This is one of a series of articles for school and district leaders about strategic planning, organizational change, and how AI can be leveraged to operationalize a school district's mission, vision, and core values.
My previous article on strategic planning and organizational change encouraged school and district leaders to consider revisiting their mission and vision, both critical aspects of a Professional Learning Communities. This article shifts the focus to another fundamental element that is equally important: core values. These values are vital as they guide how members of an educational organization should behave or act, intertwining seamlessly with the mission and vision to define and shape the institution's culture.
Early in my career as an educational leader, I was tasked with investigating an incident of serious student misconduct that sparked great concern in the community. Unfortunately, the strong emotions that many felt overrode our core values in addressing the situation, making things worse and prolonging the pain. It was a defining moment, deeply influencing my understanding of the essential difference between merely stating core values and genuinely living by them, particularly in challenging times.
Core values that are explicit and shared will take you far; however, core values that are embedded into every facet of your school or district’s practices and operations will take you even farther. This article examines strategies for accomplishing this.
Align Human Resources with Core Values
In educational leadership, effectively shaping the culture and character of your schools and districts begins with human resources practices. Recognizing that hiring is more than assessing skills—it is an opportunity to align your team with the institution's core values—is crucial. The following are key recommendations for ensuring this alignment:
Evaluate for Value Alignment: When recruiting, look beyond educational and professional qualifications. Assess candidates' past actions and experiences for evidence of core values in practice. For instance, a candidate’s history with working in teams can signal alignment with a value of collaboration.
Design Interviews to Reflect Core Values: Structure your interviews to gauge not only technical knowledge but also character. Use behavioral questions that elicit specific instances where candidates have demonstrated these core values. Complement these interviews with reference checks focused on the candidates' adherence to these values in their previous roles.
Integrate Core Values from Onboarding: Once hired, ensure new employees are thoroughly integrated into the school's culture with a strong emphasis on its core values. This includes comprehensive orientation programs that underscore these values and how they translate into daily responsibilities.
Support and Align New Hires: Be prepared to provide ongoing support, assistance, and coaching to employees, especially those who may initially struggle to align with the institution's values. This commitment to development is essential in building a cohesive team that embodies your culture.
Act When Necessary: When it becomes apparent that an individual is not a match with your core values, it is important to do something about it. Merely hoping for improvement is not an effective strategy. Be ready to have honest conversations with the employee, provide resources and support as needed, and use the evaluation process to ensure accountability.
Aligning your human resources with core values is an ongoing endeavor, requiring continuous vigilance and commitment. It is about building a team that not only excels professionally but also embodies the values central to your school or district's culture.
Respond to Challenges Using Core Values as a Lens
Educational leaders face diverse challenges, from budget constraints to integrating disruptive technologies like AI. Using your organization’s core values as a guiding framework is essential in these situations. The following strategies can help effectively navigate these challenges using core values:
Address Budget Constraints with Core Values in Mind: When faced with budgetary constraints, ensure your financial decisions reflect your core values. For example, if ‘health and wellbeing’ is an area your school or district believes deeply in, prioritize spending in a way that will protect investments in staff like counselors, social workers, and nurses. This approach helps uphold your institution's core values, even in times of fiscal challenges.
Use Core Values to Navigate External Pressures: When external factors like political agendas or community expectations arise, it is essential to turn to your core values for guidance when navigating through them. These values help steer decisions in a way that aligns with your school or district's mission and vision, ensuring that what is best for students, parents and families, and educators is what matters most. By consistently applying core values in the face of these external pressures, leaders can preserve the integrity and purpose of their institution, staying true to its underlying principles.
Embrace Technological Innovations Aligned with Core Values: The adoption of disruptive technologies, like artificial intelligence (AI) in education, offers unique opportunities and challenges. When integrating these innovations, do so in ways that reflect and reinforce your core values. For instance, if ‘personalized learning’ is important, utilize AI to customize educational experiences, aligning technology use with a student-centered approach.
Leverage Core Values for Ethical Decision-Making: When navigating complex situations where the right decision is not popular, core values are crucial. They guide leaders to make ethically sound decisions that reflect the institution's fundamental principles. By adhering to these values, leaders can navigate difficult choices with integrity, ensuring decisions are aligned with the long-term vision and ethos of their schools or districts.
These strategies can help you navigate through difficulties while steadfastly upholding your foundational commitments. Core values not only guide you through present challenges but also prepare you for future complexities, ensuring that your leadership remains both effective and ethically grounded.
Embed Core Values in Evaluation and Organizational Alignment
In educational leadership, evaluations and organizational alignment are crucial for reflecting and reinforcing your institution's core values. These processes are vital in demonstrating commitment to your foundational principles. The strategies below are designed to effectively embed core values in these areas:
Incorporate Core Values in Evaluations: Extend the criteria for evaluating teachers, staff, and leaders beyond traditional indicators or metrics that are typically part of the evaluation process. Include assessments of how these individuals embody and promote the institution's core values in their roles. For instance, evaluate how a teacher fosters collaboration in the classroom or how a leader demonstrates integrity in challenging situations. Ensure that feedback recognizes and celebrates instances where individuals exemplify core values, alongside addressing areas for improvement.
Align Professional Development with Core Values: Professional development initiatives should deepen understanding and application of core values. Offer learning opportunities that foster professional and personal growth that align with your institution's core values like workshops, mentorship programs, and collaborative projects. This helps integrate them into everyday practices.
Integrate Core Values into Strategic Decisions: When making strategic decisions, such as those involving budget allocation, policy analysis, or curriculum development, it is essential to align these choices with your institution's core values. For example, if 'sustainability' is a core value with respect to being fiscally responsible, then considerations should be integral to decisions that are made about implementing a new program or hiring additional staff. This alignment ensures that every strategic choice not only serves immediate needs but also resonates with your institution's core values and long-term goals.
Demonstrate Core Values Through Organizational Practices: It is crucial that every level of the organization, from administration to the classroom, consistently demonstrates core values through its practices. This could involve adopting inclusive teaching methods to support English Learners or students with disabilities or fostering a sense of belonging when access is increased to an opportunity for students who may have been shut out in the past. Such consistent demonstration of core values in daily practices reinforces their significance and embeds them deeply into the institutional culture, making them a lived experience for all members of the community.
Use Core Values as a Lens for Outcome Analysis: When analyzing educational outcomes like student performance, community engagement, or feedback from teachers and staff, interpret these through the lens of your institution's core values. This ensures that the efforts made on behalf of students remains aligned with your those values. The evaluation process should be an ongoing cycle, with insights used to continuously refine and reinforce the embedding of core values.
Embedding core values in these key areas reinforces their importance and fosters a culture where they are actively practiced. This approach not only upholds core principles but also enhances the overall impact and integrity of your institution.
Final Thoughts
Core values are critical for navigating the challenges and complexities of educational leadership, guiding everything from hiring practices to organizational decisions. For school and district leaders, regularly reflecting on how these values are rooted in your actions is crucial. This self-reflection ensures that leadership is not just effective but also grounded in principle.
Embracing core values extends beyond our schools and districts; it involves engaging the broader community, including students, parents, and community members, in meaningful dialogues. This approach strengthens the culture that exists in a school and district community, fostering a collaborative environment. When I was Superintendent of the Monrovia Unified School District, our strategic planning work involved a broad 'guiding coalition' of stakeholders that guided our strategic planning efforts. This group provided invaluable feedback on the core values and their definitions that were established, ensuring greater meaning and placing them at the forefront of our work along with our new mission and vision.
While the world around us rapidly evolves, the strength of core values lies in their constancy. Regularly revisiting these values is important, not necessarily to change them, but to affirm and recommit to them. This ensures that our institutions remain true to their guiding principles while adapting to new circumstances, needs, and challenges.
Core values should act as a compass that guides our leadership of those we serve. Embedding these into every facet of our schools and districts helps to ensure that the decisions that are made, especially the difficult ones, are rooted in our foundational principles.
Dr. Ryan Smith, with 20 years of leadership experience in public education, is dedicated to ensuring every student receives an outstanding education and reaches their highest potential. Through his service as Superintendent of the Monrovia Unified School District and in other key leadership roles, his commitment to putting students first has driven success and positive change across various schools and districts. Learn more about Dr. Smith at his website, on LinkedIn, or X.