NW: It sounds like you see the principal's role as being really critical in all of this. What are the most important qualities of a principal, to be able to lead this kind of change?

Rhines: A principal has to be many things today. They have to be an instructional leader to be able to do this process. But principals also have to spend a lot of time as managers of the building, dealing with discipline, dealing with parent concerns, dealing with staffs and unions and districts and all those things. Some principals who are wonderful instructional leaders may not be very good managers—but they're really good at figuring out how to get other people to do that stuff. And then there are other principals who are wonderful managers, but they're not good at being instructional leaders. They count on their teachers to do that. There will be professional development for the school, but the principal won't come because the principal's too busy doing other things. So the principal doesn't know what's going on in the classroom. We believe that for true school reform to happen—and especially in the lowest performing schools that need to make instructional changes—the principals need to focus on being instructional leaders.

And then, of course, there's that leadership capacity of being able to move people off the dime. If you have a staff of people who are quite happy with the way they're teaching now, yet the principal knows that isn't moving kids, they need to be able to do more than just say, "Well, I'll have to wait until that person retires."

So I guess it's being someone who's a bit of a maverick. And these 20 principals are—they are all very strong instructional leaders. The research says the most successful schoolwides have strong leadership, a strong principal. Another really critical piece is that the principal has to be able to build a team of people—whether it's a site council or a leadership team—where they're not totally responsible for everything that happens in the building.

NW: How would you distinguish the most important difference between Title I Schoolwide and CSRD in terms of the emphasis? The emphasis of Title I Schoolwide seems to be on serving all kids in less segregated settings. If that's right, what's the main focus for CSRD?

Rhines: With CSRD, the emphasis is on the word "comprehensive." You're trying to take every single thing you do in your building and integrate it. You focus on a plan, and everybody in the building is aware of that plan. I believe that's the intent of schoolwides, but I don't think that's what has happened with most schoolwides. I think there are several reasons for that. Schools that have been targeted-assistance schools and want to become eligible for Title I Schoolwide, sometimes go after it for the wrong reasons. They go after it because they think it means, "Now we don't have to identify a certain group of kids; we can use our Title I resources for any kid, for any program." And that's fine, that's good, but if that's where it stops, it's a schoolwide in name only. I've been in many schoolwides where they're doing business exactly the same way (as they were before). It's just that now they don't have target lists of kids.

What we've discovered is that in some schools, they still really don't understand just what schoolwide and CSRD mean—that you're taking everything that you do and you're putting it on the table.

NW: How does Oregon compare to the other Northwest states in the process of selecting CSRD schools?

Rhines: I don't think that anybody else is giving the same level of technical assistance. We have the luxury of only having 20 schools, but we only have five Distinguished Educators, who have been the primary technical-assistance providers to the CSRD schools. The primary role of DEs is working with schoolwides. Their Number One role is to help schools that are going through their planning year, and CSRD has also been a main focus for them this year.

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