Is your school Learning or just Lucky? Leading or Losing?

As a school leader, one of the most important skills to have is to be able to understand why certain things are happening in your school the way that they are. For example, school leaders need to understand what it is about their organization that causes them to have the student achievement results that they have. A great way to analyze where a school is is by using the Leadership and Learning Matrix below.

Created by Doug Reeves, this leadership matrix allows school leaders to analyze why they are getting the results that are occurring. This is very similar to the concepts of unconscious incompetency/conscious competency. Schools that find themselves in the Leading quadrant are schools where gains in student achievement are the result of intentional structures that could be reproduced in any setting. However, schools that find themselves in the Lucky quadrant have no idea why they are getting gains in student achievement. For these "lucky" schools, imagine how much more successful they could be with more intentional structures. Schools that are "Learning" are schools that have realized why they aren't making more progress but are willing to change in order to benefit the students.

And then there are the "Losing" schools. These schools haven't really even accepted that they are leaving students behind. These schools most often blame outside factors for their lack of success instead of focusing on the factors they have control over.

No matter which quadrant you find your school in, the most important thing is realizing that you can always improve. Communities of learning never rest and never stop analyzing how to get better. Which school are you?