School leadership has always been hard. In the months and years since the pandemic, it’s getting harder.

As organizations go, schools have gotten fairly adept at solving technical problems. Case in point: We’re good at pairing data from past experience with well-defined processes to target academic shortfalls. Research suggests these efforts are already working in core academic subjects such as reading and math. Though we have work to do.

But, what about other complex challenges? Ones that maybe didn’t exist, or don’t look familiar to us in a post-pandemic world? Things like chronic absenteeism, student mental health, equity and school culture and staff engagement and retention?

As school leaders struggle to solve a host of increasingly messy and, in some cases, entirely new challenges with no previously known solutions, experts contend that a new breed of thinking and a process for leadership is required. Done right, everyone — from the superintendent steering the mission to the assistant superintendent leading critical teams and functions to the teacher working on the front line with students — has a role to play.

Technical vs. Adaptive Leadership in K-12 Schools

If technical leadership helps us solve for what we know how to do, adaptive leadership is what we need as we wade into the relative unknown, with an eye toward positive change.

In a recent editorial in Education Week, Joshua P. Starr, former school district superintendent and Managing Partner of the Center of Model Schools, a division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, put it this way. “Technical leadership is required to solve an immediate problem that’s reasonably straightforward. Adaptive leadership is about resolving deep issues and retooling the system so it sticks.”

To hear Starr tell it, both forms of leadership, be it technical or adaptive, are important to school leaders tasked with developing modern solutions to K-12’s most stubborn challenges.

Consider chronic absenteeism. Research suggests that the number of students who are chronically absent from school exploded post pandemic. Though absenteeism has been an issue in schools to some degree for years, the problem all but exploded in recent years, from a reported 25 percent to more than 66 percent in school-year 2021-22, according to research cited by Eliot Ransom, Co-CEO of UChicago Impact. This has created unprecedented challenges for educators and families.

When it comes to getting kids back into school, Starr says, there are plenty of tactics at our disposal. Before we can deploy those tactics effectively, we have to first understand the value proposition of going to school and how it’s changed for students. Kids learn independently more now than in the past. In many cases, they are used to asking questions and using technology to help find answers.

“We have to ask, ‘What is the experience of school like now and how is that experience going to be inherently different if I attend school then what I am going to be able to get on my own,’” proposed Starr on a recent episode of The RocketPD Podcast, adding, “That’s an essential adaptive question.” Said another way: School leaders can’t worry solely about what they need to do to get students in the door; they also have to think about how they are going to keep coming back?

Starr and his colleagues at the Center for Model Schools contend that adaptive leadership isn’t just a mindset, but a process that can be taught.

To help schools get started, the Center has outlined a five-part framework that can be used to toggle a school leader’s mindset, where it makes sense to do so, from technical to adaptive.

Here’s a quick snapshot of their thinking:

A Model Framework for Adaptive Leadership in K-12 Schools

#1 Proactively gather insight & feedback

• Create context for transformational leadership
• Develop a system and a process for community feedback
• Use multiple sources of district and school data to address critical needs

#2 Launching change-based initiatives

• Vision & strategy: Craft ‘the story’ of your vision
• Culture: Foster buy-in and relationships through reflective practices
• Teaching & learning: cultivate a focus on the classroom

#3 Monitoring and adjusting your approach

• Vision & strategy: Assess progress toward your vision
• Culture: Measure the impact of key relationships
• Teaching & learning: Gauge the impact of your instruction

#4 Scale your success

• Vision & strategy: Establish systems to accelerate change
• Culture: Sustain transformational relationships
• Teaching & learning: Build a high-performing instructional leadership team

#5 Leadership development in a world of constant change

• The power of transformational leadership networks
• Launching your principal’s academy
• Launching an aspiring leaders academy

Source: Joshua P. Starr, Center for Model Schools

This article is written and produced as part of a strategic partnership between The Center for Model Schools, a division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and RocketPD. For more on the partnership, see the press release.