principals in the SAM project. The coaching model is a study of the Wallace Foundation Leadership Issue Group: Assessing Leadership Effectiveness. The Leadership Performance Planning Worksheet was developed to help new principals identify, organize around, and effectively lead instructional improvement in their schools. The philosophy supporting this worksheet development is that new principals, during their beginning years in the job, should focus on the developing mastery of a subset of key leader behaviors that have been found to develop capacity to perform instructional leadership.
The Worksheet is comprised of 37 core behaviors that are organized into nine leadership dimensions. This list was created from a review and synthesis of principal leadership audit protocols and assessment instruments developed by the New York City Leadership Academy, the states of Delaware and Kentucky and the Wallace Foundation Driver Behaviors. Each behavior was selected for its ability to address the expected scope of new principals’ critical job demands; its generalizability to a wide variety of state performance standards for principals; and its utility to new principals of different experience levels
This tool is specifically designed to assist principal development of the leadership skills and behaviors to meet the goals of leading and improving schools instructionally. Each principal is assigned a Leadership Development Coach as a collaborative effort of the KyCLS and KDE SAM Project and Kentucky Leadership Academy.