Education Leadership

Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership, Matthew Lynch

The Seven Principles of Sustainable Leadership

The main responsibility that all education leaders have created a learning system that engages students intellectually, emotionally, and socially. Sustainable leadership therefore goes beyond the temporary gains in achievement scores to create long-lasting, meaningful improvements in learning processes. Let us look at the particular principles that define sustainable leadership:

1. Sustainable Leadership Lasts

One of the major characteristics of sustainable leadership is that it involves planning and preparing for succession – not just as an afterthought, but from the first day of the school leader’s appointment. Sustainable leadership requires that leaders pay serious attention to leadership succession. This can be achieved through grooming successors for them to continue with reforms, and keeping successful leaders in schools much longer, especially if they are making great strides in promoting learning. It also involves resisting the urge to search for “irreplaceable charismatic heroes” to become the saviors of schools, including succession in all district and school improvement plans, and slowing the rate of principal turnover.

2. Sustainable Leadership Spreads

A suitable way for leaders to leave a lasting legacy in their schools is to ensure that they share and help develop their vision with other school actors. Leadership succession in this sense therefore means more than grooming one’s successor. It actually means distributing leadership throughout the school through its professional community so that others can carry the torch of school improvement after the current principal is gone.
Sustainable leadership cannot just be the responsibility of one person. The school is a highly complex institution, and no one leader can control everything without assistance. In summary, sustainable leadership is and must be a shared responsibility, if it is to be carried out with success.

3. Sustainable Leadership Is Socially Just

Another aspect of sustainable leadership is that it aims to benefit all students and schools. Sustainable leadership is conscious of the fact that the magnet, lighthouse, and charter schools and their leaders effect surrounding schools. It is also sensitive to privileged communities “poaching” from the local leadership pool. Sustainable leadership recognizes and takes full responsibility for the fact that schools affect each other in interlinked webs of mutual influence. In this aspect, and in knowing the above facts, sustainability is tied to social justice.

Sustainable leadership is not just about maintaining improvement in one’s own school,. School leaders who truly care about sustainability should accept responsibility for the schools and students and be aware that their actions have an effect on the wider environment.

4. Sustainable Leadership Is Resourceful

The systems of sustainable leadership provide certain intrinsic rewards while at the same time offering external incentives that attract, motivate, and retain the best and brightest in the leadership pool. These systems provide time and opportunity for school leaders to network, support, and learn from one another, while at the same time coaching and mentoring their successors. Sustainable leadership carefully utilizes its resources to develop the talents of its educators, instead of lavishing rewards on selected proven leaders. The systems of sustainable leadership take care of leaders while encouraging them to take care of themselves. Eventually, leadership is only sustainable when it sustains the leaders themselves.

5. Sustainable Leadership Promotes Diversity

Leaders who promote sustainability prepare and recreate environments that stimulate continuous improvement on a broad level. They enable people to adapt and prosper in increasingly complex environments by learning from each other’s diverse practices. Most innovative schools create and promote this diversity.
Sustainable leadership does not impose standardized templates on entire communities.

6. Sustainable Leadership Is Activist

Standardization has increased the problems that traditional schools had. Moreover, formerly innovative schools have lost their edge. In an unhelpful environment, sustainable leadership must include some sort of activism. Leaders must be willing to pursue improvement for their schools, even if it means being labeled as difficult.

7. Systems Must Support Sustainable Leadership

Most inspiring school leaders do more than manage change – they actively pursue and model a form of sustainable leadership. The measure of developing sustainability is the commitment to and protection of deep learning in schools by attempting to ensure that school improvements last over time, especially after the charismatic leaders have left. by distributing leadership and responsibility, considering the impact of their leadership on schools and communities in their neighborhood, avoiding stress and burnout, promoting and bringing about diverse approaches to school reform , and activism, leaders develop sustainability.

While most school leaders want to achieve the goals that matter and inspire others so as to leave a lasting legacy, they are often not responsible for their school’s failure. Most of the blame rests with the systems in which they lead. To institute change that matters, spreads, and lasts, we must ensure that the systems in which leaders work make sustainability a priority.

 

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Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership, Matthew Lynch

Entrepreneurial Leadership: What Schools Can Learn from Business Leaders

The U.S. education system is becoming increasingly modernized. Efforts in the business world to improve leadership were ignored by school administrators for a long time, but this is beginning to change.. Researchers are scrambling to propose models that would steer the education sector to new heights. Most of the efforts to improve leadership have sprung from the fact that now, more than ever, there is increasing pressure on school leaders from the government, communities, and various highly placed observers, all of whom are concerned about the state of education in America. This is especially true in light of reports that have found American education lacking when compared with other developed countries.

One of the new ventures being considered as a leadership solution is entrepreneurial leadership. One aspect of entrepreneurs that stands out is their positive influence on creativity and economic growth, both of which are commodities in high demand globally. School leaders can draw valuable lessons from entrepreneurs when it comes to being innovative, motivated, and goal-oriented.

Many studies have been dedicated to entrepreneurial leadership in the business sense, especially for small enterprises, but few have linked it to school leadership. Perhaps this is due to the fact that school leadership has traditionally been seen as separate, likely because the success of a school is not measured in dollars. However, among many other similarities, schools and businesses share an emphasis on obvious, measurable results.

The entrepreneur’s drive has been the main focus of many research studies. Schumpeter describes this drive as “the will to conquer,” “the dream and the will to found a private kingdom,” and “the joy of creating and of getting things done.” While these developments accurately describe an entrepreneur’s desire to succeed, they do not explain where the so-called “Schumpeterian entrepreneurial endowments” come from. This will be the basis for our focus on entrepreneurial leadership.

Recently, researchers have recognized that entrepreneurs do not successfully build new ventures without possessing effective leadership behavior traits. A good example of this is the requirement that business founders create a vision for their firm, and inspire or influence others to see and understand their dreams. This is a good trait for attracting employees and acquiring the necessary resources for growing their ventures.

Entrepreneurs have to set the initial goals in a way that rewards workers. They need to show leadership because they are founders of their ventures; there are no established standard operating procedures or tried and true strategies that they can fall back on when starting from scratch. This is the main difference between entrepreneurs and corporate managers, since the latter often have more well-defined goals, objectives, structures, and work procedures to guide them. This may be an advantage to entrepreneurs, since the problem of substitutes and/or blockers of leadership that are usually associated with the larger and more established organizations are less of an issue.

Though the importance of leadership in entrepreneurship has been established, there has been a lack of research on the forms of leadership behavior that are required, and which prove most effective. Additionally, much of the entrepreneurship literature on this kind of leadership has been one-sided, focusing mainly on empowering leadership behaviors. The failure to include the conditions caused by other behaviors, such as directive leadership, may be harmful to any entrepreneur. More specific research is needed to explore the benefits of entrepreneurial leadership for schools; after all, an educational breakthrough could be just around the corner.

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Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership, Matthew Lynch, Policy & Reform

Implementing and Sustaining School Reform

It is obviously hard to institute sustainable school reform when much of the reform undertaken in schools is the result of constant policymaking and changes mandated by incoming district administrations or temporary measures. Sustainability does, though, require changes to happen, as a “lack of change” speaks more of conservatism than reform. Essentially, sustainability means that improvements should be ongoing.

The evolution of transportation provides an instructive example. Transportation did not stop with the invention of the wheel. In the intervening centuries, transportation mediums were being developed, refined, and improved upon until they evolved into the industry we know today. The process has not stopped, nor should it. Innovation is always taking place, which means improvements are occurring. Our schools should emulate this type of process—school improvement should never end.

Let us consider five key points to sustaining school reform. The first of these is a substantial level of commitment, which stems from the belief that change is possible. There is, in fact, a great deal of power to be found in belief. Belief is what gives disadvantaged people the will to try to succeed and minorities the will to prosper. Conversely, the lack of belief can impede the success of reform efforts, regardless of how promising the proposed content of the reform may be.

If the will is not there, reform will not happen. Belief is just as important in school reform as in any other areas of life. If support, belief, and commitment are missing, then schools can paper over the gaps in the short term, but without the commitment of staff and faculty, the reforms lack stability. The likelihood of successful reform is, therefore, dependent on faculty and staff members embracing the implementation process of reform and sticking to it.

Reforms that originate outside of schools (e.g., reforms initiated at the district level) are by no means doomed to fail. Even so, district or other administrators need to make special efforts to assist teachers and other school staff in developing a feeling of ownership of the project in order to foster commitment and a belief in the efficacy of the reform.

Sustainable reform depends on the development of capacity. As our knowledge of cognitive science grows, we learn more about the ways individuals take in and process information. This knowledge has led to greater focus on how effective learning environments are built. Schools and districts are somewhat restricted in how they operate due to political, financial, and practical concerns, but they can still use their increasing knowledge to develop practices relevant to student learning needs and to structure learning environments to more effectively support these needs.

One absolutely vital aspect needed to sustain school reform is the time to accomplish it. It is a commonly reported issue that one of the most challenging issues schools and districts face is the need for time to plan and implement reform that would lead to improvements. No matter how successful the leadership of a school happens to be, leaders only have the same number of hours in a day as everyone else. Nonetheless, they likely have more demands on their time, which places them under pressure to maximize how their overcommitted time is used.

This issue often separates effective from ineffective leaders: the best ones will make much better use of their time, and have more control over it. Naturally, they will still come up against obstacles they can’t change, but they also have strict time management processes and will constantly evaluate how effective they have been in their use of time.

Sometimes the result of leader’s evaluation of time use will help them realize they are stretched too thinly.  Effective leaders are able to delegate some of their leadership responsibilities to other staff members who can perform those functions with support.  They also make sure that all the activities they undertake – particularly those relating to reform – will be structured around teaching and learning. Effective leaders will also make sure that their processes are efficient and that their actions will always work to further the goals of the school.

The actions of effective leaders may leave some staff or stakeholders feeling a little neglected or angry that they have not been given sufficient time with their leader. Ultimately, however, nothing comes without a cost, and it’s a case of weighing the benefits of spending time on reform against the costs of not focusing on other duties. The aim is to minimize the cost of actions while maximizing their benefit. This means that good planning and implementation are vital in order to manage time effectively.

 

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Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership, Matthew Lynch

Elements of Strategic Leadership

To determine the traits in schools that provide short term effectiveness and long term success, we rely on a model of strategic leadership formulated by Davies, Davies, and Ellison. The model identifies two elements that make up strategic leadership: strategic processes and strategic approaches.

Strategic processes are a force for change in schools. One saying related to leadership and management that’s relevant here is: “how we undertake an activity is as important as what we do to build long-term success.” Therefore, care and attention should be given to the process of building strategic capability, because “process is policy.” This suggests that policy isn’t simply formed and implemented; there is an interaction of processes that create the complete policy. The “how” part of strategic processes consists of four elements that build strategic direction for the school. These elements are conceptualization, involving people, articulation, and implementation.

Conceptualization mainly focuses on reflection, strategic thinking, analysis, and creation of new ways of understanding. The “involving people” part of the strategic process involves encouraging greater participation, leading to higher levels of motivation and strategic skill. The element of articulation brings out the oral, written, and structural means of communication and development of a strategic purpose. The last element of implementing policy involves turning strategy into action, organization, strategic timing and knowing when to quit.

Strategic approaches are how strategies built through strategic processes is put in place. The Davies et al. model focuses on four approaches. First, it considers the most common approach to strategic planning, the pro-active approach., It assumes that the school understands the desired outcomes, and how to go about achieving them. The method in this approach is similar to the school-development and school-improvement movements. However, it differs s from the reactive approach of emergent strategy, which means using current experience to shape future strategy. This is a common practice in circumstances where schools learn by doing.

If the school is a reflective and learning organization, a pattern of success and failure is formed. The school formulates strategy by repeating successful activities, and avoiding those that caused failures. A pattern of actions emerges that, through collaboration, produces a logical strategic framework. Therefore, emerging strategy is a reflective, reactive process that uses experience to predict and improve future patterns of behavior.

The researchers also considered a redistributed strategy as a model of strategic development. This is where senior school leaders determine values and set the direction of the school, but allow other staff to put the policies in place. This strategy only works if values, and a degree of trust, exist among the various players in the school setting. The last approach is strategic intent, which involves achieving noticeable strategic change by building capacity and ability throughout the school community.

This approach sets clear objectives (intents) that the organization is committed to meeting, but recognizes the importance of building capability and capacity first, to fully understand how and when objectives can be achieved.

 

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Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership, Matthew Lynch

Who Can Lead in Constructivism?

Leadership represents a possible set of actions for everyone in the school community, and anyone can lead. Constructivism calls for “participantship” because it is through full participation that acts of leadership are done. Intervention and re-intervention help in the building of realities, especially when staff-members emerge into the leadership arena. It is essential that the participation processes form the basis of creating meaning and understanding to gain commitment from followers.

While it may not be fitting that students, teachers, parents, and administrators are leaders according to the old adage “too many cooks spoil the broth,” new paradigms of leadership are making a different “broth.” This is because the patterns of relationships in this new “broth” breed synergy, creating rich possibilities that exist outside traditional lines of authority, roles, norms, rules, and policies. In summary, constructivist leadership provides a system of meaning making for leadership actions.

While the kinds of educational communities described above are quite rare, the knowledge, understandings, and practices suggested are not unique. This is because many learning centers, networks, projects, and partnerships already function on notions of give-and-take, community, and purpose. Schools are beginning to focus more on student outcomes and cooperation. However, some researchers have questioned constructivist leadership and have dismissed it as “community work,” restructuring, or re-culturing.

The case for constructivist leadership is that these noble conceptions are isolated and fragmented. While these processes are happening, there is something missing that can act as glue, integration, or unity of spirit. Constructivist leadership entails interactive processes that enable participants in the school to build meanings that lead toward a common purpose of schooling.

The Case for a Constructivist Approach

The question remains as to what roles leaders, teachers, and researchers should play in translating reform policies into the reality of best practices within school cultures. A constructivist approach to teacher leadership argues that teachers need to be allowed to develop their ability to use reciprocity in problem-solving through collaborative inquiry. The approach promotes the development of teachers’ use of reciprocity in thinking, solving problems, and engaging in action research in their schools.

The purpose of this approach is to track the thinking of teachers about collaboration and inquiry as they participate in inquiry-based learning. This kind of learning describes a wide range of curricular, philosophical, and educational approaches to teaching. Its most profound requirement is that learning should be based around student questions. Collaborative learning is another term under constructivist leadership in education that involves joint intellectual effort among students and their teachers. It also refers to the methods and environments in which learners engage in common tasks and dialogue within a sustained community of inquirers, and the way they impact reciprocity in teachers’ thinking.

Current policies guiding educational reform on a national level reflect the tendency to oversimplify the change process by emphasizing large-scale uniform mandates instead of supporting ongoing and locally responsive research that encourages professional teacher development and teacher-driven inquiry. Leaders have to realize that change is not a linear top-down process; instead they need a more realistic understanding of change as a complex process.

Constructivism teaches that change occurs by creating the right conditions for stakeholders to engage in talk and collaborative inquiry, and allowing them to develop the capacity to use their own ideas to create locally transformative solutions to problems. In the reform process in education, school leaders need to move beyond top-down, quick-fix, or one-size-fits-all models of reform. If meaningful reforms are to happen, specific questions by teacher leaders need to be engaged in the complex process of developing effective teaching practices to bring about change.

If challenging the system is to become part of school culture, a theoretical approach that embraces constructivist premises needs to be applied to teacher leadership , to offer a promising framework for the development of school communities where dialogue and questioning thrive. This will transform the thinking among individuals to form a collective school culture. Engaging teachers in ongoing professional development involving a shared vision, dialogue, collaboration, specific questions, and shared learning for a common goal, develops the capacity and passion for the growth of sustainable change.

 

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Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership, Policy & Reform, Teachers

When teachers sexually abuse students

Editor’s Note: Sexual abuse is a difficult topic but an important one for educators to understand when it comes to the students they teach. As a warning, the following guest post may cause distress for those who have suffered similar abuse. You can read more about the Quest program sexual abuse controversy referenced in this post by clicking here. 

A guest post by Jennifer Fraser

I was halfway up the rock face when I suddenly couldn’t find any hold for my hand or my foot. I looked down and it was a long way. Of course I was roped in. This was a school-sponsored outing and at the top of the climb were my teachers who were holding the ropes. I was wearing a helmet. I was completely protected, but I couldn’t go up and I couldn’t go down and started to panic. My legs started to shake uncontrollably. Above, the students and teachers could see I was in trouble. And one teacher yelled down at me:

“If you give me a blow job, I’ll help you up.”

I was fifteen and didn’t know what a “blow job” was. I knew it was something sexual and was embarrassed that I didn’t know what it meant. It made me feel ashamed and ignorant at the same time

Now the interesting question is: why did I not tell this story to my parents?

There are many reasons and hopefully in shedding light on this dark part of my life, I can empower parents to watch for telltale signs of abuse and I can encourage students to speak up.

The problem with reporting on the men that sexually abused me, and so many students in the Quest program at Prince of Wales School in Vancouver, was that they were so popular. They had cult-like status at the school. They were charming and extremely funny. They were also leaders in terms of health and nutrition. They were anti-drinking and drugs and therefore greatly respected by parents and quite likely their colleagues. They were counter-culture at a time when kids were questioning their parents’ values. These teachers seemed incredibly cool to us. They were early environmentalists and we worked hard as teens to save the wilderness alongside them.

It’s important for all those who want to protect kids from abuse to know that oftentimes abusers are very popular; they are so good; they are so sought-after. They’re attractive. That’s how they get away with years of abuse. It’s this disguise they are highly adept at wearing that lets them unleash years of soul-destroying abuse on children in their power. They hold the ropes and the child believes they want to keep them safe; the child believes that they care. Abusers convince everyone, probably even themselves, that they act out of “love.” They never ask themselves why the love they offer causes so many kids profound suffering or why it’s against the law.

If adults can’t recognize abusers, children are even less likely to realize that what’s happening is abuse and that it is doing damage of a kind they can’t see.

If I had fallen from that rock face and broken my arm, I would have been rushed to hospital and cared for. But what happened on that rock face that day broke something in my mind and in my spirit. The pain far outweighed a snapped bone, but there was no cast to envelop the break and allow it to heal.

On a bus ride back from one of the wilderness trips, one of the teachers, Tom Ellison, held me down for a stretch of time and he licked my ear in a provocative sexual way in front of all the kids. It revolted me and made me afraid. He was twice my size and strong. It’s the only time in my life a man has held me down and forced himself upon me. The news stories and the court case about this teacher are packed full of such incidents and most of them far, far worse.

While I was scarred by my experience in Quest, I did not end up having sex with these teachers and am profoundly thankful for that. I’ve often wondered how I escaped.

I think there were a couple of reasons. The first one was that I was extremely naïve. As a fifteen year old girl, it never occurred to me that middle-aged men would have any sexual interest in kids. It literally did not cross my mind and so when advances were made, I just felt completely confused.

From the age of four on, children have it hammered into them that teachers deserve trust and respect. To suddenly go against those repeated lessons, is like telling a child raised in a religion that the God they have always worshipped is in fact evil. The mind cannot fathom it.

As a teenager, I was working hard not to look like a loser in front of my peers who all seemed to love these teachers. I was interested in boys my own age and thrilled at the notion that some of the grade 12 boys were interested in me. They were two years older and seemed to belong to a whole other category of sophistication. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea that a man who was married and had three children and was middle-aged actually wanted to have sexual relations with me or any other teenage girl. It did not make sense.

Dean Hull approached me at the first Quest dance when a slow song came on. I couldn’t even imagine dancing closely with him and held him at bay as it was just so strange and awkward. He proceeded to humiliate me in front of the other kids saying that I was “frigid” and laughing at how I was trying not to dance right up against him. I was deeply embarrassed and finally slow danced with him. Just writing this makes me feel physically sick.

Adults have enormous power over children.

Their knowledge and experience makes them able to influence those who have so few years on the planet and are just learning. It’s counter-intuitive, but watch out for teachers who are devoted to their students, the ones who appear to be so passionate that the majority of their time—even holidays—is dedicated to students. Adults who don’t spend much time in adult relationships and say that it’s because they’re so intensely passionate about their wilderness program or their theatre production or their sports team should concern parents and administrators and be watched carefully. Of course there are dedicated teachers out there who simply do care about their students and devote their time because education is a calling for them. It’s just that abusers are smart and so they imitate educational goodness to cover up for their real motivations.

After the traumatizing, embarrassing dance with Dean Hull, I didn’t say anything to my parents. If anything, I walked away from that dance feeling like a failure. I had displeased my teacher. I had done something wrong. I had not acted appropriately. Why would I share that with my parents?

I was forced to slow dance with Dean Hull, but I wasn’t forced into having sex with him and for that I am deeply thankful and I feel extremely sad for the teenage girls in my grade who ended up having sex with Dean Hull, Stan Callegari and Tom Ellison. I know how much these men have messed up my brain and I can only imagine what they’ve done to others who suffered far more than I did.

I think there’s another reason I escaped the worst from these abusers and it was because of my parents. They knew something was wrong. And I encourage parents: trust your instincts, talk to your kids, ask them questions, watch for signs of mental illness like eating disorder, cutting, depression. I suffered from all three of those conditions. I was voted “worst dressed girl” in grade 12, but I did not explain to anyone—even myself—that I was wearing sweat pants everyday and baggy shirts so that the teachers would leave me alone and not notice me.

In the summer of grade 11, before I went on a month long trip to the Yukon with these abusers, my mom met with them. She told them my dad was a lawyer and if anything happened to me on this trip, they would do everything in their power to ensure the teachers were held accountable. I suffered terribly on that trip, but I was not the girl who shared a tent or a bed with these teachers. That fate was reserved for two other teenage girls and I thank my parents for making those teachers afraid of what would happen if they abused me.

Schools are so careful to supply students with helmets and ropes, to keep them physically safe.

But they need to work harder on protecting children from abuse that plays on children’s emotions and uses them as a way to gain entry into a child’s body and mind. Schools must teach children what abuse from a teacher looks like, what it sounds like, what it does to the brain and heart and soul.

Kids need to know that if a teacher or coach abuses them, it does very serious, long-lasting damage.

No one told me that when I was a child.

—

Jennifer Fraser has a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Toronto and is a published writer. She is presently teaching creative writing and International Baccalaureate literature classes at an independent school in British Columbia.

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Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership, Matthew Lynch

An Ethical Framework for Leadership Practice

The ethical framework referred to in the title of this column was developed by Shapiro and Stefkovich is based on ethical reasoning in educational leadership. It is aimed at guiding the decision-making of principals, as they confront unfamiliar, complex situations in their schools. They suggest four approaches to the understanding of ethics, which are known to influence school leaders. These include the perspectives of justice, care, critique, and the ethics of the profession. These four aspects reflect the focus of administrators as they make decisions. In order to illustrate them, we will describe each ethical stance, and the problems related to the delivery of education by administrators in public schools.

The first ethic, justice, concerns issues related to individual rights and laws. In decision-making based on this perspective, administrators should pose the following questions: Does a law, right, or a policy that relates to this particular case exist? If it does exist, should it be enforced? And finally, if there is no law, right, or policy, should there be one?

The critique ethic is responsible for keeping educators sensitive to the inequities of social class, race, disability, gender, and other differences that occur in the school community. When making decisions based on this perspective, school administrators should consider the following: Who makes the rules, laws or policies? Who benefits from them? Who has the power to enforce? Lastly, he or she should find out whose voices are silenced in the debate.

The care ethic challenges school decision-makers to address certain values such as loyalty and trust. It calls for school leaders to show care, concern, and connection with stakeholders in solving moral dilemmas. The questions to be asked in this perspective are: Who is likely to benefit from what I decide? Who will I hurt by my actions? What are the overall long-term effects of the decision I make today? Finally, if someone helps me now, what should I do in the future to give back to this person, or to society in general?

Shapiro and Stefkovich state that the ethic of the profession considers “the moral aspects unique to a profession and the questions thereof that arise from educational leaders becoming more aware of their own personal and professional codes of ethics.” In decision-making by school leaders from this perspective, they should ask the following questions: What does the profession expect me to do? What would my community expect me to do? And what should I do that serves the best interests of the students, who are diverse in their composition and needs?

Utilizing this professional ethics perspective enables school leaders to become critical, logical thinkers, who consider practical outcomes and the effects of their decisions before they are made. The questions posed above are relevant to school leaders in addressing issues related to social justice, education of students with special needs, and to performance and resource inequities in their schools. Working within this ethical framework leads to more effective leadership, and in turn, a better overall school environment.

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Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership, Matthew Lynch, Policy & Reform

School Closures Need More Consideration

It’s been a rough couple of years for public schools on the chopping block for closings. Parents, students and communities as a whole feel targeted, even if school board members are quick to blame unbiased numbers. So who is right? The self-proclaimed objective board members and politicians who say students will attend better-performing schools and that the money saved will go to other educational initiatives? Or the parents, teachers and students that say there shouldn’t be a price tag on quality education? Each of these districts, and many others around the nation, have individual circumstances. At the risk of sounding like a cynic, each school board member and politician has an agenda too – some virtuous in nature and others selfish. There is no concrete way to declare a winner in these cases; there is no formula for determining right or wrong

I think, though, when schools are viewed only for their monetary contributions (or lack thereof), there is an inherent problem. Schools are not short-term retailers that tally up profits at the end of each business day; the economic impact of students from strong public schools with enough teachers and space to go around is often not felt for years, or even decades. To call schools a societal burden that are half-full because of special education classrooms with a higher student-to-teacher ratio is flawed. To close underperforming schools punishes the very students who struggle and need the safety and stability of a neighborhood school – not one that they must take a 20-minute bus ride to attend.

Then there is the emotional impact of it all. Neighborhoods affected by school closings, and particularly the students impacted, face an inferiority complex. Why their schools? Why their neighborhoods? For families that already feel a sense of helplessness due to poverty and crime-ridden streets, the mental toll of being a target for a school closing weighs heavy.  Maybe the judge ruled against those parents in Brevard County who claimed minority bias, but that doesn’t change how those communities feel in their hearts. We often associate our public schools solely with the well-being of our children, but they really do belong to entire communities. A school closing brings communal grief – for the jobs lost, for the children displaced and for never being able to know what could have been within the school walls. To flippantly toss these emotions aside and advise communities to simply “move on” just adds salt to the wounds.

There are times when a school closing is simply an inevitability but communities should first look for other solutions. Instead of shuttering underutilized public schools – icons of the community – districts should consider other neighborhood uses. Maybe a community center. Maybe adult education classes. Maybe a cooperation agreement with a local college that opens up the building for paid courses. Maybe even a health center, or location for other district office space. Closing public schools should not be a short-sighted procedure. The decision should look beyond immediacy, and 10-year plans, and focus on the only investment that really matters: quality, public education for all our nation’s children.

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Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership, Matthew Lynch

The Urgency of Resolve for Low Performing Districts

In order to close the achievement gap, school districts need to participate as key players in reform. There are many questions and critical issues facing schools as districts evolve from their bureaucratic roots. These questions include the roles that should be kept at the district level, those that should be eliminated, or those that should be passed on to others. Districts also have to look at new functions they may wish to take on and the capabilities needed to assume these functions. At least initially, they will need to determine whether decisions should be made at district level, school level, or elsewhere.

There is also support for districts to take action to discover common interests between schools and the community, through ongoing outreach. Districts need to find ways for people to meet and discuss how to further common interests and work on them cooperatively in order to break down barriers. This type of outreach empowers families and communities, making them useful assets to school systems. Building relationships within the education system and holding open conversations are excellent ways to foster engagement.

Our political leaders have finally begun to recognize the importance of education to the survival of individuals and societies in the 21st century. The other aspect of this conversation is all too familiar: while our children do learn, not all of them are learning as much or as well as they should to meet the demands of the new century.

In the United States, there are low levels of achievement among students from low-income backgrounds and students of color. This is in contrast to the fact that students in educationally supportive states and those from advantaged backgrounds easily rival students from across the world. To put this into context, nine year-olds from White, advantaged backgrounds read as well as thirteen-year-old Black and Hispanic students. In addition, even though funding has increased, it has done so unequally and the achievement gap has grown.

Typically, schools that serve a large number of “minority” students face big issues, which put them at a disadvantage when compared to other schools. They have to deal with lower budgets, larger classes, and often less qualified teachers and school leaders. The effect of this has been to create an “educational debt” that negatively affects the students in these communities. Major efforts are needed to address this issue. Recruiting great teachers is important, but it is not the whole answer. Systemic elements are needed to support the work of talented educators. It is not the people who are at fault: it is the system that needs an overhaul.

As Ted Sizer once put it, “The people are better than the system.” We have come a long way in understanding how to create more effective school leaders and build a national commitment to educational leadership. However, we are not there yet. We need leadership to forge all of the various elements of school reform today into well-functioning systems that make sense for those working hard to achieve results for students.

Click here to read all our posts concerning the Achievement Gap.

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Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership

3 Reasons Educators Are Opting for the Distributed Leadership Style

Nowadays, it is becoming more popular in schools for leadership duties to be spread out among educators, rather than concentrated in the hands of a few. This concept is known as distributed leadership, and it’s worth knowing why this leadership style has become the style of choice for some schools and districts.

For one, the “charismatic hero” leadership style associated with transformational leadership can be hit or miss. Furthermore, distributed leadership allows school leaders to handle tasks of much greater complexity. After all, it is not the heroic leader who makes an organization function well, but rather the “mundane,” everyday activities that matter.

Aside from that, there are a few more reasons that a school might adopt a distributed leadership style. Consider that:

1. Distributed leadership is well within the broader policy spectrum for public services.
In a government’s emerging model for public services, we see three major types of leadership that the government favors. These are hierarchy, market, and network. Now, if we overlay the school setup on the government model, then we see where the schools’ “capability and capacity” fits in relation to the network regime of governance, where distributed leadership is positioned.

Distributed leadership can therefore be said to be similar to the broader policy process, since government will construct a goal that would require both school actors and non-school actors to distribute their efforts between organizations and/or within organizations to achieve this end. It also provides a cultural reference to the official structural similarities of two traditionally separate organizations.

2. Distributed leadership promotes collaboration between organizations. Distributed leadership fits well with the merging or networking of work-based activities according to current trends on inter-agency working in schools; with the joint production of personalized needs and solutions; and finally with the changing workforce . All these efforts seek to merge the professional cultures of different groups.

With the above in mind, the emergence of distributed leadership is not only a reaction to the recent policy shifts; it also reflects changes in contemporary culture. Organizations can no longer control their workers through the so-called rational or bureaucratic structures of the past. Those out-of-date methods inhibit the kind of independent work that relies on solidarity, respect, or mutual trust, since all they end up doing is bringing about authority conflicts.

3. Distributed leadership is a result of changing attitudes toward organizational culture.

The present focus on distributed leadership is not so much related to the cultural turn toward taking emotions into account, like transformational leadership, but is more of an example of management theory resonating with a contemporary shift toward the weakening of traditional logic. Organized social structure, as a result, has given way to a “network culture.”

These new changes also indicate a change in the knowledge economy. We have begun to see a form of “socialism” in education, proven by the use of terms such as “universal education” to symbolize the trend toward viewing education as something other than a market commodity in this age. Governments around the world are now keen to set up a policy that ensures that literacy is achieved by all, with no regard to social status. The role of the school leader is therefore shifting from economic management to social management.

Distributed leadership is emerging as an alternative to the hierarchy we have seen in organizations in the past. What do you think are some reasons for the growing popularity of this leadership style? Leave your comments in the section below.

References

Distributed leadership is a theory of leadership that was developed by Peter Gronn, and has been written about by many other scholars since then. To read more of his work on distributed leadership and other topics, click here to visit his Amazon.com page.

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