Coaching and Collaborating for Instructional Leadership

New attention to the principal-supervisor relationship shows the possibilities for educators’ growth and students’ gains

The principalship can be lonely, but it doesn’t have to be. Imagine a scenario in which your supervisor is also your partner in improvement. In the Prince George’s County, Md., Public Schools, two principal supervisor/principal partnerships built both principal and school-level capacity for improvement.

At 2,500-student High Point High School, Principal Nicole Isley-McClure worked collaboratively with her supervisor, Carletta Marrow, and with her administrative team in 2017-18, her second year as a principal. The partnership between Isley-McClure and Mar-row built the capacity of the leadership team to improve classroom instruction through professional learning they collaboratively pro-vided. High Point’s graduation rate increased by 2 percent and Advanced Placement scores improved by 4 percent following these efforts.

At Cool Spring Elementary School, the third-year principal, Cameron Millspaugh, partnered with his supervisor, Tricia Hairston, to improve his skills to observe classroom instruction and provide useful feedback to teachers. Even though Hairston was Millspaugh’s third principal supervisor in three years, their collaboration led to improvement at Cool Spring, a school serving 850 students, nearly all of whom qualify for the federal lunch program.

In the year following their work together, Cool Spring surpassed county averages in 2nd-grade reading and improved in 1st grade through a focus on guided reading in these grades. Math scores increased at all grade levels. Cool Spring subsequently moved from being a 3-star school to a 4-star school on the 5-star rating system.