Instructional Leadership In The Indiana Department Of Education

All students deserve the right to high quality and equitable programs, however, in many schools, students are continuously underserved. It is both the district and instructional leaderships’ responsibility to “set high and demanding academic, and behavior expectations for every student, ensuring all student are consistently learning” (Indiana Department of Education, 2010, p. 4). As stated by Harris, Leithwood, and Strauss (2010), “leaders believe their teaching colleagues and students are capable of much more than they have been accomplishing” thus leaders should take every opportunity to increase their expectations for students (p. 109). One way to do this is to establish academic goals that are immovable with staff and hold them to the expectation of obtaining them, Standards 5.1 and 5.2 (Indiana Department of Education, 2010, p. 4). To obtain hefty goals, especially for “students from low-income homes, students with disabilities, students who are linguistically diverse, and students of color” who often have not performed at the same level as middle class to upper class, white, English speaking students,

“Projects like equity audits where achievement gaps and differences in teacher quality are compared across local school districts can help uncover how schools reinforce social inequality” (Scanlan & Theoharis, 2015, p. 182). Through the use of data analysis, instructional leaders have the ability to locate, identify, and use data to improve outcomes for all students, Standard 2.3 (Indiana Department of Education, 2010, p. 3). Further, beyond academic data alone, instructional leaders must use discipline data to identify trends and initiate new practices to ensure students remain in the classroom for as much learning time as possible, Standards 2.6 and 5.6 (Indiana Department of Education, 2010, p.