Leadership Succession at All Levels

In Prince George’s County, Md., Chief Executive Officer Kevin Maxwell is changing a culture.

In his third year at the helm of the 129,000-student school system in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., Maxwell is building a coherent system to deliberately grow a deep bench of leaders at all levels. He’s not relying on chance and hope that future principals, instructional leaders or cafeteria and transportation managers rise through the system with the right training and experiences.

Maxwell is creating a leadership succession process in Prince George’s that draws on his experiences over more than a decade as a superintendent and community superintendent in neighboring Anne Arundel and Montgomery counties. Developing a strong cohort of aspiring leaders within the district is critical to Maxwell’s overall goal of boosting student outcomes in Prince George’s, traditionally one of Maryland’s lowest-performing districts.

Part of his purposeful effort to grow new leaders is the district’s participation in The Wallace Foundation’s Principal Pipeline Initiative, a project that predated Maxwell’s arrival in Prince George’s in 2013. Those efforts include clear requirements and expectations for the job of principal, high-quality training, mentorship and on-the-job support. The district also developed eight standards of leadership for principals — aligned to the district’s overall strategic plan — that cover everything from the use of technology and data to curriculum management and site-based budgeting.

Notably, the Principal Pipeline (also called the Aspiring Leaders program within the district) is being replicated for Prince George’s assistant principals and principal supervisors, to create highly qualified central-office leaders.
These pipelines dovetail with other initiatives in the district, including a resident-principal program for top assistant principals, a 12-month Prince George’s leadership curriculum for 25 assistant principals and at least four higher-education programs for everyone from paraprofessionals seeking to become teachers to aspiring principals, administrators and teacher-leaders.

Growth a Priority

Succession planning is part of the district’s overall strategic plan, and benchmarks and updates are shared regularly with top leadership, Maxwell says.

All of these programs are connected. “In the past,” says Douglas W. Anthony, executive director of talent and development in Prince George’s, “we haven’t had the coherence that we’re starting to see now.”

AASA is also a key partner in The Wallace Foundation leadership initiative, sharing research and findings to help improve district retention and the quality of leadership, according to MaryAnn P. Jobe, AASA’s director of leadership development.

“What’s happening is there are a lot of candidates (for leadership positions) that come out certified, but are not highly qualified,” she says. “If you work hard to hire the right people, then help prep them to be the kind of leader you need, you’ll have much better success finding people to run a school system.”

Maxwell’s Smarts

In a recent interview with School Administrator, Maxwell talked about the leadership succession work in his school district.

Why should superintendents think about succession planning in a deliberate, districtwide fashion?

Maxwell: In a district this size, the scale is important to understand. Having people who bubble to the top independently of a structural plan may work in a place that needs two principals a year. We have over 200 schools, support positions and a central office. There’s a need to be active and proactive in identifying candidates who are good. When you leave it to chance, you get [weaker] candidates who lack the quality control.

If you’re lucky enough to serve with a principal who is a really good teacher, wants people to learn and gives [others] a variety of responsibilities, then you get someone who is well-skilled and familiar with all the areas. If you get a principal who just wants you to take care of stuff and stay in your lane, then you don’t get that type of exposure. We can’t count on that person to know the breadth of how to handle many situations.

By having a formal, structured program you can guarantee that everyone entering your administration team at every level has this minimal core set of understandings, training and knowledge about policy, procedure and responsibility. To leave that to chance is just not fair to the children we serve and the community we serve. That quality control is really important.

What new efforts are improving leadership abilities and preparing people for the next level?

Maxwell: The Aspiring Leaders program has recently added mentors. We pull excellent principals out of schools and give them the responsibility of working with new principals. We are making sure these new leaders have the supports they need as they step into those demanding and important positions.

When you turn to your bench and say, “I need 17 new principals this year,” it can add up pretty fast. Do you have 17 people that are ready? We were looking at new kinds of supports. We’ve done the developmental work, but what kinds of supports do we have for the new principal? Do we just throw them in the water and see if they’ve learned their swim lessons?

We have another new piece this year. We’ve added the resident principal position. We’re taking principal candidates and putting them in the school to run the school for a while and be a co-principal and then pull the principal out for a while. (The principal goes to work in the central office during that time to get experience at a supervisory level, shadowing associate superintendents or working on problems of practice.)

Having a resident principal tell you what they learned, then applying it hand-in-hand with a sitting principal for refinement and then giving them the helm for a little while, that gives them a real taste for what happens when you walk in on that first morning and something happens that you didn’t expect. The resident principalship is going to help us a lot.

Are you also going beyond principals with this program?

Maxwell: We’ve also been doing work with the principal supervisors. If you train principals on concepts and skills, but not the people who are doing the evaluations, it’s a lot like taking an English teacher and sending them through a new training program and then having them be observed and evaluated on some old system. You’ve got to have those systems aligned. That step of the work is critically important.

If you’re my supervisor, you need to know what I’ve been told the expectations are, and I need to know what yours are, and they should not be a surprise to each other. We’re trying to make the work we’re doing coherent, and connecting it all to what we’re trying to achieve.

How do you balance the need to encourage those seeking new leadership positions with the need to have experienced people in those positions?

Maxwell: You want to be supportive of the people in your district who aspire to higher levels of responsibility and leadership, but at the same time, there’s a difference between the academic certifications you get and the ability to do what the job demands of you.

We want to make sure that we’re generating a group of leaders who can take us forward in all of the different aspects, from the management of schools and the operation of events, to working with parent communities and leading the instructional work.

What signs have you seen that some of these efforts are working?

Maxwell: It’s not just the number of candidates we have, but the quality of the pool, too. When you are interviewing people, how many really get through the interview process? Are we scratching our heads for a candidate or do we have three really good candidates?

I’m in my third year back here at Prince George’s and the number of internal candidates we have are proof that these programs are having an impact. We’re not struggling to find candidates who we think can do the job and that’s an important milestone. We’re doing fewer outside hires. That’s an important measurement.

Leadership succession is not just about principals. How important is it to think about this for other departments and areas of a district?

Maxwell: You have to have a plan that’s in place not just for principals. It is not easy to find a director of maintenance or transportation or food service for a district this big. The millions of miles we drive on our buses and the millions of meals we serve, it is a huge undertaking. You have to make sure that these areas know that you include them in that. (The district is piloting the Principal Pipeline Initiative with hopes of expanding it to other areas of the district.)

What advice do you have for other districts?

Maxwell: Reach out to other people is the most important one. We sometimes isolate ourselves on our day-to-day, but there are people really doing the work and we can learn from each other.

Part of the reason for working with AASA is that this work is important to them, and they have opportunities for learning about this at every meeting, the national conferences, too. It’s on their website. We can learn so much from one another, there’s no sense reinventing the wheel.