HOLDSWORTH
rated under Texas’ new academic accountability system.
For decades, school districts across the country have not adequately invested in identifying and nurturing administrators like Foster, resulting in thinning ranks of high-quality public school leaders, education advocates say. A 2017 Gallup survey of about 2,100 U.S. public school superintendents backs up the claim: Only 14 percent said the quality of new principal candidates is improving, while 49 percent said it remains the same and 36 percent said it is declining.
That blind spot has borne one of Texas’ most closely-watched educational experiments: The Holdsworth Center, an Austin-based nonprofit dedicated to transforming how local school districts approach educational leadership. With an initial investment of $100 million by Charles Butt, CEO and chairman of grocery giant H-E-B, The Holdsworth Center has ambitious goals for improving academic outcomes for tens of thousands of Texas children by raising the quality of school administrators.
Now in its second year, The Holdsworth Center plans to address this deficiency in dozens of school districts across Texas over the next decade, starting with a seven-district cohort that includes Greater Houston’s Klein ISD and Lamar CISD. The Holdsworth Center will spend about $4 million over five years working with each district, providing two on-the-ground staff members, training from renowned management experts, and airfare and accommodations for visits to world-class institutions, among other perks.
While education reformers have focused on myriad solutions for the nation’s lagging public schools — improved teacher training, additional social services to students, expanded charter and choice options, The Holdsworth Center’s leaders and some education experts believe district and campus leadership plays an underappreciated role in academic performance. Research measuring the impact of effective leadership on student outcomes remains relatively scarce, but one analysis of multiple studies on the topic found that among factors controlled by school districts principal quality trails only teacher quality when it comes to impact on learning.
“There’s a field of educational leadership that has been shouting for a long time that this needs to be a focal point,” said Jason Grissom, an associate professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt University and faculty director of the Tennessee Education Research Alliance. “I think people do believe that school leadership is an important topic, but the activity and investment has not matched the claims of importance.”
Ultimately, The Holdsworth Center and district leaders hope their work will filter down to teachers and students. Texas traditionally has ranked in the bottom 10 states for performance in math and reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly known as the Nation’s Report Card, though its results are above-average in reading and exceptional in math when controlling for student demographics.
“Our goal is to maybe take a slightly more patient approach to change, in the belief that you can go deeper and it will last longer and, eventually, that it will impact more people,” said Lindsay Whorton, The Holdsworth Center’s managing director of district services.
To date, The Holdsworth Center’s first batch of school districts have dug into the often-unglamorous work. Administrators puzzle over the design of principal pipelines and evaluation rubrics. Principals huddle in meeting rooms to share experiences and craft plans for their campuses. Assistant principals attend training sessions focused on leadership over day-today minutiae. The gatherings often are peppered with educational and management buzzwords — value alignment, professional development, core competencies.
When the five-year cycle ends, districts will have installed new, business-inspired systems designed to identify and train future administrators. District leaders will have groomed replacements to transition into top jobs. Middle managers will have received deeper feedback preparing them for higher roles.
“The Holdsworth process made us stop and blow the whistle on the day-to-day frenetic activity and say, ‘What do you believe in? And how do you define a leader who can make that happen?’ ” said Valerie Vogt, chief academic officer of Lamar CISD. “This has been like a dream come true.” A different vision
Butt named The Holdsworth Center to honor his mother, Mary Elizabeth Holdsworth Butt, an educator and philanthropist. The 79year-old grocery store magnate, long an advocate for the state’s traditional public schools, wanted to spend part of his vast fortune on a new venture, settling on improving the quality of school district leadership.
He convened a group of prominent education, philanthropic and business leaders to provide guidance. The group researched organizations renowned for their leadership practices, including Southwest Airlines, Procter & Gamble Co. and the U.S. Army War College. It also analyzed international education ministries that have invested heavily in educational leadership, including those in Singapore, the top-ranked performer on the most closely-watched international academic assessment, and Ontario, Canada, widely regarded for its academic progress over the past decade. The group also interviewed Texas superintendents about their needs.
The Holdsworth Center’s advisers and leaders settled on a structure for the nonprofit. The center would start with well-established, medium- to large-sized districts with stable governance. In the first year, each district’s highest-ranking administrators would participate, analyzing leadership needs and outlining a vision for reform. Principals, assistant principals and top teachers would join the fold in the second year, beginning training collaborations with The Holdsworth Center’s employees and consultants. More campus-level staffers would roll in each year, until the majority of schools were served.
The Holdsworth Center invited 26 districts to apply for its first effort. The prospect enticed Thomas Randle, superintendent of Lamar CISD for the past 18 years, who saw room for improvement in his district despite numerous accolades during his tenure.
“When they laid it out to us, you knew there was something different here,” Randle said. “I’ve watched several foundations throw money at the education system, but it wasn’t structured in a way that impacted the entire system.”
In addition to Klein and Lamar, the center’s leaders selected five districts: Arlington and Grand Prairie ISDs (located in the Dallas-Fort Worth area), Pharr-San Juan-Alamo ISD (Rio Grande Valley), Round Rock ISD (Austin area), and Southwest ISD (San Antonio area). The districts’ enrollment ranges from about 14,000 to 61,000, with shares of economically disadvantaged students ranging from 26 percent to 91 percent. Hispanic students comprise the largest demographic group in six of the seven districts. ‘Eye-opening to me’
Two years into the center’s first class, each district’s game plan looks similar.
Most have crafted “leadership profiles” documenting the traits valued by administrators. Campus leaders attend regular training sessions emphasizing constructive communication and motivational techniques. Staffers have finalized evaluation tools for campus-level administrators and potential job candidates, valuing harder-to-measure soft skills.
Foster, the Pink Elementary principal, said her work with The Holdsworth Center largely has focused on managing subordinates who lacked her drive. Early in her tenure, Foster said, she tried to “solve everything for everyone.”
“But with Holdsworth and that training, it’s more like, ‘No, you’re going to help them and equip them with the skills to problem-solve,’ ” Foster said. “That has been really eye-opening to me.”
Fifty miles to the northeast, at Klein High School, Principal Jessica Haddox has worked with The Holdsworth Center on training her assistant principals to become campus leaders. To help prepare Brandon Baker, her associate principal in charge of curriculum and instruction, Haddox last year administered a three-hour, Holdsworth-crafted performance review to Baker. Rather than discussing technical skills and basic professionalism, Haddox and Baker reviewed the quality of his relationship with students, communication with parents and cultural responsiveness.
“It could have taken three, four, five years to learn everything I’ve gotten in the past year and a half,” Baker said.
To drive home key points, The Holdsworth Center has integrated parts of H-E-B’s business ethos into its work. Allie Martin, principal of Klein ISD’s Klenk Elementary School, said a September visit to a Dallas-area store owned by H-E-B highlighted how the company’s employees “had such clarity” about exhibiting the company’s values.
“Without a shadow of a doubt, my time in Dallas was the best professional learning experience of my career,” Martin said. “My biggest takeaway — and it’s very simplistic in nature, but it’s complex at the same time — is that people matter the most in the work we do.”
The Holdsworth Center’s leaders expect tangible results, including improved test scores, from Butt’s $100 million investment, while acknowledging that change could come slowly.
A similar education leadership endeavor, carried out by New Yorkbased nonprofit The Wallace Foundation, could offer a baseline for expected outcomes in the coming months. From 2011 to 2016, the foundation coordinated with six large, urban school districts to establish systems for identifying and selecting high-quality principals. Researchers are expected to publish findings soon on the impact of the reforms on student academic achievement. Measuring progress
In addition to raising student achievement in Lamar CISD, which generally ranks on par with districts of similar demographics, Randle said he expects to be better prepared for filling top jobs at new schools after working with The Holdsworth Center. Lamar is expected to add more than 20,000 students and several campuses over the next decade.
“We’re going to be in a position where we’ve got 20 people that have spent almost two years going through a selection process and a curriculum that’s designed to support the things we’re doing in our district,” Randle said.
At Pink Elementary, district administrators believe Foster will produce consistently strong academic results. Despite fluctuating accountability results during her tenure, Foster sees building blocks. Parents now fill the gymnasium for informational sessions. A full-time, on-campus social worker connects families with needed services. Teachers are adapting to higher expectations and more oversight.
Better test scores definitely are a high priority, Foster said.
“But for me, when I come to work every day, I measure my success by: Are my kids happy? Are my kids wanting to come to school? When they’re here, are they engaged and able to come and tell me what they’re learning? When I think long term, I want to be the best building principal ever. I want my kids to be successful. I want kids to be fighting to come to Pink.”