What's Become Clear

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I just saw a tweet about the book The School Principal Visionary Leadership and Competent Management. In part of the summary there is a quote, “Today, school-level administrators are expected to be both visionary leaders and competent managers.” I haven’t read the book but my first impression was, “I don’t think so.”

This is not to denigrate in anyway the job of the principle but I simply don’t see our principles as visionary leaders. They have an extremely difficult job, that is getting more difficult all the time. And maybe it’s just a difference in the definition of leaders versus managers. When I think of leaders I see their role as deciding what to do, and the job of managers is how to do it. Leaders ask the question, “Are we doing the right things?” Managers asked the question, “Are we doing things right?”

I think all the “visioning” has been taken out of the hands of our school administrators by bureaucrats. By default our vision is for schools to look like they always have. All of the rules and regulations being forced upon us by state and federal bureaucrats are based on the assumption that schools will look exactly like they have for the last hundred years. And the measure of what we are doing has been dictated as standardized test results.

They assume that our schools will be organized by age, compartmentalized by content area, prepare kids to go to liberal arts colleges, and learn in the abstract absent a context.

It is my opinion that if our principles were “leaders” they would be looking at society and asking the question, “Is what we’re doing in our schools preparing our kids to be productive members of a 21st-century society?” Perhaps I’m in the distinct minority, but I can’t imagine anybody thinking that what we are doing in schools today is in any way visionary, and preparing our kids for the 21st century.

Again, I am in no way trying to disparage school principals, but a constant focus on raising test scores is management not leadership. – Steve Wyckoff

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The whole question of leadership versus management has been on my mind for some time. Years is in fact. I’ve watched as we were told that principals and superintendents needed to be leaders not managers. And magically, even though they were doing exactly the same things on their job, they became leaders rather than managers.

Like I said, I’ve been giving this a lot of thought for a long time and I decided that we need a third category to describe the behavior of individuals in leadership positions. It occurred to me recently when I was listening to the book The Knack by Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlingham.

In their book they talked about how valuable managers are, but only when they are monitoring the most important data to make sure that things are being done right. But they also eluded to leaders as being the people who make sure the right things are being done. So if you’re not managing well, figuring out what’s most important in collecting data and analyzing it to determine how you’re going, and are not leading, making sure you’re doing the right things, then there must be a third category.

I’ve begun calling that third category of individuals caretakers. They monitor  what’s going on in the organization but they never really analyze how to measure the most important functions of the organization. They typically make sure that what’s been done in the past keeps occurring in the future.

In education it was so pervasive that we started talking about data-driven decision-making. Principles simply had never looked at data, they simply did what was done when they were teachers or even students, and kept doing it. I still don’t think we do a good job of data-driven decision-making because in my opinion we usually look at irrelevant data, namely test scores. But that’s another rant.

Leaders on the other hand are making sure that the right things are being done within the organization, not that the things that are being done are simply being done correctly. When I think of leaders in education the individual who always comes to mind is Mike Carson. Mike retired last year as superintendent of the Erie public schools, but not before he had led the complete transformation of Erie high school to project-based learning. Now that’s leadership!

Mike looked at the organization and asked, “What is it that we should be doing to make sure that our kids are prepared to be productive members of the 21st century society?” Based on that discussion Mike “lead” his school district in making dramatic changes.

We need more Mikes in our world. –  Steve Wyckoff

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In the innovative educator’s dilemma part 1, I talked about how your best customers can drive you out of business if you’re not careful. That your best students with the most influential parents will keep you in the old paradigm of education, traditional schooling, right up to the point that they leave for private schools, and your school isn’t meeting the needs of any of your students.

But there is a further dilemma to this story. Even the parents of students who are the least successful, and those that are far less successful, than your best students, believe that every child should be prepared to go to a four-year liberal arts college, and that schools should look much like they did when the parents were students.

This is a real problem. I talk to school leaders all the time who tell me that the fastest way for them to get in trouble is to suggest to some parents that their kids should not go to a four-year college. We’ve done a tremendous job getting parents to believe that education is the key to success. Now we’ve got to convince them that a four-year liberal arts degree is not necessarily the kind of education that is the key to success for their child. Only about 25% of jobs today require a four-year professional degree. On the other hand about 65% of jobs are what we refer to as skilled. These skilled jobs require post secondary education.  But the post secondary education may be in the form of certification programs, associate degree programs, and yes even bachelors degree programs.

Four of 10 of the most popular majors include Social Sciences (ex. History and Political Science) Psychology, Communication, and English

Popular careers of these majors include:
retail store manager
customer service representative
administrative assistant

So the dilemma for school reformers is that we must not only convince educators that they must redesign how they prepare students for their future, but we must also help parents understand that we need to change how their children are educated if they are to be successful in the 21st century. – Steve Wyckoff

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Why can’t schools change? It’s an interesting question. If you ask many educators they would say that schools have changed dramatically. I disagree. I think what goes on inside some classrooms has changed dramatically, but not schools. We do use more technology in classrooms; projectors, computers, smart boards, etc. But what we’re doing inside those walls is basically the same thing we’ve done for over 100 years. And sadly, with pretty much the same curriculum. Oh there have been some changes, but mostly tinkering inside the old format.

Some people believe that we need to change the rules so that schools look different. But then I can show you examples of schools that look dramatically different than traditional schools and are functioning within the same rules, regulations, and policies. So the rules must not be what is impeding our ability to change.

Other people think that a tradition that is over 100 years old is keeping us from changing. That we’ve done school the same way for so long that the belief system, and the culture around schools is too entrenched to change. These people often see parents as the biggest reason we can’t change. That parents demand that schools look like they did when they were students.

Still more people believe that the arcane rules for admission into college keep us from changing. That the emphasis on preparing every student to go to college forces schools to behave exactly as they always have. They believe that the Carnegie unit, Departmentalization, focus on standardized test, etc. are the fault of universities.

A cause that is never considered among educators is that perhaps we lack the leadership to make changes. School administrators are of the opinion that they are no longer managers, but rather leaders. I’m not sure I see any difference in their behaviors from when they were managers. I don’t think that continuous improvement of traditional processes constitutes leadership when there is a need for real systemic change.

There is also a school of thought that educators are risk-averse by nature, and that has a whole, are very, very reluctant to change. But when I talk to business people they feel the same way about themselves. Being resistant to change seems to be, to a large degree, human nature, and not reserved for educators.

And last, but certainly not least, there seems to be an non-articulated argument about the purpose of schools. There seems to be a “venn diagram” of purposes for schools. Prepare kids to go to college, prepare kids for the workplace, to give them a broad liberal education, to indoctrinate them for society, etc. The conflicting camps all want schools to change in a different way, therefore causing gridlock.

I think, in my humble opinion, that each of these is a characteristic of a centrally controlled bureaucracy. And there is no bigger centrally controlled bureaucracy than public education. Bureaucracies were designed to guarantee compliance, and stability in systems and processes. There is no system with more stable systems and processes nor more compliant than public education.

So what do I think the chances of real systemic change are? Zero. Nadda. None. In fact I think the bureaucracy has moved from the state level to the federal level with a corresponding increase in stability and compliance. I chuckle at the federal government’s insistence that they are encouraging real systemic change in schools. My observation is that they are causing exactly the opposite effect. Our schools have become test preparation Academy, whose sole purpose is to prepare kids to increase their scores on standardized test.

So what’s the solution? I believe the solution is “mission impossible.” The elimination of the educational bureaucracy at a time when our country is moving in the opposite direction seems hopeless. I keep looking for that ray of hope, but every time I see one, the results never seem to pan out. I don’t think there is a rule that America has to stay the best. Time will tell.- Steve Wyckoff

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Erie school district has been blessed. By Mike Carson, Rose Frey, Ted Hill, and many many others who were involved in the transformation of their school. Erie high school is unique. What makes them unique is that their focus is on their students, and their student’s futures.

Erie high school has changed what the students learn, how the students learn, and how they organize the students to learn. In addition, while the students do take the state mandated standardized tests, their students are measured in much different ways than almost all other kids across the country.

The curriculum used in Erie high school is based on projects and problems designed by each individual student, based on their own interest, needs, and desires. And the results have been equally unique, students, and I mean all students, have far exceeded the normal expectations we have for high school kids. And, as former superintendent Mike Carson is fond of saying, “It isn’t just the head cheerleader and the quarterback that are doing great things.”

What Erie high school has figured out is how to not just expose their kids to curriculum with all the standards, but how to actually engage the students in meaningful work, whereby the kids learn the things that they want them to learn. Is it perfect? No. There have been, and continue to be, many issues. But unlike school improvement in traditional schools, they are getting better at the right things, rather than just getting better at what schools have always done.

I’ve observed for the last 40 years scores of creative an innovative projects. Some big, some small. The thing that they all had in common was a champion. The sad truth is, as soon as the champion moved on, and eventually they always do, the gravity of the status quo always pulled the project back into the mainstream and morphed it into a traditional program. There seems to be no way to make real systemic change in the educational system.

So I’m watching Erie high school with great interest. The superintendent has retired, as has the high school principal responsible for the project-based, problem-based learning curriculum. Other changes have been made with key personnel. My hope is that the model employed in Erie high school will spread across the state and the country.  The hope is that new champions have replaced the old champions.

I have low expectations. In spite of the fact that their kids are doing exceptional things and are truly well-prepared for the life they’re going to live; and in spite of the fact that it is actually cheaper to educate kids in this model; and in spite of the fact that we are in a financial crisis; I fear that it is impossible to actually make sustainable systemic change in public schools.

Time will tell.

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As I observed leadership in our schools it started to become apparent to me that not all leaders are created equal. So I started to pay closer attention to see if I couldn’t create in my mind some general categories for the types of leaders that I see. Mainly I’m talking about superintendents, but with some thought I might be able to apply this to high school principals also, but that’s a thought for another time.

The thing that started me thinking about this was observing a handful of superintendents that appear to think differently and behave differently than most superintendents. They tend to be younger, more innovative, and less willing to be one of the “good old boys.” In conversation they are more likely to see the need for real systemic change, and not as likely to see more money as the only solution to education’s problems.

They appear to prefer to “fly under the radar”, and implement strategies in their schools that pushed the defined limits of the system. They neither see, nor desire, the approval of their peers not in their immediate circle of professional friends. The superintendents seem destined to implement the really “out-of-the-box” thinking that may lead to real change in education. Interestingly, this seems to be a  group that is growing in number. And for my money, that’s a good sign.

As I was analyzing the small group of superintendent I started to think about the other categories that superintendents might fit in. The first obvious group are those veteran superintendent’s who have emerged as  de facto leaders among their peers. They are more confident and outspoken about what they believe. They tend to be very supportive of doing business as we currently do, only better. For the most part they are highly respected by their peers, and also by policymakers. They truly are the banner carriers for the profession. They inherently are neither innovative nor creating outside the bounds of what is traditionally accepted as good educational practice among educators.

The category that occupies the middle ground of superintendents tends to be made up of relatively young superintendents who agree with, and seek the leadership, and mentoring, of those veteran superintendent’s who are attempting to improve on the status quo. They appeared to be biding their time until they emerge as the veteran defenders of the system. These superintendents are very reluctant to be the initial implementers of any new strategy, preferring to follow the lead of their mentors.

Anyway, food for thought. Whether you agree or disagree leave a comment. Like I said, this is the beginning of what I think I believe

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