Advancing School Leadership with a Comprehensive Approach      The strength of the SREB Leadership Academy lies in the interdependence of the four strategies and their relative impact upon individual participants, the teams, and ultimately the school systems and students. Each strategy of the program reinforces the others. The connection is critical.      “The program is not a parachute drop, where you come in and there’s no follow up,” Coble says. “The combination of variables that went into the training, the actual on-site training, good trainers, the reflective learning journal and the mentor-coaching aspect were all woven together, moving toward establishing a worthwhile district goal. It was more focused and more tied together than other programs I’ve been a part of.”      When educators of various responsibility levels and other individuals such as school board members, parents and business people work together within the same context, the process creates a climate for personal and professional change that leads to organizational change—and improved schools. “Something has to happen to us personally before we are then able to join with a group and take action,” says Cowles. “I believe this program has touched everyone [who participated] and that something similar to this is needed by every leadership team and school system to make a real commitment and impact in getting change and improvement from schools.”       Compared to other continuing education programs he has attended, Lawson says the SREB program is “certainly better all the way around. It’s an excellent approach. It’s much more thorough. It’s more all-encompassing. It’s much more than just a one-shot, hit-and-miss approach. For most leadership programs, you go in for a two- or three-day session and that’s the end of it. At SREB, with the reflective journal, with the coaching and with the three or four meetings a year, you have the continuity and interaction with other teams that you don’t get in other programs.”      “The hands-on experiences were invaluable,” adds Symmonds. “The SREB Leadership Academy is 100 percent better than any other continuing education program in which I have participated. In most programs that I’ve been to, you sit there and let them tell you how you should be doing things. This program gets us involved. There’s no way you can sit through a session and not participate. That’s certainly the way I learn—by doing rather than having somebody tell me how to do it.”      Davis says the program exceeded his expectations. “During all my years in professional education—the background, the experience and the contact with other people around the country—it has been the strongest and most beneficial professionally to me, and to our district, of anything I’ve ever done.”      The SREB Leadership Academy is not a prescription. It is a model offering four strategies that states can adapt and tailor to their needs. As educators in the SREB states face tough challenges, leadership training will help them find and pursue new ideas, new ways of thinking, new answers. Leaders can be trained to break through old patterns, but they cannot bring about change without the support of legislatures, state education departments and communities.      “Any school district is only as good as its leadership at the top,” says Davis, who is now a district superintendent in another state. “That same thing is true in a [school] building; it is only as good as the vision and the expertise of its principal. Every class is only as good as the vision and expertise of its teacher. It’s a pyramid. The superintendent has to set a vision for the school district, and that has a direct impact on the students.”      Some states have already begun to adopt the SREB program or to develop similar programs. In Georgia, the Next Generation Schools project involves more than 150 school leaders from 13 school systems in the Leadership Academy’s concepts. Feedback from this project has refined and strengthened the SREB program.      In Winston-Salem/Forsyth County, North Carolina, the district’s participation in the Leadership Academy inspired it to set up its own leadership program, called LAP, for Leadership Academy Program, says team member Jim Wilhelm. The two-year program (LAP1 and LAP2) uses the basic strategies of the SREB Academy. New administrators, including principals, assistant principals and central office staff, attend a three-hour LAP session at least once a month.      Benefits of leadership development provided through programs such as the SREB Leadership Academy are not always limited to participating districts. Educators who attend the program and later move to other districts carry with them the skills and insights they develop through the training. “What I did at the Leadership Academy and what I learned there I brought here,” Davis says, “and I’m sure other superintendents who have moved on are doing the same thing. The seed has been planted, and we’re scattering the seeds again.” Next—AFTERWORD: A Look Back, A Look Forward—by Alton C. Crews