With increasing pressure from NCLB to building literacy leaders throughout schools, experts say principals should make time to join teachers in core reading program professional development opportunities.

Becoming a literacy leader means balancing duties so principals have time for school administration as well as for professional development on core elements of reading programs. Principals who attend professional development with teachers are “better able to identify additional training and support needs among their teachers,” according to "Teaching All Students to Read in Elementary School", a principal’s guide from the Center on Instruction.

Such training is also important because principals need to ensure teachers are delivering programs with fidelity—something “many principals don’t have the expertise or energy to do,” said Joseph Torgesen, director of the Florida Center for Reading Research and lead author of the guide. Training with teachers can be especially useful for principals whose educational background is not reading instruction, he said.

Mary Kay Sommers, former president of the National Association of Elementary School Principals, believes that principals need to know the reading program and what it actually looks like when it is taught in a classroom. “It is very difficult for principals to work with teachers without knowing a program’s strengths and its deficiencies.”

It can be tough for principals to find the time to immerse themselves in professional development indicates Sommers. Elementary school principals know their reading programs “to different degrees.”

Pre-K through fifth-grade principals will generally know about broad aspects, core features and philosophy, and general implementation of a core-reading program. The specific aspects, such as daily lesson planning, coming during “principal-teacher collaborations,” when principals observe classroom lessons and work with teachers to come up with strategies to improve student learning, she said.

Principals in Reading First schools in Maryland are encouraged to attend core reading training that publishers provide to school staff, said Michele Goady, director of the state education department’s Reading First office.

“Many of them attend as much as they can,” she said. “As instructional leaders, you have to know the reading program because, otherwise, you could not go into a classroom and offer suggestions.”

Goady said the training can guide principals’ discussions with reading coaches. It can also help in their decision-making on the technical assistance teachers need to effectively deliver instruction.

In addition to principals attending the publishers’ training sessions, the Kennewick (Wash.) School District started holding instructional conferences for school administrators and lead teachers six years ago, said school board director Lynn Fielding.

The daylong conferences, which are held four times a year, demonstrate what good instruction looks like. School administrators watch classroom videos and discuss how to evaluate instruction based on “purpose, engagement, rigor and results”—a model developed at Harvard University after a project found school administrators disagreed about elements of effective teaching.

- Pro Principal, September 2008