The Learning Leader

"We can't do that in our school district."
"I don't have time to add that to my curriculum."
"We're fighting against impossible odds with these students."

Sound familiar? School improvement can often feel like a losing battle, but it doesn't have to be. In this fully revised and updated second edition of The Learning Leader, Douglas B. Reeves helps leadership teams go beyond excuses to capitalize on their strengths, reduce their weaknesses, and reset their mindset and priorities to achieve unprecedented success.

A critical key is recognizing student achievement as more than just a set of test scores. Reeves asserts that when leaders focus exclusively on results, they fail to measure and understand the importance of their own actions. He offers an alternative—the Leadership for Learning Framework, which helps leaders identify and distinguish among four different types of educators and provide more effective, tailored support to

- "Lucky" educators, who achieve high results but don't understand how their actions influence achievement.
- "Losing" educators, who achieve low results yet keep doing the same thing, expecting different outcomes.
- "Learning" educators, who have not yet achieved the desired results but are working their way toward excellence.
- "Leading" educators, who achieve high results and understand how their actions influence their success.


Reeves stresses that effective leadership is neither a unitary skill nor a solitary activity. The Learning Leader helps leaders reconceptualize their roles in the school improvement process and motivate themselves and their colleagues to keep working to better serve their students.