Supporting the Learning of Others-Leading for (a) Change

Capstone Portfolio Year 3

John G. Parker

University of Washington

Leadership for Learning (L4L)

College of Education

May 6, 2015

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In his book, Professional Capital-Transforming Teaching in Every School, Andy
Hargreaves describes how culture impacts the performance of an organization (Hargreaves,
2012). As I reflect on three years engaged in an L4L community of practice; this resonates with
me. This three-year endeavor forced me to confront some long-standing views of my own
leadership and actually reconstruct my thinking and actions as a leader. My claims and evidence
below depict how I now work with others, and these new experiences created a lasting desire to
continue to explore sustainable ways to build capacity of my district colleagues and leaders
outside my district.

Equity and Excellence

Over the previous year, I improved my ability to identify how practices, policies, and
systems, both presently and historically, created disparities in the quality of learning
environments and student success, particularly for traditionally marginalized students. In my
previous leadership practice, I participated in district-level discussions to change school policies
and instructional practices to help marginalized students achieve at higher levels. This year, I
lead district work to close gaps for marginalized students. Specifically, I helped other district
leaders understand how data can identify how students are marginalized so building leaders can
use the same data to discuss disparities in their own schools.
One instance that demonstrates this growth in this area was to identify disparities in
student discipline (suspensions and expulsions) in our 31 schools. As a member of the district
leadership team in the past, I engaged in leadership discussions about school discipline data and
noted how the frequency and type of discipline differed along racial lines and between school
buildings. This year however, I lead a discussion with Gerald Denman, our Chief Officer of
Equity and Achievement, using data pulled from our student data system to determine if

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discipline (suspension and expulsion) disparities existed in our schools. I met with our
Information Systems team and, collaboratively, we pulled the data and organized it into graphs
school by school. We noted specifically how black males were suspended or expelled more than
our white students. In our District Leadership Meeting (DLT), Gerald and I discussed the data
findings and our leaders were not surprised to hear that we suspend and expel minorities more
than white students in many of our schools. I suggested that exposing our building administrators
to this data would be a first step. This discussion influenced our Education Leadership Team
(ELT) to dedicate one of our monthly administrator professional development sessions toward
examination of this data, and provide discussion tools for principals to take this data back to their
buildings for further examination and discussion in one of their scheduled supplemental day
trainings. Gerald and I then planned and conducted a training by developing questions to ask
administrators about the data and developing a protocol to reveal disparities (Love, Stiles,
Mundry, & Diranna, 2008).
The results from the training were mostly positive based on exit tickets; for example,
some administrators were ready to launch into discussions with their staff, while others indicated
they did not fully understand how the data was presented. We are planning additional time in a
follow up professional development session to review intervention options to administrators
based upon this data. Some administrators wanted the same discipline data broken out by gender
and by free/reduced lunch status, and we plan to provide through a standing agenda item during
our principal regional meetings.
Another leadership move I made involved goal setting for central office administrators.
This year, central office administrators were asked to write three professional goals to align with
the new central office framework modeled after the WASA Leadership framework. Last year, the
expectation was to identify 2-3 goals related to my productivity in technology-the primary duty
of my job. I am a few layers removed from classrooms, and I struggled with how I could write a

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goal which might directly impact students; or more specifically, marginalized students.
In keeping with connecting my goals to student growth by focusing on students who
received an individual laptop this year, I wanted know if student receiving that laptop became
more prepared for college and career. I used these students academic grades from the prior year
as a baseline as well as student perception data about the laptop pilot. I then modeled how a
central office administrator could create student growth goals during our January district-wide
administrative meeting by sharing the concept and data collection methods I used and planned to
collect at the end of the year. My plan was to influence other central office administrators to
write student growth goals; and after the training, I provided growth data ideas to three
administrators goals they planned to write.
In addition to setting goals to student learning, I also grew in my ability to build policies
and systems that support every student with success and learning to high standards. Prior to this
year, I helped update policies based upon updates from WSSDA but often did not deliberately
follow-up on how the introduction and implementation of those policies influenced district and
building decisions. This year however, I improved my equitable systems leadership by analyzing
how my policy decisions either helped or hindered the districts ability to support the learning of
all students and amended policies after meeting with stakeholders.
Another instance of my leadership came when I helped lead grade level teachers to
update the elementary report card based upon the new standards from the Common Core and
Next Generation Science Standards. Most notably, I helped direct consensus building for each
team to identify the key learning standards each teacher would measure student performance on
the new elementary report cards. Our target was taking the 40+ standards in each grade level and
identifying approximately 4-5 standards in reading and math for each grade level. Consensus
building was challenging since many of the committee members struggled to identify priority

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standards; and so I used suggestions from Larry Ainsworths book on Power Standards and
modeled examples of how to prioritize standards. In the end, these moves helped facilitate the
creation of our new elementary report card.
Another occasion where I provided systems-level leadership occurred when the
Transcript Guidelines Policy I created last year were challenged by parents of one of our high
school students. The previous year I had created these transcript policy guidelines to eliminate
disparities in awarding credit differently in one high school from another. I created guidelines
and vetted them (and their implications) through of our chief academic officers (CAO) and
assistant superintendents. This new policy would comply with the new state requirement on the
tracking student course history using a Withdraw mark (W), and to reflect drop-dead dates when
credit would be awarded or not. But, the guidelines also provided some flexibility for secondary
administrators to make exceptions. All agreed that this policy would guide future decisions on
awarding credit within student transcripts.
Recently when one parent requested the W be removed from their childs transcript
since they felt it would adversely impact their childs admission to college. When one of our
CAOs agreed, I challenged the decision privately with the CAO citing instances where these
decision had previously led to credit disparity problems. The CAO explained the circumstances
and why this would be an instance where the W would be removed; however, our discussion
made its way back to the other CAOs and Assistant Superintendents where we all decided that
we would limit exemptions and carefully document the rationale in the students cumulative
folder. My advocacy of this principle led to precedent setting action and results which solidified
district resolve for this policy on a larger, sustainable scale.
The transcript policy guideline case also represents evidence of a leadership move to
foster the collective responsibility, growth and capacity of others to reflect on and enact equitable
practice. Prior to this year, I had typically not challenged policy language with another district
leader, especially if the leader outranked me. This year however, the private challenge of the

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transcript guidelines policy with both a CAO and our assistant superintendent demonstrated how
I have grown in my ability to lead with equitable leadership stance regardless of positional
authority. As a district, we are stronger in our stance with credits because of my advocacy and
this instance proved to me that positional authority matters less when fostering collective
responsibility towards an equitable practice.
Another piece of data comes from my Special Interest Group (SIG) project. During this
work, I conducted interviews with our Central Office (CO) administrators in smaller groups to
help identify of problems of practice focusing on providing central office support and service to
our schools administrators. The three questions I asked, required CO administrators to evaluate
our success to impact the instructional leadership of our principals were: 1. How their
professional goals connected to and related to the support they provide principals? 2. What
professional development they provided to building administrators on a weekly basis? 3. How
do they quantify the amount of time spent in schools versus the time spent on their program
duties? The responses I received informed my SIG project, but more importantly, the process
opened our CO practice prompting our superintendent to consider making changes to our service
model to schools.
Over the course of this year, I have grown to value engaging and empowering multiple
voicesboth professional and community in key deliberations and decision-making.
Previously, I limited involvement of community voice since I found their responses lacked a
contextual understanding of the complexities of school systems. During the 2014-2015 school
year, I embraced community voice and structured community meetings carefully to inform and
elicit important feedback to inform decision-making.
One leadership move was to review Data Spotlight readings and find new ways to ask
guiding questions and facilitate discussions with community members during the three District
Technology Committee meetings we held throughout the year. To refine my listening skills, I
also employed listening techniques from Adaptive Schools Sourcebook (Garmston, 2013)

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because I wanted to hone my listening and paraphrasing skills with community members to
ensure I was accurately capturing their voice to inform the revision of our districts technology
vision and guiding principles. Drafts of our technology vision reflect feedback from our
community; I confirmed we accurately captured their voice in this guiding document.
Another move I made was to engage the voice of our central office (CO) administrators
to collect qualitative data for my SIG project. I interviewed 18 administrators to collect
perception data on how we serve our principals (see interview questions above). Prior, I met with
Dr Fredricka Smith, a chief academic officer and Leadership for Learning (L4L) graduate and
asked for suggestions on how I might accomplish this. Based upon her input, I decided to lead
small group discussions based upon job-alike status because this would allow the most authentic
response from our CO administrators. Over the following month, I met with and interviewed
teams consisting of assistant superintendents, CAOs, directors of instructional leadership,
executive directors of career and technical education, assessment and accountability, special
education, and Title and LAP. Now I feel more adept and skilled at engaging multiple
professional voices to inform the problem of practice for my SIG project and have greater
confidence that the data I collected informs the decisions around my SIG theory of action.
Finally, I continue to evolve as a leader in facilitating explicit discussions about race,
class, language, ability, and other group-based disparities in the service of collective action as a
means to decrease them. Beyond last year, I tended to avoid discussion about race. I am a white
male and believed I lacked credibility to discuss issues of race, class and disparities associated
with these groups. After leading discipline disparity trainings and transcript guideline
conversations involving our marginalized students, I feel more confident and prepared as a leader
to engage in discussions about race, language, and ability.
One piece of evidence occurred when I led discussions about race related to those who
graduated not graduate on time with members of our technology team. Each member of our team
is white; however, we discussed the barriers our non-white students experience to graduate on

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time based upon building decisions related to awarding high school credits. After identifying
specific non-white students who did not graduate when taking the same courses white students
took and passed, I pressed them to help me find student records data to substantiate our claims
that a disparity existed related to awarding credits to whites and minority students. When I
addressed the CAO about removing the W from the students transcript, the data my team had
collected about graduation disparities supported my talking points. From this experience, I
learned I can engage in difficult, systems-level discussions about race without being an without
having direct experience and acknowledging my own white privilege

Inquiry-focused Practice
Over the course of this year I expanded my leadership of using the Cycle of Inquiry
(COI) process by using this work to transform our districts central office leadership practice.
During the previous two years, I learned how to conduct full cycles in two different system
settings with a basic level of understanding. This year however, I chose a SIG project and
utilized the COI process knowing other CO administrators had COI experience; thereby
generating a greater degree of engagement by them in the process of examining how the CO
serves buildings administrators.
I matured in my leadership to lead using evidence to understand problems of practice,
and specifically the student, teaching/other adult, and leadership dimensions of those problems.
As mentioned previously, interviews I conducted from 18 CO administrators and 6 principals
generated valuable qualitative data reflecting our current realities of how we serve building
administrators. Interview responses indicated CO administrators do not have a clear
understanding of what their role is to help develop the instructional leadership capacity of our

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building leaders nor what a common service might be for our administrators even though our
superintendents message includes such practice. CO administrators identified challenges
differentiating their service to buildings and how to balance this service in light of managing the
tasks associated with the programs for which they have oversight.
Supporting my use of cycles of inquiry (COI) involved meeting directly with the
Puyallup Superintendent, Dr. Tim Yeomans, to discuss my interview data and provide him the
opportunity to ask questions about this information was another leadership move I made. My
goal was for Dr. Yeomans to understand the leadership dimensions associated with this problem
of practice; and the meeting led to some key outcomes. He asked me to summarize my findings
and make claims as to the problem of leadership practice I saw reflected in the data. Previously, I
would have jumped to a claim or even suggested a theory of action immediately. This time
however, I hesitated jumping to a claim or theory of action before pinpointing the problem more
succinctly. In fact, I also suggested that to move forward with a targeted and effective theory of
action, we would need to ensure more central office administrators understood the problem. The
data suggested we needed to define the service model to principals and how to distinguish this
service from tasks associated with our programs or areas of oversight. Later at our weekly DLT
meeting, Tim articulated the need to define service and distinguish service from tasks to all of
our central office administrators. I was excited and anxious since this work involved the most
authentic audience and was systems level work I had been involved with to date.
Therefore, it was an easy decision then to use my interview data in my capstone
presentation as a logical next step with some members of my leadership team. I will lead by
facilitating a conversation with L4L alumni from Puyallup (5 central office administrators) using
a consultancy protocol (National School Reform Faculty, 2014) to pinpoint our central office

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leadership problem of practice. This leadership move will create greater collective ownership of
the problem and inform our next (theory of action) steps to take as a team.
While more work is to be done with the theory of action, I also discussed with Dr
Yeomans the importance of identifying indicators of success that an effective service model
might demonstrate so our central office team can use the indicators to assess progress. In follow
up work, I will be sure to have these indicators related to leadership actions by principals which,
in turn, are tied to achievement indicators in our schools.
I currently operate as a systems-wide leader to support the learning of other adults to
continuously strengthen their practice in ways that promise to improve results for all students.
While in previous years, I focused more on strengthening the practice of teachers and
occasionally building administrators. This year however, I shifted my support of CO
administrators to strengthen their practice. By reviewing our central office practices so we can
articulate, address and improve service to our principals, I demonstrated a shift in my practice
with this standard.
One piece of evidence that I created and shared with our Superintendent and our CAOs
was a personal reflection of how each director's job description must shift in order to align with a
new service model. I lead by creating a new job description for my own shift in practice to
initiate a discussion with other leaders to consider how creating a job description would
influence the change in service sought. I showed this document to one of our CAOs and our
Superintendent. The influence of this leadership move was immediate in that Dr Tim Yeomans
asked me to construct a white paper on how this work would influence a transformation of our
central office.

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Another leadership move supporting this standard involved training administrators to use
technology to organize, simplify and make efficient the numerous tasks for which they engage on
a daily basis. These tasks included training on how to use the new teacher observation and
evaluation tool that we had created last year, Microsoft OneNote training to help organize
Response to Intervention work in buildings, and conducting first-ever webinar trainings using
new technology which we had recently purchased. The effect of the trainings was pronounced.
Over 76% of our central office staff and 36% of our building administrators participated in the
trainings and either used the technology immediately or trained their staff to use the technology.
In addition, I followed up with each administrator to provide ongoing support. One junior high
principal sent me a follow-up email after my OneNote training stating how the training I led to
greater collaboration between English-Social Studies teams and she thanked me for the
differentiated support as they used this technology for the first time.
Finally, I continue to grow in my ability to communicate from a teaching and learning
stance in ways that help other adults deepen the extent to which they are engaged with and value
strengthening their practice. In review of my journal reflections, I was taken aback at my growth
in leading through cycles of inquiry (COI). I often labored to understand the COI components
and how each fit together in a coherent manner previous years. This year was different as I
elected focused my SIG work using a COI to help myself and other leaders examine and
strengthen their own practice of supporting our building administrators. Currently, I am still
working on this cycle with the intent on sharing my SIG findings with Puyallup L4L alumni at
my Capstone presentation. More specifically, interview data from central office administrators
was coded and identified central office administrators as being compliant to program standards,
having a lack of expertise in content and programs, and being generally confused as to what
effective service to building administrators might be. I shared these findings with our

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superintendent and assistant superintendent and begin initial conversations in DLT on how we
can change and norm our service to building administrators.
Another leadership move supporting a teaching and learning stance includes my
introduction of the technology tool, Lync, to communicate teaching and learning initiatives out
district-wide to building administrators and teachers through online professional development
opportunities (Trainings with Keyboarding software, Smarter Balanced and Assessment,
OneNote). Several hundred teachers and administrators participated my training and their
feedback indicated the new PD tool values their time and increased professional development
participation because the opportunity to receive the training in their own classroom while still
interacting virtually with the trainer and other participants. The result of this work led to a shift
in how we use technology to deliver training to all staff.

The Improvement of Teaching and Learning

Since joining the L4L cohort, I strengthened my development and articulation of a
theory-based vision of deeply-engaging, culturally-responsive, and intellectually-challenging
instruction and adult professional learning. Prior to participating in the L4L program, my theory
of learning was influenced trainings I received from the National Staff Development Council, the
National Academy of Curriculum Leadership, and numerous regional trainings I received as an
instructional coach. I was also greatly influenced by the research by Jon Bransford on How
People Learn(Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000). I built upon those previous experiences and
three years of cohort work to enhance my theory-based vision to include equitable systems
leadership.
One piece of evidence is the culminating work I helped lead on developing a new

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technology vision and guiding principles with our District Technology Committee (DTC).
Specifically, I conducted six DTC meetings over a two-year period sharing technology practices
and tools teachers could use to differentiate their teaching. More importantly, I introduced case
studies showing how all students improved due to those practices. I guided our members to craft
a single vision statement for use of technology and used theory of action statements to guide
future technology decision-making and prioritization.
Another piece of data supporting my leadership with this standard involved
coordinating a 3.5 hour professional development with our diversity officer to all district
administrators focusing on discipline disparities within our schools. I tied our training
targets to the proficient rating of criterion 8.1 (Identifies barriers to achievement and
knows how to close resulting gaps) of the principal leadership evaluation. Simply stated, if
our minority students are being suspended and expelled, How can we close the
achievement gap? We had each school review their school discipline data to determine if
non-white or special education students were missing school and not afforded learning
opportunities due to suspension or expulsion. This barrier, I believed, limited the extent to
which these students would engage in intellectually challenging instruction. Exit tickets
from the training indicated this training had a profound impact on how building
administrators were re-adjusting their leadership to our district strategic direction stating
Equity, Equal Opportunity and High Performance for All Students.
From 2013-2015, I intentionally connected our instructional framework and other tools to
optimize student and adult professional learning. Last year, I created technology tools for
administrators and teachers so they could conduct their evaluation work using the Danielson and
central office frameworks more efficiently. This year, I enhanced and improved the tools using
administrator feedback so more administrators used and benefit from these tools.

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For instance, I used Microsoft Excel and embedded the Danielson framework and
evaluation criteria to create a single teacher observational tool for administrators to record staff
observations and complete their evaluations. Last year, problems with the tool caused some of
our administrators to abandon the tool. However, many administrators shared their appreciation
for the tool and suggested fixes. I met with and garnered support from our administrators to use
the tool if we provided a tool without bugs. When we did this year, more administrators used the
tool. I then dedicated web design experts in our technology center to re-create this tool online
and further improve the tool. Initial feedback is very positive, and building administrators who
saw the new online version were excited to try it. The common observation tool is being used by
all building administrators; and I am pleased to create a wonderful opportunity to collaborate,
monitor learning and adjust leadership using such a common tool.
Microsoft OneNote was another administrative tool I trained many building
administrators to use to store all their observations and evaluations. Over 40% of our
administrators now use OneNote as an organizational tool since I introduced and trained
administrators to use the software application last year. This year, I taught several administrators
how to share their OneNote notebook with staff and collaborate on evidence they acquire from
each framework component.
Over a two-year period, I further developed as a leader by engaging relevant players
collaboratively and drawing from school-based and community expertise and resources in
instructional improvement work. Prior to my L4L experience, I trained science and math teachers
but rarely building and central office administrators. Now, I focus my training and collaboration
efforts to train principals and other central office colleagues and improve their instructional
leadership capacity and improve central office service to schools.
In one instance, I changed my strategy to include and solicit expertise from central office

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staff, building administrators, teachers and community members within the teaching and learning
to successfully implement initiatives I oversee. Examples include the One-to-One computer
laptop initiative, Open Education Resources curricular planning, and district technology
recommendations to the bond advisory team. In the process, I gathered broader support and trust
from principals and central office administrators for their use. Now these colleagues are more
willing to share suggestions and feedback to improve these and other initiatives.
My Special Interest Group (SIG) project is another opportunity where I engaged relevant
players collaboratively. As I mentioned above, I interviewed several CO administrators and
building principals, and shared this data with our superintendent and four other L4L alumni. In
turn, I asked them to lead smaller groups at my capstone in an effort to identify problems of
leadership practice associated with our service support to principals. Already, this work is
beginning to help transform our central office and work continues back in our district to use this
interview data to identify problems of practice in route to the development of a theory of action.
From 2012-2015, I created systems to support and sustain instructional leadership of
principals, teacher leaders, and educators, inside and outside the district. Though my job title was
Director of Instructional Leadership over the last five years, I struggled to engage and nurture
administrator growth during professional trainings prior to L4L. Now armed with a research base
and experiential learning of instructional leadership through L4l, I positioned myself relationally
and through support to lead administrators.
One leadership move was to joint plan professional development with our Educational
Leadership Team (ELT) and executing professional training in direct support of our building
administrators instead of just teachers. On the team, I advocated for the use of more data within
each of our trainings, and co-led the principals through an exercise of writing narrative
statements about their own building discipline data. I used my cycle of inquiry experience to

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have building administrators refine problems of practice using other data to determine if
additional correlations existed between race, suspensions, and the academic performance of
minority students in their building. Finally, I provided training plans for principals to lead a
similar training with staff back in their buildings.
My SIG project yielded another piece of evidence supporting this claim. In the projects
early stages, I was unclear on what instructional leadership looked like if I was going to change
my own service and support to our building administrators. To clarify my position, I created a Tchart and listed all the service and tasks associated with my current position and conceptualized
what my new instructional leadership service and level of support might be. Included on my new
service model were statements which included assistance relationship components (Gallimore &
Tharp, 1988), building trust and re-culturing (Witherspoon, 1997), and communities of practice
(Wenger, 1998). The outcome of this leadership move was more profound than I had imagined. I
showed this product to three of our five leaders who are L4L graduates, including our
superintendent. Since sharing this, our superintendent references that product often as a common
outcome of the project.
For standard 3e, I honed my ability to craft and/or adapt instructional visions, practices,
and other supports appropriately for meeting specialized learning needs. Prior to L4L year one, I
labored to find curricular and instructional supports for our ELL, special education and low
income students. These supports usually involved professional development for staff. Now, my
approach is much different in that my vision and practice is guided by the Danielson instructional
framework and my support includes training our building administrators instead, or involving
administrators with instructionally-based decision making.
Additionally, my work with principals to develop a method of assessing progress for
students with specialized learning needs according to their building RTI plan was yet another

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piece of evidence. Specifically, I used assessment tools and data analysis protocols (City &
Murname, 2005; Love et al., 2008) to help determine student growth based upon performance
data. In several instances, I guided building administrators through an analysis of their data in a
particular area like math or reading by grouping strand data by similar scores and reviewing how
the various subgroups performed.
In another instance with central office colleagues, I helped coordinate with our principals
and their leadership teams to model what grade or content teams do during one of their RTI
meetings. When I shared that some principals did not know specifically what this might look
like, I requested to our ELT planning team to include this activity in our two-day training in June.
Our intent is to model for the observers so they gain a better understanding of what an RTI team
does and identify an in-district resource (team) to contact if they want more modeling.
Again, in support of my colleagues, I grew in my leadership to analyze assessment
practices and use assessment data of various kinds to improve instruction; and I assisted our
building administrators to do the same. Prior to this, teachers were my target audience for
analyzing assessment practices. Now, I realize the importance of supporting building
administrators to train their teachers to improve their assessment practices as it aligns to
instructional leadership findings (Neumerski, 2013), and principals leadership framework (Kipp,
Quinn, Gordon, & Sharratt, 2013).
One particular move involved a shift in how I led a district-wide effort to develop
common assessments in math and science (grades 7-12) to guide incremental learning in
secondary classrooms. Many administrators however, chose not to attend. Now, TPEP and our
instructional framework generates a need by prioritizing assessment practices and the analysis of
student assessment data along with providing a vision for what quality instruction looks/sounds
like. Given this shift, I joined principals with their RTI teams on a monthly basis to analyze their

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STAR and DIBELs data using protocols (Love et al., 2008). With a framework and protocol, I
continue to help principals lead their RTI teams using data, and identify areas of need for
students so interventions can be assigned. My involvement is making a difference based upon
feedback from principals, however principals state they need additional help with assessment
literacy.
I teamed with the Executive Director of Assessment and Accountability as an additional
opportunity for leadership, Dr. Glenn Malone. Glenn and I believe technology and assessment
collectively play a vital role with interventions for students. With our technology-assessment
backgrounds, we brainstormed ideas to bring valuable assessment tools and practices to our
secondary schools to support their RTI benchmark testing and progress monitoring. The results
of teaming together has generated additional involvement from other directors and broadened our
impact to principals. We now use software such as PerformancePLUS, Imagine Learning, IXL,
and STAR Math and Reading to more quickly assess student progress.

Strategic, Collaborative Governance & Decision-Making

Interestingly as I progressed in my L4L work, opportunities presented themselves to
share research on assistance relationships (Gallimore & Tharp, 1988) with Dr. Malone to discuss
ways to model and differentiated our support to principals as we work together. So during the
2014-2015 school year, I grew the most in my leadership ability to understand and develop
coherent organizational structures and policies that improve the equity and overall performance
of the educational system. Prior to this year, I relied heavily on district policy, state and federal
compliance, and positional authority as a basis for decision-making and leadership. Now I use
many components from L4L to lead. These components include using inquiry-focused practice,

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knowledge and refinement of instructional leadership practices, and equitable systems leadership
to improve the performance of our school district.
The most notable piece of evidence supporting this claim involved my SIG work to
understand our current central office service model to support principals and change our practice
to improve support to building administrators; so in turn, they can improve the overall
performance of their school. Specifically, I interviewed 18 central office administrators and six
of our principals to help me understand our current leadership problem of practice in this area.
One theme emerged with the data-not all principals need or want the same level of central office
support.
My next leadership move was to ask our district leadership to engage in a consultancy
protocol to examine the data and discuss the complexities of the problem during my capstone
presentation so they would collectively understand and own our problem of practice. The data
showed many issues; most poignantly, it showed that while the superintendents message was
clear details and specifics were lacking on what that service looked like. As a result of this effort,
Superintendent Dr. Tim Yeomans indicated we would be using my research from the UW
program to examine how we can effectively support instructional staff and principals through
coherent systems during our district leadership team meetings from April to September of 2015.
Managing resources is a large part of our leadership duties, over the last year, I
strengthened my leadership to generate, allocate, and manage resources in alignment with
improvement and equity goals. Prior to my L4L experience, I managed large budgets, allocating
and managing resources to teachers. In many instances, I tried to improve achievement but found
many of these resources were not used by students or disparities existed between schools who
needed more or different resources based upon their student population. Now, I use the resource
management lessons learned in L4L as well as my equitable systems leadership to guide resource

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allocation decisions and differentiate based on the learning needs of students.
The 3-year Teacher Laptop Initiative I co-authored is evidence of how resources were
allocated and used in alignment with our districts strategic direction to improved student
achievement. I identified teachers within our emerging schools first as recipients of new laptops
since they could access more online intervention resources for their students. Teachers receiving
those laptops in those schools responded by asking for more laptop training to fully utilize their
new teaching tool as an instructional resource, and I complied by providing them additional
training.
Additionally, I allocated resources, as another leadership move, to create a new pilot
program for students to take their original paper-pencil assessments online. Then, assessments
could be scored quickly and results used in a more timely manner for intervention purposes. I
convinced three principals to collaborate on this project since I knew each believed technology
could simplify this process. So I purchased the online assessment tool, and installed this program
on our systems network. The three schools will soon begin piloting the program, and I will
provide additional resources to train these three principals to use this tool.
I also enhanced my leadership ability over the last three years to identify, engage, and
influence broader policy, legal, and political environments to strengthen supports for learning.
Prior to L4L, my influence was mostly behind the scenes reviewing and updating policy which
was then shared with stakeholders like our school board. Now, I find any opportunity I can to
involve myself in leadership conversations upfront to influence others in ways to support
learning.
One of these opportunities presented itself when I co-lead an initiative with four other
directors and I informed our school board on how Open Education Resources (OER) could

Parker, Year 3 Capstone Portfolio, Page | 21

represent a cost-effective, teacher supported, and sustainable solution to our present textbook
adoption policy. My influence came when I addressed how we, as a district, could use our
existing technology infrastructure and modify adoption policies with our teachers assistance to
find free, current and relevant curriculum to replace our costly, aging curriculum. This board
approved the measure after engaging myself and our team in a lengthy question-answer
discussion.
Another instance of my leadership in this area was more subtle and long-term. After
watching several DLT members struggle using their laptops and many software applications
which promoted collaboration and organization, I asked our superintendent if I could provide a
3-5 minute technology tip at the start of each DLT meeting. Over 90% of DLT leaders said they
highly value the tips and use the applications more to organize and collaborate with their teams.
One example included learning to fully utilize our existing Microsoft Lync online
meeting system to collaborate with educators online across the district on rollouts as the new
keyboarding software and our new standards-based, elementary report cards. By providing this
staff training online, I introduced a method for teachers to remain in their classrooms and
collaborate virtually rather than having them spend time commuting across our district. As a
result, we had far greater attendance and participants hailed use of this format as a game
changer for them. Now, other directors such as our director of assessment and accountability use
this delivery format after he saw this tools value to efficiently collaborate with test coordinators
across the district.
Likewise, I addressed this standard when I trained administrators, teachers and classified
staff throughout the year to fully utilize their district webpages as a tool to inform the public
(community and parents) about course content, school events and parent meetings, newsletters
and other learning events.

Parker, Year 3 Capstone Portfolio, Page | 22

In 2014-2015, I grew substantially in my leadership to develop and guide decision
processes that maximize collaborative problem solving and continuous improvement. Prior to
L4L, the extent of my collaboration involved meeting with other directors to inform them of
teaching and learning opportunities I planned to provide staff. This year, however, I spent
considerable time developing relationships with leaders in our central office groups in an effort
to build trust, improve communication and enhance collaboration so these groups interact and
make leadership decisions in more of a coherent manner.
An instance of this was when I chose to join our HR, Business, and Payroll leaders in a
weekly meeting. My primary move was to collaborate and problem-solve with these leaders and
resolve technology issues associated with the primary application these departments shared.
Though a few layers removed from student learning, I recognized the central importance of
BusinessPLUS as a hub to allocate and monitor financial and human resources data. The
collaboration work paid off as I eliminated communication breakdowns between departments
and brokered technology staff support between payroll, purchasing and human resource directors
to improve operation of the application and make it run more efficiently.
Another leadership move was taking the initiative to join and participate in the weekly
director of instructional leadership meetings held at our central office. Though my office is not
amongst the rest of the district leadership, I recognized the importance of attending these
meetings to both inform and be informed of teaching and learning news and updates; especially
since my role overseeing technology, integrates with so many of these initiatives. I provided
insight and expertise through full participation in conversations to collaborate on learning
initiatives, define rationales for technology use, and helped the team develop implementation
plans with such initiatives as planning professional development of RTI, OER, and the Common
Core State Standards. In my new role as CAO next year, I plan to continue attending these

Parker, Year 3 Capstone Portfolio, Page | 23

meetings to improve collaboration by connecting leaders with each other to share ideas, see and
discuss models of exemplary practice, and thereby model assistance relationships to those I
support.
Lastly, I improved my leadership skill to model transparent and ethical leadership and
address sources of conflict productively and equitably. Prior to L4L, I tended to address conflict
less directly with others or did not address conflict in a timely manner. From L4L learning and a
desire to understand our own district systems, I am more informed about issues related to
teaching, learning and district operations; and it is easier for me to engage conflict with
colleagues and employees.
A situation where I was able to demonstrate dealing with conflict equitably where this
occurred was in our joint meetings with human resources and payroll. I joined these bi-weekly
meetings to learn more about our business software and how our existing model of support from
our technology staff helped or hindered the systems performance. Conflict arose often from a
lack of understanding how the software worked and, more importantly, assumptions made
between the technology support person and the payroll director. I decided to meet with these two
staff separately and using an online meeting and have each party identify and write down tasks
needing to be completed prior to the following payroll cycle. I am building further capacity by
having them set these calendar meetings themselves, and being accountable for the task list
deadlines.
Another key leadership move was interviewing central office administrators in groups to
learn how our central office service to principals might improve. I recorded their comments using
Data Spotlight interviewing techniques and these comments generated further discussion within
groups criticizing the lack of communication and transparency other central office groups,
especially when decisions made by these other groups impacted the systems to which they had

Parker, Year 3 Capstone Portfolio, Page | 24

oversight. My leadership move here (with the superintendents support) will be to use a protocol
to review this interview data in front of our entire DLT group so we engage productively to
address the source of miscommunication between CO leaders.

Outcomes, Goals and Next Steps

One leadership outcome this year was modeling how technology could transform the way
we train staff in a large district, and how we collaborate at scale in a virtual environment. I hit
my target with my work in this area. Our district continues to focus on developing skills like
organization, note-taking, and collaboration system-wide
Instead of providing solo technology trainings for administrators and teachers to support
these skills, I wanted to embed technology use of applications like Microsoft OneNote and Lync
within our monthly, district-wide administrative meetings to clearly show how these tools would
improve collaboration and training outcomes while modeling 21st century technology skills. The
tech tips I provided at our DLT meetings supported our superintendents message and goal to
infuse technology in every aspect of our work, including teaching and learning.
The importance of this lies in our ability now to offer district wide training online using
Lync, and increase teacher and administrator participation in training when our schools are
spread across 55 square miles. Feedback from those participating in these online trainings used
terms like transformational, revolutionary and game changing. Since my inaugural use of
Lync to do this work, I started a trend for other directors to use Lync for secondary department
meetings, AVID meetings, test coordinator and administrator check-ins, and IEP meetings.
My goal next year will be to train each central office director to fully utilize Lync to
conduct online meetings with their teams. I want to tailor the use of Lync specifically for each

Parker, Year 3 Capstone Portfolio, Page | 25

director so they each see the relevance with using this productivity tool. Then I plan to follow up
support with each director throughout the year and discuss how this tool could directly improve
instruction in their program area. This opportunity would help me continue to grow along several
standards, specifically about engaging relevant players collaboratively to improve teaching and
learning. In addition, I want to use Lync to have school grade level or content level teams discuss
response to intervention ideas related to the examination of data and subsequent proscription of
intervention. I believe this tool has the capacity to really open up instructional practice at scale.
Another leadership outcome was examining our CO service and support to our buildings.
If our central office leadership expects the instructional leadership of our building administrators
to improve as they endure new systemic changes related to TPEP, CCSS, RTI, and the new
Smarter Balanced assessments, they will need training and assistance. Equally important for our
building leaders is closing the achievement gap that we know exists. Some of our building
administrators are taking substantial steps to close the achievement; however, a majority of our
building leaders require assistance to understand why the gap exists and how to lead with an
equity focus. This is where my leadership experience from L4L has already made a difference.
As we use interview data from principals and central office to examine our central office
leadership problem of practice, we collectively begin to own this problem and can collaborate on
a theory of action to improve that service. Therefore, my goal next year will be to use perception
data and collaborate with DLT to create a theory of action which more clearly defines our
leadership actions that support principals, and to support and build their instructional leadership
capacity.
In addition, I will advocate for success indicators to monitor the impact of the plan
throughout the year. I want our team to lead with data and collect support evidence as we engage
in the process to determine if we are making a difference to our principals. By influencing our

Parker, Year 3 Capstone Portfolio, Page | 26

leadership team to collect this evidence 3-4 times per year and include our principals on the
review of this data. Since the collaboration, organization and data collection tools are in place, I
will change the culture to be more support/service-oriented and I will measure success based on
data and improve our systems overall achievement at scale.
From my CAO leadership position, I have a unique opportunity to analyze why some of
our schools are achievement award winners and continue to improve achievement through their
RTI programs and behavior supports, and other buildings are stagnate due to persistent problems
of practice which those leaders are unable to see. Moreover, I can use the variety of tools
mentioned above to continue supporting leaders to turn data into evidence; and bridge resources
to principals to help build their capacity to be instructional leaders.

Parker, Year 3 Capstone Portfolio, Page | 27

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