ELPS 606 Final Exam: How to Approach the Fullan Change Leadership Questions
A question-by-question guide to the ELPS 606 final exam — how to analyze Madison Ridge School District using all five of Fullan’s components, explain interdependence without just listing concepts, design CSP implementation at Westfield High School, write the faculty communication, address resistance, and meet the rubric’s integration and analytical depth requirements.
The ELPS 606 final exam is a 400-point open-book assessment that asks you to do two intellectually distinct things: analyze an existing change effort using Fullan’s framework (Question 1), and design a new one from scratch while writing a genuine piece of leadership communication (Question 2). Students who treat this exam as a content recall test — summarizing what Fullan says about each component — consistently underperform relative to those who use the framework as a diagnostic lens applied to specific evidence in the scenarios. This guide explains how to approach each question, what the rubric is actually rewarding, and where most responses fall short.
This guide does not write the exam for you. It explains what each part of each question requires, how to read the scenarios for the evidence the rubric expects you to use, and what distinguishes an excellent response from an adequate one at each level of the assessment.
What This Guide Covers
Understanding What the Exam Is Testing
The exam instructions are explicit: this is not a content recall test. Responses that recite Fullan’s definitions of the five components without applying them to specific scenario evidence will land in the “Developing” tier on the rubric, not the “Excellent” tier. The rubric’s highest category across both questions consistently uses words like “sophisticated,” “integrated,” “interdependent,” and “grounded in specific evidence.” Those four words tell you exactly what the exam is testing — not whether you know what the components are, but whether you can use them to explain what is actually happening in complex educational organizations.
The most common structural error in this exam is addressing each of the five components in five separate paragraphs and then treating the interdependence question as an afterthought. The rubric’s top tier for comprehensiveness and integration requires showing how components work together — not just sequentially listing them. Before you write, map the relationships between components in the scenario. In Madison Ridge, for example, the weakness in relational trust at Roosevelt is not independent of the incoherence problem — it is part of the same system. Your response should reflect that systemic understanding throughout, not just in Part B.
The Five Components: What Each Actually Means for Application
Each component requires a different analytical lens when applied to a scenario. Understanding what each component is asking you to look for in the scenario determines the quality of the evidence you can cite. This is not about memorizing definitions — it is about knowing what questions each component prompts you to ask.
| Component | The diagnostic question it asks | Evidence to look for in scenarios |
|---|---|---|
| Moral Purpose | Why does this work matter, and does that “why” actually drive decisions? | How teachers and leaders talk about the initiative; whether the “why” is visible in resource allocation; whether different stakeholders share the same moral orientation or have different ones |
| Understanding Change | Is the organization treating this as a learning process or a compliance rollout? | Evidence of the implementation dip (performance decline before improvement); whether leaders model learning; how the organization responds when things get hard; whether “behavior before beliefs” is acknowledged |
| Relationships | Is there enough relational trust for people to take risks and collaborate? | History of the organization (leadership turnover, broken commitments); specific evidence of trust or distrust in the scenario; how the quality of principal-teacher relationships varies across schools |
| Knowledge Creation | Are structures in place for collective learning, or is learning individual and isolated? | What PLC work actually looks like in practice; whether coaches are supported in their own learning; whether what teachers learn in one school travels to another; quality of collaborative structures vs. their existence on paper |
| Coherence Making | Do people experience this as aligned with what matters, or as one more thing? | Teacher survey data about competing priorities; whether resources match stated priorities; how the initiative is described by teachers and principals; whether there is a fidelity-first or learning-first orientation |
Question 1: How to Approach the Madison Ridge Analysis
The Madison Ridge scenario is deliberately constructed to include both a success case (Lincoln Elementary) and a failure case (Roosevelt Middle School) operating under the same district initiative. This is not an accident — it is the exam’s mechanism for testing whether you understand that the same initiative produces different outcomes depending on which components are present or absent in each building. Your analysis should explain why Lincoln succeeds and Roosevelt struggles using Fullan’s framework, not just describe that they differ.
Read the scenario twice before writing. On the first read, note every piece of concrete evidence (percentages, direct quotes, specific behaviors of named leaders). On the second read, sort that evidence by which component it speaks to. Some evidence speaks to multiple components simultaneously — that is a signal of an interdependence you should name in Part B.
Key Evidence Points in Madison Ridge — Sort Before You Write
These are the pieces of scenario evidence that carry the most analytical weight. Each should appear in your response connected to the component it illuminates:
- Four superintendents in eight years — speaks to relational trust (broken commitments), understanding change (no sustained learning), and moral purpose (shifting priorities mean no durable “why”).
- 78% of Lincoln teachers believe the initiative improves student learning vs. 2% literacy gain at Roosevelt and a –1% decline in year two — speaks to relationships (principal engagement), knowledge creation (PLC quality), and coherence making (protected time signals what matters).
- Coaches are exhausted and several want to step down — speaks to knowledge creation (coaches are not supported in their own learning), coherence making (their role lacks clarity), and understanding change (the implementation dip is hitting the system’s change agents hardest).
- 47% of teachers want clarity about what really matters — speaks directly to coherence making and indirectly to moral purpose (a compelling “why” reduces confusion about priorities).
- Dr. Chen’s fidelity checklist plan — the exam expects you to analyze this critically. A compliance approach to a relationship and learning problem is a coherence making and understanding change error.
- Mr. James left summer training after day one and has sporadic attendance — speaks to the leader-as-lead-learner concept (understanding change) and relational trust (his absence signals the initiative does not matter, which teachers interpret as a broken commitment).
Analyzing Each Component in the Madison Ridge Scenario
For each component, the rubric requires specific evidence from the scenario, an explanation of how strength or weakness in that component is affecting the initiative, and identification of what needs strengthening. “Specific evidence” means naming Lincoln Elementary, Roosevelt Middle School, the coach exhaustion data, and the teacher survey — not speaking in vague generalities about “some schools.”
How to Approach Each Component Analysis (80–100 words each)
Moral Purpose — What to Focus On
The moral purpose exists (improving literacy for students of color and low-income students) but the scenario gives you evidence that it is not equally compelling to all stakeholders. Teachers at Roosevelt describe the initiative as “one more thing” — which tells you moral purpose has not landed for them as a felt commitment. At Lincoln, the principal’s visible participation and inclusion of literacy work in formal evaluations signals that the “why” is embedded in professional practice, not just stated. Analyze the gap between the moral purpose as intended and the moral purpose as experienced across the district’s buildings.
Understanding Change — The Implementation Dip and Lead Learner
The scenario gives you classic implementation dip evidence: modest gains district-wide in year one, uneven results in year two, coach exhaustion, and teacher skepticism from prior failed initiatives. The district has not explicitly named or supported the implementation dip — coaches are burning out rather than being sustained through the difficulty. Mr. James’s absence from the coaching training is the lead-learner failure point: when the principal does not visibly engage in learning, the message to teachers is that this is compliance work, not genuine professional learning. Lincoln’s principal modeled the opposite — she “participated in learning alongside her staff.”
Relationships — Trust Across Multiple Levels
Relational trust operates at three levels in this scenario: between the district and principals, between principals and teachers, and between coaches and the teachers they serve. The eight-year history of leadership instability has damaged trust at the district-teacher level — the Roosevelt teacher who says “I will wait this out” is not being difficult; she is making a rational decision based on prior experience with broken institutional commitments. At Lincoln, the principal’s consistency has built enough trust that teachers engage. Analyze why the same district initiative produces trust at Lincoln and distrust at Roosevelt — and what that means for a compliance-oriented response.
Knowledge Creation — PLCs in Theory vs. Practice
The district created PLC structures but the scenario tells you they are functioning very differently across schools. At Roosevelt, “attendance was inconsistent and conversations felt perfunctory” — this is a PLC in form only, with no genuine collective learning occurring. Coaches lack clarity about their role and feel unsupported in their own learning — which means the people responsible for facilitating knowledge creation are not themselves receiving it. The scenario does not describe what Lincoln’s PLCs look like in practice, which is itself analytically significant: successful schools tend to have coaches who are supported and PLCs that are substantive.
Coherence Making — The Fidelity Checklist Problem
Forty-seven percent of teachers want clarity about what really matters — this is a coherence making failure signal. The district has layered a new literacy framework, PLCs, and a distributed leadership model on top of whatever previously existed, without explicitly eliminating competing priorities. Dr. Chen’s plan to increase “fidelity to the framework” via a checklist is the rubric’s analytical trap: the exam expects you to recognize that a compliance mechanism applied to a coherence problem will intensify teacher resistance, damage relational trust, and undermine the moral purpose framing. Coherence making requires alignment and clarity, not checklist compliance.
Writing the Interdependence Analysis (Part B)
Part B asks you to explain how the five components affect each other — not to restate what each component is doing, but to show the causal relationships between them. The exam materials give you specific examples to develop: how does relational trust weakness at Roosevelt constrain knowledge creation? How does incoherence undermine moral purpose? Your response must move from correlation to causation — not “these things are all weak” but “weakness in X makes Y impossible because…”
Weak approach (describes components separately): “Relational trust is low at Roosevelt. Knowledge creation is also not working well there. Coherence is also a problem.”
Strong approach (explains causal relationships): “The breakdown of relational trust at Roosevelt is not independent of the knowledge creation failure — it is the mechanism through which that failure operates. When teachers do not trust that an initiative will last or that their principal genuinely supports it, they protect themselves by treating PLC work as performative compliance. Perfunctory PLCs then produce no genuine collective learning, which means teachers receive no evidence that the literacy framework improves student outcomes, which further erodes the moral purpose rationale that might otherwise sustain engagement. The components collapse together because they are not separable systems — relational trust is the soil in which knowledge creation must grow, and incoherence poisons that soil by signaling to teachers that what is being asked of them does not actually matter to the institution.”
The key phrase structure is “because” or “which means” or “which then” — each chain of reasoning shows interdependence rather than parallel description.
Diagnosis and Recommendations: Part C
Part C (100–150 words) asks what is most critical for Dr. Chen to address and what she should prioritize in the next 18 months. The rubric rewards recommendations that follow logically from the component analysis — not generic leadership advice that could apply to any school district. The scenario gives you a specific decision point to analyze: Dr. Chen plans to implement a fidelity checklist. The exam expects you to engage with whether that is the right move, given what Fullan’s framework tells you about where the real problems are.
The Fidelity Checklist Problem
A compliance mechanism applied to a relationship and learning problem will deepen teacher resistance, damage the limited trust that exists, and signal a compliance-over-learning orientation that contradicts understanding change as a process. It is also incoherent: asking teachers to demonstrate fidelity to a framework they do not yet trust or understand deeply is a solution to the wrong problem.
What the Analysis Points Toward
Dr. Chen’s 18-month priorities should address: (1) the coach sustainability crisis — coaches are the change agents and several are leaving; (2) principal engagement at schools like Roosevelt — which requires relational accountability, not compliance; (3) coherence — naming what the district will stop doing so teachers experience this as a priority, not an addition; and (4) building collective learning infrastructure at the district level, not just within buildings.
Question 2: Designing the CSP Initiative at Westfield High School
Question 2 shifts you from analyst to designer and communicator. You are Dr. Marcus Johnson, and you are designing an 18-month-to-three-year implementation of culturally sustaining pedagogy in a school where you have strong relational capital but limited instructional leadership credibility, where some teachers hold explicit concerns about standards and politics, and where the district is providing minimal structural support beyond two professional development days.
The exam is explicit that your design does not need to be perfect or complete — it needs to be realistic, grounded, and demonstrably shaped by Fullan’s understanding of how change works. The rubric’s top tier rewards designs that show how the five components work together and how they are sequenced across years. A design that addresses all five components separately but does not show how building trust in year one enables knowledge creation in year two is not demonstrating the integration the rubric requires.
First: He has strong relational trust with staff but is not viewed as an instructional leader. This is a specific asset and a specific gap — and both must be visible in your design. The asset means his relationships can carry the moral purpose conversation. The gap means he needs to position himself as a lead learner alongside teachers, not as the instructional authority. Second: Several senior teachers have expressed that CSP will “lower standards” or be “too political.” These are not dismissible concerns — the rubric explicitly penalizes designs that ignore skepticism or treat it as an obstacle to overcome rather than a perspective to engage. Your design must include a genuine strategy for these teachers that reflects relational trust and understanding change principles.
The Six Design Elements: How to Address Each One
Part A of Question 2 has six subsections (80–100 words each). Each should explain not just what you will do but why — specifically grounding the decision in Fullan’s framework. The rubric rewards explanations of the reasoning behind design choices, not just descriptions of what will happen.
Writing the Faculty Communication (Part B)
Part B is the only section of the exam with a specific word count target (approximately 300 words per the overview, or 400–500 words per the detailed guidance — check the version your exam specifies). It is graded on its own 40-point rubric dimension. The rubric’s top tier requires: clear moral purpose, acknowledgment of challenges and concerns, invitation to a learning journey rather than compliance, and language authentic to how a principal would actually speak.
What the Communication Must Do — And What It Must Not Do
Tone That Closes the Room
“The district has mandated CSP and we will be implementing it this year.” Accurate but immediately frames CSP as compliance. Teachers who already have concerns will disengage before the second sentence. The rubric penalizes language that is “dismissive of teacher concerns” or “does not invite engagement.”
Tone That Opens a Conversation
Begin with what Dr. Johnson actually sees in the school — the students, the data, what he has noticed about whose stories are told in the curriculum. Lead with the moral purpose before naming the framework. Acknowledge that this is new learning for everyone, including him. Name that there are different perspectives in the room and that is expected and legitimate.
Jargon-Heavy Opening
“Culturally sustaining pedagogy, as articulated by Django Paris and others, emphasizes that teaching should honor and sustain the cultural practices, knowledge, and ways of being that students bring from their home communities.” This is accurate but reads like a policy document, not a principal speaking to colleagues he trusts.
Voice That Sounds Like Dr. Johnson
Start where Dr. Johnson starts: with his students, with what he has noticed, with a specific observation about the gap between what the school teaches and who the students are. The framework can be named after the moral purpose is established — not before. The rubric specifically says the communication should feel “authentic to how Dr. Johnson might actually speak.”
Five Things the Faculty Communication Must Contain
1. A specific moral purpose statement — not “we need to improve equity” but something grounded in the actual data from the scenario and what Dr. Johnson has seen in the building.
2. Honest acknowledgment of difficulty — that this is new learning, that there will be uncertainty, that some of what teachers currently do will shift, and that this will be hard.
3. Explicit acknowledgment of diverse perspectives — without dismissing the concerns of teachers who see this as political or who worry about standards. The communication should name that those concerns are in the room and will be part of the conversation.
4. Clarity about direction with openness about process — the direction is clear (CSP is where this school is going), but how you get there will be worked out together, not handed down.
5. An invitation, not a mandate — specifically naming how teachers will be involved in the design, what structures will exist for learning together, and that Dr. Johnson is learning alongside them.
Addressing Resistance: Part C
Part C asks you to anticipate at least three major concerns from stakeholders and explain how your design addresses each one. The scenario gives you the concerns explicitly — you do not need to invent them. Senior teachers have said CSP will “lower standards” or is “too political.” Union contract provisions limit required change. Community and student perspectives on how well the school honors their cultures are diverse.
“This Will Lower Standards”
This concern is legitimate and deserves a substantive response. CSP does not replace academic rigor — it reframes what counts as rigorous. The design response: in year one, teachers are not replacing existing curriculum wholesale; they are adding texts, examples, and contexts that reflect student experiences while teaching the same standards. Show how the two are not in tension. Reference research on culturally responsive teaching and academic outcomes where relevant.
“This Is Too Political”
This concern usually means: I am afraid of controversy, or I disagree with the premise. The design response acknowledges both. For the fear of controversy: the work is grounded in student outcomes and school data, not in political ideology. For the disagreement: Dr. Johnson’s response is that he respects different perspectives and is committed to conversation — but the direction of the school, grounded in the students it serves, is clear. He does not need everyone to agree; he needs enough shared understanding to move forward.
Union Contract Constraints
The union contract limits required change in a single year. The design response is to use year one as a voluntary, defined-scope implementation — not compliance but invitation. This respects the contract while building evidence and relationships. In conversations with union representatives, the framing is collaborative: the union shares the school’s interest in conditions that support teacher professional learning. CSP’s collaborative structures benefit teachers as professionals, not just students.
What the Rubric Is Actually Rewarding
Both questions share the same rubric logic: the highest-value dimension is integration and coherence (50 points in Q1, 50 points in Q2). Analytical depth and framework application are each worth 40–50 points. Writing quality and practical grounding together account for 50 points across both questions. This means the most time-efficient investment is in making sure your analysis is integrated and your framework application is specific — not in writing more words, but in making the analytical connections visible.
How the Rubric Tiers Differ — What Moves You Up
The difference between “Proficient” and “Excellent” in the rubric is consistently about three moves:
- Specificity of evidence: Excellent responses name Lincoln Elementary and Roosevelt Middle School, cite the 78% vs. 2% data, and reference the coach exhaustion and the fidelity checklist decision. Proficient responses speak in general terms about “some schools” and “some teachers.”
- Explanation of why: Excellent responses explain underlying causes — why the implementation is uneven, why the fidelity checklist is the wrong tool, why CSP must be framed as learning rather than compliance. Proficient responses describe what is happening without fully explaining why.
- Interdependence: Excellent responses show how strength or weakness in one component produces effects in others. Proficient responses address each component adequately but treat them as parallel, not interconnected. This is the single highest-leverage move available in both questions.
The core logic of Fullan’s change framework is that the five components are mutually reinforcing — moral purpose sustains relationships through difficulty, relationships make knowledge creation possible, knowledge creation produces the evidence that strengthens moral purpose, and coherence making ensures all of this is aligned rather than fragmented. Your exam responses should reflect that circularity, not treat the components as a checklist to work through sequentially.
Where Most Responses Lose Points
Describing the Scenario Without Analyzing It
“Lincoln Elementary improved 8% in year one because the principal was supportive. Roosevelt declined 1% in year two because the principal was not engaged.” This describes what the scenario already says. It does not explain why principal engagement produces these results through Fullan’s framework.
Instead
Use the framework to explain the mechanism: “Principal engagement at Lincoln functions as a relational trust signal — when teachers see the principal participating in learning alongside them, they experience the initiative as something the institution genuinely values, which makes them willing to take the professional risk of changing practice. At Roosevelt, the principal’s absence from the summer training communicates the opposite: this is compliance work, not real learning, and it will not last.”
Treating Dr. Chen’s Fidelity Checklist as a Good Idea
Incorporating the fidelity checklist into your recommendations as if it is an appropriate response to the district’s challenges. The scenario includes it as an analytical test — the rubric expects you to recognize that a compliance tool applied to a relationship and learning problem deepens the dysfunction rather than addressing it.
Instead
Engage the checklist critically: “Dr. Chen’s instinct to increase fidelity addresses the symptom (uneven implementation) rather than the cause (differential relational trust and principal engagement). A fidelity checklist at this stage would likely deepen teacher resistance at schools like Roosevelt, damage the limited trust that exists between district leadership and building-level staff, and signal a compliance orientation that directly contradicts Fullan’s understanding of change as a learning process.”
Five-Component List Without Interdependence
Writing five separate paragraphs on five separate components in Q1, then writing one transitional sentence for Part B (“these components all work together”). The rubric’s top tier for comprehensiveness requires showing how the components are interdependent throughout the analysis, not as a separate afterthought.
Instead
Build interdependence language into the component analysis from the start. When you analyze relational trust, note how it constrains knowledge creation. When you analyze coherence, note how incoherence erodes moral purpose. Part B then synthesizes and deepens what you have already threaded through Part A, rather than starting the interdependence conversation fresh.
Q2 Faculty Communication That Reads Like a Policy Memo
A formal, third-person, jargon-heavy communication that describes the CSP initiative, its research base, and the district’s expectations for implementation. The rubric explicitly says language should be “authentic to how a principal might actually speak” and not “canned or overly formal.”
Instead
Write in Dr. Johnson’s voice — first person, direct, warm, specific to Westfield and its students. Reference what he has actually seen in the school. Acknowledge the concerns in the room without dismissing them. Use plain language to describe CSP’s purpose before naming the framework. The communication should feel like something a trusted leader would say to colleagues he respects, not a policy announcement from above.
Q2 Design Without Realistic Constraints
Designing a CSP implementation that requires full faculty participation, significant new resources, and complete curriculum overhaul in year one — without engaging the union contract limitations, the tight budget, or the reality that some teachers will not engage voluntarily.
Instead
Name the constraints explicitly and explain how your design works within them. Year one focuses on one department with volunteers, uses existing coach capacity, and partners with community organizations for additional resources. This is more credible than an unlimited design and demonstrates the “practical wisdom” the rubric describes at its highest tier.
Frequently Asked Questions
What This Exam Is Really Asking
The ELPS 606 final exam is a test of whether you can think with Fullan’s framework rather than about it. Students who understand the five components as a taxonomy — a list of things to check — produce responses that are comprehensive in coverage but thin in analysis. Students who understand the framework as a system — where each component is a condition that enables or constrains the others — produce responses that explain why change is working or failing and what leaders should actually do about it.
Both scenarios are constructed to reward the second kind of thinking. Madison Ridge is not a problem with bad principals at some schools and good ones at others — it is a systemic problem in which relational trust, coherence, and knowledge creation are interdependent, and in which a compliance response to that systemic problem would deepen the dysfunction rather than address it. Westfield is not a problem with resistant teachers — it is a leadership design challenge that requires building moral purpose, relationships, and learning structures in a sequence that reflects how change actually works in complex human organizations.
For direct support with either exam question — including help analyzing the scenario through Fullan’s framework, developing the change design, or drafting and reviewing the faculty communication — our educational leadership writing team works specifically with ELPS and educational administration graduate coursework at the level of analysis and integration this exam requires.
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