Superintendent Burns Says Shared Leadership Can Lead to Student Success
January 6, 2009 - In his midterm report to the Wake County Board of Education, Superintendent Del Burns focused on leadership for school executives and classroom teachers.
Look in Wake County newspapers this week for your copy of Superintendent Burns 2009 Midterm Report |
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Acrobat File |
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Quicktime File |
Burns says he sees leadership improving instruction in our schools as teachers use team-based approaches to address learning for every child, administrators break down barriers to effective learning and teaching and the school system provides improved continuity and consistency.
“Good teaching is good leadership,” said Burns.
Burns called for educators and the community to focus on two vital behaviors: making sure that students attend school and helping them to learn the NC Standard Course of Study.
“It seems that these are simple behaviors, when in fact they involve complex systems of support,” said Burns. “If we are truly committed to our vision, we must act with purpose and conviction to make these behaviors our schools’ most important priority.”
Burns congratulated the board for creating a goal that fulfills the school system vision that all students graduate on time prepared for the future.
“On Dec. 2, the board took a courageous and important step by adopting a comprehensive academic goal that touches our schools and students at every level, putting our vision in concrete terms and holding our entire school system accountable for fulfilling that vision,” said Burns. “Our school system has never had such an aggressive academic goal. It will take much hard work, much rethinking of what we do, and cultural change to achieve this goal.”
The goal states, “WCPSS students will demonstrate high academic growth; by 2014, all students will graduate on time prepared to compete globally.” It establishes a number of leading indicators for each grade span to let the community know how the school system is progressing toward this goal.
The superintendent noted the school system’s success in graduating 7,600 students who earned $46.78 million in scholarships in 2008 and scored above state and national averages on the SAT and Advanced Placement Exams.
Burns said the school system is facing challenges:
- Rising community expectations
- The current rate of steady performance isn’t good enough
- Achievement gaps must be eliminated
- Current economic environment means we must make some hard choices
Burns thanked the county commissioners and county manager for working with the school system to identify sufficient resources to maintain the school building program in the short term and noted the school board had met the challenge of reducing the school system budget by $11 million this year.
“Our cooling economy affects us all in Wake County – family, school and business alike,” said Burns. “My message to our community is this: our economy offers us no excuses for our schools’ academic performance and we won’t make them.”
Burns said the 2009-10 Superintendent’s Plan for Student Success will recognize economic conditions.
“Schools, divisions and departments will be required to prioritize and repurpose,” said Burns. “We will concentrate our efforts to support the vital behaviors of school attendance and learning the Standard Course of Study.”
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