Administrator of the Year: Not Your Average Joe

Springfield Township High School, a nondescript brick building just outside of Philadelphia, could pass as any suburban, upper-middle-class high school. But what goes on behind its four walls would surprise even the most sophisticated educator. That's because Principal Joseph Roy has spent the last five years creating a school that incorporates research into everything it does.

Roy created the "Research Standard" four years ago, with the help of school librarian Joyce Valenza and language-arts chair Carol Rohrbach, to ensure that teachers understood the importance of lifelong research skills. And by doing so, he put his own staff through a few more years of schooling, while placing Valenza in charge. "[She] had to train teachers to create more inquiry-driven research assignments" by teaching them about thesis statements, credible resources, critical-thinking skills, and ways to combat plagiarism, explains Roy. Each month, Roy's Planning Team, made up of 20 staffers, including Valenza, department chairs, and teachers, holds formal workshops to go over lesson plans and to critique assignments. "If I see that a research project isn't inquiry-based, I automatically ask them to talk to Joyce," Roy says.

To ensure that all of the teachers are held accountable, each must turn in a midyear progress report citing the specific assignments that were found effective and a year-end, professional-growth report on the lessons learned. Indeed, research has become a way of life at Springfield--possibly the only school in the nation where the principal ensures that information-literacy skills are woven into the entire curriculum.

It's Roy's commitment to inquiry-based learning and his devotion to cultivating lifelong learning skills that have earned him the 2004 SLJ/Greenwood Publishing Group Administrator of the Year Award, which recognizes an administrator's contribution to the long-term success of the school library. Greenwood, the award's sponsor, contributes a total of $10,000 in award money to be spent on school library resources. The first-place winner receives $5,000, while the second- and third-place winners receive $3,000 and $2,000, respectively.

From the moment Roy arrived at Springfield in January 2000, he had an ambitious plan. It didn't matter that the school was already doing well academically--he knew it could do better. Roy's first order of business was to inspect all final exams to ensure that they asked thought-provoking questions that encouraged students to think more analytically. When many teachers' tests failed to make the grade, Roy knew he had to make some drastic changes. He hired the Davison Group, a Pennsylvania-based educational consulting firm, to compile an extensive list of demographics about his students. The results showed him something that would forever change the school's direction--about 28 percent of Springfield's 870 students, most of whom are minority transfer students, recorded the lowest test scores in the school. Roy immediately knew his mission was to close the gap between high- and low-performing students.

Roy banned teachers from assigning topical research reports and ordered his Planning Team to prepare the school for a new set of priorities. Never again would teachers be allowed to ask questions that just required rote memorization, such as "What year was the Erie Canal built?" From now on, every assignment would ask questions that sparked critical thinking, like "How has the American dream been interpreted in the 20th century?" Since then, there's been no looking back. "The consensus was to make the Research Standard a primary focus--to have inquiry-driven research projects in every course and to make sure kids learn those core skills over and over again," says Roy. Most importantly, each senior must demonstrate research proficiency in order to graduate. Why was it crucial to get every single teacher on board? When Valenza surveyed her students, they told her that they didn't feel they had to deliver high-quality research projects since many teachers didn't expect them. "This program has to be endorsed by the entire school team if it's going to affect student achievement," Valenza adds.

All that hard work has paid off. When Roy compares the most recent test scores of low-performing 10th-grade students to the previous academic year, there are vast improvements across the board. Only 18 percent of the teens received failing grades in social studies, compared to 48 percent the previous year; only 18 percent of those students failed English, compared to 30 percent the year before; and only 19 percent of them failed science, compared to 52 percent a year ago. More Springfield students are taking advanced-placement tests than ever before, and according to the most recent 11th-grade assessment tests in reading and writing, Springfield ranks among the top 20 percent of all schools in its state.

The school's success only encourages Roy to keep enforcing the Research Standard. "I'm just the big-picture guy," he says. "My job has been to set direction and expectations, but [the teachers] make it happen." That's why one of the first things Roy did when his staff returned to school on August 30 was to give them an assignment. Everyone had three weeks to hand in a one-page plan outlining two professional goals: one that included an example of an inquiry-based research project and another that contributed to the school's overall improvement. "[The assignment] is designed to encourage teachers to think reflectively about their practices," Roy explains. If any plan falls short of Roy's standards, the teacher is asked to attend research training workshops with Valenza until they get it right. In fact, all new teachers must reserve time for one-on-one sessions with the media specialist to go over the Research Standard.

Some may view Roy's expectations a bit excessive, but he sees it another way. "I want to have high expectations, but I want to provide the support so that people can fulfill those expectations," he says. "The Research Standard has really moved us ahead as a professional learning community because it has pulled teachers together across disciplines--English, science, social studies, and math. Collaboration is now the norm, with the library contributing to the priorities of the school." To prove his commitment to Valenza, Roy devotes $50,000 of his annual $300,000 budget to the media center--and there's no chance that he'd consider cutting that number in tough economic times. "A huge chunk of the library budget goes to online subscription databases, resources that are aligned with the goals of our school," Roy says. "The library directly supports our key initiatives, and I'm not going to cut resources that are needed to make that happen."

On any given school morning, Roy can be spotted standing outside the media center greeting incoming students. The room, he explains, happens to be located at the intersection of two main hallways, but the symbolism is obvious. The library is so critical to the school that, in 2001, Roy allocated $1.2 million of his $26 million school renovation budget to the media center, effectively giving Valenza carte blanche to redesign her dream library. The room, which was expanded to 9,300 square feet, was designed to accommodate individual readers, large and small groups, and multimedia presentations, and its layout provides a clear line of vision for Valenza and her two full-time aides. It's equipped with two state-of-the art computer labs, including more than 80 new Dells, and offers a generous mix of print and electronic resources and growing video and audiobook collections--all of which, Valenza points out, would not have been possible without Roy's strong backing. "I'm leading from the middle," she says. "As a school librarian, I can make a little difference, but Joe is responsible for setting a culture for high expectations for research. I couldn't do it alone."